What is going on in my childhood home?

S. Owen

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The house that I was raised in for the latter part of my childhood years is a beautiful American Foursquare built in 1920. When we first looked at the house we immediately fell in love with it and soon moved in. Within the first few months, we had an odd isolated occurrence of a tote from the back of the attic being thrown down the attic staircase, an occurrence that we thought would only happen once. We had several other odd things occur in the early days such as the occasional smell of cigars in the basement staircase and the cats being oddly attracted to the large dressing mirror located in the upstairs guest bedroom. This activity ceased after we started restoring the home. There were, however, several isolated incidents in the following years. During the renovation of my bedroom I was scrubbing the original hardwood floors to remove the residue left by an old carpet padding, I was alone in the house and had the door open behind me when suddenly an incredibly loud noise, as if a hammer was hitting a metal pipe, resonated from the middle of the room. The strange thing was that it didn't sound like it came from the ceiling or the floor, it sounded as if it came from the empty air. I at first thought this must've been someone doing road construction but then all three of the cats in the house came into the room, crawling as if they were stalking something and ready to pounce. They walked around the room and then left. this activity ceased until the past year when more and more odd things have begun to occur. We have a family friend who lives in our basement as it's quite a spacious and bright space considering the age of the house, and he has been remarking that he keeps seeing shadows and the figure of a little girl in the basement he is not a superstitious person and is often the first to call into question the validity of paranormal claims by others. It should be noted that the basement and it's original use is quite the enigma, it was built to originally have one large open area, another large room, and a small workshop/canning room. The room that is the strangest is the largest one, while very obviously it was partly a laundry room as the laundry chute drops into the room it still has many strange features and is far too large to be solely a laundry space. The room originally had a full-sized window looking into it from the inside of the house, and while we initially thought this was later added upon further inspection it's obvious that the wall was built intentionally to house this window, the door into the room also used to have many locks on the interior as well as what appears to be the shadow of an old twist doorbell, there are also deep gauges from what appears to be animal claw marks although they are very high up the door. There is little info on the original owners besides that they lost the home in the Great Depression and it was bought by the VP of the bank who they had the loan through. No one is ever reported to have died in the house. The more recent strange occurrences have all been on the second floor. The bedroom with the large dressing mirror has a door that is incredibly hard to open due to an improperly installed strike plate. It is only my mother in the house a majority of the time as the family friend works in the early morning until the late afternoon. The bedroom in question is furnished entirely with a bedroom set from the 1920's as well as vintage linens, for this reason, the door is always firmly shut to prevent the cats from getting in. She came upstairs to find the door wide open. Roughly a month earlier my sister was staying in the room and asked me if I was up late the night she was there and I said no. She said that during the night someone had loudly knocked on her door and upon opening it she saw no one. The most recent occurrence has thoroughly scared my mother who has been adamantly against the existence of ghosts since moving into the house. My mother is a very very heavy sleeper and has slept through tornado sirens despite them being located in the Catholic churches playground behind the house. She was awoken in the middle of the night by five very hard knocks on a door that she eventually realized was the attic door. The next morning she was downstairs when she heard a tremendously loud crash followed by the sound of broken glass. She initially thought it to be something in the basement as she has a large amount of antique glassware but found nothing, she then went upstairs and started looking in the closets, nothing, and then opened the attic door to find a tote full of paintings that had been firmly put far away from the stairs. Nothing was broken except for an antique glass painting that we had once had in the dining room but had removed due to a large amount of fading that was occurring. She initially thought that it somehow slid from where it was but realized that even if it did slide from the location where it was there was no way for it to have been orientated the way it was at the base of the stairs since it was right side up and facing the opposite direction it had been placed in the attic. The family friend mentioned that the cat a few days earlier had gotten into the attic and while usually, he is impossible to get out of the attic he quickly came barreling down the stairs after only a few seconds as if something had scared him. She has ruled out any animals being in the attic as well as any person doing it and she is concerned that this may be the start of something worse. There are some odd features to the second floor however since several of the doors show signs of once having an interior lock on top of the original mortise lock on the door, similar to an apartment style chain. All of the doors besides the master show signs of being kicked in at one time as well.

I have zero idea what to tell my mother to do or how to explain to her what exactly might be going on so I am asking for some suggestions or ideas as to what might be happening or what to do to alleviate it.
 
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You could begin by telling your Mother, that ghosts are not spirits, spirits have better things to do.
It has been suggested that it's not always necessary to do anything about such activity.

Had there been a tape recorder switched on to record during the time those loud noises were heard, the recorder would most likely not have picked up any such sounds.
How could that be?
It's because those sounds were heard by some other person in that house, sometime in the past.

I'd suggest, those sounds created a very powerful emotion in whoever heard them, all that time ago.
Powerful emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant, create an impression in the atmosphere of where they were felt.
Anyone who happens to be in that place could quite easily perceive those impressions created in the past.
Such impressions we perceive with our psychic senses (these are the subtle, finer aspects of our mental mechanism, responsible for phenomena like intuition, whether or not we trust someone, etc.
Psychic activity is not physical, so would not be picked up by a recording device.

Probably the right time to close this letter to you, interesting times, you could learn a lot from them, xx
 
Hello, and welcome to the forum. Although, as Cass points out, this may be a residual energy haunting of sorts, there are those of us who have a different view about entities, in that many of us do believe they exist. In fact, a few of us have had some interactions with them. You will find differing opinions here about the paranormal.

In this situation, I'm sure it is unnerving for you and your family members. No one wants things that go bump in the night in their home. You mention a Catholic Church nearby. You might start with asking clergy to do a simple house blessing for you. Many times that is enough to settle any activity of this level. I don't know your chosen spiritual affiliations, but any clergy will do for a house blessing. Prayer is also another thing that appears to help settle things down and puts up a barrier and protection. I will attach a prayer widely used for this purpose here on this post for you.

Tell mom that whenever the activity starts up to say this prayer. Since the activity is at a mild level, give the house blessing and the prayer a chance first to see if it settle things down for you. If it gets worse, let us know, and we'll happy to help you further with more steps you can take.

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Hello, and welcome to the forum. Although, as Cass points out, this may be a residual energy haunting of sorts, there are those of us who have a different view about entities, in that many of us do believe they exist. In fact, a few of us have had some interactions with them. You will find differing opinions here about the paranormal.

In this situation, I'm sure it is unnerving for you and your family members. No one wants things that go bump in the night in their home. You mention a Catholic Church nearby. You might start with asking clergy to do a simple house blessing for you. Many times that is enough to settle any activity of this level. I don't know your chosen spiritual affiliations, but any clergy will do for a house blessing. Prayer is also another thing that appears to help settle things down and puts up a barrier and protection. I will attach a prayer widely used for this purpose here on this post for you.

Tell mom that whenever the activity starts up to say this prayer. Since the activity is at a mild level, give the house blessing and the prayer a chance first to see if it settle things down for you. If it gets worse, let us know, and we'll happy to help you further with more steps you can take.

View attachment 15423
Might I add that advise you to not ignore things and do nothing. All too often these types of hauntings follow a pattern of escalation, and if you leave it lie now, you may end up with occurrences that ramp up in severity.
 
Hello, and welcome to the forum. Although, as Cass points out, this may be a residual energy haunting of sorts, there are those of us who have a different view about entities, in that many of us do believe they exist. In fact, a few of us have had some interactions with them. You will find differing opinions here about the paranormal.

In this situation, I'm sure it is unnerving for you and your family members. No one wants things that go bump in the night in their home. You mention a Catholic Church nearby. You might start with asking clergy to do a simple house blessing for you. Many times that is enough to settle any activity of this level. I don't know your chosen spiritual affiliations, but any clergy will do for a house blessing. Prayer is also another thing that appears to help settle things down and puts up a barrier and protection. I will attach a prayer widely used for this purpose here on this post for you.

Tell mom that whenever the activity starts up to say this prayer. Since the activity is at a mild level, give the house blessing and the prayer a chance first to see if it settle things down for you. If it gets worse, let us know, and we'll happy to help you further with more steps you can take.

View attachment 15423

Thank you I sent that her way, she's still spooked and after hearing a more detailed account of what happened with the attic situation I can imagine why
 
Might I add that advise you to not ignore things and do nothing. All too often these types of hauntings follow a pattern of escalation, and if you leave it lie now, you may end up with occurrences that ramp up in severity.

This activity first occurred in 2012 but it was quiet until recently, I am currently away at college now and it seems to have ramped up since then. She actually heard 3 loud knocks at the attic door, I don't know where I got five. Also I had originally assumed it was only one tote that had been thrown and put against the door but it actually was a couple of totes, all of which were placed in different positions and then the painting, When she opened the door the shattered glass from the painting fell out into the upstairs hall and then was followed by the totes, This house has never had an odd feeling about it, besides in the attic and the basement workroom, and if anything the whole house has an almost uncanny calm about it besides these areas. It's strange that the attic feels odd considering it was finished probably in the 80's through the use of blue paneling and carpet and is actually quite bright and airy visually just not feeling wise.
 
Hi Owen and welcome to the forum.

I meant to respond yesterday but didn’t get through your whole story. So I’m a bit late to the post.

I agree with Debi totally. You will get many diff opinions on what this is, however there is evidence on what works, “most of the time”, to clear the activity. If you spend some time reading here you will find many theory’s on what people believe hauntings to be. I’m guessing there may be more than one answer. In your case perhaps something has stired up a dormant energy. Remodels, cleaning, moving an attached object, or playing with any divination device can start things up. Debi has given you sound advice.
 
Owen,

Your story slightly reminds me of what happened to my mom's boyfriend's son in his house.
They are a regular family, he works at the National Orchestra, she's a teacher, they have 2 little girls that at the time were 2 and 8.
They had a good family friend, a 34 year old man, that would often come over and sometimes stay overnight, sleeping on the sofa.

One morning after he had fallen asleep on their sofa again, the 8 year old daughter comes to tell them that he is not waking up. They go to check and he's dead. His body was covered with a strange red blotches, but the weird part is that the autopsy found nothing wrong with him. The reason for his death on the certificate was marked 'unknown'.

Shortly after, the hauntings begun in their house, as well as in the dead friend's own home and in his cousin's home. It started off as knocking on walls and sounds like someone throwing pennies against glasses in the kitchen cupboards, then things started moving, lights turning on and off etc.

On one occasion the wife was at home with the 8 year old girl and she was sewing. Suddenly the very heavy antique wooden sewing machine cover lifts up in the air and floats a good few feet above the ground while they are staring at it, before crashing back down with a massive bang.
The girl quietly asks "Mommy, should we leave now?", she nods, they grab their clothes and escape to her parents house.

Eventually there was one event that was the final straw. The wife was home alone, she locked the front door that has 2 heavy locks, a bolt and a chain lock that can only be opened from inside. She went to take a shower. The next thing she remembers is waking up in the hallway sitting in a heavy armchair that had mysteriously moved from the living room to hallway. She is very petite and can barely move it on her own let alone drag to the hallway. The armchair had been placed directly facing the door that was not only unlocked, but wide open. She woke up because she felt the cold street air come in and she was naked and wet from the shower. She had no recollection about how she got there, the last memory she had was turning on the shower.

After that they found a Catholic priest to come and bless their home and tell the spirit to leave. They were not even religious, it was just all they could think of doing at that point. The priest said that sometimes when young people die, they have unfinished business and want to stay behind to resolve it, but in this case it was becoming borderline malicious. The last I spoke to her, she said after the priest's visit there have been no disturbances. That's why I agree with Debi - the Catholic house blessing can work wonders. Good luck :)
 
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