Relationship

Sara had just been outside her boyfriend's house the day she tried not laugh at him. The afternoon sun had been shining down on them both and he had looked like such an angel in the light. She admired his tense face as he searched for the keys in his school bag. They had only been going out for the past two weeks or so and it was the first time they were going back to his place. This story took place in the early eighties in Lakewood, Co and Sara has remembered it till now, that she is married with children. He was searching for his keys when he started telling her that strange things had a tendency to go on in his house and that if anything happened, no to be too worried or scared about it. Things sometimes went strange but it was usually nothing to worry about.

Sara had looked at him in cynical wonder, but saw that he really believed what he was saying. She had wanted to laugh but decided not to, seeing that he was genuinely concerned. She had never believed in ghosts and she never would believe in them. They went into the house and talked for a while in the living room when she noticed something. 'Paul', she said. 'You do know your clock is three hours slow don't you?' he glanced at the clock casually and nodded his head. 'They do that sometimes, the clocks. All the clocks in the house read a different time. Whatever it is that lives here with us likes to play with the clocks. 'Excuse me?' she had asked. 'I told you. the house is haunted. Whatever it is that lives with us like to play with clocks. Strange fetish if you ask me.' Strange was not the only word that had crossed Sara's mind at the time when she looked at him. The word she was looking for was more along the lines of 'psychopatic'.

The problem was that she genuinely liked this guy and that she liked him no matter what he thought seemed to be living in his house. But her cynicism started dying down the more and more she came to his house. At first, she came to think that there was something wrong with the electrical line in his house because the lights kept flickering. But as more and more things happened, she started thinking that maybe there was apt reason for him to think that his house was haunted, even though it was not. By the end of their eight month's relationship, there was no doubt in her mind that he was perfectly sane and that his house was inhabited by beings other than him and his family. First of all, the thing with the clocks truly was a regular occurrence and every time they left for somewhere from his house, he would set the clocks to the same time but when they came back, they would all show different times, even though no one had been in his house since they left. Once when spending the evening, she had gone to the bedroom to lie down when she heard his voice coming from just outside the room and calling her. It happened three times and all three times he had either been int the shower down the hallway on downstairs in the kitchen.

The one thing that Sara remembers the most was the thing that happened in the middle of the night when she was sleeping over. Paul had fallen asleep and she had been drifting off into sleep when she saw a whole group of white figures at the foot of the bed. Trying to wake Paul up but afraid of raising her voice, he did not really hear her and said that it was just the neighbors making noise. She tried to get up and take a better look but with an electric snap, they were gone. In the morning, she told him the story and he seemed mildly surprised. 'Oh, those', he said. 'I thought they were gone already.' Sara freaked out. Would she want to marry this guy and stay in the house forever? Would you? Sara and Paul broke up a long time ago but if there is any boyfriend she remembers for anything out of the ordinary, it would be Paul for his house.

French

It was a literally a bright and sunny day in St. Louis, Missouri and little nine year old Tommy was doing what children usually did when they were on summer break: exploring. He had just gotten a hand me down tape recorder from his brother and it fascinated him to no end. He was on one of his little expeditions when this happened. He was with the neighbor's little son who was three years his senior, and who was supposed to take care of him. When they gone exploring the area around the town, they had found a huge area overgrown with vegetation. They had gone to search within it to find out what kind of treasures the deserted place hid. After some time, they found an old cabin, which had been overgrown with weeds.

Deciding to record nature sounds and switching on the huge tape recorder, they let it lay for awhile, keeping silent while listening to the rustling of leaves in the trees as well and the birds which sung in them. Later that night, Tommy played the tape back for his own pleasure and after hearing his little voice narrate that they were going into the cabin, foreign voices started speaking. They were deep and hoarse and they were not speaking in English. After listening to it several times, rather fascinated, he came to a conclusion. He was taking elementary German and French in his school at the time and made out the word 'Anglais', thus identifying the language as French. Deciding to take the tape to his French teacher once school started again, he put it into his school bag, which stayed in a corner of his room for the next month or so. When he did get back to school and gave the tape to his teacher, he was called to the principal's office on account that he had been trying to play a prank on his teacher. On Tuesday, his teacher apologized to him, saying that she had made a mistake. She said that she knew he could not have made up voices because they were speaking in nineteenth century French, which he could not have known.

She said that the voices were talking about how they wanted to kill the two boys because they thought the English spies sent them. When Tommy got old enough to realize the extent of his experience, he decided to do some research on the area and found out that the land on which the cabin sits was actually the site a French fur trapping or trading post called Fort Belle Fontaine. The post had been attacked by the British almost two hundred years before. He has told no one else of the experience. The boy who accompanied him has not listened to the tape and has long since forgotten about it.

The Illusion

Christopher Raines still gets a chill thinking about what he saw four years ago. He admits that what he saw was neither dreadful nor horrifying. But even so, it is still creepy and has kept his grandparents and him thinking about it since then. Christopher had been enjoying himself at his grandparents house pigging out on the candy bars ans sweets which one's parents never lets one eat at home. During dinner just a while before, his grandmother had been telling him about how the faucet kept turning itself on no matter how many times she turned it off. People kept saying that they saw a little girl in a frilly red dress on the front porch every time they passed and the smell of cigars became a constant occurrence at the house even though none of them smoked. Going to bed a little unnerved, Christopher fell into a troubled sleep.

Christopher was sound asleep. Suddenly, something woke him. Waking up to a strange noise, he looked out of his window and saw a lady dressed all in white. She looked at him as if she had known he would wake up just then and look at her. Terrified at the look in her eyes, he dived under his sheets and did not come out till he heard the familiar noise of his grandfather waking up at half past four in the morning to make his coffee. Rushing over to the light switch, which was at his door and switching it on with much force, he scurried out of the room. The two were having coffee and talking when Christopher's mother woke up a while later and joined in the conversation. Soon they were all wide awake, talking about everything under the sun. Christopher wanted to tell them about what he had seen but refrained from doing so. Either way, by the time the conversation had run its course, he was enjoying himself too much to worry about it.

Just before six, Christopher and his mother saw his grandmother walking across the hallway. He had been facing her and his mother had noticed her when her nightgown touched her arm. They heard the water faucet come on and heard the refrigerator door opening. After a while, they were still waiting for her to come out but she did not. The asked Chris's grandfather what she could be doing and he was pretty confused, saying that she was in the room. The two informed his grandfather that she had come out and gone into the kitchen. 'Babe!' he called in the direction of the kitchen. After getting no reply, he called out again only to have the same silence greet him. So Christopher went into the kitchen... only to find no one there. In a panic, he came out and informed his mother that she was not there. Rushing to the bedroom, his mother found her sleeping soundly in bed. There was no way she could have gotten back without either of them noticing her. They shook her awake, nearly giving the poor old women a heart attack and began questioning her anxiously.

'Mawmaw, did you go into the kitchen and leave the water on?' 'No.' A chill ran through both the back of Christopher and his mother and they quivered as the reply came.

Secrets

A small house in Ironton, at the southern tip of the state of Ohio, stands as a keeper of secrets to the town's tragic past. Jim got a little look into these secrets when he moved in in 1992. After getting used to the fact that old houses made strange noises on their own, even if they were not inhabited, he had gotten used to the creaks and moans that the house emitted. It was late October and it was getting cold. So about two weeks after he had settled in, he had been watching night television and had gone to close the windows. He walked into the kitchen to switch off the lights he had accidentally left on when he heard the distinctive sound of footsteps coming up from the basement and walking into the kitchen.

He stood frozen, looking at the heavy wooden door, unable to do anything. His hand reached for the utensils drawer, probing for a knife, or at least something he could use in self defense. The footsteps stopped at what sounded like the top of the stairs, and silence fell all around him. He saw the large wooden door open all by itself, and saw what was behind it. There was nothing. The door opened fully and touched the wall behind it. It stayed like that for a while and then in one quick sharp movement, slammed back shut again with a loud and hollow bang that ruined the floorboards but Jim's affected most of all. Finally, finding his feet, Jim left the house taking nothing but his keys, and went to stay at a relative's house. Two weeks later, when two friends named Joe and Sheila came to visit, they chatted and drank coffee till about one in the morning after which they all went to sleep. Around half past three, he was awakened by a piercing scream, and Joe and Jim found Sheila in the hallway shivering uncontrollably. When Joe and Jim asked her what was wrong, she replied between chattering teeth that she had been walking to the bathroom when she saw a woman all in white with her throat torn out.

Two weeks later, after taking a shower, Jim, wrapped in a towel around himself and got ready to shave. He got out his razor and wiped off the condensation off the mirror. It was when he did this that he saw the man standing behind him, looking t him blankly. Dropping the razor, he spun around in a flash. There was no one there. Jim moved out of the house after the incident and never looked back. It was only after he did that that he could bring himself to look up the house's history. He found out by word of mouth that the man who lived here before him had come home to find his wife in bed with another man. In a fit of rage, he killed her. It was a crime of passion that he regretted immediately and he in turn, killed himself. He had slit her throat.

The Mad House

With the area's rich and somewhat gory history, how could the house bot be haunted? When Mrs. Croft was out one day, Mr. Croft heard the faucet in the bathroom turn on. Wondering how that could have happened, he went to take a look at it. The water was flowing at full blast, and when he tried to turn it off, it took some effort because the knob had been pushed too far to the right. It was impossible that this could have been some mechanical mistake. The faucet could not have shoved itself so far. Once when they were about to go to sleep, they heard a loud thud come from their basement downstairs. Taking his wife and rushing her out of the house as he called the police, they waited outside for a good ten minutes before they arrived.

Naturally they had thought that someone had been inside the house. But when the police officer had told them to come and take a look for themselves they were shocked. A ham, which they had purchased the night before, had managed to find its way out of the fridge and into the basement all by itself. It had managed to roll its way to the door, open it and roll down the stairs without any assistance whatsoever. When Mrs. Croft tried to argue with the officer about how it would not have happened unless someone else was there, he went on to reiterate the fact that there was no sign of forced entry or robbery. Nor had they seen anyone come out of the house while they waited outside for the police to come. When their only son, Terence, was born, whatever was in the house continued to haunt them. Once when Mrs. Croft was downstairs watching television all by herself, the television knob began to turn itself. She turned it back, but it kept happening over and over until she was just so frustrated that she gave up.

Footsteps in the hallway when no one was around became a frequent occurrence, as was the shaking and rattling of the China cabinet while the couple was in the living room. Whatever was in their house seemed to dwell very potently in the barn. Once when Mrs. Croft went in, she began to feel sad. Within the five minutes she could stand to be in there, her heart had filled up with such an extreme sorrow that she had to leave. She was almost in tears when she stepped out, but the moment she did, the feeling left just as suddenly as it had come. The couple and their son eventually sold the house. It was a long and tedious process, since they were a sweet couple who did not want to con people into something they would regret. They told everyone who came about what happened to them, and so went through twenty three possible buyers before they eventually ended up selling it to a man who wanted to convert the place into an office. The cynical man had laughed their story off, saying that 'he did not believe in ghosts'.

Mr. and Mrs. Croft have not seen him since, but they wished him well before they left. Mr. and Mrs. Croft then moved into their house in Snow Creek, Franklin county, VA without even the idea that it could be haunted in mind. The house, though they were ignorant of this at the time, had formerly been built on what had been a mental health institution, and next to what had been a cemetery. it had been said that many of the patients of the mental institution can be heard screaming every night, as they received their daily torture.