Today's Stories

Ohio:

Now that we've talked a bit about my own home (which we'll come back to soon enough), lets take a little trip up North to a small town in rural Ohio. Years ago some of my family members headed North for work. My Uncle Clayton and his family ended up renting a beautiful brick home built in the 1800s. It set off the road about 1/2 mile or so down a really rough dirt road. You couldn't reach the house in the winter (or even in really rainy weather) unless you had a four-wheel drive because the road wasn't gravel or paved. Just dirt. Later, when I would go help my Dad work in the woods, I would associate every logging road I saw with that same road leading to Clayton and Daphne's house; that's how rough a road it was. You couldn't see the house from the main highway because it was surrounded by tall beautiful trees and fields full or corn and soybeans. Needless to say, it was fairly secluded. Seclusion would have been nice if the house itself wasn't so terrifying.

Never in my life have I had such a chilling feeling from a house. I believe it was Stephen King that once wrote "some places are just born bad" and this was one of those places. Don't get me wrong, I have great memories from there. So great in fact, that every fall I get the strongest urge to pack up my things and head North for a few days. In my childhood, at least once or twice a year before cold weather set in, my parents and I would load up and drive to Ohio to visit with family (I also have other family members that still live in Ohio, although these aren't the ones that lived in this particular house) and deliver wood or coal for the winter months to Clayton and his family.

What I remember from my weekends spent in Ohio include family board games, big breakfast meals, tag football in the front yard, cartoons, playing with dolls, and many, many more happy memories. Of course I also remember not sleeping at night, avoiding going to the bathroom at all costs, avoiding certain rooms in that old brick home, and staying glued to my Mommy whenever I was inside. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to me there...well, one minor thing, but it could or could not have been an over-active imagination and since it happened on my very last visit to the house, it wasn't something I worried too much about.

As far as I know, the children that grew up in that house (my cousins) all had happy childhoods while there. Sure it was haunted and they each have their own stories to tell, but overall, it was a normal childhood out in the country. But the house itself and the surrounding property were always a little "off". You could tell it as soon as you pulled up in the drive-way. It felt like someone was watching you while you were out in the front yard. On more than one occasion I was sure if I looked up into the top floor windows I would see someone looking down at me. Someone that shouldn't be there. The house was so old, that it didn't have a bathroom inside. Instead you went to the back of the house to the edge of the woods and used an outhouse. All this meant to me was that I would NOT be using the bathroom after dark. Even through the day I refused to go to the outhouse by myself. I was used to woods and I had used an outhouse before, but I was terribly uncomfortable being at the back of that house by myself. I wasn't the only one either.

Sadly the house is no longer there. After the children were grown and Clayton and Daphne retired and especially when Clayton got sick, everyone moved back to Kentucky. Shortly after they moved, the owner of the property had the house torn down. I'm not sure why. Maybe he just didn't want to do any upkeep or repairs on a house that was that old, but I have always thought it was because he was afraid. He had heard the stories after all, and to be honest, I have never known of anyone that didn't get creeped out by the house.

The history of the house is something that I am not very familiar with. It was built in the 1800s (like I said) and had been a part of the Underground Railroad at one point. There was a barn on the property as well. Before I was born, there had been an even older white house across the field and it had been very, very actively haunted (I'm talking things flying through the air and whatnot. So bad in fact that they eventually tore it down because no one would live in it.). The house was two and 1/2 stories and I think there might have been a basement, although I'm not quite sure. The first floor housed the living room, master bedroom, kitchen and dining room. The upstairs was two rooms which were used as bedrooms for the kids. The 1/2 story was in the upstairs bedroom. Beside an upstairs window was a little bitty door that led back into a storage area. I consider this to be 1/2 story because there was a small set of steps you had to climb in order to get to the door.

This brings us to our stories...finally. There are a lot of spooky tales from the house, but I'm going to share my two favorites.

Three Knocks:
The little door I mentioned earlier was kept locked. Back when my cousins were still small children, Clayton and Daphne kept the door locked and the key put away because they had some things stored in that area. In other words, there was no need for the kids to be playing inside the storage compartment.

One day, my cousins Janice and Helen (sisters) were playing house in their bedroom. Helen walked up the little steps and knocked on the little door, pretending that it was the front door to Janice's house.

From the other side of the door, came three knocks.

Needless to say the girls quickly evacuated the bedroom. No one was on the other side of the door. The door was locked. So who knocked back?

That story used to scare me the most because I always had to sleep in that bedroom when I came to visit. I made sure that my back was never turned to that creepy little door. God only knew what lived behind its locks.

The People Down the Lane:
This is a story that my cousin Janice will rarely talk about it. She doesn't like to relive it even though it happened well over thirty years ago.

She was outside playing in the front yard as a child and she had walked down to the end of her sidewalk and into the drive way when she happened to glance up the road and saw two people walking down the lane toward the house. One was a man and the other a young girl.

Thinking they were people she knew, she took off running towards them, waving happily and calling out their names. As she got closer she could tell that they were dressed "funny", wearing "old fashioned" clothes. As she got even closer she was frozen in fear at what she saw.

They looked like normal people but their eyes were completely black. Not unlike my own Lady in White, she could tell they weren't exactly transparent, but they weren't completely solid either. The thing that scared her the most though was the black eyes. There were no pupils, no whites, just complete darkness.

Terrified she turned and walked steadily but fast back to her house and the safety of her mother. She said she was so afraid, that she was too afraid to run. She felt like they would hurt her if they saw her run. Daphne went out to see who she was so afraid of, but no one was there. And that was the first and last time Janice ever saw those people with the black eyes.