My parents are divorced, have been since I was around eight years old. Mom won custody of me, so i lived with her for the first eighteen years of my life. When I was in fourth grade, my stepfathers work required us to move to the greater San Antonio area in Texas. We settled in a nice, fairly new house. I want to say that I have always believed in ghosts and various spiritual entities. My mother claims that we come from a long line of mediums, I don’t know if I truly believe that, but it’s fun to think about. The house we moved into was built in 08’ and we moved in the summer of 2012. I want to say now because this will be important later, the house had never had a creepy vibe to it, I had never felt like there was someone with me when I was home alone. Any amount of spooky ambiance just came from being a kid and being scared to be alone and various other “i’m a scared little kid” things.
Fast forward to around 2017 or 2018 (the memories of when this happened are fuzzy to me at best). My stepfather had gotten into motorcycle clubs, and had been running one out of the little clubhouse they had installed out back. Anyway, the club members had a lot to drink and were headed home, most of them had designated drivers, so it wasn’t a big deal. Needless to say, one of the members had been riding his bike home drunk. I woke up, and noticed my step-father’s mood was abnormal. Normally he’s the stoic, almost r/iamverybadass type, but now he seemed more emotional. It turns out that the club member who had been riding home drunk got into a high-speed chase, and unfortunately, he crashed. He was gone before the EMS had even got to him.
Ever since his death, the ambiance in the house changed completely. As a 16 year old who had been living in this house for around 6 years, the feeling was almost alien. The biker was really close to my step-father, and even to my mom, despite the fact that she didn’t approve of the whole biker club lifestyle we had all been dragged into. He was near and dear to them, and to this day he remains in their thoughts. As a young adult, I just moved on, and we all had to. Though, that’s when things started happening, objects around the house were misplaced, and every now and again, sounds around the house could be heard with no explanation.
The first real experience that I cannot explain was when my step-father made me take the trash out one night. I hated leaving the house at night, it always freaked me out. I begrudgingly began out the door, trying to get it done as soon as possible. I make it to the driveway and my mom’s truck, a Nissan Titan, unlocks. The headlights illuminated the entire driveway, and the cabin lights came on, revealing that nobody had been in the vehicle. I threw the trash bag into the dumpster and ran back inside. I figured my stepfather was just being an ass like usual, and had been fucking with the key fob to try to scare me. So I entered the house, and looked him dead in the eye and asked, “Where’s the keys to the truck?” He was confused initially, but then pointed to the little table by the door. Sure enough, the key fob was in fact, there. This is the only fob to this vehicle, and the way the living room is laid out would not allow for him to have left his seat, grabbed the fob, peered through the blinds, unlock the truck, then run back to the table to leave it neatly where it was before, and then get back in his chair all in the short time I was outside. They didn’t believe me, and I shared this with my mom years later, and she says she remembered that night, and that my step-father hadn’t been trying to play a prank on me.
My mom had a much more baffling experience about a year later. I had gotten a job, and was working a closing shift. That left my mom and my step-father in the house, watching TV in the living room. There’s a hallway from the living room that connects it to the garage, and the master bedroom. My mom had decorated it with a few of those “live laugh love” canvas paintings and other suburban white mother mantras. My mom said she had been watching the tv from the couch, when she looked over at this hallway. To her horror, one of these canvas paintings had come off the wall, but it hadn’t just, fallen over, it had LIFTED itself off of the wall, stayed stationary in the MIDDLE of the hallway for a good second or two, and then fell straight to the ground. My mom still has no explanation for this, and I’m still super bummed I missed seeing it.
My last experience in that house happened after I had graduated and was visiting my mom for thanksgiving. I went to take a shower, as I’d been driving since early in the morning, and hadn’t showered when I woke up. I placed all my clean clothes on the toilet seat, and placed my phone on the counter next to the sink. It’s important to not that my phone had a case on it, it was one of those unnecessarily grippy rubber backs to it. It was so bad that getting it into a pocket was an absolute chore because it doesn’t just slide into the pocket, it just grips every bit of fabric it can. I strip down and put all my dirty clothes on the ground under the sink counter. As I’m in the shower I hear the sound of my phone falling to the ground. I pulled the curtain and noticed that I didn’t see my phone where I had left it. I told myself that maybe I had left my phone on the edge of the counter where it could have tipped over. I knew this wasn’t true though, I’m good about taking care of my phone, and would never leave my phone in such a state. I got out and dried myself off, put my clean clothes on, and started looking for my phone. I looked under the counter my phone was sitting on, but it was nowhere in sight. That’s when I checked underneath all of my dirty clothes, and I shit you not my phone was there, underneath all of my clothes. There is absolutely no way that it could have fallen off the counter and then shimmied its way underneath 5 articles of clothing. I know this because my mother and I tried to emulate this event to no avail. I have no way to explain it to this day.
My mom sold the house a few years ago, and I’ve had only minor experiences over the years since. I hope if he’s still in that house, that the new owners find him some peace, if not I hope they can share their stories as well.