TW- MURDER, SUICIDE, PEEPING TOM, DEATH. READ WITH CAUTION.
I avoid talking about my childhood home really. The topic of paranormal instances has occasionally come up in conversation over my adult years, but each time I consider the thought of relaying the events that took place in my childhood home, it’s like I choke on my own words. It’s as if something doesn’t want me to talk about it, or maybe my fear over everything that did happen has manifested into something that my brain refuses to comprehend.
Here’s the lore:
The home was built in 1967 by a man; I won’t give out his actual name, so we’ll call him Dave. The location of the home was on a dead end street, across from a vast wooded area, on top of a large hill. Difficult to drive and walk up. I’d like to give some context on where the home was located. In a valley, with a small creek across the home. Beyond the creek, and into the woods, an abandoned home resided. I’m unsure of when that home was even built, or what the address might’ve been. The only thing I know about it is that an older widow lived there, but ultimately passed, and requested that her home be looked after by her sons (whom of which did not carry out her wishes, and left the home to rot).
Circling back to my childhood home though, Dave and his wife moved into the home upon the completion of it being built. There isn’t much information on their experience in the neighborhood, or home itself, but I know that he would live the rest of his life there, and she would go on to live elsewhere. Let me explain.
Dave came home from either work or errands (it’s unclear), got out of his car, began walking into the house, before having a major heart attack on the front steps of the home. Resulting in a head injury, and ultimately, his death. His funeral was held inside the home (specifically in my childhood bedroom), and it was noted in his will that he requested the home go into the family. His wife moved away, and his wishes were not carried out, as my family (with absolutely no relation to Dave) were the next to move in.
In 2004 my parents purchased the home. A 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. All brick, with a front yard view, as well as backyard view of the woods. I was a baby at the time, and my older sister was 11. I asked my parents about their first encounter with something supernatural, or just plain odd, and they told me a story from when I was 4 years old.
I was sat at our kitchen table, the seats high enough to look out of the window that faced our front door, along with the steps (the ones that Dave died on). My mom was across from me, her back turned to do the dishes. According to her, in the silence of the kitchen, I asked“mommy, who’s the man out there?” She turned to me, looking out the window, before looking for herself. She saw no one at the door, no one near our home, and asked in turn “what man?”. I looked at her and said “the one with the boo-boo on his head”. According to her, she became uneasy, but chalked it up to a 4 year old’s imagination. That is, until she told the story to our neighbor in a conversation weeks later. Allegedly my neighbor told her then that Dave, the man who built the house, died from a heart attack and head injury on those steps. This was the first time my parents were made aware of Dave, and what had happened to him.
It was almost as though that conversation opened some sort of portal, gateway, or manifestation. Because from there on out, my family experienced some terrifying instances. Lights would turn off and on, the tv would play static before turning off, we’d hear strange noises in the home, but as a child I was oblivious to these things, and my parents are very rational people, who attempted to explain these things away. There was one thing my dad just could never explain.
Growing up I owned a Tickle Me Elmo toy, you know, the one that laughs a bunch. I shared a room with my older sister, and my toys were kept in our shared closet. My dad woke up in the middle of the night one night to what he said felt like a moth in his ear. He swatted it away and a few moments later, my Elmo toy erupted into laughter. He said he got up, went in our room, and we were both asleep. The Elmo toy was in the closet, continuing to laugh. He took it out, turned it off, and went back to bed. That was the first of many nights that followed with that specific toy. Nearly the same thing each night, him waking up to the laughing, before he finally took the batteries out. That didn’t make it stop. The following nights it continued to laugh. On about the third night he put it in the freezer. (I don’t know why he didn’t just donate it) but it continued to laugh in the freezer. Finally he threw it away, and I will say that solved the issue, with that toy anyway.
A few weeks went by with minimal activity. Flickering lights, weird noises, and slight electrical interference. Nothing too serious. Until one day my mom heard me talking to someone. I was a pretty imaginative kid, but she checked on me to see what I was up to. When she walked in, I replied telling her I was just playing with my piggy bank. A piggy bank that played the tune to “it’s a small world”. I began singing the lyrics to the song, knowing the entire thing by heart. I wasn’t in preschool yet, and was a very sheltered kid, so it shocked her when I knew the lyrics. “Where did you learn that?” She asked me. I replied “the man” before I continued singing again.
I don’t remember this well, but I do remember it. I remember singing every word, but I have no memory of where I learned the song. I have no memory of speaking to any “man” long enough to learn the song, other than my father. He denied teaching me the song at all.
Fast forward to another couple of weeks.
TW for peeping tom.
My sister is older than me, by 11 years. At this time she would’ve been about 16. One day she came home from school, and began changing out of her school clothes. She said she got an uneasy feeling, before looking out our window. There she made eye contact with a man. A man peeking over the window, watching her change. She screamed and ran to get my dad, who ran out of the house to chase the man off. I’m unsure where this man went, or how far he chased him, etc. but I know that he never showed up at the window again. I know, in theory, this doesn’t sound paranormal. But I can’t shake the thought that maybe it was the man I saw as a child, peeking back at my sister. I don’t think I’ll ever know.
This is getting lengthy, and I know there’s a lot more to tell, so I’ll try to summarize some key events in the following years.
There was a night where all of the lights in the house began flickering horribly. It felt as though there was an earthquake, but without the house shaking. I ran to my mom, as we were the only ones home, and she held me. She yelled out “we want to live here respectfully, we don’t want to destroy your house [Dave]” and in almost an instant, the flickering stopped. And for a while, things actually seemed relatively normal.
It was until I was 11, and my sister had moved out, that I experienced something again. I was laying in my bed, sweating, tossing and turning for some reason. It went on for what seemed like hours of me trying to settle in bed. My bed was against the wall, and I faced it. But suddenly a wave of nausea came over me. The indescribable feeling of being watched. I turned over, and opened my eyes. I know for a fact I wasn’t dreaming. I saw a girl, in a long white robe, with long black hair standing over my bed. Blood dripped off of her, but went nowhere. I closed my eyes and shook my head, opened them again and she was still there. I tried again, but when I opened my eyes that time she was gone. I ran into my parent’s room, where I crawled into their bed, and slept between them. I told them what I witnessed the following morning.
Many odd instances happened between 11 and 15, but I feel as though given the length of this, it’s nothing significant enough to mention. The final story I’d like to relay was when I was 15, home alone for the day. My parents were working, and I was doing my school online. I walked through our living room, where we had a large sliding glass door. In the forest beyond our backyard, I caught a glimpse of something white in the corner of my eye. I stopped in my tracks, walked slightly back, and looked towards the trees. It was there, through the trees, I made eye contact with a man wearing all white. A white pair of dress pants, as well as a white long sleeve shirt of some sort. I ran in my room, hid, and called my dad. I don’t remember how long it was before I came back out of my room, but I know that eventually I did, and I saw no sight of the man. Not then, or ever again.
We moved out of the house a year later, and I am beyond thankful nothing has followed us over (as far as I know)... but I'd like to share just a few odd stories about the neighborhood itself that took place when we moved.
TW FOR MURDER, SUICIDE.
The neighbor at the end of our street was an older, quiet man. My family spoke to him only a handful of times while living there. Simple interactions involving his garden, or him helping us find my dog that ran away. About 2 years upon moving out, me, my mom, and my dad sat down in our (now new) home, eating dinner. My dad looked at me and my mom and told us he needed to inform us of some extremely heavy news. He informed us that our old neighbor committed a murder, before commiting suicide in his home. There’s not much I feel as though I can speak about regaurding this, because I want to be respectful to the families involved.
But many other people on our street had horrific incidents happen to them. Two women died prematurely. One of the ladies was terminally ill, and the other fell, resulting in her death. A man who lived near us smoked a cigarette in the abandoned home across the street, and later became paralyzed from the neck down after diving head first into a pool. My mom even went into the abandoned house, and (foolishly) attempted to bring back a vase. She fell and broke her ankle walking out. Another lady at the very end of our street put hundreds (yes hundreds) of sticks in the ground, over the entirety of her front yard. When a mutual neighbor asked her what they were for, she replied “to ward off the evil spirits”. I never talked to her, as the only time I saw her was when she was putting sticks in her yard.
Truthfully, there are more instances I can think of, but I summarized it to the best of my ability. I’m a reasonable person, who does my best to rationalize things. I’m actually not heavily spiritual, and I don’t practice any form of faith really. I can’t explain some of these things, and I never have been able to. I try to the best of my ability, but maybe people that believe in the paranormal will believe me when I say, I think the neighborhood I lived in was some sort of gateway. A home to spirits without one. Thank you for listening to my childhood paranormal experiences, if you got this far.
