My grandparents, Dee and Autry, swapped houses with another couple when I was, oh, 10-ish? I'll call the other couple The Smiths. My grandparents were living in our old house, the one we lived in until I was five and swapped it for The Smith's house across town. I rather enjoyed the new house and yard in the daytime. There was a huge shade tree with low limbs in the back yard, an apple tree in the side yard and a swing on the front porch. Grandpa and I would sit in the swing and he would peel an apple we'd picked, slice it and alternate giving him and me a slice. He only peeled it because I didn't like the peeling back then. I didn't spend a lot of time there, but did spend the night every once in awhile.
I hated spending the night there. I was scared to sleep in a bedroom and slept on the couch next to Grandma and Grandpa's bedroom, but I was still terrified. I was scared to turn my back to the middle of the room and scared not to. I sure didn't want to see what I was afraid of! But I didn't know what made me afraid. I only knew when I was alone in the room and the lights were out, I had the most oppressive feeling come over me. This is nothing I could explain then, nor can I explain it now. Heaviness, oppression, sadness, terror......all these things describe the feeling, but it was more than just those words. As I got older, I would sleep in the middle bedroom, but was terribly scared there, too.
Grandpa died in 1977 and Grandma left us in 1978. It was during that year Grandma felt someone rubbing her legs. My uncle moved into the house after Grandma died. If you've read all the posts, you might remember the uncle I visited the day he died. It was this uncle who moved into the house. We were talking one day and he mentioned that the house was haunted. He said they could hear someone running from one end to the other. Now, I never heard anything when I had stayed there 10 years earlier and Grandma never mentioned anything like that, but my uncle ruled out squirrels and other critters. We thought maybe Grandpa was looking for Grandma and was upset he couldn't find her there. But that still doesn't explain the feelings I'd get when they were both alive. When my uncle remodeled the house, the running stopped.
My cousin was staying with his dad (the uncle) and said he woke up in the night and saw a woman standing at the foot of the bed staring at him. Another night he said she tried to smother him. Needless to say, he was pretty scared and didn't like staying there, either.
Years later, I spoke to The Smith's granddaughter-in-law. She had lived in the house that was first ours, then my grandparents', then The Smiths. The house had burned a few years earlier. I asked her something about the house, don't remember what now, but I do remember her answer. She said, "No, but that house was haunted." What??!! I'd lived there the first five years of my life. I remember a lot about that house, but nothing like that. She said that a rocking chair would start rocking for no reason. There may have been other things, but that's all I remember her talking about. Since hearing that, I've tried to relax and feel the feelings I had when we lived there, but can't grasp anything. I do wonder if the hauntings had something to do with The Smiths? Perhaps they brought the ghosts with them?
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Hope everyone had a fun Halloween. It's over for us here. We ran out of candy and our company is gone. I think I'll turn in now.
