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I lived in this farm house from the age of 1 until I was about 11-years-old,
from 1969 until around 1979. I have some fairly strange memories from living in this house...and over the years
I have gathered odd stories from subsequent residents. The address will remain undisclosed.
The photos on this page were taken on the morning on 11-28-05. As you can see, the farmhouse was boarded up and
had been scheduled by the city for demolition. Here are some of the stories surrounding the house...both my memories
and the stories of past residents. |
First off, my personal memories of the home are what they are...simply memories.
I was very young, and the only thing I can be certain of are the images and memories in my mind from that time.
I do not present them as evidence
of anything paranormal...but they are a part of the history of the home.
At the time my family moved into the home it was a 3-bedroom home, with a kitchen,
dining room, living room, and one bathroom. When my dad bought it, the house was a wreck, and open to the elements.
There were pigs on the farm, and some of them lived in the basement of the home.
But my dad fixed the house up and moved us in. Later he added a room addition to serve as a family room area and
play room. The house was on 35 acres of land, with a big red barn, a smaller barn, an unused grain silo, and a
small cabin with a fireplace. |
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At the time I am writing this, I have not researched the history of the farmhouse
or the land upon which it sits. I remember as a kid coming across several old building foundations in the area.
My dad said the land was once a plantation farm, and that there were the foundations of slave cabins down the hill
from our farm house. A neighbor's house and barn were very old, and actually said to be "slave-built."
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The farmhouse itself was a single-story, wood-frame house with a front and back porch...with
a third small porch and stairs off the NE bedroom. The basement was a damp stone basement with a long open crawl
space under the bathroom.
The farmhouse was surrounded by tall oak trees, and was up on a bluff overlooking a wide valley. On the Rooms &
Photos page, I'll go into a lot more detail about the house itself, with photos of all the rooms to help illustrate
what the house was like. Let's move on to paranormal activity reports about the farmhouse... |
THREE FRIENDS
When I was 3-years-old and about to turn 4, I began mentioning my "friends" to my mom. I would come out
of my bedroom (the SW bedroom of the house) and ask her to make Kool-Aid for my friends. I would mention that they
were visiting again and that we were playing in my room. This continued into my fourth year, and my parents never
quite knew what to think of it. They never seemed to fear it, and they never acted in a way to cause me to react
in a negative way. It seemed to me they got used to it. I remember when I was older, my parents would tell friends
and family that the house was haunted, and ask me to talk about and describe the "three friends" to them.
My memories of my three "friends" are fairly clear, but it is a story that has been talked about in our
family for many years. At this point, I have no way of seperating out my original memories of the "three friends"
from the memories I've formed from telling the story over and over again. But for what its worth, here's what I
remember. One of the "friends" appeared to be a white man, with long hair and a beard. His clothes were
very torn and dirty. The second "friend" appeared to be a black man, wearing old worn clothing that appeared
dusty and thread-bare. The third "friend" was more of a presence. I used to think of him (it) as sort
of a "floating blob." Sometimes the "blob" was light in color and seemed to be a friendly presence.
At other times the "blob" was dark in color, and would keep to itself in the corner of my bedroom.
| When the "three friends" would visit me one might sit on the bunk bed,
while the other two stood nearby. They seemed to always be trying to entertain me. They would make funny faces
and noises, smile at me, and just seemed very focused on me. I have no idea how often or how many times they visited
me, but I still have distinct memories and images from their visits. I recall that once I reached the age of 5
or 6 when the visits had stopped...I used wish and ask out-loud for them to visit me. I remember sitting in my
room as a boy crying because they no longer visited, and I remember thinking I was now too old for them to visit
me. |
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I realize that this is an odd story, and I don't know what it means. Were these three "friends" just
imaginary friends? Were they something more? I don't know. I always considered them to be ghosts or spirits, and
my family always talked about them during the years afterward as ghosts or spirits. What they actually were, I
have no idea. I know a majority of children have some sort of imaginary friend or another while growing up, but
I also believe children can be more sensitive to paranormal activity than adults.
AFTERNOON APPARITION
One afternoon when I was 3 or 4-years-old, my mom and I were watching television in the main living room of the
home. Cartoons were on the television and it was a nice day outside. The television was on the north wall, to the
left side of the fireplace. My mom was sitting in a chair fairly close to the television while I was sitting on
a couch on the south wall, on the other side of the room. Suddenly I saw a white shape or mist in the vague form
of a human being come out of the east wall on my right, cross the length of the room between my mom and I, and
pass into the bedroom hallway to the west of the living room.
Whatever this shape was, it had crossed in front of me, but behind my mom due to where we were sitting in the room.
I asked my mom, "Did you see that?" She said no, and when I explained to her what I had seen, she questioned
me on it thoroughly. I don't remember either of us being very scared or upset, but she was extremely interested
in all the details. She told me then, that the wall I had seen the shape enter the room through, had once been
a door to the basement. The basement door had since been moved, and the old door plastered over.
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I'm 100% sure I saw something that day, but because I was so young, I'm not sure
on all the details of what it looked like. I know it did not look like a real person, but seemed like more of a
misty shape...and fairly tall. It was vaguely human in shape, with a head, torso, arms, and legs...but seemed to
almost be a slow-moving white "blur" that moved from one side of the room to the other. It seemed to
pay absolutely no attention to either my mom or I. If this was something paranormal, it seems to me to be more
of a case of residual energy or recorded energy spotted by a young boy watching cartoons... |
FACE IN THE GLASS
When I was 4 or 5 years old, I was in the bathroom of the farm house brushing my teeth before bed. I looked at
the window, and saw what I believed to be an old man with a beard looking in the window at me. I screamed and ran,
and went and told my parents. Seeing that face in the window at night really startled me.
My parents were certain I had seen my own face reflected in the glass of the window. I was certain it had been
an old man's face. Of course the natural explanation my parents provided is the most likely explanation for this
experience in the house. If we disregard that first natural explanation, there is the second natural explanation
that is equally viable. It could be that an actual living, breathing old man was looking in the window. As a child,
I just remember the terror of that experience...and that at the time I had thought it was a ghost looking at me
through the window.
In the initial writing I did about the house before our investigation there, I did not include the story of the
face in the glass. But while Mike Cross and I were walking through the house, video-taping the investigation...being
in the house reminded me of the story. I told Mike the story on video tape, and I am including it in this final
version of the investigation background.
A NEW COUPLE MOVES IN
When I was about to enter the 5th grade, my parents decided to move my brother and I to a more "suburban"
environment...with a close-knit neighborhood, sidewalks, etc. After we moved, I did not return again to the old
farm house until I was 16 or 17 years old. My dad had sold the house and 5 acres, but had kept 30 acres of the
land. I was going to camp on the 30 acres, but wanted to warn the current residents of the old farm house, so they
wouldn't call the police about me. |
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I went up and knocked on the door the afternoon before our campout, and there was a man and a woman there. I don't
know anything about them, except that they appeared to be in their late-20's and they were white. I don't even
know if they were married or not, or their names...but I know they both lived in the house. I told them about our
planned campout, and then almost as an afterthought, I asked them if anything "strange" had happened
to them since they had moved into the house.
They told me two stories...which, much like my childhood stories...are what they are. They are stories. No real
evidence and no way to verify the truth of them. The couple was so quick to come up with and tell me both of these
stories, that it did not appear to be something they had made up to frighten me or to be mischievious. They truly
seemed to believe the stories they were telling me had taken place.
First, a friend of their's was staying at the home with them, and was sleeping
in their guest bedroom (the NW bedroom). He awoke in the middle of the night and opened his eyes...only to see
a face starring back at him. He had described it to them as if a head were laying on the pillow next to him, looking
right into his eyes. When telling the story, they used the term "disembodied head." I don't recall any
other details, such as the gender or race of the head and face.
Secondly, they told me a story about a huge amount of unexplained noise in the living room. They said they were
both asleep and in bed in the master bedroom of the house (the "room addition" on the map), when suddenly
there was the sound of a what seemed like a loud party in the living room. They said there were numerous voices
and footsteps, as if "there was a party going on in there." They both woke up and sat up in bed...having
both heard it. They said the noise continued until they both jumped out of bed...and then everything went completely
silent. They checked the living room and the rest of the house, convinced that there was a group of people in their
house, but they found no one else was there.
A FAMILY MOVES IN...
It was several years later when I was in college that I returned to the old farm house. I had learned that someone
new had moved in, and I was again afraid they might not know me and disrupt a campout on my dad's 30 acres of land
by calling the cops. I knocked on the door, and a white woman in her early 30's answered. I told her about the
campout and that I had lived in the home when I was a boy.
She immediately asked, "Did you have strange things happen when you lived here." I was sort of surprised
she was asking me that...as I had planned on asking her that question...but had not gotten around to it yet. Without
telling her my stories or really answering her question, I said, "What do you mean?" It was evident at
the time that she was scared and very worried about something. As she told me her stories she had this wide-eyed
look and her voice quavered. After she told me her stories, I told her mine. And I assured her that in my 10+ years
of living there, though strange things happened, no one was ever injured. Here are her stories...
First of all, she told me that their 12-year-old little girl was constantly being "touched." She stayed
in the NW bedroom, and something unseen in the room would tap her on the shoulder or lightly touch or pull her
hair. She would hear her name being softly called but no one in the family would be calling for her.
This same 12-year-old girl would be walking through the living room, and something would tap her on the shoulder
or lightly pull her hair. She would of course turn around looking for who had done it, and no one would be there.
The mom telling me the stories mentioned that when the little girl would be sitting in the living room watching
television, her legs would be touched...as if something under the couch were reaching out and tugging on her legs.
The mom made it clear how uncomfortable all this "attention" had made her daughter.
Secondly she told me that one night each of them had heard their named called by another family member. They all
got out of bed and walked into the living room, only to find that no one had called anyone's name. The daughter
had believed her mother had called her, while the mother had heard her other child call her, and so on. Everyone
insisted that they had not called anyone...and they all went back to bed, but couldn't sleep that night.
The mom's final story was about a baby crib that was stored in the garage area of the basement. The mom said that
the baby crib had been folded up and was hanging on the wall for some time. One day, the mom found the baby crib
set up in the center of the basement floor. Everyone in the family insisted they had not pulled the crib down from
the basement wall and set it up...but there it was.
SO, WHAT'S IT ALL MEAN?
I have no way of knowing, really. It was an old farm house...on land with a lot of reported history to it. It was
somewhat isolated, and surrounded by 35 acres of trees. I suppose it is possible that there was a certain atmosphere
or psychology about the farm house that caused its various and diverse occupants to imagine strange events. The
wide-variety of activity that is described makes it all a little confusing to attempt to classify.
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If my experiences at a young age were the only ones reported, and no one had experienced
anything since...then the answer for me would lean towards my experiences having been produced by the imagination
of a child. But the fact that three different households of people had experiences in the home is compelling for
me, personally.
Check out the products of our investigation, and then make up your own mind...
-Mark Stinson |
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