True Tales Growing Up in a Haunted House

Tags

Ghost Stories, Halloween, Halloween reads, Haunted House, Hauntings, memoir, nonfiction, Supernatural, writing

Have you ever had any ghostly encounters?

Each year around this time, I like to reblog a series of tales about my encounters with the ghostly and unexplained, starting when I was a child, and later full grown with children of my own. The first is printed below with links to the others.

While ”intellectually” I don’t believe in ghosts, demons, and the like, I have experienced such. And I cannot deny that the phenomena which I and others–indeed, all known cultures and societies–have laid claim to, are “real.” The reality they seem to have is unexplained, often unverifiable, and usually fleeting and ephemeral. And yet they persist in haunting humanity.

I can neither explain, verify, nor dismiss the reality of the experiences that I relate here. I can only state that these things occurred as I remember them, or as others I trust related them to me. And most were witnessed by more than one person

Happy Halloween!

Our House on a Haunted Hill

When I was a kid “House on Haunted Hill” was my favorite spooky movie. I first saw it a few years after my own family had escaped, just barely, from a haunted house experience. While living there I was not aware of all the horrors that house contained, and only learned the full account when my mother felt I was old enough to learn the truth.

I was eight years old when my parents rented a home set on a hillside in an older, respectable neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska. The attic had been converted into two rooms, a tiny room overlooking the back yard and garage; and a huge room overlooking the front yard. This larger room had been recently renovated and then abruptly abandoned, it appeared. The high pitched ceiling and walls were covered in a richly varnished, knotty pine paneling. Finely crafted drawers and book cases had been built beneath the eaves. But the floor, made of rough, unvarnished planks of wood, had been left unfinished. And a large reddish-brown stain that looked like a puddle of blood had soaked into the wood.

This was my bedroom and I loved it. Being an avid fan of Nancy Drew mysteries, the giant blood stain only added to the allure of the room–that and the trap door on the floor of the walk-in closet. While the door had been nailed shut, I could still probe the cracks with a ruler, detecting steps that led downward—to where, no one knew. My discovery sent chills of delight down my back.

In fact, I was thrilled to have the whole second story all to myself. Even though the second smaller room could have easily accommodated my little brother, my mother made him sleep down below in the tiny room at the bottom of the stairs. She claimed the small room upstairs was “too cold” and used it as a storage room instead. She filled it with unpacked boxes and unused furniture, forbidding me to play there—which, of course, made the room seem even more desirable.

I remember entering the room often to play by myself and looking out the dusty window toward the mysterious barn-like structure that faced the alley. The structure, which could easily have accommodated several cars, sat empty nearly the whole time we lived there, and my brother and I were forbidden to play here as well. It too was considered “too cold” for human habitation. The one time I did enter, my eyes were drawn upward to the high rafters where, through the rotting roof, splinters of light filled with ghostly dust motes fell to the floor. I did not enter again. When some teenage boys wanted to use the garage to rebuild a car, they moved out after a couple of nights, never to return—even though they had paid rent for a full month.

I thought it strange when my mother kept wanting to move me out of my lovely upstairs “apartment” to a room below and I refused to be moved. She kept asking if I was afraid up there all by myself, but I insisted I wasn’t. This was true. I knew what needed to be done to stay safe, although I never shared this with my mother. It was a ritual that I religiously followed. Every night after my mother heard my prayers and tucked me into bed, I would pull the covers tight over my head and stay there until I fell asleep. I knew somehow that no harm would come to me if I followed this ritual. And no harm ever did come to me.

I might well have been very afraid if I had heard what my parents heard at night as they slept in the room below mine.

Often my mother was woken by the sound of heavy, dragging footsteps lumbering across room over her bed, and she would wake my father and make him go upstairs to investigate. At first he did so wearily, thinking she was imagining it. But once he woke early enough to hear it himself and went dashing up the stairs—but nothing was there and I was sound asleep in my bed.

We moved shortly thereafter. That’s when the neighbors told us about the horrible tragedy that had taken place in the house before we moved in. They hadn’t wanted to tell us earlier and scare us away. Apparently the previous owner of the house had murdered his wife in my bedroom and then hung himself afterwards from the rafters in the garage.

If some other tragic event took place in the small room next to mine upstairs—the coldest room in the house–we never learned. Whatever haunted that room did more than drag its feet across the floor or blow cold air down our spines. During our final days in that home, my mother, to her terror, found this out–with no one but my three-year-old brother at home to save her.

More about this in my next post.

You can read the full series of true ghost stories at the links below which were first posted in 2013

• True Ghost Stories, Part II – Attack of the Poltergeist
• True Ghost Stories, Part III – When the Dead Refuse to Leave
• True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast
• True Ghost Stories, Part V – A Demon on My Chest
• True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate
• True Ghost stories, Part VII – Do I Believe This Stuff?

Hauntings, Ghosts, & Demons I Have Known

Tags

Deborah J. Brasket, Demons, Ghost Stories, Ghosts, Halloween, Haunted House, personal, Poltergeist, reality, Supernatural

As Halloween draws near, I like to repost a series of true life tales about the hauntings, ghosts, and demons I experienced growing up, and later when I had children of my own.

While I don’t ”intellectually” believe in ghosts and the supernatural, I cannot deny that the physical and psychic phenomena which I and so many others–-indeed, all known cultures and societies–-have laid claim to, are “real.” The reality they seem to have is unexplained, often unverifiable, and usually fleeting and ephemeral. And yet they persist in haunting humanity.

Throughout history, people whom we usually credit with intelligence and integrity have reported ghostly experiences, among them the psychologist Carl Jung, President Theodore Roosevelt, and Sir Winston Churchill, as well as a host of current well-known celebrities, such as Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, and Halle Berry.

I can neither explain, verify, nor dismiss the reality of the experiences that I relate here. I can only state that these things occurred as I remember them, or as others I trust related them to me. And most were witnessed by more than one person.

You can read the full series of ghost stories at the links below. I’ve included excerpts from each. Enjoy!

• True Ghost Stories, Part I – Growing up in a Haunted House

Every night after my mother heard my prayers and tucked me into bed, I would pull the covers tight over my head and stay there until I fell asleep. I knew somehow that no harm would come to me if I followed this ritual. And no harm ever did come to me.

I might well have been terrified had I heard what my parents heard at night as they slept in the room below mine.

• True Ghost Stories, Part II – Attack of the Poltergeist

We had already decided to move when my mother entered the small room upstairs that had been used for storage because it was “too cold” for human habitation. She was trying to move boxes out of the room when something unseen attacked her.  It threw her to the floor and pinned her down so that she could not move. All she could do was scream for help.

• True Ghost Stories, Part III – When the Dead Refuse to Leave

That night my mother woke from an extremely vivid dream where Margaret (her mother-in-law) had come to her weeping so hard she could not speak. She hung onto my mother so tightly it scared her. It felt as if Margaret was trying to climb inside her body and she had to fight her off. The next morning my mother . . .  discovered that Margaret had died that night. 

• True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast

Shortly after moving in, I became increasingly afraid to be alone in the house. I was okay when Dale was at home. But as soon as he left for work, a creepy feeling overwhelmed me. As I walked through the house I was aware of something sinister and malicious watching me. It was as if the walls had eyes that followed me everywhere. As if I was living in the belly of the Beast.

• True Ghost Stories, Part V – A Demon on My Chest

Have you ever awoken from sleep to find yourself paralyzed with fear as if something dark and evil sitting on your chest has pinned you down? You try to scream or move, but find that you cannot. You are overcome with terror. It’s more common than you think. And it happened to me several times.

• True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate

It was like a dark, evil twin had taken over me, and I was as horrified as my little friend by what was happening . . . I like to think now that it was that sad, angry, stalking presence that haunted our house that tried, unsuccessfully, to inhabit me . . . I had a taste of what true evil feels like, with all its sense of pleasure and power, and I did not like it. 

• True Ghost stories, Part VII – Do I Believe This Stuff?

So are the ghosts, demons, and other supernatural beings that have haunted humans through the centuries, that make brief appearances and then disappear, “real”? I do not know, and I’m not sure if it even matters. They are real enough to those who experience them, as least while they are experiencing them, and then afterwards, one wonders.

Each of us make but brief ghostly appearances in this world we call real. We apparently spring from nearly nothing–-a few multiplying cells, and then disappear into nothing as our bodies disintegrate after a short visitation that can last a few days or a few decades. Are we “real”?

I’d loved to hear your ghost stories. Have you had any brushings with the supernatural?

Growing Up in a Haunted House

Tags

Ghost Stories, Ghosts, Halloween, Haunted House, Hauntings, spooky stories, Supernatural

Last October I posted a series of true life tales about the hauntings, ghosts, and demons I experienced growing up, and later when I had children of my own. The first is printed below with links to the others.  Happy Halloween!

While ”intellectually” I don’t believe in ghosts, demons, and the like, I have experienced such. And I cannot deny that the phenomena which I and others–indeed, all known cultures and societies–have laid claim to, are “real.” The reality they seem to have is unexplained, often unverifiable, and usually fleeting and ephemeral. And yet they persist in haunting humanity.

Throughout history, people whom we usually credit with intelligence and integrity have reported ghostly experiences, among them the psychologist Carl Jung, President Theodore Roosevelt, and Sir Winston Churchill, as well as a host of current well-known celebrities, such as Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, and Halle Berry.

I can neither explain, verify, nor dismiss the reality of the experiences that I relate here. I can only state that these things occurred as I remember them, or as others I trust related them to me. And most were witnessed by more than one person.

Our House on a Haunted Hill

When I was a kid “House on Haunted Hill” was my favorite spooky movie. I first saw it a few years after my own family had escaped, just barely, from a haunted house experience. While living there I was not aware of all the horrors that house contained, and only learned the full account when my mother felt I was old enough to learn the truth.

I was eight years old when my parents rented a home set on a hillside in an older, respectable neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska. The attic had been converted into two rooms, a tiny room overlooking the back yard and garage; and a huge room overlooking the front yard. This larger room had been recently renovated and then abruptly abandoned, it appeared. The high pitched ceiling and walls were covered in a richly varnished, knotty pine paneling. Finely crafted drawers and book cases had been built beneath the eaves. But the floor, made of rough, unvarnished planks of wood, had been left unfinished. And a large reddish-brown stain that looked like a puddle of blood had soaked into the wood.

This was my bedroom and I loved it. Being an avid fan of Nancy Drew mysteries, the giant blood stain only added to the allure of the room–that and the trap door on the floor of the walk-in closet. While the door had been nailed shut, I could still probe the cracks with a ruler, detecting steps that led downward—to where, no one knew. My discovery sent chills of delight down my back.

In fact, I was thrilled to have the whole second story all to myself. Even though the second smaller room could have easily accommodated my little brother, my mother made him sleep down below in the tiny room at the bottom of the stairs. She claimed the small room upstairs was “too cold” and used it as a storage room instead. She filled it with unpacked boxes and unused furniture, forbidding me to play there—which, of course, made the room seem even more desirable.

I remember entering the room often to play by myself and looking out the dusty window toward the mysterious barn-like structure that faced the alley. The structure, which could easily have accommodated several cars, sat empty nearly the whole time we lived there, and my brother and I were forbidden to play here as well. It too was considered “too cold” for human habitation. The one time I did enter, my eyes were drawn upward to the high rafters where, through the rotting roof, splinters of light filled with ghostly dust motes fell to the floor. I did not enter again. When some teenage boys wanted to use the garage to rebuild a car, they moved out after a couple of nights, never to return—even though they had paid rent for a full month.

I thought it strange when my mother kept wanting to move me out of my lovely upstairs “apartment” to a room below and I refused to be moved. She kept asking if I was afraid up there all by myself, and I insisted I wasn’t . This was true. I knew what needed to be done to stay safe, although I never shared this with my mother. It was a ritual that I religiously followed. Every night after my mother heard my prayers and tucked me into bed, I would pull the covers tight over my head and stay there until I fell asleep. I knew somehow that no harm would come to me if I followed this ritual. And no harm ever did come to me.

I might well have been very afraid if I had heard what my parents heard at night as they slept in the room below mine.

Often my mother was woken by the sound of heavy, dragging footsteps lumbering across room over her bed, and she would wake my father and make him go upstairs to investigate. At first he did so wearily, thinking she was imagining it. But once he woke early enough to hear it himself and went dashing up the stairs—but nothing was there and I was sound asleep in my bed.

We moved shortly thereafter. That’s when the neighbors told us about the horrible tragedy that had taken place in the house before we moved in. They hadn’t wanted to tell us earlier and scare us away. Apparently the previous owner of the house had murdered his wife in my bedroom and then hung himself afterwards from the rafters in the garage.

If some other tragic event took place in the small room next to mine upstairs—the coldest room in the house–we never learned. Whatever haunted that room did more than drag its feet across the floor or blow cold air down our spines. During our final days in that home, my mother, to her terror, found this out–with no one but my three-year-old brother at home to save her.

More about this in my next post.

You can read the full series of ghost stories at the links below.

• True Ghost Stories, Part II – Attack of the Poltergeist
• True Ghost Stories, Part III – When the Dead Refuse to Leave
• True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast
• True Ghost Stories, Part V – A Demon on My Chest
• True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate
• True Ghost stories, Part VIII – Do I Believe This Stuff?

 

True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate

Tags

Evil, Evil incarnate, Ghost Stories, Good vs Evil, Halloween, Haunted House, Paranormal, Spirit possession, Supernatural

The dark creatures that haunt our dreams and come to us as waking nightmares take many shapes or forms, but none is more evil nor dangerous than that which takes the shape of our own thoughts, and acts out its evil intentions through our own bodies.

When I was a little girl living in that haunted house, it appeared that I had escaped unscathed. I never heard the dragging footsteps across my floor at night, I never saw the ghost of the man who had murdered his wife in my room and hung himself in our garage. I was never attacked as my mother had been by the poltergeist that knocked her to the floor that day.

But something equally frightening and more dangerous visited me one late afternoon as I played dolls with my best friend in my bedroom. I cannot remember the exact details of what happened that day, but it was of such significance that I never forgot its occurrence. It had a profound effect upon my thinking and how I have lived ever since.

It came as a subtle suggestion as I played with my friend. An impulse to say something deliberately cruel and hurtful to her. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was mean. But I gave into that impulse nonetheless.

I was surprised by her reaction. How shocked and stunned she was. How she was physically repelled by my words and backed away. How she looked at me as if I was a stranger. As if she was afraid of me.

But rather than feeling remorse or regret, what I felt was a surge of excitement, of power and pleasure. I struck out again at her verbally, harder this, and she begged me to stop. But I didn’t stop, and as I continued, she began to cry.

The whole time I was doing this, there was no sense of empathy. She was no longer my best friend. She was this creature, a lab rat, and I was performing an experiment. How cruel could I be? How frightened would she become?

Yet beneath all this, another part of me reacted quite differently. It was shocked by my behavior. Mortified. This was not me! I could not believe that I was doing this, and could not understand what had come over me, or why I was persisting in hurting my friend. It was like a dark, evil twin had taken over me, and I was as horrified as my little friend by what was happening.

It was at this point that my feeling of moral outrage and dismay overcame the pleasurable feeling of power that had possessed me, and I shook it off. It was literally as if I had shook my head hard and threw off whatever had come over me. Then seeing my friend trembling and crying before me, I wrapped my arms around her and wept with her, and told her how sorry I was, and promised never to do that again. Sweet girl that she was, she forgave me, and we played together happily the rest of that day and all the days that followed, as best friends should, until we moved away.

But I never forgot that day. I like to think now that it was that sad, angry, stalking presence that haunted our house that tried, unsuccessfully, to inhabit me. And I think what saved me was knowing, truly knowing in my heart, that it was’t me. Even though it came in the guise of my own thoughts, my own actions, I did not identify with it. And because of that, I believe, I was able to eject it as “not me.”

I had a taste of what true evil feels like, with all its sense of pleasure and power, and I did not like it.

I was as repelled by it as my friend was of me that day. And to this day I have never deliberately, gleefully, sought to hurt anyone again.

That is not to say that I have never said or done horrible things that I regret when I was deeply angry, or hurt, or outraged by someone or something.

But never in the calculated, cold-hearted way I had done that day, merely to see how cruel, how hurtful, I could be.

Was I briefly possessed by an evil spirit that day? Or was it something else? The incident could be explained in several ways—religiously, spiritually, psychologically, even from a simple moral standpoint. Good versus evil. Right versus wrong.

I imagine the “mean girls” you hear about today who cyber-bully other girls to the point of suicide, the boys who go out on joy rides looking for someone to hurt, the rapists that feel pleasure and power when they assault others, or the serial killers that stalk their victims—all at some point in their lives felt an impulse to do something quite unlike anything they had ever done before. But rather than rejecting that impulse as “not me,” or “not who I want to be,” they consented to being that person. And the impulse became a compulsion that possessed them.

I write this now because I think it’s important to make a distinction between the supernatural or paranormal appearances that spook us and thrill us and give us those tantalizing chills, and the more “normal” appearances of evil that, if we consent to them, take up residence in our hearts and minds. That make us the “mean girls” and the cruel boys, the heartless con men, the conniving heart-breakers, the stalking predators or murderous madmen. That haunt our hallways and back roads and bedrooms, our main streets and Wall Streets, and all the places in-between.

It begins with a cruel impulse. And if we are alert and vigilant, that’s where it can end too.

What is evil incarnate, after all, but evil manifested, evil embodied, evil given a human heart and mind to haunt? Without that, evil is powerless.

And so ends my series of posts on true ghost stories, or would end here, except I have something further to ponder.

Do I truly believe this stuff?

Do I believe in ghosts and haunted houses and demons and spirit possession? In the supernatural and paranormal? In evil incarnate?

How does an intelligent, rational person explain all this?

How indeed. To find out, you’ll have to wait for my next, and final post, on this topic. On Halloween night.

This is Part V of an ongoing series leading up to Halloween of true life ghost stories, experienced either by me or by people I trusted.

You can read the full series of ghost stories at the links below.

• True Ghost Stories, Part I – Growing Up in a Haunted House
• True Ghost Stories, Part II – Attack of the Poltergeist
• True Ghost Stories, Part III – When the Dead Refuse to Leave
• True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast
• True Ghost Stories, Part V – A Demon on My Chest
• True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate
• True Ghost stories, Part VIII – Do I Believe This Stuff?

 

True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast

Tags

Evil, Exorcism, Ghost Stories, Halloween, Haunted House, Spirit possession

We felt so fortunate. Dale had a job in San Francisco that summer, and his Uncle who lived nearby asked us to house sit for them while they were away. We jumped at the chance. They lived in a beautiful home in an upscale neighborhood with a pool—a perfect place for me and our 6-month old son to hang out while Dale worked in the city.

There was only one hitch. Shortly after moving in, I became increasingly afraid to be alone in the house. I was okay when Dale was at home. But as soon as he left for work, a creepy feeling overwhelmed me. As I walked through the house I was aware of something sinister and malicious watching me. It was as if the walls had eyes that followed me everywhere. As if I was living in the belly of the Beast.

I could not stay in the house. Every morning I would pack up food and diapers and books and towels and whatever else I needed so that my son and I could camp out on the patio by the pool all day. There I felt some measure of relief. While the house behind me felt menacing, at least I was not surrounded by those eyes, not immersed in the midst of it.

One of my house-sitting chores was to keep the lush landscaping that surrounded the home watered, and I did my best. But one side of the house I could not water, the side where the bedrooms of the teenage children were located. What I felt staring out at me from those windows was too unnerving.

One day when Dale was home I felt brave enough to open those two bedrooms and look inside. Nothing seemed amiss. Yet I felt sinister unwelcome and looking out the windows that had so frightened me, I had a strong premonition that something horrible was waiting to happen.

This feeling of impending doom came whenever I heard the wind chimes blow outside our bedroom window. How I hated that eerie sound, and how grateful I felt when Dale, for some unstated reason, took them down. I didn’t press him about it. I wasn’t yet willing to share my spooky feelings with my young husband who seemed to fear nothing, who was so practical and level-headed. I was afraid he’d think me silly or foolish. I didn’t want to admit how scared I was in his Uncle’s beautiful home.

But one evening when we were watching TV together, Dale jumped up and switched the channel just as a horror movie was about to play. Until then, he had always loved watching spooky movies.

That’s when I found out that he too had the same creepy feeling in the house—like something evil was lurking, or the house itself had become possessed and was watching us and waiting. We both had the horrible premonition that something awful was about to happen.

So while it was a relief to find that I was not alone, that this frightening sense of being watched and impending doom was not merely my imagination, I could not shake it and could not continue to live there with it.

That’s when I decided enough was enough. Either we were going to have to move, or IT was. I was no longer willing to allow myself to be forced out onto the patio each day. I decided to fight back.

I’d grown up attending Sunday School each week. I’d been taught that God is Love and All-in-all. I reasoned that if this was so, then God as Love must surround me, must fill the very space that occupied that house. Either this was true or it wasn’t. And I was going to find out which.

So instead of going out on the patio one morning, I sat at the dining room table and prayed. My prayer was simply to feel God’s presence, that Love, surrounding me and filling that house. No thought, no thinking, no reasoning—just feeling Love. And I sat there like that until the whole room seemed filled with a warm inviting light, until my whole being seemed filled with Love, until I forgot all about any evil presence or the need to be rid of it. All that I felt was joy.

When my prayer ended, the house was free. That sense of evil had vanished. I walked around the house and was flooded with happiness. The house was normal, non-threatening. Whatever had occupied it before was gone. Even the children’s rooms were peaceful, empty.

The rest of our stay there was uneventful. Nothing horrible happened then, or in the future, as far as we knew. We did question his Uncle years later about whether he’d had any abnormal experiences in the house, and he said he never had. Dale and I speculated that perhaps one of the teenagers had dabbled in the occult. They did seem rather strange, as most teens do, I suppose.

So we never found out why we both felt such a sense of evil and impending doom while living there. I told Dale about how I no longer needed to spend the day outside, that whatever had been bothering me before had vanished. He was not so lucky. That evil sense never left him while we were there, and to this day he says that he would never want to stay in that house. For many, many years we could not hang wind chimes in our home. It was too eerie!

You’d think after having had “exorcised” the Beast, I never again would have been troubled by ghosts or demons or evil incarnate. But you’d be wrong.

Several years later when I had two small children I again was visited by a sense of pure evil. And this time was even more terrifying than being in the belly of the Beast. So terrifying, in fact, that I was paralyzed with fear. I could not move, I could not scream, I could barely breathe. For the Beast had crept into my bed, pinned me down, and sat grinning on my chest.

More about that next time.

This is Part IV of an ongoing series of true life ghost stories, experienced either by me or by people I trusted.

You can read the full series of ghost stories at the links below.

• True Ghost Stories, Part I – Growing Up in a Haunted House
• True Ghost Stories, Part II – Attack of the Poltergeist
• True Ghost Stories, Part III – When the Dead Refuse to Leave
• True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast
• True Ghost Stories, Part V – A Demon on My Chest
• True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate
• True Ghost stories, Part VIII – Do I Believe This Stuff?