Haunted Houses and Halloween

With Halloween just around the corner, the topic of whether spirits are real or imagined is often the subject of conversations, particularly among younger people.

This church has been there for 900 years but no one knows why this image was painted there

Children are noted for seeing apparitions, perhaps because of their fertile imagination, or perhaps because of their innocent nature: a nature unfettered and free from the restrictive thoughts of logic and reason, that pervades adults in their thinking and creativity.

An eerie place

Many years ago, I rented a house I believe was haunted or, at least, where things happened, that I couldn’t easily explain.

I was much, much younger than I am now. It was a very old house, somewhat dilapidated, but the rent was cheap and being located close to the city, it was attractive and convenient for a young person on limited means.

I moved in with a housemate. And it wasn’t long before strange things began to happen.

Ghostly mist coming from the fenceposts

Household Objects that Move

Incident #1: I awoke one particular morning feeling nothing out of the ordinary, but was surprised to find the refrigerator situated in the middle of the kitchen and not against the wall, in its usual position. And I do mean in the middle of the kitchen. It was placed about 1 – 2 metres out from the wall as far as the power cord allowed, which was still in the socket. Something, or someone had moved the fridge out from the wall, during the night. Despite my scepticism and questions, my housemate vehemently denied moving the fridge and was asleep beside me all night, as far as I could account. He was as stunned as myself at this strange occurrence. We had no guests or visitors staying over either. It was just us in the house that night. We moved the fridge back against the wall.

Walls that were Numbered

Incident #2: The walls of this old timber house were painted in various shades of white, or off-white, green and light blue. However it was the living room that was of particular interest. On each wall, someone had written a number in black paint – A different number on each wall. Initially, we thought nothing of it. We passed it off as some random numerical graffiti a child had drawn on the walls. That was, until a year or so later, when a visitor casually told us the numbers written on the walls indicated that the living room had been the site of a witch’s coven. A witch’s meeting place!! Given that witches gatherings are not as left of field as they once were, perhaps this is not such a drama, anymore. Although I was taken aback and wondered if it could explain the other incidents like:

Footsteps

Incident #3: Whenever I was in the house alone, and went to the downstairs bathroom, which was under the main part of the house, I would, more often than not, hear the sound of footsteps moving around upstairs, (directly over my head), despite no one else being at home at the time. The footsteps were loud and quick, and they were very clearly above my head.

Strange Noises and Lights

Incident #4: Sitting quietly in the living room watching TV one night, around 1980, a very loud bang accompanied by a flash of bright, blue light appeared in one corner of the room, despite there not being any electrical sockets, or power sources in the vicinity. The lights did go out as I recall, and our pet cockatoo let off a loud shriek and fell off its perch! We were a little frightened, but after some rudimentary investigations could not any explanation for the noise, or the light. Nothing further happened that night. Although it was perplexing at the time, life returned to normal without further mishap or occurrences of the mysterious blue light.

Could it have been a build up of static electricity, perhaps?

All of this was very strange.

This house definitely had some unexplainable and mysterious events. what is worse is that over the time I lived there, it also coincided with distinct personality changes in my housemate. He became abusive and turned to alcohol as comfort, but I am not disputing that other factors could also have accounted for this.

Have you ever watched a horror movie and thought, “Why are those folks going back into that haunted place? Why don’t they get the hell out of there?”

I have thought that yet I was the one who continued to live in that house, despite all these strange happenings. At the time, it didn’t really bother me much, yet I wonder if someone had looked on at me from afar, would they have been yelling the same thing to me?

Living in that house did not seem scary at the time, at all, and I think that is mainly because the house at that time, was my home. Now I just hate that house. If I do drive past it, (and I try not to do so), I wonder what experiences the current residents who live there have had? Did they experience any weird happenings, like me?

The most haunted house in Iceland – my friend was not welcome here

Many old houses seem to have some unsettled spirits and Halloween makes us think about the possibilities of these events having some scientific validity.

A friend of mine lives in one such old house. On several occasions, she has seen an apparition of a young girl in the hallway. When she researched the history of the house, it appeared that a young girl died there, in a house fire, many years previously.

Coincidence?

What do you think?

Have you had a ghostly experience?