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Let me start by telling you a bit about myself. I’m pushing 40.  I work from home as a virtual assistant (answering emails, working in help desks, posting videos to websites, building webpages, etc).  In my spare time I play guitar and video games.  I’m married and have a five year old daughter (who rocks, by the way).  I’m neither a republican or a democrat – I believe that most politicians should be taken with a grain of salt (if not a teaspoon) because they are what they are: politicians.  I may have a slight liberal slant on most topics, but I don’t consider myself a die-hard go-out-and-protest kind of guy.

I got interested in the paranormal because I (and several other people) believe the house I grew up in was haunted.  Not like “big sheets with holes” for eyes haunted, but “something there that you can’t see” haunted.  The layout of the house looked like this:

House Layout

Keep in mind this probably isn’t to scale – I don’t remember the kids room being that narrow or the living room being that big. But it’ll do for storytelling purposes.

When we bought the house in 1976 it just wasn’t big enough for my parents and their five-year old kid.  They wanted a bigger bedroom for one thing (the room labeled as “Another bedroom” was a TV room at the time) so they added on to the house.  The hallway & two bedrooms on the left were built before we moved in.  Oddly enough, this is where the “presence” was felt the strongest.

Now don’t go thinking this was like the movie Poltergeist.  This wasn’t a Chumash tribe burial ground or anything like that.  It was just some extra room (the family before us had parked vehicles there) between our yard and the lot next door.

When I say “presence” I don’t mean that the old guy from Phantasm was there with his steel ball or anything.  I mean that when you turned the corner into that hallway at certain times you just felt like there was someone standing in the hallway with you.  That overhead hallway light burned (and burned out) more than any other bulb in the house.  I never felt threatened by it (my brother did, but that’s another blog by another person) but it was just…creepy.  It was dark (clearly there were no windows in the hallway) all the time and was just kind of unsettling to feel that there was someone or something in there with you that you couldn’t see.

I remember plenty of times as a kid kind of asking in a loud voice (since my parents were in the room next to me) for something to drink in the middle of the night.  I’d doze and hear someone set a cup or glass on my nightstand, get a drink, and go back to sleep.  The next morning I’d get in trouble for getting up in the middle of the night and getting my own drinks, so my parents didn’t think they did it.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it.  That’s what I mean by “not really threatening”.

There was a closet that ran the length of “Another bedroom” and the living room with a door in both the bedroom and the living room.  At all hours of the night you could hear the door in the living room open and close.  It had a distinctly different sound from the door in the bedroom so you could always tell which door it was.  I never had the guts to go check it out.

When I got older and my brother was born I moved my stuff into the other bedroom and he took over the kids room.  I was almost terrified at first – the living room closet door would open and close, and that was the same closet that opened into my room as well!  But I don’t recall ever having anything ever happen in that room.

It got to the point that a lot of people (my brother, his friends, etc.) didn’t want to go back into his room by themselves, especially if the hallway light was off.  And nobody went into my mother’s room – that’s where it seemed to be the strongest.  Something happened that my brother’s doorknob was broken off (nothing paranormal – I’m pretty sure it was my dad’s temper) and he would always stuff a rag in the hole so whatever was in the hallway wouldn’t stare in at him.  You could actually feel it watching you if you were in his room.

This wasn’t a 24/7 thing, but it happened often enough that it was spooky and creepy.  Some of his friends felt it, some didn’t.  Some of our family (and not just the ones who lived there) felt it, others didnt’.  But enough people felt it to convince me that there was something there.  Something you couldn’t see.

My wife was actually touched in my mother’s room, but again, that’s another story for another time.

Since then I’ve been extremely interested in paranormal events – what are they, why do they happen when they do, can you make them go away – so many questions.

I have more experiences I’ll share later on, but I think this will do for now.

Thanks for stopping by!