ghost stories

This house has been in my dad's side of the family since 1919. I don't know much about its history, except for a few things, vaguely. Most of it was built in the early 1800's, and it was first a convent, and then it was a firehouse, before my ancestors bought it.

On the right side of the photo there's a fireplace. It's one of four fireplaces, one on each side of a huge central chimney. Beyond that is the living room. In the foreground is the dining room table. As you can see, the living room is huge. I wonder if it used to be the cathedral part of the convent. I'll have to find out.

The place is supposedly haunted. Many people who have stayed in the house over the last century have experienced ghostly happenings. For instance, a common one is that that wicker rocking chair in the center of the frame can be heard creaking back and forth in the middle of the night. Some people hear footsteps at night too.


GHOST STORIES

I've always heard talk of other people having had run-ins with ghosts, or spirits, or whatever you want to call them. I don't know too many specifics though. I haven't spent much time there since I was in my early teens, and whenever ghost stories came up in conversation back then, or earlier, the conversation was hushed up because people didn't want to freak out the little kids. But I have had a couple weird experiences of my own, too. First, here are some other peoples' stories:

One night one of my relatives was asleep in bed. She woke up suddenly and opened her eyes to see a very old man standing next to her bed, staring at her. He said, "How long have you been coming here?" in a friendly and inquisitive tone. She had half a heart attack and pulled the blankets over her head. When she looked out he was gone.

My dad recently told me that one time my mom was there alone in the middle of the day. She was in the kitchen, minding her own business, when she heard a woman weeping from another part of the house.

My mom once let her coworker's family stay at the house for a weekend. The coworker brought along a friend who happened to be a medium. As soon as she walked through the door she stopped dead in her tracks and said "Someone is here." She spent the whole weekend gathering information (however it is that mediums do that) about the various spirits who live there. One of them is apparently a nun who watches over the females of the family, and occasionally talks to some of them.

That's all pretty freaky. As a kid I was always a little uneasy at the house, mostly at night. I think any kid would be. You're trying to fall asleep, and all you can smell is oldness, and all you can hear is the sailor's clock on the mantle, ticking loudly throughout the house... FOREVER. It's creepy. I've heard the rocking chair creaking once or twice, and the footsteps now and then, but neither ever convinced me that ghosts are real. But these three experiences made me wonder...

I was sitting on the couch in the living room. Everyone who was at the house that night was there with me in the living room; my parents, my sister, and my grandfather, all sitting around reading. But I wasn't really aware of this at the particular time. I was just sitting there, chillin', reading the Hardy Boys or something. At one point, out of the corner of my eye I saw (saw, but didn't notice right then) a person in a white shirt walk from the kitchen hallway, through the dining room, and into my grandfather's bedroom (the doorway at the left of the frame, next to that portrait on the wall). I was so focused on my book that it was one of those things that your brain perceives but doesn't really tell you about immediately. So I keep reading, a few minutes go by, and then I look up. First I notice that everyone (none of whom are wearing white shirts) is there with me in the room, and then my brain says "Hey man, then who just walked into grandpa's room and hasn't come out?" Answer: no one? Or some... THING????!

A few years later I was lying in bed. It was really late and I had been trying to fall asleep for a long time, with no success. It was totally silent, which is quite different from the day times, when my grandfather has either classical music or NPR playing on the living room radio, low volume all day every day. So I'm finally drifting off to sleep when all of a sudden country music starts blaring from the living room at full volume. Really, really loud. Right on the other side of the wall. Country music, something that my grandfather has probably never even heard of. It went on for at least a few minutes. But it felt like hours while I tried not to suffocate under my quilt/drown in my own pee. Finally I heard someone (probably my grandpa) walk across the living room and turn the radio off. It has the kind of power switch where to turn it on or off you have to press it in, it clicks, you let it go, and it clicks out again.

There's a beach nearby that we would always go to. One time my mom asked me to help her bring some beach chairs down from the attic. We went up and opened the door and there were the beach chairs leaning up against a pile of old shutters. We grabbed them, went to the beach, and had a lovely time. The next day as we were preparing to go home, we brought the beach chairs back up to the attic. When we opened the door the first thing we saw was a ripped-off bird wing lying on top of the shutters. It was definitely not there the previous day. Everything I've heard about the supposed ghosts indicates that they are harmless, but whoa, super creepy.

Do you think ghosts or spirits exist, and that they interact with us in some way? Do you have any ghost stories of your own? I'd like to hear them.