A bit of context before I start my story it’s a long one. Sorry if there are any problems with it first time posting here and I spent my nerves getting all this down.
I grew up in an old farmhouse built back in the 1830s built by a wealthy family at the time. It wasn’t like most of the other houses in our small rural town it was built from brick and had a carriage house as well as a big barn. It was more like an estate than your average farmhouse.
My folks bought the place after it sat abandoned for many years after the original owners fell on hard times. It was a place my dad had always wanted from a young age and he could finally afford it after the bank put it up for sale. They had to put a lot of effort into it, from repairing the years of neglect to covering the lead paint so my twin brother and I wouldn’t eat it.
Those were easy issues to fix, the first sign that something wasn’t so normal about the house was in the basement. It still had its original cobblestone walls in one part of the basement that was never changed. Over in the far corner of the basement which had steps leading up to the outside entrance. It was the old butcher’s room where servants used to slaughter animals. No matter how much my dad tried pressure washing the blood stains they never left.
Between that and the old creaky floors that would randomly make sounds or the doors that would never latch right, it frustrated my dad how the progress wasn’t going as fast as he liked. Tools would go missing just to reappear again in other parts of the house and other such anomalies only hindered him more.
By the time the house was ready for move-in, my twin brother and I were already three months old. We had to stay at my grandparents’ house because the house took 6 months longer than expected. We finally moved in, to my folks’ relief. My twin brother and I were little so the folks put in one of those early baby cameras in so they could watch us and make sure we weren’t having any problems. They could watch us in our cribs from downstairs after we were put to bed.
A few times my folks would have the camera playing off the VHS downstairs and we would be sleeping perfectly fine all to be ended by the screen going static on the tv which would always lead to usually my brother whaling at the top of his infant lungs followed by me. This would lead to my parents’ mad dash up the stairs to our room just to find our door open or maybe our toy box open with toys spread over the place. They would clean up whatever mess was made, calm us down, and put us back to bed.
Things like this kept on happening well we grew up. We had to change babysitters a few times, some would get spooked. Talking to them when I got older they would tell me that they had heard strange noises at night or would see balls rolling around the house and always hated being there late at night. My parents paid them well so most dealt with it for the rare occasions that they stayed late.
For some reason, it never bothered me as much as it did my twin. I used to think that he might have had a wild imagination or he was just a scardy cat. Looking back on it now I think he was just more sensitive to things than I was. That or I just wasn’t as worried about them because they weren’t malicious towards me.
When I was about 10 or so I thought that I was all grown up and wanted to move into the spare bedroom because I wanted my own room. That ended up not happening due to my bother’s incessant begging not to leave him alone at night. So I ended up staying with him for another two years till I decided to get my own room. In that time before I ended up moving I had a bad bullying experience that scared me. After that, I have become a super light sleeper that practically sleeps with one eye open.
I started noticing some of the odd behaviors my brother had when he when was sleeping. Especially the occasional night terror. That tied with the occasional 3 am footsteps and occasional shadow that would sit in the corner of our room I would start hiding under my sheets more often after that. It started to bother me more.
Eventually, my prepubescent mind stopped being so bothered by those strange quirks about our house and I moved to the back room at the house. This was unlike the grand entrance and staircase at the front of the house where my brother slept, my room was now the spare room by the servant quarters, and a narrow set of steps that the servants used to use at the back of the house. For a while, it was mostly quiet except for my brother coming to the room saying he was scared and would end up sleeping in the spare bed from time to time. After a few weeks, I started noticing new sounds at night from here on out. Usually, it just sounded like someone climbing up the steps or the sound of the sink turning on and off. This bothered me more now knowing that I was the only one that used it.
There were a few other stories before the big event started.
I couldn’t tell my family or my brother at this point. I was probably 13 or 14 and I couldn’t admit that I was scared of what I heard or saw. My parent wouldn’t believe me, my dad frankly dismissed it and my mom used to always say that they were friendly spirits. She is a very religious woman she thought God would protect us from any evil even if there were any evil spirits living with us. She had put Crucifixes on all the bedroom doors that had been blessed with holy water by the priest at our parish. I never told my brother because I couldn’t really tell him because he was always sensitive to it and I didn’t want to give him anything else to stress about at night about the new side of the house.
I had slowly gotten adjusted to my new room and the different spirits over a few years and things went back to normal. I had just gotten my 1st phone I was 16 or so and I was up late texting a friend about plans for the first football game of the year. I was up late and was distracted by my phone and forgot to follow the one cardinal rule that My brother and I had made over the many years living in that haunted house and forgot to close the door.
That was one of the dumbest decisions that I had ever made in my life that I would learn to regret. I woke up yet again at around 3 in the morning to footsteps, but this time I could see what had been making them all these years. It was one of the shadows from back in my brother’s room and it was the little girl and she was dragging a little toy horse behind her. I could see its silhouette clear as day in the moonlight. It then all of the sudden stopped and it was almost like it stared right back at me. I quickly hid under the sheets and held my breath and prayed. Then nothing happened after I stood up for as long as I could until I went back to sleep exhausted and woke up the next morning perfectly just tired.
The next day all was fine and the same as the next, I soon tried to forget about it thinking my eyes were playing with me. That weekend my parents and my brother were downstairs watching a movie, and I had gone up to get changed into something more comfortable. I went up and got changed taking the back stairs up to my room. I had to stop by my brother’s room to get his flip phone off the charger and while standing in the hallway in front of my brother’s door I heard it.
*Hehe you saw me didn’t you*
In a creepy girlish that quickly dropped low almost satanic voice by the end of it. I felt the hairs stick up and a cold chill down my neck I booked it down the stair not caring if I bite it on the way down and quickly turned the corner to see my family looking at me in bewilderment. My mom quickly got up looking at the sweating paste-white son in concern.
By the time I had caught my breath and calmed down and explained what happened upstairs my whole family had grave faces on them. It wasn’t like my brother’s antics when we were younger it was the twin that never complained about ghosts or anything else freaking out about it. They tried reassuring me that everything was fine and it was probably just my imagination getting the better of me to reassure me. My mom checked both my brother’s and my rooms said a prayer with us and checked the crosses on our doors before going to bed herself.
Unlike before, things did not go to “normal” (or as normal as living in a haunted house is could be) things got worse for me. The energy in the house had changed it had turned to become more malicious or at least for me it did. after living all those years there the dogs started acting up by my room and would start barking at night. footsteps became loader. the door to the servants’ quarters of the house would now slam loudly. It appeared that I had pissed off the young lady of the house and they did not take too kindly to that.
Soon after I woke up one night to a being standing in front of my bed. I was completely frozen in place it was like sleep paralysis but instead of it sitting on my chest it was like I was bounded by in place and would levitate in the air. It was like it was trying to take my soul. Utter terror came over me and I tried with all my might to make a sound for a cry to help.
I knew even if I did odds were that no one would hear through the thick brick walls anyways. I then went to what my mother trained me to do best and that was to pray. I blacked out soon after but when I awoke my room was a mess my sheets that were always tucked in were over the floor and there were scratch marks on my chest. I got up quickly and remade my bed. I noticed by my door that the cross was no longer on my door but was broken on the floor.
The next morning I told my mom about the cross and we went to church. I hadn’t shown her the scratch marks for fear of scaring her but when I went to church they started to burn like getting branded with a hot iron. I grabbed some holy water and told my family I had to go to the bathroom.
When I got inside the bathroom and locked the door I took the holy water I put in my hand and splashed it on my chest and tried washing the marks with it. The pain was so excruciating that I almost passed out in the bathroom and the marks start to slowly fade away. That is when I realized I was dealing with an evil spirit. When mass ended we went to the priest and got a new cross, I ended up getting a saints medal and finally some more holy water to bless the house.
We went home and I started wearing the medal, would put up the cross and spread some holy water around, and I wasn’t bothered for another year or so. It stayed that way, I would go to church to get some more holy water and things were good. It wasn’t till the next summer that after being gone for a month going on a boy scout trip and a summer practice camp something else happened.
I guess the young lady wasn’t done with me or her little tricks yet. This time it almost got deadly. One night I had another night of terror this time it wasn’t as scary I’m not sure if it was because I had already experienced it once already or of that my protections weakened it. I wasn’t too worried about it I kept quiet and thought I could make it through the week so I applied some holy water and made sure to pray extra the next night.
I guess that demon wasn’t having any of that and the next night I woke up from a strange dream and it was my brother trying to kill me. It was like he was someone else his eyes were devoid of life. I wake up in a cold sweat panting I sit up to turn my lamp on so I can calm my nerves and grab a drink of water. Before I even had a chance to turn on the light my door creeks open and in the moonlight I see my brother walk through the door.
I call his name, no response.
Then I see his eyes reflect in the dim light and they are completely devoid of any color there all white. I grab the lamp and before he’s through the threshold for the door throw it with all my might. It shatters and I let out a primal cry ready to fight for my life. At this point, I’m standing and grabbing the holy water I have by my bed. Before I can turn around again with the water I hear my brother calling my name in a scared voice like when he was little.
At this point, the whole house is up and my dad had rushed over with his shotgun and I see the color in his eyes had returned. My dad sighs in relief seeing that we are ok and no one else is in the house. My brother is really shaken up and cuts his foot on the shattered lamp. He tells me he had a nightmare and he was a small child and was scared so he came to my room. I told them that I had a dream that he was trying to kill me. At this point, my dad grabs my mom and we patch my brother up and clean my brother up. I end up sleeping in my brother’s room in my childhood bed that I can barely fit in now till we end up moving out later that summer, lucky my parents were getting ready to downsize at that point with us going into our final year of high school.
When the new owners come in we tell them that there are some rules that come with the house.
Talking to my brother we have figgered that there were 3 main ghosts in the house