March 4, 2009

I have been asked to tell the tales behind the haunted houses I have lived in. I am sure there are those who doubt there are such things as haunted houses. The tales are true, I have lived in haunted houses, however, there is not much to the tales.

My first haunted house is also my first house. The house my parents took me to after my birth. Yup they took me straight from the hospital to a haunted house. At the time I was unaware the house was haunted, I had yet to discover my feet let alone eerie ghosts.
By the time I was four I had been designated as a basement sleeper. I was now old enough to sleep in the downstairs bedroom with my older brother; this is where the ordeal takes place.

My brother had been terrified by the ghosts since our return to the house. My father was stationed in California during the Korean Conflict, a ghost moved into our house sometime between the start of the conflict and decided he need not move just because we returned to claim our house back. Why my brother failed to mention his spooky roommate is a question I can not answer.

This is where I come into the haunted house part of the story. Soon after being banished to the basement I started noticing a grey object standing in our doorway. Terrified I pulled the blanket over my head. My brother tried his best to comfort me, “Don’t worry little Raballard, that is only the grey man, I don’t think he can hurt us”

The grey object had the shape of a man. It appeared it could not enter our room even though I could see him trying. OK there are going to be those among you that will claim the grey man is due to overactive imaginations, I might agree with you, had I not been there.

I am not the same person my brother is, I am not going to live through terror without sharing my experience. I told my father about the grey man, after my brother admitted he saw it too, my father decided to spend the night in the basement.

To make a long story short, he spent one night in the basement; the grey man showed up, my father ran screaming up the stairs. We moved soon after.

Many years later I ran into the victim that spent his formative years sleeping in the haunted basement. After he found out I was the original occupant he asked me “Hey what gives with the grey man?”

That was a true story; the next story is just as true.

We moved directly from our grey man house into a house that was almost 100 years old, even back then houses that old were old. Our neighbors were a dry cleaner on the one side, and a couple that were about as old as our house on the other side. I tell you who our neighbors were because they will figure into the story. Behind us we had a huge backyard and a large field.
The house was a three story Victorian style house with a small basement. The basement walls were painted red, at least that is what I was told, there is no way I was going down into the basement. Fortunately the basement was unfinished so nobody was allowed to sleep down there.

The spooky activities started soon after we moved in. During the night the whole family could here a baby crying, as I said before, there is no baby around us. The baby cried soon after we were all in our bed and would continue for about 5 minutes. When you are 7 years old, 5 minutes are an eternity. My father worked up the courage to investigate the crying, he could find nothing.

After a couple of weeks of nightly crying my father decided to ask our ancient neighbors. The answer was disturbing. Around the turn of the century the occupant of the house went out of his mind.

The story goes an unnamed occupant lost his wife during child birth. The child was blamed for his loss. Unable to forgive his daughter, the man took his infant into the basement and bashed her head against the wall. He buried the child in the back yard and proceeded to paint the basement red. We moved soon after.

If you would like on my next blog I could tell a couple of ghost stories my mother told me. Both are also true. I think the ghoulish among you would get a kick out of them. Leave a comment if you would like to hear them.