Ok, insomnia strikes So ill tell you about the house we lived in when I was 13.
It was just a small brick home, probably atleast 60-80 yrs old from its style. Fireplaces in the livingroom and bedrooms, nothing particularly creepy about it at all, though it was dark inside having small old fashioned windows and no skylights.
It sat among a row of similar houses on an average street in my hometown in rural NSW.
When we moved in, the girls got first pick of bedrooms then my older brother got the next best. I got a built on annex at the back of the house with a sink!
It had been where the elderly owners live in carer had lived until he died some years before. The house was rented for several years before we moved in.
One room down the hall on the left did have a strangely foreboding feel about it, we dubbed this, 'the spooky room', It was my eldest sisters. It had this little service window
onto the kitchen, that my sister covered with a curtain. This was almost opposite my room, toward the back of the house.
After a few months we began to notice odd things, nothing much at first, an odd draught down the central hallway, an unexplained stain or dampness on a wall or floor in the bathroom, and occasionly a whiff of perfume or something similar out of nowhere.
Nobody thought much about them until things changed in the second winter there.
Because the loungeroom (livingroom) had no internal door, in order to keep heat in the room, a blanket was hung over the door, trailing to about 6 inches from the floor.
One night while watching tv, My aunt (who was my guardian) noticed the toes of a pair of boots under the blanket, and assuming it was my older brother in his work boots, asked him what he doing.
There was no reply and she called him by name teling him to come in and stop mucking about, at this point we all look over and the boots dissapear.
I go and pull back the blanket expecting a trick and the hallway is empty, phil is not yet home from work and nowhere in the house! He came home an hour or so later.
Ofcourse this started the expected talk of spooks and laughing suggestions we had a casper.
A week or so later, my sister starts screaming at me to get out of her room, she's in the kitchen and she sees the service window curtain moving inside. meanwhile Im in the bathroom protesting my innocence, and the three go in to find the room empty and the window closed. It got worse.
A few nights later, when we were all in bed for the night, my brother gets up with the sh*ts because he can hear a noise, turns on his light and finds nothing.
A while later he swears loudly, jumps up and turns his light on and leaves it on.
This wakes me because like the living room, the internal door to this room (which was once the back door) ajoins my annex room and also has a blanket through which phils light is shining.
So I get up and go In and ask what hes swearing about, he says 'shhhh, listen'
And we sit there on his bed and within minutes comes the sounds of laboured breathing and snoring. Nobody else in the room and its nearby yet not anywhere. Very freaky.
Within a week of that more annoying things began to happen, such as the dissappearance of things and their later reappearance elsewhere, for which no responsibility was claimed by any of us. These things included my Aunts glasses, sisters jewlery and my electronic game that turned up inside that boarded up fireplace in the spooky room that we had never opened. (more about that later).
I had a habit of listening to a small transister radio by my bedside while I read before going to bed. I never left it on because Id end up thumped by my brother.
A few mornings in a row, I got hassled by my sister who complained about the radio late at night. naturally I protested my innocence, but It recurred, and on the fourth night, my sister decided I doing it somehow, so her, myself and phil go into his room, phil turns off the radio, turns off the light and comes back.
We sat on his bed and began a card game , the idea being, if it went on, we'd catch out the culprit. After almost half hour, with no sound, the radio suddenly came on playing talk back radio abc, all by itself. Phil goes in, plays with the radio, makes sure its off and removes the battery and comes back.
While we're all busy talking about it and blaming each other, the radio comes back on .
We go and see and theres a creepy feel to the room, and the radio is playing and its battery, which phil had left on my sink, is back in the back of it.
These things sparked lots of talk but for the most part were an amusement of sorts, though we were admittedly freaked out.
In the following days and weeks, the tap in the sink would turn itself at random, day or night, sometimes a trickle, sometimes running,sometimes the toilet flushed by itself and my other sister complained of a scratching noise at night behind the fireplace in her room (the spooky room), so because it was at night, we all thought it was probably a rat, it was an old house afterall, So phil being the man of the house, pulls the boards off her fireplace and discovers my electronic game in the dust and ash, making the sounds.
This fireplace was boarded up when we moved in and had never been opened.
I was happy because I was the cool kid at school with Electronic game and it had been missing for weeks.
The final strange and frightening thing happened late one night, about 6 months before we moved. We were all bed, and in this town it was as dead as anything so late, rarely any cars in our street.
This horrendous screaming, like a terrified woman, suddenly erupted in the hallway, and we all rush out thinking our aunt was hurt or something, and In the dark of the hallway
this odd cloud of bright smokey light seems to seep through the backdoor from outside, and race up the hall overhead and vanish through the front door, accompanied by this screaming that abruptly cut off with the light.
This even gave my no nonsense Aunt the heeby jeebies, we were all shaken.
None of us were able to find a cause for it or source of the scream or the light.
I have no idea still exactly what it was, but I expect as I said earlier, sometimes certain events reverberate as 'echos' of life in a place, perhaps in some way shadows of the living get trapped long after the the living have died or moved away.
I think they are simply frightening because they are inexplicable to us.
Many would claim our house was as haunted as all hell, but I dont really think so, These things didnt happen all the time, months went by sometimes where nothing at all out of the ordinary was seen ,heard or felt. *shrugs*
