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Permanent Vacation For Some

What Kid Wants to Vacation in Gettysburg? My dad was obsessed with history. He's a reenactor, he's written books, he's fairly obsessed with the French and Indian War and a lot of other things. So, of course, when summer rolled around, every single year, we went to Gettysburg. No one had the common decency to tell me that Gettysburg was haunted. It seems like that would be pretty logical. Lots of death and suffering, anger and fear, young men and women killed, even in their own homes. Of course it would be haunted, but that wasn't something I had on my mind when I was a kid. I think my main thought on it was, "Boring. Why can't we go to the beach like normal people?" Incidentally, I've never been to the beach. Every time we stayed in Gettysburg, I had trouble sleeping. Once I even told my parents the reason I couldn't sleep was because of the person who kept walking past the window and looking in. My dad got up and went outside, and there was ...

Hell Away From Home

A Ghost Warming Present I've moved a few times in the last ten years. First to Cumberland, where the house was old, but clear of anything remotely creepy. It was a huge relief, honestly, just getting to go to bed at night and not being scared to go up the stairs and into a dark room. There were no voices, nothing moved on its own, no areas that radiated the feeling of "get out", and everything was very comfortable and calm. That lasted only a couple of months. Eventually we had to move over across the tracks. We'd moved in with a couple we worked with, since they were moving out. We could already hear someone running up and down the stairs as well as knocking on the walls. I could feel something awful on the first landing that reminded me a lot of the feeling my friend's house had. Sam had to hold my hand to and from the bathroom each night, because this time we had to pass over the landing to get to the bathroom. The hallway by the kitchen that led to the s...

Su Casa Es Mi Casa

The Old Neighbours I wasn't alone in my fun of having the previous owners (plus) still sticking around. A lot of people I knew who had houses original to the town also had interesting activity. They were able to look up the history of their houses and find answers, though. In one house, they could hear crying in the attic. I personally got to see a lot of interesting activity, including looking for toys and books that we'd laid down in one room, never left the room, and suddenly the toy or book would disappear. We'd look all over the house and never find it. Suddenly, after we gave up, the toy or book would be sitting on top and middle of the bed of the room we'd lost it in. You could hear people running up and down the stairs when no one was there, expecting one of the kids to show up in the room, only to see no one at all. And the crying in the attic some nights persisted. Even up until the point that they decided to renovate the attic. They were going to turn i...

The Ghosts Who Follow

You Never Truly Walk Alone Have you ever been alone somewhere and you hear someone call your name? You look around to see who was calling you, but either no one is there or no one seems responsible? As if no one heard anything at all? You figure you're just hearing things, you move on, and that happens a couple times in your life and it's easy to shrug off. I was walking a friend home from school one day, and I guess really she was the only friend I had. (Plenty of people are happy to use you and call it friendship, but they prove themselves unreliable when reciprocating. At a point I simply didn't talk to or hang out with anyone. Just one person, and I was quite loyal to them until recently when it showed that they actually hadn't cared at all.) I walked her home to make sure she got there safely, even though her dad didn't want me around, and definitely not invited in. It was just something I did, every day, after school, and I'd leave before her dad got h...

They Sing, They Scream, They Steal

Poltergeists A poltergeist is, by definition, a noisy spirit. And we had those. Plural. Added to the noise, they also made rooms change temperature, you could smell them at times, and they also had the habit of moving and stealing things. I think this made me the most nervous. After all, if they can move things, then they could throw things. If they could throw things, they could probably stab and kill you. That's really not a comforting thought and isn't something that should be on an elementary kid's mind, but it definitely was. I would add my families stories, but every time I've asked, I usually don't get anything new because they're too scared to talk about it. They also tell me to stop talking when I start to share my stories, and abruptly change the subject. I don't know everything that happened in that house to anyone else, because they just never talked about it. I just know that things happened to them, too. All I can really regale is what I ex...

A Few Pictures

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It honestly just looks like a normal house, doesn't it? I stayed away from the basement cellar.  I always did. It always felt like someone was watching me fro, the window of the door or the crack of the door. I made sure to keep the door itself locked. As if that ever helped. The attic closet. Possibly the worst feeling area in the whole house. It was even worse feeling than the cellar. The closer to this closet you got, the worse the feeling of fear got. I didn't go into this room even in the day time. And I definitely kept away from this place.

Ghost in the Hall

Sleep Overs Ruined Besides monsters in the closet, there were ghosts in the hall. And not pleasant ones, in fact, but ones who seemed aggressive and unpleasant. Each night I'd lay down and try to sleep. Often times I was up reading or, as habit was, talking to my tape recorder. I'd eventually record over top of everything, anyway, It made me feel less alone, and in the very least, if anything happened to me, there was taped evidence. (Although once I got a mini tape recorder, for Christmas, that hobby went a bit farther and took me right to trying to bust the criminals among us, but we're not going to talk about that. It's pretty obvious I wasn't a normal kid. It's simply off topic.) Each night, probably after 2am, I could either feel someone come into my room, or at least stand in the doorway. It simply felt like someone was staring at me. I was usually too scared to even chance a look, in the event that I'd see what was there. Most times, I'd just ...