It's Just The Wind

Neat article on assessing the possibility of your home being haunted, and what to do if it is.

Even if your house is not haunted, it's easy to get caught up in the idea that it is, thinking every bump and creak you hear is something ghostly. And it's not long before your family picks up on your fears, and begins hearing the "unexplainable" sounds and seeing the resident "ghost."

This Old House.


Image source.


Never had anything ghostly happen to me that would make me a solid believer, but I've known a few people that have had neat experiences. Two that come to mind involve my parents and a friend of theirs. My mother's mother passed away when I was in grade school. Shortly after she did, my parents were watching TV one night and my mother and father heard my mother's name called. Loudly, and from the top of the stairs. My father jumped up and was rather disturbed, "WHAT THE HELLLLLL WAS THAT?!" They said it was the voice of my grandmother.

Granted, it could have been a noise that was perfectly tuned to sound like a name being called, but it makes for a creepy little story. The second is somewhat more solid. A friend of my parents died in his house while his wife and son were down in the living room. Very sudden. Very devastating. Many years after the man's passing, his wife shared a story with my mother. A week after his death, she was watching TV with her son and looked to the top of the stairs and saw her husband start to descend the stairs, but then looked as though he had forgotten something and quickly turned and rushed back up. She was telling the story to my mother because her son, all these years later (about fifteen years), had recently told her a story of the time he saw his dad, a week after his death, start to descend the stairway, turn, and go back up into the darkness.

She said she and her son kept it from each other for all those years after the incident, thinking they were each just a little crazy from the grief and the shock. Each thinking they were the only one who saw it. She told my mother they cried and hugged after that. For a long time.