I don't believe in ghosts, but I swear I grew up in a haunted house. It was a 1950's rambler, of all things. We know that the people that built the place had a mentally disabled son who died in the house in his 40's, but he was somewhere around 3rd grade mentally - basically a child. We also know that the house was on the market a long time before my parents bought it. I've been told (but haven't confirmed) that when it finally sold, the family that moved in lived there less than a year and then moved out and put the house on the market for a steal. My parents snapped it up, and lived there for close to 30 years.
Growing up in the house it was like the shadows were always moving. Some of them were aggressive, some of them were not, but one shadow showed up time and time again - a shadow of (what seemed to me at the time) a rather large man. He wasn't that tall - maybe 5'8", but he was thick. I'm a big comic book fan and he reminded me of a disheveled Kingpin. That shadow was a troublemaker. He would stand outside of the bathroom door and lunge at you as you exited. If you were transporting a hot pan from the stove to the sink, or from the oven to the dining room, he would lunge at you like he was going to knock the pan out of your hands.
In the yard, he would hide around a mimosa tree and lunge at you while you were mowing the yard. One time I was so startled I jumped off the riding mower and tripped. The mower had a butt sensor and stopped immediately, thank goodness. After that, I mowed that area with a push mower.
He would spook me in the shower, and at night when I was trying to sleep, and if I was home alone watching television, the works.
In this house, we had a game room that was a nicely converted garage. My sister was scared of that room, and wouldn't go in there at night without anyone with her. Strange stuff happened in that room. The lights would turn on for no reason. The television in there would turn on. There were two closets in there, both with double bi-fold doors. The doors would fling open and stuff would hurl out of the closet. The door to the game room was oriented so that you could see from the doorway into the sitting area of the living room, where we mostly watched TV. We usually kept this door completely shut, but sometimes we would hear jiggling on the doorknob, and the door would open just a sliver, like someone was watching us in the other room.
One time my sister brought home her boyfriend from college, and he slept on the couch in the living room. He said in the middle of the night he heard the door to the game room open, stuff being moved around in the dark, and the light to the game room come on. He sat up in a panic, just in time to see a chair move and one of the closet doors open on its own, and a couple of piles of sewing fabric get thrown on the floor (my mother has been a lifelong fabric collector - she used to be a pretty good seamstress). The guy was scared half to death, refused to sleep in the house again, and broke up with my sister soon after. We all got an uneasy chuckle out of the whole thing.
That was over 15 years ago - probably closer to 20 years now. My sisters and I are grown now with our own kids, and we all live a long way from that house. I barely think about the stuff I saw growing up there. A few years ago, though, my sister was visiting our parents, who only moved out of the house recently, with her son and two daughters, and her oldest daughter suddenly started. My sister asked her what was wrong, and she said, "Mommy, why does that man like to scare me?"
"What man, honey?"
"The man who likes to stand outside of the bathroom door."
#Building/aa/Bathroom #Visual/Shadow