Is my home haunted? Yes, yes it is...maybe (Updated: October 2019)
- Aug 18, 2017
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 19, 2021
In May of 2014 my family and I, then with three less children than we have now, purchased our current home in a subdivision in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I have not yet taken the plunge into researching the history of this home, but last night's event is making me seriously consider it.
I have to preface my description of last night's event by explaining the other occurrences we have experienced in the house since we moved in. One of them can definitely be explained away, the second can MAYBE be explained away. The last two, including the one that happened last night leave cause for a bit more concern.
EXPERIENCE #1:
You will have to forgive my memory. I have absolutely no sense of time so I'm not even going to try to remember when this happened, but it was at least three years ago. I woke in the middle of the night what sounded like frantic banging on my front door. If you look at the front of our home, it appears that we have double doors, although only the right half works. The doors are green which really accents the brown well creating what I like to call the "Andes Mint" effect. There are light weight glass panel doors layered in front of the main wooden doors. From the sound of the banging, I deduced that whomever was trying to get our attention had not opened the glass doors, and was banging on them rather than pounding their fists on the solid wooden doors.
The banging was consistent and, as I said before, frantic, as if someone was either really really mad, or really really afraid. I got up and went down the stairs. The banging stopped just as I reached the top of the stairs and by the time I got down there and opened the door there was no one present.
I will go ahead and throw this one out as a paranormal experience, as it could have just been some punk kid messing with us—but don't they usually use the doorbell?
EXPERIENCE #2:
This one occurred around November of 2015 and has two parts, as I learned something interesting from my daughter the next morning. In this case, I woke during the night because I heard a noise. I can't recall what the noise was, but for the sake of good storytelling lets say it was a cold, raspy voice harshly whispering "GET OUT" from the shadows.
I got out of bed and walked out onto the second floor landing from which branch all four of the bedrooms and one bathroom. As I stood at the top of the steps, I heard sounds coming from downstairs. As I typically do when strange noises coax me out of bed in the middle of the night, I headed down the stairs in my underoos, taking care to miss the creaky parts of the steps lest I alert anyone, or anything, that might be making the sounds.
Downstairs, I can tell the sounds are coming from the family room, but I still can't make out what the noises really are. As I walk through the kitchen, past the back door, and enter the dark family room the sounds are really loud and think that they are coming from our surround sound speakers, but then I pinpoint the location of the sounds as a very small Hello Kitty CD player/radio which belongs to my oldest daughter. In our family room we have two decorative, armless chairs flanking the sides of an aqua blue end table. A lamp sits atop the table, white geometric base with a large grey shade, and the Hello Kitty "boom box" sits on the lower shelf only inches from the floor. The switch on the side of the device has been moved to AM radio, and although the blasting noise is mostly static, the sounds of really old Greek or Italian music begin to leak through. Pretty freaky in the dark and the middle of the night, but I'll let you judge for yourself. Here is the video I took. Too dark to see, but you can hear the music:
Now I will say a few things. 1. My daughter never listens to AM radio (nor does anyone else for that matter). 2. This controls on this device are not digital, it is a hard switch that has to be clicked into place on the CD, or Radio settings. 3. This device was not turned on when we went to bed. You could say that some electrical glitch caused the radio to turn on unprompted, though I'm not sure how.
The next morning, our oldest daughter (she would have been about 7 years old at the time) told us that Ozzy (German Shepard Mix) had been sleeping with her and at one point he woke up suddenly, which also woke her up. He then proceeded to go to the top of the stairs and looked down into the darkness in a very aggressive stance. He listened for a while and then went downstairs. She said he came back up a short time later and went back to sleep.
EXPERIENCE #3
During the night, not sure what time, I woke up to a loud BANG which sounded like it came from inside our bedroom. My wife and I both woke up, but remained in the groggy state that often accompanies interrupted sleep. I looked over the edge of my bed, where the sound came from, and noted that the bottom drawer was out of my night stand. I remember saying something, possibly incoherent, to my wife about the drawer. Then we fell back asleep. We had either gotten used to this crap happening, or we were just that tired.
The next morning we got a better look at what happened. The bottom drawer of the nightstand was at least a full foot away from the nightstand itself, and the front of it was angled toward the wall as if the drawer had been yanked out and pulled to the right. There is only about two feet of space, so if a person had done that they would have ran into the wall. I put the drawer back in, and tried to pull it just a little to see if it would slide out. It would only move a couple centimeters and then stop. There was no way for me to get it to roll all the way open without pulling it the whole time. Also, there was a stop somewhere in the mechanism which kept it from just falling out when opened all the way. I had to lift up and pull out pretty hard to get the thing to come out. It had to have been yanked pretty darn hard to come out at all, let alone be a foot in front of it.
I have no explanation for how that happened as there were no kids or dogs in the room with us that night.
EXPERIENCE #4
Last night. It has been probably a couple of years since the last experience in the house. We have been having issues with our oldest son (7) sneaking snacks after my wife and I go to bed. So, as any self-respecting father would do, I set up a motion activated camera to catch the little punk in the act. Oh, you didn't take the pretzel sticks? It must have been someone else? I present to the court video evidence #4321 which PROVES my son took them! No further questions.
Anyway, I did not catch my son in the act of stealing food. Bully for him. But I did manage to catch something. I will begin by showing Video Evidence A (henceforth known as VE-A as I'm too lazy to type out those two words ever again.) VE.A occurred at 11:18pm last night, 08/17/2017. As I came upstairs to get ready for bed, my wife says, "Did you remember to finish vacuuming the family room?" Naturally, I back slowly out of the bedroom, close the door, and then go downstairs to finish vacuuming the family room. In VE-A you can clearly see the light is on in the family room on the left side of the picture and you can hear the vacuum and a loud CLACK sound which is probably the vacuum sucking up a rogue lego or something:
In the video you can clearly see a white door near the middle of the shot. That door goes the basement. Just inside that door, on the wall, is a charging dock for our Dyson vacuum. Once I finished vacuuming the family room, which took me all of three minutes, I placed the vacuum back on the charging dock, closed the basement door and went to bed. About a half hour later, at 11:49pm, I received a notification on my phone that motion had been detected. I snatched my phone and watched the video that was recorded. I saw nothing. Disappointed, I went back to sleep.
Upon waking in the morning, I watched the video once again—this time with the sound up all the way:
You can clearly hear the vacuum turn on, run for a bit, and then turn off. This vacuum has a trigger that must be held down for the vacuum to run, insisting that something, behind the basement door, was holding down the trigger of the vacuum during the time it was running. The camera detected motion, and yet the "action" took place behind a closed door. If I hadn't been convinced my house was haunted before—I was now.
Now, based on the experiences listed above, I can confidently descern that the ghost haunting my house is the spirit of a housekeeper or italian or Greek descent with an inappropriate tedancy to go through their customers' drawers. I've thought about just shouting "You're Fired!" and seeing what happens. All I know, is that the camera is staying up.
UPDATE: October 5th, 2019
It has been over two years since I posted these events, and I'm sad to report that we have not had a single occurence of note since that last one with the vacuum. There have been small things here and there, but nothing as blatant as the previous events and honestly all of them could probably be easily disproven with a little effort. I suppose this is a good thing. Perhaps whatever was in our home has moved on. I'm sure my wife would be okay with that!
As I read back through my stories, I wish I had taken a picture of my nightstand drawer so that I could remember that sight clearly and show how odd the placement was. I remember how I felt during each occurence, a mixture of fear and excitement. Maybe now, as we approach Halloween and the days of the dead, our ghostly housekeeper will return for a special guest appearence. If they do...I'll be sure to add another update. Happy Nightmares everyone.
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