I have been prompted to write about the haunted house I grew up in that I made reference to in my last blog. I have also searched high and low for a photo to correspond to this story, but the only photo I have of this house is not in the place I thought it was...
My parents play a role in this story and before anyone casts judgment on them, I hold nothing against them for any "lack" of action on their part. They did only what they knew to do and had I been in their shoes, I might have sent my little boy off for psychiatric evaluations! I know I can be a bit dramatic, but I'm pretty sure my parents thought I was flipped! I hold nothing against them in any of this, and still hold true that I grew up exceptionally well and in a loving home. All the time I was living there, my parents had only clues as to the goings on there and never put together that the house was haunted. It was only after the house had appeared in the paper after we moved out that they believed me.
This is a story of a fully documented true haunting. (and I retain all movie rights!)
In 1978 my dad designed and built his dream house near a small Wisconsin town called Mukwonago. It was huge. He bought a large plot in a subdivision on the side of a hill overlooking a marsh and a lake. The land used to be the farm where my mother and her sisters grew up with the exception of a few wooded plots on this hill.
The home is a wood-frame two-story built in the modern-style. It has a long sloped roof-line extending from the front up to the center of the house and down the back. There were three balconies on the front of the house, one that wrapped around the front and two on the upper level for two bedrooms there. A giant fireplace in the middle of the front that extended from the exposed basement level to reach above the second floor - which looked like the third floor from the view in the front. The interior had an open staircase by the front door, two balconies in the upper living room that overlooked the entrance on one side and the fireplace on the other. The house featured hanging chandeliers and large open windows to capture the beautiful view. The upstairs was all open with cathedral ceilings. Each upstairs bedroom had sloped ceilings.
I picked a room on the upper floor, above my parent’s bedroom. It had a balcony, sloped cathedral ceiling and an unusually large walk-in closet. Even the closets had cathedral ceilings. It must have been fifteen feet tall, absolutely cavernous!
Just after we moved in I began to start seeing unexplained things and had weird feelings around the house. I was all of eight at the time, so I couldn't really know what was going on, all I knew was that my room was the coldest room in the house even in the hottest summer. I saw things in the night. Things in my room moved in the shadows. Being a frightened eight-year-old, I cowered under my sheets, laying awake for hours into the night as I watched my red digital alarm clock vanish and turn itself into several small blips and freely float in front of my bed. The next morning, everything in the room would be as it was the night before and I was left to wonder, did I actually see anything? The next night would come, and the whole scenario would play out again.
Every time I went into my closet, it was like I was walking into a meat-locker. Frigid cold and the space seemed always a bit askew. You know the type of lens distortion where, in a movie, the camera views down a long corridor and the space seems to stretch unnaturally? THAT'S the way I felt in my closet, like the space wasn't quite right. I would go in there and it felt like I was being watched. It was a bad feeling - I have never quite put it any other way, but it was a feeling that made me not want to be there. The strange occurrences continued the entire time I stayed in that bedroom. I moved out of that room and into another room after a few years.
One summer night, I went to bed on the floor next to my huge box fan. I always slept with a fan, the white noise puts me to sleep. It was still early, my parents were still up. I was laying with my head near the fan when I heard whispering. Whispering just softly enough as to not be understood. I sat up. Nobody around. I laid back down and heard more whispering. I went out to tell my dad, who lovingly told me to turn the fan up to a higher setting.
I had a play area in the basement that was on the same side of the house my bedroom was on. I had a giant train set there that was in a constant state of disrepair. In fact, our whole basement was in disrepair. Exposed masonry, stacks of lumber from construction projects my dad was working on, lots of junk as my mother would put it. Across from where I was working was a window looking out to the front yard. Beyond the window the ground sloped away from the house to a small grove of trees. At night when I was working on my set, it would feel as though something was peering at me from the window. I would look into it from across the room and it was blacker than pitch. It actually gave me a terrible sense of fear to look at it and felt as though the energy that was coming from it passed right through me, yearned for me to move, get out of there or die. It made me feel grossly out of place. Not long after I had a few night experiences like that, I stopped playing there at night. Eventually I avoided going into the basement at night, and even during the day I was uncomfortable being there. My train set was never fully completed.
The one defining experience stands out in my mind. One night, I was home alone, my parents were out playing cards. We had a small ShiTzu dog that would sometimes scratch her claws and rub her face on the carpet stairs the way most dogs do. I heard the scratching on the staircase, but it was "different." I walked over to the stairs to get a clear, top-down view and the dog was nowhere to be seen! But the noise continued, I quickly turned around and the damn dog was hiding under the sofa. My skin crawled! I ran to the phone and quickly called my parents to explain what was going on. They probably thought I was a disturbed, imaginative little boy, they did the only thing they knew to do, continued playing cards and passively deny the whole thing.
Later on, I began to put some things together in my mind about some of the signs I saw that might have tipped me off that the side of the house where my first bedroom was located was haunted. On that side of the house it was never really completed. There was always overgrowth of weeds, no matter what we did to landscape the area and the wood panel siding on the house above the same area, leaked a disproportionate amount of sap. Sure, these things could be explained by logical explanations, the angle of the sun, lack of nutrient in the soil, but I think I knew better.
Looking at photos of the house after the fact, the house looks demonic. It's beautiful and massive and by no fault of the designer (my dad), but by the look in the windows, the eyes of the home, it looks ill and twisted.
We lived in this house for ten years, from the time I was eight until I graduated high school. Soon after we moved out of that house, the new people expanded along the side of the house where my and my parents' bedroom was. That proved to be the home's fatal mistake. Just after the construction was completed, it is reported that the woman of the house was taking a bath when holy hell broke out in the bathroom, her toiletries flying about her while she bathed. She was reported to have run out of the house naked, and screaming. The owners had the house looked at by the scientific community. She reported that after she would clean the house, items in the house would find new places to exist. Her knick-knacks would change places or move to face a different direction. She would vacuum the carpet and moments later see a set of footprints in the carpet where she KNEW nobody had walked. It was later deemed fully-haunted and was vacant for the several years after. The investigators found the area contained Indian burial mounds and found that the side of the house where my first bedroom was, had been partially built on a burial mound. The people that later expanded on that side, went further into the mound and thereby activating the house fully. I wished I had saved the news reports, perhaps on my next visit home, I might do a little more investigating myself and try to dig up some archives at the local paper.
Since the ten years of my life having lived in other-worldly presences, I have come to recognize a certain feeling inside myself whenever a presence is near. I can sense the energy of a room and the energy of a whole house. In fact, it took many months of living in this house before I felt my energy had taken hold and any negative energy had become sub-dominant. There is still some negativity here, because when I am alone at night, I am a little uncomfortable. I am very particular about the positioning of items in a room and have since learned the art of Feng Shui. I believe, as do many others, that the way that we live and exist in a space leaves a residual effect after we are gone. Some of our energy stays behind, even after we leave in the morning to go to work, there is an energy left behind. It is important to live happy and balanced lives, not only for our own good, but for the good of what is around us and for the good of what is to come us us next. Always leave a space better than when you found it.
The experience has left one bad side-effect on me and that I am a VERY light sleeper. However, living among spirits has also given me a broader view on life and the afterlife. We must respect the other side of life, be aware of what's around us, and most of all, keep an open mind.
Those experiences are a part of me now, and I am a better person for having experienced them.
Thank you for allowing me to share that with you all, feel free to leave me a comment!
