Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

Here is something that happened to me when I was in my teens in the summer of ’88 at my Grandmother’s House in a small town in northwest Maine. I’m not giving any other info to protect the town, my family, and potentially the new owners of the house this happened in. It was customary for me to spend several weeks with my “Nana” every summer. This particular visit, she had been sick with the flu and I had opted to stay with her for another week to help her mend while my sibling went back home.

The house she lived in was a fixture in the town and had for a time been a boarding home. Nana would rent rooms to the various hunters, snowmobilers, hikers and the like for a nominal fee when the town was “full”.

This place was built in the old Victorian / Canadian style with the tower looking spire at one corner – a very large gothic type look with what seemed like too many windows. In short the place was somewhat ominous when looked at from outside. Oddly enough, one of Nana’s friends had owned the house years before becoming a widower. She always hated the place and said something was “wrong” with it. Nana paid that no mind, she wasn’t easily frightened and even was the type of person to read tarot cards, tea leaves, and loved reading about the occult. I could care less, it was Nana’s house and that was good enough for me.

The main floor had been renovated, but the upstairs “boarder” room area was like warren of 10 rooms that was partially renovated. The upstairs was probably more like a maze than anything else, and the hallways and rooms seemed to have a peculiar / haphazard layout that defied any and all logic. There were four entrances to the second floor – one of them was through a shed at the back of the house secured by a door at the base of the stairs with a deadbolt, one to an ancient bath at the top of those stairs was screwed shut and bolted, and one at the top of the stairs from the shed that opened into the kitchenette also deadbolted (all deadbolts new at the time) and by a door at the top of the stairs in the main living room / parlor on the main floor also secured by a bolt and chain on the downstairs side. This effectively limited the passage of “boarders” through the home unless they were given access.

On the particular night of this strange incident, there was a very large thunderstorm looming and we were getting ready for the inevitable power outage. Having finished dinner, we were in the living room listening to old records as the TV had already given up due to the weather. Soon it was full dark, and the storm picked up with lots of rain, thunder, lightning, and hail. While we sat, Nana told me stories about her life when she was younger. During one of her particularly entertaining tales, there was a very loud thud directly above us and I jumped.

“Just the wind” Nana assured me, and went back to her story. Then thud, thud, thud, and a huge bang, followed by the sound of footsteps.

“Somebody is in the house! Upstairs!” I said, now getting angry instead of frightened. My Nana was more frightened than angry by the look on her face.

“Connie left three days ago before the locks were changed.” She said to me flatly.

I leaped to my feet.  “I’m going to check it out.” I said, and grabbed the bat that was kept near the stairs for just such an occasion.

“You be careful. I’m going to be right here near the phone, and if you see anyone up there, you tell them to get the hell out and that I’m calling the constable.” She instructed.

So up the stairs I crept, slowly, quietly, until I reached the top. Silently, I turned the bolt, slid the chain, then threw the door open. The main hall was bathed in light from the lightning outside. I pulled the chain for the overhead, and the whole area lit up. Nothing there. I moved toward the living room area and kitchen which was directly over our heads as we sat downstairs. Nothing there except the couch, an old chair, a beat up TV tray, and an old black and white TV on a stand. The kitchenette also was empty. Moving room by room, one light at a time, I discovered absolutely nobody there.  Nothing was out of place. I yelled down to Nana:

“There’s nobody here!  Nothing, nothing at all!”

“OK – then get back down here then!” Distantly from downstairs.

I reversed my track, turning off lights, and within a couple of minutes, doors securely locked, I was back downstairs listening to more tales from Nana.

An hour went by and the storm intensified. The inevitable power outage happened. We lit candles. Just as I sat down, there was what sounded like a tremendous scream of rage directly over our head! We both jumped. This was followed by several loud bangs and a crash. At this point we were both terrified and could say nothing. Then the lights came on. This was followed by very heavy footsteps overhead, they proceeded through toward the rear of the building, rapidly gaining speed, and followed by the slamming of a door.

“The shed – they’re heading for the shed!” Nana cried. We both got to our feet, knowing that whoever was up there would have to exit through the dead-bolted door on the porch next to the kitchen. We crept into the kitchen, and turned on the porch light. Bang, bang, bang, then the sound of wood splintering, followed by the sound of the screen door banging shut. But there was nothing on the porch – we could see the door that sounded like it had just been smashed and the screen door that had slammed but neither had moved!

Together, we both headed for the front stairs in the living room, and up we went, bat and cordless phone in hand. Nana threw open the door and pulled on the lights. What we saw made the hair on my neck stand up straight. Everything that was in the living room was pushed into the center. The shoddy old chair was upside down in front of the window. Water was running in the sink in the kitchenette. Nana looked at me, she was white as a sheet. “We’d better check the rooms. I’ll get number 8, and start back from there, you check the doors.” She said. So check we did. All of the windows were locked, all of the doors were locked. The shed was empty, and the door at the bottom was locked – but strangely, there was frost on the lock and the door was cold to the touch even though it had to have been 80 degrees that night during the storm.

“What was that?” I asked her, my fear turning slowly to embarrassment.

“I have some ideas.” Was her reply.

I’ve only told a few of my friends what happened that night, and told even fewer of them what I learned years later…

After many conversations with Nana, she relayed to me that strange things had been happening in that house since her friend lived there. Sounds in the upstairs rooms at night, furniture moving around, lights coming on and off, doors that were locked being unlocked and opened. Then there were the cold spots and the smell of smoke that never could be explained. Nana recounted how she had one night heard noise in her bedroom, and then felt a strange coldness. When she sat up in bed, she could hear and feel the warmth of someone / something breathing on her arm. She also tried to keep me and any other family members out of room 8, which always had a funny smell like rotten meat that would never go away. When I pressed her about it, she would only say that it was “bad” and that I should never be alone there or sleep there.

Her friend’s husband died suddenly at a very young age while working in the attached shed. Her friend, who had long since moved back to Canada died very suddenly a few years after the move. Both were attributed to natural causes.

A few of the “old timers” in town had different tales to tell of “that place.” One instance had been that there had been a fire in the house caused by a careless cigarette and that there had been deaths (nobody knew how many) due to smoke inhalation. Another story told of a murder that occurred – in of all places, room 8. Yet another story told of an old woman who ran the place that died while cleaning one of the rooms and was not found for several days – also again room 8 was mentioned. Another story told that an undertaker had lived there at one point and that the stalls off the garage under the shed was once used to store bodies in the winter, and possible some of the rooms upstairs. Nobody could give me definitive answers, so I dismissed the tales as rumor, conjecture, or just plain old myth. But they all called it “that place”, which was strange.

Three years after this incident, Nana died unexpectedly. So suddenly in fact that nobody really knew what to do with her possessions which weren’t many, and the house belonged to an aunt of mine, so things kind of stayed in limbo. Almost four months after that, my uncle and aunt that owned the house had a friend go check on it. When he opened the kitchen door, he was looking directly into the cellar hole. The entire inside of the house had burned from floor to roof. Nobody in town had seen the fire, nobody had seen the smoke, but the place had burned completely inside so all that was left was twisted metal and ash. The fire was deemed to be electrical, but I’m not so sure.

Many years later, while talking to an aunt that was closest to Nana, she related to me that Nana was scared to death of fire, and that she had lost two children in a fire when this aunt was only a child. I had heard tell of the demise of the children, but didn’t know it was a fire just that they had “died”. This same aunt also told me that Nana had always liked the house she lived in till she died – with the exception of the upstairs rooms and the strange things that happened there in the summer. She also was particularly afraid of room 8 and said it was “evil” and that there was “evil all over that room and that section of the house”. This aunt also said that Nana was a very powerful woman, and that she was “keeping whatever was there in check.”

To this day, I still don’t know exactly what was going on with that house, or what happened there so long ago. I can find no record of what transpired, and those who may have known are now long dead. What I do know is, something did happen there when I was with Nana that summer. What I do know is somebody bought the place, fixed it up, and they are now living there. I can only hope the “evil” has moved on. I still drive by that place from time to time when I’m in the area, and now, it gives me the creeps though it never did before. I have to wonder why that is.

Anyway, that’s my story of just one of the strange things that happened there, as it happened. Nana – God Bless.

Sent in by Jarren Davis, Copyright 2010