Your True Tales
July 2006 - Page 13
Australian Haunt
by dlitefulmslauren
At Christmas 1992 (I was almost 6), my family and I went with some friends and their young children to Sydney. The wife of our friend had a brother who lived there and he said we could stay in his house as he would be traveling elsewhere for Christmas. When we got there, the first thing everyone noticed was that the house was directly across from a cemetery... how quaint! I can still remember coming back to the house after a day out, in the dark, and our friend would say, "How about we drop the kids off at the cemetery?" as a joke to scare all of us kids. I hated it.
Anyway, the sleeping arrangements were: our family in one room at the front end of the house and our friends in another room in the opposite end of the house. One night when I was in bed, I noticed the door at the foot of my bed was opening and closing with the wind. It annoyed me to an extent, but I was too chicken to get up and close it. I just tried to keep warm and ignore it. That's another thing - the house was FREEZING all the time, and here in Australia it's summer in December; it's supposed to be hot.
I assumed the door lead to a storage cupboard because I remember looking at it earlier that day and my bed was in the way of it, so if you tried to open it you would probably only fit your leg in the gap. I finally got back to sleep and when we woke up in the morning we had a big brekky in the kitchen. Our friends were asking how we all slept and my mum said, "Well, that door at the end of Lauren's bed kept creeping and slamming, and that kept me awake for a while, but otherwise, still a bit cold. I think I'll have to put another blanket on the bed tonight..."
Our friend's wife asked, "What do you mean? That door's never been opened since my brother moved in here. It's bolted shut!" At that point I said, "I saw it happen as well." Mum looked at me with horror, "Did you see it, too?" She seemed scared but so relieved that someone else should back her up. I was as terrified as she was.
Our friend's wife was still convinced that it was unable to be opened, but sure enough we all went in to see who was right and the door was bolted shut, just like she said. The only way you would be getting that door open would be with an axe or maybe a crowbar. It actually had a thick piece of metal across where the handle was, so it joined the door to the door-frame. Our friends never had a complaint the whole time. They were warm, not cold; they were sleeping well and undisturbed.
We later found out that the house was previously owned by an old man who died in the house and we were sleeping in the original part of the house. Our friends, on the other hand, were sleeping in the extended part of the house that was built after the new owners had moved in.
I think his ghost must still be hanging around in the house, but I'll always wonder if he was trying to tell us something about the cupboard. Was there something suspicious about his death that he wants us to know about which has been locked away in the cupboard? It's scary to think there might be, because I slept in that room for a week! The house being across from a cemetery just added more creepiness to the event! What a holiday! Oh, and for the record, that was the only time it happened, just once that whole time, thankfully. Otherwise I'd probably still be scared from it... more so!
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