Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

A few months back I posted a story about our family’s haunted house in Hartville MO (Haunting in Hartville, and decided that this time I wanted to share a story about the experience I had when I was a young teenager.

My grandmother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, passed away in 1983 when I was 13 years old from cancer. In her will, she left her home to my parents. We were living in Missouri at the time, but had originally come from Wichita, and my folks decided they wanted to move back and live in Grandma’s house. From the very first day we moved in, weird creepy things started happening.

My mother was the one who started having things happen to her first. The day the moving van arrived, she was alone in the house unpacking dishes in the kitchen, while I was outside helping my dad put some things in the detached garage. She was bent down with her head stuck in a cabinet when she heard a young girl’s laugh behind her. She backed out and turned around, thinking it was me, and there was no one there. Figuring I’d just left before she could see me, she went back to her unpacking when she heard it again. This time she got up and looked out the kitchen window to where she could see the driveway and she saw I was still outside with my dad. At that moment, she heard the giggle again from the direction of the living room. She went and looked and no one was in the house. She didn’t say anything to me or my dad, thinking we’d think she was nuts.

A few days later, she had to go down to the basement where the laundry area was to wash some clothes, and she later told us that she felt very cold and had the persistent feeling of being watched the entire time she was down there. The whole time we lived in this house (3 years) she absolutely HATED being in the basement by herself. Many times she would hear the giggling also.

After about a month in the house, my dad and I started experiencing creepy stuff. We had just recently gotten a little pug dog that followed Mom everywhere, but would not go to the basement even if you tried to drag it down. It would sit at the basement doorway and GROWL down the stairs with its hackles raised. Anyway, this little dog slept in a chair in the hallway right across from my folks’ room. One night, Mom was gone out with some girlfriends, and Dad and I had gone to bed. I woke up and heard him hollering at the dog to quit pulling the blanket off his bed. I came out of my room and Dad was standing in the hall with a funny look on his face. He told me he had been awakened by what he thought was the dog jerking the covers off his feet, but when he stepped into the hall, the dog was out cold in the chair and obviously hadn’t moved in awhile.

My first up-close-and-personal incident happened just two days after this. I was woke up from a deep sleep and for no reason I could explain, I was absolutely TERRIFIED, so much so I could not move, could barely swallow. Finally with a great effort, I sat up. Directly across from my bed was the closet, and there was a full length mirror on the door. I saw something in that mirror, something black and oily and very menacing. I shut my eyes and started praying as hard as I could. After about 5 minutes I felt the terror going away and opened my eyes, and the thing in the mirror was gone. Little did I know that it would come back many times in the next few years. I never slept without all the lights on in my room after that, ever.

We started having all the usual haunted house stuff happen, too. Footsteps in the night. Doors opening and closing on their own. Things that you put in one place, like keys, books, what have you, would disappear and then turn up in really odd places, like the bathtub.

My parents were really reserved people and they did not want anybody outside of our little family unit to know what was happening, not even people at our church. After less than a year, they put the house up for sale, but it sat on the market for nearly two years before it finally sold, and during that time it was a living hell, so many things happened I could write a book.

The final frightening episode happened our last night in the house. We had all of our stuff packed and the next day the moving van was coming to get us back to Missouri. We were talking about all the stuff that had happened and wondering how in the hell Grandma had lived there ALONE for 13 years and hadn’t had anything happen to her, and why nothing had ever happened whenever we’d visited over the years, until we moved in. Suddenly our pug stood up and started barking like it was having a fit, and SOME THING whooshed right through the dining room and into the kitchen, where we had some boxes piled. The boxes fell all over the place! We all looked at each other, then grabbed our personal bags and RAN to our car. We spent our last night in Wichita at a motel. My dad was the only one to go back to the house the next day to supervise the movers. Mom and I had had it.

Up until both of my parents passed away a few years back, they rarely talked about the experience, even to me. I never liked thinking about it either. Now MY family is in a haunted house, and we are finally putting the darn thing up for sale. I’m tired of ghosts and evil spirits, it’s not pleasant at all!

Written by Renee, Copyright 2009 TrueGhostTales.com