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Deborah J. Brasket

~ Living on the Edge of the Wild

Deborah J. Brasket

Tag Archives: Haunted Houses

True Ghost Stories: Growing Up in a Haunted House

26 Monday Oct 2020

Posted by deborahbrasket in Family, Memoir, Short Story

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Ghost Stories, Ghosts, Halloween, Halloween reads, Haunted Houses, Supernatural

House on Haunted Hill large

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.

Nancy_Drew_-_Ghost_of_Thornton_Hall_Cover_Art

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.

Athenodorus_-_The_Greek_Stoic_Philosopher_Athenodorus_Rents_a_Haunted_House

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. Your can read about this in Part II of this series, listed below.

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?

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Living on the Edge of the Ghostly and Unexplained

28 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by deborahbrasket in Family, Human Consciousness, Memoir

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Ghost Stories, Halloween, Halloween reads, Haunted Houses, mystery, Psychology, the unknown

man in a dark forestThere’s so much in this world that surrounds us that we can hardly fathom, let alone explain. We keep bumping up against it, like looking into a mirror and seeing ghostly shapes of things all around us that are invisible in our daily lives. Are they real, or imagined, or do they dwell within the dark matter of the universe that haunts our psychic and scientific minds? Or if, as some say, all is consciousness, then are we merely peeking into the dark corners of our own inner space?

So much of what this blog is about is exploring those spaces, those ghostly, ethereal presences that lie all around us, some beautiful and serene, some dark and scary, some transcendent and awe-inspiring.

A couple of years ago I wrote a series of blogs about my experiences with some of those ghostly presences, the kinds that, if we are lucky, enter our homes only in costume on Halloween, when we make light of our darker fears. If only we could contain them there. Alas, we are not all so lucky.

Climb under the covers with me if you dare, and peek out into my own dreadful unknown. If you’ve had similar brushes with ghostly presences, I’d love to hear about them.

You can read the full series of true 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?

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True Ghost Stories, Part II – Attack of the Poltergeist

10 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by deborahbrasket in Creative Nonfiction, Culture, Family, Memoir

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Ghost, Ghost story, Halloween, Haunted Houses, Murder, Paranormal, Poltergeist

449px-Bosch,_Hieronymus_-_The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights,_right_panel_-_Detail_Butterfly_monster_(mid-right)It’s a blessing I think now that I never knew as a child that a woman whose blood still stained the floor had been murdered in my bedroom, or that the man who had murdered her, her husband, had hung himself from the rafters of our garage.

It’s a blessing I never knew when I covered my head at night to sleep, feeling that if I did so I would be safe, that someone or something lumbered across my bedroom floor, waking and terrifying my parents who slept in the room below mine. It’s a blessing I never knew the power of the cold entity that inhabited the small room next to mine where I sometimes played.

Since starting this series, I’ve done some research on spooks and hauntings and all thing supernatural. I discovered that ghosts are entities that are attached to a particular place and can make appearances, can even be heard laughing or crying or running up and down stairs. But they cannot toss things about the room or physically touch and harm humans. The more physically violent supernatural beings are called poltergeists.

170px-Theodor_von_Holst_Bertalda_Assailed_SpiritsThat’s what my mother apparently encountered shortly before we fled from our home. 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 is scream for help.

Unfortunately the only person at home at the time to help her was my three-year-old brother. But he came when she called him. She told him to grab her feet, which fortunately lay near the doorway, and to pull her out. Slowly, inch by inch, he was able to pull enough of her into the hallway so that whatever was holding her down lost its power, and she was able to get up. Never to enter that room again.

We never knew if it was the murdered woman that stalked my bedroom at night, or the ghost of her murderous husband who did so. Nor did we know who or what had knocked my mother to the floor and held her there.

Suushi_YureiBut it wasn’t the last encounter my mother had with a ghostly being.

Many years later she was visited in the middle of the night by a crying woman, someone she knew and loved, but whom, unknown to her, had died that evening. Someone who tried desperately to enter into my mother’s body, because she was not ready to leave this world.

This grieving woman was her mother-in-law.

More about that next time.

This is Part II 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?
Related articles
  • True Ghost Stories, Part One – Growing Up in a Haunted House (deborahbrasket.wordpress.com)

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True Ghost Stories, Part One – Growing Up in a Haunted House

07 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by deborahbrasket in Creative Nonfiction, Culture, Family, Memoir, Writing

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

Ghost, Ghost Stories, Halloween, Haunted Houses, Hauntings, House on Haunted Hill

photalia moonAs Halloween draws near, I will be posting 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, even while having experienced such, I cannot deny that the physical and psychic 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

House on Haunted Hill largeWhen 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.

Nancy_Drew_-_Ghost_of_Thornton_Hall_Cover_ArtThis 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.

Athenodorus_-_The_Greek_Stoic_Philosopher_Athenodorus_Rents_a_Haunted_HouseOften 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 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?

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After sailing around the world in a small boat for six years, I came to appreciate how tiny and insignificant we humans appear in our natural and untamed surroundings, living always on the edge of the wild, into which we are embedded even while being that thing which sets us apart. Now living again on the edge of the wild in a home that borders a nature preserve, I am re-exploring what it means to be human in a more than human world.

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