Haunted

Have you ever been in a haunted house? I mean a real one, not the amusement ones. I have. The second time I was in a haunted house was terrifying. I'll save that story for last. The third one involved a house that a lady I knew was renovating. JoAnn was the mother of my then-boyfriend, Mike. I'll tell that story first.

I was visiting with JoAnn while she was working on this house when she had to run an errand. I stayed behind with her dogs. To be honest, that house always seemed a little spooky to me. I always sensed that there was something there. I was sitting downstairs when I heard footsteps upstairs. Like I said, I was there alone with the dogs. You'd best believe that I got out of the house fast, taking the dogs out to the yard with me. When JoAnn returned I told her what had happened. Her response? "Oh that was probably…" and she proceeded to tell me about the man who used to live there. I think she said he died in that house. Apparently she used to know him. She wasn't phased in the least.

Mike had a similar experience in that same house. Here I should explain a little something about the house. There used to be a balcony outside one of the bedrooms upstairs. At some point the balcony was closed off to make a hallway, but still leaving a window in place. Mike used to stay in this house while his mother worked in it. One night, as he was lying in bed he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The footsteps continued across the landing into the hallway that used to be the balcony. They came to a stop right outside the window. Needless to say, this scared the <beep> out of Mike, who ran out of the house and slept at his sister's that night. I can't remember if he ever slept in that house again.

The first haunted house that I was in happened years before this. I'd been in that house numerous times because my friend Meagan lived there. According to my friend, there was a murder in that house. I won't go into the details of that. Suffice to say, this happened long before Meagan and her mother, Lena, lived there. I was told many stories about happenings in their house. Just one example, apparently Lena's bedroom used to be the sewing room of the victim. Quite often they could hear a sewing machine. Most of the stories I heard about this house were a little spooky but I never felt terrified there. And I had never experienced anything there myself until one time I was in Meagan's room. The door to her room led into the living room and there was an armchair near the door. I mention this for a reason. As we were leaving her room, half of the doorway was blocked by the armchair. It was not blocking the door when we went into her room, and we were the only ones home. That left me feeling a little more than spooked, to say the least. This happened so long ago that I don't remember all of the things that Meagan told me about over the years. But I will never forget the armchair in the doorway.

The second haunted house, the one that terrified me the most, also involved Meagan. She lived in a rural area, and walking distance from her house was what was called the Witch's House. It was back off the road, on the edge of a wooded area. And it had been sitting abandoned for many, many years. The story was that a woman lived there with her two daughters. She was accused of Witchcraft. She and her daughters disappeared and were never seen again.

One day Meagan, her husband (at that time) and I decided to go to the Witch's House and check it out. From the moment I stepped foot in that house I felt an overwhelming evil. I was terrified. Nothing "happened" but the evil just permeated the place. I could feel… something. So I kept repeating a protective charm that I had been taught.

Turn, turn away from me.

I now invoke the Law of Three.

As I do will, so mote it be.

I just kept repeating that over and over. 

We didn't get far in our exploration. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor and we hurriedly left, never to return.

As I said, nothing "happened" there. No noises, no unexplained movements. But the whole house just reeked of evil. I've never been more terrified in my life. This happened back in the 1980s and I will never forget this.