Halloween Fun: Anyone Ever Own a Haunted Property?

[Karl B.]

I may have posted a similar thread around Halloween in years past but only because the paranormal and ghost stories entertain me so much!

So the question must be asked: have any of y'all ever had/have a rental, flip, etc. that was haunted or (at the very least) where unexplained, creepy happenings occurred? (horrendously low appraisals don't count!) 

[Uriah Maynard]

Being from New England originally I have a few ghost stories. The first I'll tell you involves the family homestead in Peterborough NH, a big 1791 colonial farmhouse up on the hill that's been in the family for almost the entire time, though nobody has actually lived there full time in a few decades. Many of my relatives have been born, lived and died in that house over the past couple centuries, and everyone who's been there that's sensitive to ghost activity has told us it's haunted. There's been a lot of stories but the most common recurring theme to the ghost sightings is a little girl in the north room on the third floor. Family members staying in the room say that she's lonely and wants to play. Non-family members say that she's angry and wants them to leave, and more than one person has refused to stay in the house after feeling the ghostly presence. In either case there's no shortage of strange sounds, that room will randomly go cold for no apparent reason, doors will swing shut or creak open on their own, and there's weird vibes to the property in general. I wouldn't characterize it as bad vibes, just weird, numinous feelings, like you can feel the history there. I'd assume that it's just that it's such an old house, it's a bit drafty and it shifts in the wind and that's what causes the phenomena, but who knows?

Another, scarier story I have is from when my business partner at the time and I were touring a house that'd been vacant and on the market for a few years, deep in the back woods of Vershire VT, real middle of nowhere town that has fewer residents now than way back in the 18th century. He'd heard from the realtor that the house was rumored to be haunted and the owners had abandoned it after doing some renovations and briefly moving into it. Apparently there'd been a murder/suicide in the home, the previous owner went crazy and killed his wife in the basement, and then weeks later himself. As part of the renovations they'd painted over a bunch of satanic looking symbols that had been graffiti'd all over the house, a tasteful light mint as I recall. Maybe the graffiti had been done by bored kids looking for thrills while the house was vacant for a few years after the killings, maybe they were done as part of the husband's psychosis that had led to it all. 

So we go into this house, and it's a fairly small colonial with a decently renovated kitchen for the time (around 2002). You can smell the fresh paint but there's something stale there too, like unloved houses sometimes have. It's not staged or anything, just an empty house. We've been there for a minute or two checking out the main floor when a door slams upstairs. I'm like "are we alone here?" But there's no other cars outside so who could it be? We're a couple big manly men so we go upstairs and there's a couple bedrooms and a small bathroom, but it is crazy cold up here, like ten degrees colder than it is outside at least. The lights start flickering and we hear another door slam somewhere else in the house. Between hearing the history here and the feeling of dread in my heart I've had enough at this point but my friend loves this kind of stuff and wants to look around some more, so I leave and go back to the car while he checks it out. 

A couple minutes later he comes hurrying out of the door, white as a ghost. He tells me that he went down to the basement and there was a door at the bottom of the stairs. He'd tried to open it, and it was unlocked, but when he pushed on it the door pushed back. So he pushed harder, put his shoulder into it, and he's a big guy, 6' and 240lbs of more muscle than flab, and he said he got further in that time, but he said that something pushed the door closed so hard that he fell back on the stairs, and all the lights went out for a few seconds, and he heard the door upstairs slam shut again. And then as he's lying there on the stairs the basement door creaked open an inch, only to slam shut and latch this time, he got up and couldn't get it to open at all, it was now locked, and nobody answered his calls. He went upstairs and now the cold was in the main room, and the lights started to flicker again, and the door upstairs slammed twice, three times in quick succession. So he left, and we never went back. I don't know if it ever sold or who would have bought it or if it slowly rotted to nothing over the last two decades. Maybe it was a decently strong squatter holed up in the basement and some faulty wiring? Maybe it was the work of malevolent spirits, trapped between worlds. Maybe he made up the last part just to **** with me, I don't know, but he is not typically a man to show fear like that.