This experience added to the website 01/13/04
I apologize in advance for the length of this letter, I've got a lot to share and as I'm an incessant chatterer, I have a hard time stopping myself from running off at the mouth.
My family and I own a large, very old building in the Midwest and it's just as rich in history.
Since purchasing the building, we have experienced countless "phenomena" involving what many others and I would refer to as "ghostly encounters". Voices, apparitions, moving objects, odors and anomalous "bumps in the night" are only a few of the strange things that we've encountered while living here.
That in itself isn't anything overly exciting, most people that believe in the potential existence of ghosts would like to say they live in a haunted house and look for things to label as "hauntings", but we have had more than one very, -very- skeptical friend experience things that either made them believers or drove and kept them away from our home.
Before I get into details, let me say that I am a very analytical thinker with a vast array of beliefs and ideas about the world around us. I am educated and have no problem understanding and respecting most of the belief systems that any given human might have. The ideology of the Supernatural teaches us that when a person dies their spirit lives on as a ghost, Science teaches us that energy (like the energy that our bodies run on) can't be created or destroyed, only transformed. Whether by Scientific or Supernatural belief systems, most people can acknowledge that whatever makes us who we are, can potentially continue existing after our bodies expire. That being said, let me get to the various experiences many of us have had in this building.
Most everyone that lives here and the majority of the guests we've had can say that they've experienced "phenomena" while here. A continuing occurrence is the sound of an old phone ringing and the very distinct voice of a child saying "Daddy".
More than one "non believer" has been converted after spending only a short time in the building, a particular instance comes to mind that happened in front of at least six people. My niece, nephew, myself and some of our friends were having a conversation about the potential existence of "spirits" in the building. "Z", a family friend, made a very blunt statement at the end of the conversation basically summed up as "I don't believe in that stuff and never will". As we were leaving the room, three of our guests and my nephew went down the back stairs followed by my niece, "Z" and myself. Just as my niece and "Z" reached the door leading from the room to the stairs, the door slammed shut, which was something that I -immediately- attributed to the wind...then the door knob turned, the door opened and slammed itself again and opened again slowly. Needless to say, not more than a minute after his declaration of disbelief, "Z" set a land speed record for safely exiting a building.
On other occasions, we've had a room full of people over, relaxing in our living room and visiting when we've all heard voices coming from nowhere saying things like "Daddy" or giggling. Most of the time when more than four or five people hear the voices, only two or three in the group will actually hear it, the rest either don't hear it as clearly or look around and say "what was that sound", while the others all agree they distinctly heard the clear voice of a child saying "Daddy" or giggling with glee somewhere in the apartment. The same thing happens with the anomalous phone ringing, sometimes everyone hears it, other times only one, two or three in the group will hear it but everyone agrees it sounds like an old time British style phone ring. What a British style-ringing phone would be doing in a Midwest location at any point in history, I wouldn't know. There are no phones in the building that has or is capable of making that particular sound.
Our four children have experienced things as well, though I don't press the issue with them or try and make them believe or think a certain way, my wife and I just tell them there's nothing to be afraid of and divert their attention. A recurring theme with the children seemed to be seeing a "big man at the door"; some time ago our apartment's front door was the original door to the apartment that had three glass panes about head level. The kids would walk through the kitchen, glance at the front door and get pale as their little eyes widened and though barely able to speak full sentences, they'd point at the door then run out of the kitchen back to me or their mother saying, "Big man at the door gonna get me!" Then other times they have seen or heard things in their room or awakened from their sleep, looked up in the corner of their room and started crying, (I normally react extremely negatively to anything that frightens or could potentially harm my children, but when this occurs I comfort them and try to explain that nothing can "get them" while their mother and I are there.
There has only been one or two instances that I would consider being even remotely "Sinister" in our history of experiences, the big man at the door would be one, the other would be the "feeling" that myself and many others have gotten while standing in the hallway just outside our front door. The feeling can only be described as that inner sensation that makes you look nervously over your shoulder at nothing in the darkness. It's an uneasy feeling that makes a person uncomfortable to say the least and we've had more than one friend say they wont walk out of our apartment alone after dark and have to be escorted to the exit.
Even my mother, though not having experienced as much phenomena as the rest of us, has gotten "odd feelings" before in certain areas at certain times in the building. She's about like me in the way she analytically looks for an ordinary explanation for those kind of things, if she saw a specter floating in front of her, she's the kind of person that would shrug and say she saw the light from Venus reflecting off swamp gas instead of admitting she had seen a ghost. She is however from good Celtic stock and will admit that she's experienced things that was nothing less than ethereal in origin.
We have renovated (modernized) most of the building, (installed a new door with no window on our apartment, rewired, new plumbing etc.) but the basement and our "junk" room are basically the same as when the building was built, minus the dangerously deteriorated ceilings and floors we repaired. A friend of the family did some research on the building but failed to find any concrete physical history on it other than it being mentioned in other documents concerning the town's history as having been a general store, post office and butcher shop. He talked to a man in a nursing home that had been the sheriff in the 30's or 40's and was told that there had been a murder/suicide here but as we haven't found any actual documentation on this, I'm loathe to even entertain the idea.
After purchasing the building and beginning renovations, we discovered one or two secret lofts hidden in the ceiling as well as a standing wardrobe with a back hatch in it that was designed to be hidden from the interior view. There was (and is still in some places) graffiti on the inside of the building comprised mainly of names and dates of the graffiti artists dating well past the late 1800's. While working in the building basements, my nephews and I found a hole in the wall that will at times blow through with a breeze that can only be felt on one side of the wall even though there is a person at each opening of the hole. I had always thought that it was some explainable occurrence probably related to architecture and air flow physics, as something so tangible as a breeze that emanates from no where is a little too good to be true as far as attributing to ethereal origins goes.
We've taken digital pictures containing unexplainable orbs (I believe they're called now), ethereal faces, visible floating "vapors", ghostly hands and countless other things. Though we've never actually tried to catch the voices on tape (as they're so random and unexpected this would be near impossible), we have recorded ourselves talking or the kids singing etc. and found strange sounds that we hadn't heard while recording. Unfortunately over time, the recordings and more than a few of our pictures have gone missing.
That's about all I'll subject you too now, if I actually sat down and wrote out in detail all the things we've had happen here this would turn from a short story into a novel. Thanks for letting me bend your ear, or eyeball as it were, I stumbled across your SGS website and thought I'd use the opportunity to vent some of my paranormal paranoia :)
Thank you for your time