The House In The Swamp

by Bruce James

Although it has been many years since I lived there, some of the strongest memories I have are of a certain house in rural Minnesota.  My high school friend G (I won’t use his real name) lived there, and it had to be one of the creepiest places I have ever visited.

G lived in an old farmhouse with his dad a few miles out of a small little town next to a low-lying swampy area.  Often in the spring and fall we could see wraithlike mists clinging to the old county road as we drove to his house.  It was a quiet enough place, a two-story house with a porch, attic, and a “basement’, a crawlspace, really.  Nearby was an old shed, a large polebarn where G’s dad kept his classic cars, and a ring of thick, old oaks ringing the edge of the swamp.  G had already told me many stories of the things that went on there when he was a kid.  A spectral woman walking across his bed.  Shadows of hands from the floodlight outside his bedroom window, that didn’t belong to him.  His hair being tousled by something invisible.  Some kind of glowing humanoid figure in the trees outside, observing the house and trying not to be seen. There was no shortage of weirdness at G’s place. 

I wanted to see something paranormal for myself, and I got to see some things in the years I new and visited G.  One of them was the spinning bomber.  G had a model of a B-29 aircraft suspended by a thread in his living room.  This would have a propensity to rotate by itself.  On still, quiet days, we would sit and watch as this model airplane would go from a complete standstill and begin to slowly rotate in a counterclockwise direction (there was no fan or furnace running, and the windows would be closed).  Then the rotation would stop, but not from inertial forces, but suddenly stop as though blocked by an invisible hand.  Then it would stay in its new position for a few minutes, and rotate clockwise for a time.  Nothing seemed to precipitate this, it would merely happen of its own accord. 

One of the stranger things I experienced there was the hammock.  G’s house was old enough to have transoms, (the windows you will sometimes see above doors in old buildings, back in the days before central air) and he strung a hammock crossways over the transom for the living room door.  I would often sit in this hammock (from this position, more like a net had scooped me up) to watch TV or play D&D at his house.  One evening as I was curled up in this hammock, I looked at G and said “Snap?” as if to say “oh no, did I hear something snap?”  G, never late to pick up a comedic cue, replied “Snap?”.  Then SNAP the rope holding the hammock to the transom snapped, and I dropped about a foot, foot-and-a-half to the floor on my butt.  THUD!  This incident, by itself, could not be construed as paranormal, except that it happened every time we tried it.  We have witnesses, who would watch G tie the hammock up with fresh rope, sturdy enough for G to swing on, and once I climbed in, and we said “snap?”, sure enough SNAP THUD.  The ends of the rope where it broke were frayed as though they were worn from years of friction.  I guess that whatever presence or force that was in that house didn’t like me too much.  

G concurred.  On the rare occasion I slept over at his house, not only would I have a very hard time getting to sleep, but when I did pass into a dreamless slumber, G would see that I would make faces in my sleep… or rather, he told me it appeared to him that there was some other face superimposed over my sleeping face, which would make wild eyed and terrifying grimaces and mouth soundless words at him.  After hearing this, naturally I declined to ever sleep there again!

Once, he showed me the crawlspace.  Now this was strange and unusual.  By accident or design, the cellar of this house could only be accessed through the downstairs bathroom closet.  A piece of plywood about 2 feet square covered a hole in the back of the closet.  We crawled down three or four little wooden stairs, and G fumbled around in the dark to find the light switch.  He pulled the chain, and a dim, bare bulb weakly illuminated a chamber about 5 feet by 5 feet, with a dirt floor and the ceiling only 3 feet above.  It may have, in fact, been smaller, as the main thing that sticks out in my memory was the hole in the wall.  The hole in the block foundation may have only been 2 feet square, but behind was a space so dark it seemed to swallow up the light.  From it, I got that weird, prickly sensation you get whenever you sense the presence of the supernatural.  I wouldn’t go in for the world, and G told me he had never been either… and G was one brave dude!  He also got creeped out by the black hole in the crawlspace.  Not even his dog would go!  She would only growl at it, with her hackles standing up, and leave the crawlspace as quickly as possible.  To this day, I still don’t know what was in there that wigged us out so bad, and as far as I know, G doesn’t either.

This story has an epilogue.  Years later, I was up for a ride in my dad’s single-engine plane, enjoying the miracle of flight.  I found an aviation chart of the county in which we lived.  Now, aviation charts are quite a bit different from road maps.  The roads are there, for reference, but the things that are marked are the things that are a hazard or of use to pilots… heights of radio antennas and water towers, and the like.  After some study of this chart, I was able to reference familiar landmarks.  My parent’s house would be here, the old high school there, and over here… where I could estimate G’s house on the chart  was a hazard.  For about a half-mile radius with his house in the middle, the chart warned of magnetic deflections in the area.  Thus, if you fly over G’s house, your compass goes wonky.  We never did fly over his house to test the theory, but at least, in a roundabout way, this chart vindicated all the weirdness I ever heard about or experienced at the house in the swamp.

Farmer With An Axe Handle, A Haunting Encounter

by Bobby Elgee

Old New England Estate
Southeastern Vermont
Late August 2006

I have a friend of mine whose been metal detecting for over 20 years and he’d shown me some interesting artifacts he discovered. Many of the items of were found on an estate in southern Vermont that dated back to the Revolutionary War.

One day, during the late afternoon, we had the idea to lay out the stuff on a white blanket on top of a rod iron patio table and take a picture. Both of us are very interested in history, and this expresses itself in his propensity for metal detecting and my interest in the paranormal.

On at late August night around 11pm, my friend and I were standing around a campfire in his backyard. I had wanted to visit the estate where he discovered most of the artifacts because he told me about being ‘helped along’ by a ghost when he was metal detecting. This took the form of a helpful hand on his back.

“No way, you’ve been touched?” I said, a little too exuberantly.

“Oh yeah. It was like I was walking in a line of people. I paused a moment, and felt a hand on my back, like it was encouraging me to keep moving.”

My friend isn’t scared of ghosts, but he is very leery. Of course, he is wise to be cautious. When you’ve seen full-bodied apparitions that have spoken to you, ended up in a line of ghostly revolutionary war soldiers, and have been metal detecting and found a ring still attached to skeletal hand and arm–then re-bury it, ring intact- he had every right to be wary.

So, after nagging him for about a year, he finally indulged me, and we hiked down the road and crept up on the big estate during the full moon.

We stuck to the shadows as we edged up to the well-manicured lawn and looked toward the house-an old New England estate that even had a photograph of some Civil War soldiers standing outside the residence hanging in a frame above the fireplace. This photograph could be easily seen-I had glimpsed it one during the day-if you could get close enough to peek inside the large bay window looking in on the living room.

I had kept telling my friend that I wanted to run up and look in the window. He said that he didn’t think that this was a good idea. My friend had permission to be on the property to metal detect whenever he wanted, and we weren’t worried about the police arresting us for trespassing as we had permission, in addition to both of us being of the trust-worthy sort.

The house wasn’t abandoned by any stretch of the imagination, though we knew no one was there at the time. Well-taken care of by a caretaker, it was an excellent example of an old New England salt box, with an old red barn on the property. Considering the historical nature of the location-and with all the artifacts that had been discovered-the place was something we definitely treated with respect.

We had crept to the edge of a lilac bush, next to a big tree, across an expanse of lawn from the window that I planned to look in. Being a fledgling paranormal investigator at the time, I had a vague realization that this isn’t really how you should do that sort of thing, and wasn’t prepared in the least.

With this thought in my brain, I made a break for the house. I ran to the northwest corner, and hid in the shadow of a rhoderdenron from which I could inch my way up and peek in the picture window.

I moved forward very slowly. The sound of the crickets and other insects was very loud. I got to the edge of the window and put my hand on the frame, pulling myself forward, just wanting to gain enough of an angle where I could seen the picture hanging above the mantle.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the front door. Two solid knocks. I paused, and had the distinct feeling that looking inside the house wasn’t such a good idea. I turned and ran back toward the tree-across the open yard-to where my friend was standing.

At the same time I saw a shadow rush out from the door to the barn, which was closed. At the same time, my friend swears he saw a farmer in overalls moving quickly from the barn toward the house, with something like a shovel or axe handle in his hand. By the time I had made it to my friends location, the apparition had disappeared.

We stood underneath the tree, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

“What the hell did you do?” he asked. I had no answer to his question.

We crept slowly along the edge of the shadows to the road, then walked home.

Something I have learned is to respect the paranormal. And intent is everything. If we hadn’t been sneaking around like we were, perhaps we would’ve had a completely different experience. My feeling is that we stirred something up, and it reacted to us.

And, whatever it was, it wasn’t messing around. Instead it appeared to be protecting the location, ensuring that the property was safe from two people who hadn’t made their intent clear.

In all my years of ghost hunting, this remains one of the strangest and most unsettling experiences I’ve had, and it’s not one I intend to repeat. Now, I go in with an open mind and announce my intentions, ensuring that whatever spirits I encounter don’t misconstrue my curiosity for something else.

Barry Road

by Victoria Rife

Jimmy was one of my best friends in high school and since we had all of our art classes together we often spent a lot of time after school working on art with one another. Some nights we both couldn’t sleep so we would stay up playing Mario Kart before heading out and grabbing some Taco Bell. Sometimes we would just drive around listening to music. One night in particular we decided to take an alternate route and drive around exploring. We happened upon Barry Road (for those who don’t know where that is - it’s a long winding road out in the country) and drove on. As we followed the twists of the road, something came out of the trees on the right hand side of the road and smashed into the car. It appeared to be a white figure, although it had no face, and it was running. I screamed. He stopped the car. We looked around but there was no person or animal around and his car was in perfect condition - not a scratch or a dent on it. I asked him if he thought it was a ghost and he said he thought it was. Scared, perplexed, and a little bit entertained we turned around and tried to recreate it that night and many nights to come but we never had the same experience. This story has always been very significant to me because it was one of the few times I had someone with me to vouch for my experiences.

Living in a Funeral Home

by Victoria Rife

My dad took a second job working as an assistant funeral director and to make things easier he lived above the funeral home while he worked there. Most people don’t know that some old funeral homes rent out the top part and, knowing that many are spooked by the thought of living in a home with dead people, they make the rent incredibly cheap. He had many, many unexplainable experiences while living there. I think it is very important to mention that my dad had been around dead bodies for well over twenty years when he took the job at the funeral home. Normal people may find the transition to be difficult and they may scare themselves knowing they are living in a house with the dead. The shock of working with dead bodies may also make it incredibly traumatic for those who are not used to it. My dad was a not only a police officer for many years (often working at night and seeing the worst accidents), but he was also a diver for the Coast Guard and searched for lost people who were presumed dead. He has seen his fair share of dead people for years and years. In other words, working in a funeral home was nothing new to him.

Here are a few things he experienced: at night the lights would flicker on and off, locked doors would open and then slam shut, unlocked doors would magically lock, things would move and disappear only to reappear later in a strange place, and one night a wall hanging even flew off the wall several feet. My dad had to turn off everything downstairs before retreating upstairs to his home. Some nights he would turn everything off only to get up later and have every light in the house turned on.

Shadowed Figures

by Victoria Rife

Since I was about four years old I saw shadows at night that terrified me. This was highly unusual because I was relatively fearless when it came to most aspects of life. At the time I think my parents just believed it was the workings of an overactive imagination but I knew what I saw was real. I would often sleep on the floor of my brother’s room, at the foot of his bed, or at the end of our hallway just so I wouldn’t have to be stuck in my room alone with whatever was harassing me.

The shadows were always pitch black and opaque while normal shadows are transparent and light penetrates them. That’s very obvious information but I feel the need to point it out because a lot of people tend to come up with the same reasoning for the shadows I saw - “maybe it was a passing car that cast light into the room?” “Was it a moving tree outside of your bedroom window?” If a passing car or a moving tree can cast impenetrable black shadows in the shape of a figure then that’s one hell of a car or tree!

The shadows always felt mean or angry to me - for some reason I felt like they were not there to be gentle and friendly, they were there to harm me. Although, as a child, they never ever touched me. I would simply wake up at night and see one of them standing at the foot of my bed or standing across from my room and I felt more scared than I have ever felt in my life. Ever.

Gradually the occurrences stopped and I was able to sleep okay again.

It wasn’t until years later did I see one again and it terrified me more than any of my other experiences. I was trying to fall asleep as my husband (my fiancé at that time) lay sound asleep next to me. It was standing about four feet away from our bed until it slowly came over and leaned over my husband. It had no distinctive features - no face, no hands, no feet, no clothing, no hair, nothing. It was simply a black shadowed figure with impenetrable darkness. I started screaming to wake up my husband to turn on the light and the shadow disappeared. I explained what happened to him but I don’t think he believed me. My husband had never seen or experienced anything he could not explain and although the paranormal interests him, he had never felt, seen, or heard anything unexplainable. He tried to quiet me down and we slowly fell back to sleep. I felt safe - I had always felt safe sleeping in the same room as others.

But later on in the night I awoke on my stomach unable to breathe.

Someone or something was holding me down, pushing me down onto the bed with all of their might. I was gasping for breath and managed to yell out to my husband who turned on the light once again. At this point I was simply sobbing. We moved our bed against the wall so nothing could approach me and I demanded that the light be left on for the rest of the night.

A few months later I was switching through the channels on the tv when I happened to stop on a paranormal investigation show. I have no idea which one it was but my ears perked up when they talked about “shadow people”. Sure enough, they played a video of a ‘shadow person’ appearing out of nowhere and it was exactly the same thing I’ve been seeing for years.

Strange Happenings

by Victoria Rife

My husband’s grandparents live in a house they believe is haunted. Everyone in the family has experienced one thing or another and they have plenty of stories to share. I will tell a few of their personal stories in order to share my own.

My grandma-in-law was woken up in the morning by my grandpa-in-law. Her back was to him but she felt him roll out of bed, get up, and heard him walk into the bathroom. She tried unsuccessfully to go back to sleep and eventually got up to go into the bathroom herself, wondering what was taking her husband so long. But when she got in there he was nowhere to be seen. Confused, she called him and he proceeded to tell her that he had left very, very early that morning and hadn’t been in the house for a few hours. No one else was in the home.

My aunt-in-law was in her closet sorting clothes with her back to the doorway and her front facing the back of the closet. She saw the shadow of someone standing in the closet doorway so she turned around to see who it was but there was no one around.

My uncle-in-law was in the living room watching tv when a picture flew off the wall and crashed to the floor. I tried to ask him if it simply fell but he was very adamant that it flew off the wall.

My mother-in-law and father-in-law were spending the night in the house when my husband was a baby - they were the only ones in the house that night. My mother-in-law decided to go to bed with the baby but she kept waking up to the sound of my father-in-law pacing the hallway. Worried that he would wake the baby, she got up and told him to stop but found him in the living room watching tv. He said he had been sitting there the whole time and never went into the hallway.

My husband and I stopped by to see his grandparents but they weren’t home. We didn’t want to stop by unannounced so we went inside to leave them a note. When we got in the dogs greeted us at the door and they were friendly. As we started to write the note though one of them became seriously agitated. Their dog, Hank, began to bark savagely and it wasn’t a “hey, get out of my house” or “there’s a squirrel!” bark, it was more of a threatening “I’m going to kill you” bark. This dog knows us very well so it’s not like we were strangers coming into his house threatening his domain. My husband tried to calm him down but he continued to bark and growl as if he were plain mad. But I noticed he wasn’t even looking at us - he was looking behind and beyond us. I told my husband, “look at Hank. He’s not barking at us. He’s barking at something else.”

It was extremely eerie and it made my hair stand up because this dog saw something we did not. At that moment the tv switched on and we got the hell out of there.

Bataan Girl

by Carlos

For a couple of years, I was stationed on a base in the New Orleans area.  I became good friends with my supervisor and started going over to his residence which was on base.  The first time I was over for a good duration, he told me about the little girl.  Before I get to that, he had two kids and a wife.  H, the daughter.  T, the son.  And N, the wife.  I guess I will refer to my friend as M.  Most of the time, the kids were gone and it was M, N and me at the residence.  The house was really a two story townhouse style apartment.  The entry was immediately met with a large closet and a right turn leads you to the living room.

After the right turn into the living room, to the left was a path to the dining area.  Along that path and before the dining room area was a restroom was to the left and just after that, the stairs were to the right.  In the living room they had their t.v. centered under the staircase and it faced the wall with the door in which you enter.

Back to the little girl.  He told me that there was a ghost in the house.  He said, “If you are watching t.v., you can see a head running up and down the stairs in your peripheral vision.”  I had never seen a ghost and I always wanted to.  I wanted to believe what he said, but I thought that after 26 years I would have seen something.  Well, it didn’t take long before I started to see movement over the t.v.  I couldn’t focus on it and it’s not like I could focus on the stairs and see it.  I found it odd and it puzzled me, but I accepted it.  Eventually, just like them, I just got used to her and the movement didn’t even draw my attention at times.  We would talk about her when one or more of us would see her constantly in a day.  We would wonder what caused all the activity that day because there were days in which no one would see her.

The stairs went up about eight steps before a turn and those were the steps we would see her traverse.  As you go up the stairs, to your right is the wall behind the t.v. which climbs up with you and you can see the living room.  At any step the wall is approximately three feet tall or a little higher.

August of 2006, the area was hit by Hurricane Katrina and I was part of the stay behind security team on base.  There were multiple hurricane scares so many people would leave their pets behind, thinking they would be back in two or three days.  My friend left his cat.  Once word was out that Katrina was headed our way, I made a run to his residence and flushed all the toilets and left a pot of water.  The cat liked to drink out of the toilets.

Also, I left it’s bag sideways and open on top of the couch because I did not know when I would be able to return in order to feed her.  Two weeks after the Hurricane I was able to return and found the bag of cat food upright.  The bag was left on its side with most of the food along the side so that the bag would not tip back over.  I never really thought about that bag incident until now.  I found the cat on their bed upstairs as if nothing had ever happened.  The next day M returned from Tennessee and I left for a few days to TN.  I returned four days later with food for his residence since all the food was no longer any good.  We had K, a fellow patrolman as a room mate.  K stayed in T’s room and I stayed in H’s.  It didn’t take long before M found a dog at a residence and brought it home.  The dog was often left it outside because it would get beat up by the cat and it was hyper.  It would not leave us alone when we tried to do anything, especially sleep.

One night at exactly 330AM, I awoke and looked at my alarm clock.  I heard the dog barking outside and this was odd because the dog never barked when we left it outside.  I looked out of the window which looked out to the back yard and found that nothing was there.  I went back to sleep.  A few nights later, I was once again woken up at exactly 330AM to the dog barking.  I figured that I should go downstairs this time and see what is going on.  I went downstairs which had music playing and all the lights were off.  I looked into the backyard and the dog quickly ran to the door.  I kicked it away and closed the door.  I then decided to use the downstairs bathroom to take a piss.  While I urinating I got a wierd feeling and looked to my left towards the stairs and there I saw a little girl.  It wasn’t as if I saw the girl standing in the dark.  Everything except her was normal and she was like a photo negative image that stood still.  Quickly, I turned away and repeatedly wished her away in my head.  Five wishes later, I worked the nerve to look over and and she was gone.  As I finished urinating and flushed I gained my thoughts and noticed that the music which was on earlier was skipping and stuck on a loop.  I looked at the dark stairs and debated going up through the same path that she stood in to get to bed or stay downstairs on my own.  I ran up the stairs and fell asleep.

Premonition Cafeteria And The Basement Of Doom

by Kermit McGoober

Disclaimer: Certain names and places have been changed in order to protect the identities of the people and places of business involved. 

My sister works as a security guard at night.  She was doing her rounds the other night in the Rec Center.  Located inside of the Rec Center is a cafeteria, which she described as “normally well lit-and not scary”.  Immediately upon her arrival into the cafeteria, the lights went out and all of the security lights surrounding the room snapped on.  Along with the security lights a t.v. turned on.  It was on a station that she referred to as “a fuzzy news station”.  The t.v. was only on long enough for her to hear the anchor woman (with the very creepy voice) say: “…and the woman’s intestines were wrapped around her neck.”  That’s when the t.v. shut off and the regular lights turned back on as if nothing had happened.  The rest of her rounds included a trip into the basement, which she opted out of for the night.  She went to turn and bolt from the room and found that one of her co-workers who worked nearby was standing there.  He seemed very alarmed and very concerned for her well-being.  So much that he allowed her to go calm down and didn’t ask her to finish her rounds that night.

After hearing this I had to ask her what exactly was so scary about a sudden loss of power and a “fuzzy news station”? 
 
She told me that this is not the first time this has happened.  That, in fact, the EXACT same scenario has played itself out for dozens of other workers there.  The only difference, she told me, was that the anchor woman was always gender specific to the person in the room and the cause of death or serious injury was never the same.
 
Okay, I’ll admit that’s definitely spooky, but there had to be more to this.  So, I asked her again, why all of these people are so spooked by this?
 
Rewind back to a little over a decade ago: a man who is now one of her superiors (and she has many) experienced this exact same phenomenon.  Except the anchor woman said: “…and the man’s foot was severed.”  This definitely disturbed the man a bit, but-being the brave type, he decided he was going to finish his rounds.  So he trudged down into the basement where I was told there are some things down there being held up by suspension wires.  (What exactly those things are she was not specific about)  When suddenly one of the wires snapped and hit the guy directly above the ankle.  Thankfully he was wearing shin guards…the only thing that saved him from losing a foot. 
 
As far as she knows he is the only person to have ever continued on into the basement after the lights went out and the t.v. turned on to that fuzzy news station.
 
I’m thankful that she had the good sense to listen to the televisions warning and bolt.

Two Nightly Visitors

by ~Brovinadeergooberpoop~

Three nights ago my father was sleeping on the couch. He woke up and saw a women standing near the couch staring at him.  He blinked and she was gone.  Now the house he lives in was built in 1979.  No one else has ever lived in it. My parents actually had it built for them.  We have never had any paranormal happenings at this house.  So I asked him if it was his mother that he saw and he said “No she has gray hair and had a mean look on her face”.  So I guess he fell back asleep and was awoken again to find another women standing by the couch staring at him.  This women had dark hair and didn’t look mean.  He asked her what she wanted and she disappeared.  So he turned over with his back to the room and was again awoken by someone tapping on his back. He turned to look and there was no one there.  Trying to get the whole story out of him is like trying to pull teeth.  He doesn’t share my love for the paranormal.  Scares the crap out of him.  I asked him if the women that he saw were solid or transparent and he said they were definitely solid.  I then asked him what they were wearing and he just said they had on dresses.  He wouldn’t elaborate.  I don’t know what this means. I’ve heard of people talking about waking up to someone standing near their bed looking at them, but I have never heard of someone seeing two different people in the same night.

The Mean Monkey

by ~Brovinadeergooberpoop~

I have a cousin that had twins in 2003, she also has an older daughter from a previous marriage who we will call Anna. Anna got pregnant in 2007. She had the baby and named her Kathy.  The twins Jackie and Jason were ecstatic! They loved the new baby. When they would go somewhere to visit Jackie was always afraid they were gonna leave the baby. She would tell everyone “the baby is coming home with us”.  Well 4 months after baby Kathy was born she was tragically mauled and killed by a 120 lb. rottweiler.  It wasn’t their dog. It belonged to a friend of the mothers.  Well a couple weeks before the baby passed away Jackie, one of the twins, who was about 4 kept talking about this “mean monkey”. I mean she was petrified of this thing she kept seeing.  That’s all she would talk about is the mean monkey.  They would ask her about it & all she would say was that he was soooo mean.  She would be scared to go in certain rooms or to go to her aunts house cuz she didn’t want to see the monkey.  So my cousin said “Where is this monkey!?!  I’ll go beat it up!” and Jackie said “not even you can get the monkey, nobody is strong enough to get the monkey”.  Everyone was like what the hell is she talking about, what is she seeing? Assuming maybe she had had a bad dream they let it go.  Well Kathy passed away & a couple days later Jackie told her grandma that mean monkey is gone now.  Still to this day we don’t understand what she saw or why she was so scared of this monkey.  I thought maybe someone came to her & explained to her that baby Kathy had to go away and maybe because she is so young they came to her as a monkey to tell her that baby Kathy had to go away to heaven and because she was so protective over the baby she thought that the monkey was mean because he was taking the baby away.

A little side note, a couple days after the baby died the twins were standing at the door wall jumping up & down, waving & talking & my cousin said “what are you doing?” and they pointed and said “look Kathy is out there!”

We think baby Kathy came back to say goodbye to the twins.