Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I levitated then a week later my 17 year old brother Sean died in a car accident in Woodstock Illinois.

On August 1983 my 17 year old brother Sean Thompson was brutally assaulted by a J. Greenham who was 19 from Woodstock Illinois. He was mad at my brother over a pretty girl named Connie. My brother was found lying at the LakeWood Apartments in Woodstock Illinois on the ground unconscious. A woman found him and called an ambulance. My brother was taken to Woodstock Hospital with head trauma. I went to see my brother in intensive care, his head was the size of a large watermelon. He was embarrassed. His eyes were bloody red. It was a horrible attack. My brother’s face was all beaten in. My brother was in intensive care for over a month.

Sean was released two months after being in the hospital. Before leaving Woodstock Hospital, I asked the neurologist, would my brother have any problems. The neurologist responded with worried eyes, “Sean will be ok. We tested him and he appears to healing normally with no problem.” I picked up my brother Sean and I left the hospital apprehensively.  J. Greenham never served any time for this beating. Sean was too afraid to press charges.

Sean had a ’69 blue Dodge Charger and started his senior year of high school at Woodstock High. My brother was never the same after the beating. He often would forget things. One day an Illinois State Trooper came to my parent’s house and said Sean had passed a semi and barely made it. I told my brother to stop the dangerous driving, he told me to shut up. I was staying at the Woodstock Motel with my boyfriend Ken. Ken was very handsome and looked like a young Richard Gere look alike.

That night I went  to sleep and was stuck in a semi sleep state. My soul started to float above the room. I did not know what was happening. I screamed and yelled for my boyfriend but he did not hear me. This levitation went on for several hours. I kept screaming and calling but my voice echoed into another world. My soul finally went back into my body, after floating all night. It was a very scary experience. This timeline was about January 7, 1984. I told Ken Thomas about the experience but, he shrugged it off.  He did not know how to deal with anything like what had happened. He was only concerned over survival. We were only eating one meal a day. We  had no place to stay. We had no car. So we just walked  looking for work. But, we still tried hoping some kind of luck would come through.

I was 19 and had just graduated from Woodstock High School. It was a bitter cold winter. I was going hungry. I walked to the Train stop to get food. A relative of Ken’s there fed us once a day. This went on for about a week. I still can remember the day like it was yesterday. It was January 14, 1984. A cold negative 10 was blowing outside my motel bedroom window. I awoke to the motel clerk banging on the door. The oriental woman urgently pushed me into the motel clerk’s room. She handed me the phone with a worried look on her face. My dad was on the phone, he was crying frantically. I said, “dad what is the matter?” I hesitated for a moment because I had never heard my dad cry before. “Dad, what is the matter?” “Why are you crying?” “Carri,” dad sobbed, “your brother Sean, was just killed in a car accident.” I asked him, “What time did it happen, dad?” He responded, “it happened at 3pm today.”

I looked at the motel lobby clock it was 5:30 pm. I just started screaming and crying, right there in the middle of a motel lobby. The oriental clerk just stared and looked down. I handed the clerk the phone. I went back to my room sobbing telling Ken what had happened. Then later the clerk knocked on my motel room door and told me that the Coroner was coming to pick me and Ken up, to drive us to my parent’s house.

At about 6:30 pm, Marene Lanz the McHenry County Coroner came to my room and picked me up. I remember her smiling and trying to cheer me up. “At least Sean, had on matching socks.” I just smiled holding back tears as we drove to my parents house. We lived on Jankowski Road. We finally pulled in the long driveway in the crunchy January snow. The sun now had gone down. I opened my parents front door, it was unlocked. I walked in and my family was in deep mourning, everyone was crying and teary eyed. I was devastated and walked in a fog. Still even to this day I still cannot remember, only bits and pieces of the events.

The local Baptist church came and brought us meals. We were too upset to cook. Most of the time I  couldn’t sleep. Richard, my stepfather, took Sean’s death real hard. That very night, the night that Sean had died, Richard went driving down route 14 in Woodstock and picked up a hitchhiker walking on the side of the rode. Richard brought the man to our house. He claimed to have psychic ability. The hitchhiker did a séance in my parent’s kitchen. I was sleeping when this was going on. I did not think anything of the hitchhiker incident other than I thought he was crazy and my parent’s were really flipping out. I demanded that my parent’s make the man leave. Richard finally agreed and drove the hitchhiker away. I am pretty sure he gave the man money. But the very next day the haunting started.

My bedroom was right next to my brother Sean’s bedroom. From Sean’s room I heard banging and clambering of chains. These noises sounded like they came from another world. Sometimes I would hear footsteps outside my window. I heard load moans and crying for many nights. The door would open and shut, orbs would fly around the room. My sister slept in the same room as me and did not see anything. My mother smelled toast being made in the morning like Sean used to do. This haunting went on for about over six months. I kept hearing banging coming from his room next to mine and my sister’s.

Finally, after weeks of paranormal activity, I gathered the courage to go into his room. When I opened the room it appeared like he had never left. The room was bright and sunny with a desk in it where he used to do his homework. But I noticed garbage bags in the room with a bad odor. I opened the bags. I was mortified to realize that Richard put my brother’s clothes he had died in, in those bags. They smelled like blood. The parts to his car was in his room. The parts were all mangled from the accident. I ran out screaming. “Get this stuff out of the house.” “Dad that is why I am being haunted.”

Richard finally agreed. That night Sean came to me in a dream. He was lying in a coffin. He opened the coffin and sat up. He said, “Carri, am I dead?” I told him yes. He said,  “are you sure?” I said, “Sean you died in a car accident.” I started to cry. He cried too, then he said, “I’m only 17. I can’t be dead.” Sean finally stated, “I’m too young to die.” He was sobbing, but he shut the coffin closed. I then woke up and was shaken, but after the dream the haunting stopped.

Sent in by Carri Williams, Copyright 2009