Subject: Okay, here it is!
From: Dee <dnorman@ntr.net>
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 20:55:24 -0400
Hello all.
My name is Dee Norman and I mentioned in a previous post that I might write about my old house. So here it is, by popular (sort of) demand:
From my birth until my thirteenth year, my family lived in a boring looking tract house in a suburb of Louisville, KY. The house was haunted (as will soon be apparent), and haunted in the worst way. All of my family members experienced the haunting to greater or lesser degree, depending on how sensitive they were.
Growing up in a haunted house from birth sure makes for some interesting problems for a child. It took several years after we moved out for me to realize that our house was actually haunted, because all the goings on seemed normal to me. I had never known anything else. It was not until we moved out when I was thirteen that my family would even talk about what happened there. There were so many times that we experienced manifestations of the haunting that I can not relate a novel like time line, so I will do my best to just cite particular instances and hope that it all makes some sort of sense to you all.
One of the worst experiences that any of my family members had, was during the summer that I turned eight. We had a big vegetable garden in our back yard, and it was a family project to keep the weeds out and the veggies growing. This particular day, I was standing on our back porch with my grandmother before lunch time, watching my mother pick tomatoes for our lunch. As my mother moved from row to row, picking happily, a black shapeless mist rose from the ground and enveloped her head and shoulders. She quickly began flailing her arm and screaming, trying to beat the shadow away from her. My grandmother and I stood in shock for a moment, watching as my mother ran out of the garden and into the yard, still flailing and crying. The shape stayed with her as she ran towards us, perfectly centered around her head. My grandmother, not wanting the formless cloud to come near me, began to run to my mother. She was holding a broom at the time, and I distinctly remember her beating at the form and screaming, "You son of a bitch! Get away from my daughter!" I stood in shock and watched as my grandmother beat at it repeatedly until it vanished before our eyes.
After that day, my mother refused to enter the garden again. Another event that happened that summer took place one evening as the whole family was about to sit down for dinner.
I had just come in from playing all day in the yard, and my mother instructed me to go to my room and change from my bathing suit to regular clothes. I stepped into my room, which was dark as the sun was just setting, intending to dress in the dimness because I was in a hurry to eat. Once I entered my room, I came face to face with something that made me scream on the top of my lungs. As my family rushed into my small room, I was crying and pointing towards the center of the room. To this day, I do not recall what I saw exactly, only that at the time I cried out something about children. My family refuses to tell me what I said that I saw.
I am not sure about the date of this event, but my older sister claims to have seen the walls bleed in her bedroom at one time. She screamed for help, and as my mother rushed into her room, she caught a glimpse of the blood too. One time, my mother opened her closet in her bedroom to see that all of her clothes were soaked with water. She quickly removed all of the clothes, and sent my father to check the roof for leaks (which was a bit delusional, because it had not rained in at least a week). My father inspected the roof closely, and when he could not find any evidence of damage, spent the next half hour wetting the roof down with the garden hose. By then, my mother had already dried the inside of her closet, and she stood in it, waiting to see when the water would leak in. No matter how much water my father hosed onto the roof, no water ever leaked in. He inspected our attic for leaks and could not find any evidence of water damage anywhere.
Another event that happened to my mother took place one night when my brother, sister, and I were all out of the house. The three of us were at my grandmother's. My mother was in the living room, watering her plants, when she felt someone come up behind her and place a hand on her waist. Fully expecting it to be my father, she turned and said, "Larry?" No one was standing behind her, and my father answered her call from the other side of the house.
One night at dinner, my entire family watched as my father's napkin lifted a foot in the air, moved about two feet over, and gently dropped to the floor.
On my tenth birthday, my brother and I watched as a row of my mother's potted plants slowly began to spin clockwise and continue to pick up speed until my father quickly ushered us out of the room.
Several times, my family was awoken from our sleep by the fire alarm going off for no reason. My father bought a new one and the same thing happened. Then my father had the wiring redone and the false alarms still took place. Also, in the middle of the night, the microwave would beep incessantly and the toilet would flush by itself.
Those are most of the major events that happened in the house. Some of them were trivial, some of them were annoying, and a lot of them were down right scary. My father, who had always claimed to be a skeptic of the first order, informed me a couple years after we moved out, that he would never stay in the house alone. If the rest of the family was out, he would "find something to do outside, preferably in the front yard," until we came home. My mother never entered the garden after the black shadow incident.
My sister informed me that she was always scared of the same three places in the house, and as she was began to list them, I was able to finish the list for her: the closets in two of the bedrooms and the back hallway. Once I was old enough to stay at home alone, the few times that my parents let me, they always found me curled into a corner by the time they got home, crying most of the time.
Whatever haunted the house was always present, mostly as an oppressive force that hung over you, especially when you were alone, other times flaring up into the events that I described above.
Now I will answer the questions that I usually get when I mention that I lived in a haunted house. The house was a tract home that was built in the 60's. It was owned by one family before mine. This family had a daughter that died at the age of 16 from a childhood illness. The family was a happy and supportive one (the father was a minister) and the girl died in the hospital. By the time of her death, she had not been in the house for several months.
So there is one of my stories. It is all true. The house still stands. I live in an apartment with my fiancé, right on the edge of the neighborhood it stands in. I avoid it at all costs because the one time that I went back to visit it (morbid curiosity -- I was going to ask the couple that bought it if they had any paranormal experiences), the moment that I stepped onto the property, I heard a horrible voice say my name. So I left.
Quickly.
Dee Norman
dnorman@ntr.net
