#real haunted house

Hell House: The Doors

After moving into Hell House in 1968, they very quickly began to realize there was something not quite right with the house. Around Christmas time that year, they began to wake up every night with the house extremely cold. Without fail they would find the front door wide open. At first my grandfather (who I have called ‘Papa’ all my life) thought it was my mom sleep walking. After about a week of this, and being unable to catch the door opener in the act, my Papa decided he needed to do something. Being a fire captain and an ex-marine, he was a practical, get it done type who wanted to solve the mystery.

He decided that he would sleep in the entryway. The house was built with a divider that separated the entryway from the rest of the living room that was only wide enough for the door. He slept with his head facing the door and his feet sticking out into the living room. When laying this way, it would be impossible to open the door without bonking him in the head.

He woke up freezing in the morning. The door was open against his back. The wind blew on his head. Once he admitted that he had no clue what was happening, it stopped.

I was raised in a Haunted House
(Picture grabbed from Google street view.)

I affectionately like to call my childhood home ‘Hell House.’ My family was the first people to own the house right after it was built in 1968. My mother, her sister, my grandmother, and grandfather moved into the three bedroom, one bathroom house not expecting to have inherited a nightmare. There are many stories about this house that predate my birth, told to me by the relatives they happened to, as well as stories from when I lived there. 

There were several entities inside Hell House that presented themselves to many people. I will make a post for each one, but the ones that come to mind right now are the children in the bathroom, the man in the bowler hat, the red light, and the stair creeper. Worse than what lived in the house was the entity that resided in the many miles of woods that loomed behind our home. We didn’t have a fun little nickname for the thing in the woods. All the families on our dead end street knew about the thing in the woods, and discussed its activities openly and often. It was unanimously understood that the thing in the woods was a threat.

I feel I should mention that the people in my life did not all start out as believers, but everyone who spent any time in the houses on that dead end came out with a new perspective and could no longer be skeptical of our claims. There were even people (like my uncle who married into the family and wasn’t used to the horror like we were) who refused to spend even one night in Hell House due to the constant activity that made the paranormal impossible to ignore. 

Hell House was lost to our family in 2009, but the 41 years we owned it, or rather it owned us, still offered me a wealth of knowledge, experience, stories, and a lifelong obsession with honing my gifts to better understand the realm of the unknown. What once filled me with fear now excites me to my core. I will be forever grateful.

Hell House: Drums in the Deep

Hell House had a curious habit that even our guests would notice. It could happen in the day, but was almost assured to happen at night, starting around 10pm and ending at 1.30am. My family called it the Drums in the Deep cuz we are all nerds who love LotR. To be honest though, it was more like the Jumanji drums. Rhythmic, deep drums from the basement.

It always started really quiet, like the house had a heart beat barely audible over the TV or conversation, but come midnight it was sometimes so loud it was impossible to sleep through. I wish I could tell you that I went into the basement while the drums beat to see what it was. I wish I had even one story of me being brave enough to look. But I don’t. The drums scared me to death. Usually when they started I would retreat to my room with headphones and loud music, or a friend’s house out of fear.

Hell House: Nails in the Door

The summer of 2002 my grandma died, my parents moved us into her house and began making repairs, gutting it of her things, and redecorating. One day during this process my dad pulled me and my mom down into the basement to show us what our grandma had done to the back door. It was nailed shut all the way around the 3 sides that weren’t hinged, with at least 50 nails. After some discussion, Dad decided to remove the nails.

A few months later he got tired of waking up to find the back door wide open and the dog barking out at the forest, so he got a deadbolt lock for the door… It didn’t work. He ended up needing three deadbolts and a bracer to keep that door from opening on its own. To this day I still have nightmares of walking into the basement to find the back door open and the forest’s vines and branches reaching in with a deep breathing and drumming sound. I have this nightmare at least once a week.