What causes a house to be haunted or thrown into chaos with unexplained activity? Is it an infestation of ghosts? Is it the arrival of spirits that many call "demonic" through the invitation of a Ouija board? Or do the disturbances arise from the darkest, uncharted recesses of the human psyche? You can draw your own conclusions as Lauren A. recalls the frightening experiences that terrorized her, her family, and friends over many years. This is Lauren's story...
AS I WILL be moving out of this house in a few weeks, I figure now is as good a time as any to tell my story, and you'll know why I am leaving. I grew up in this house in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. I'm not exactly sure what plagues it – or me in particular (the activity seems to directly center on me, or when appearing to others in my family, it mimics me) – but it has been going on for a very long time. I'm nineteen years old now, and this has been going on for as long as I can remember, maybe even before then.
AN ODD OCCURRENCE
When my family first moved here, I was about two and my sister was a few months old. I'm sure it was my parents' dream house, as we didn't leave even after my father passed. I can recall one odd story that my parents frequently spoke of:
My dad had a large key ring, one with more than ten keys on it, and one morning it was just gone. He was a believer in the occult and firmly believed that a ghost or phantom of some sort took his keys. Needless to say, after having looked everywhere for these keys, they could not be found. Until three days later. Apparently, my sister and I complained about sleeping in our room, so we slept in our parents’ room. My sister would cry or something, and I would just panic and yell and scream until I was retrieved from the room, so they put up with us being in their room to get a good night's sleep. My mother went into the room to get us clothes to wear for daycare... and what do you know? In the center of the room lay the keys.
But there's more. The whole room was infested with ants! My mother immediately called the exterminator, but ten minutes later when she returned to the room to assess the damage, the ants were gone. The exterminators came and they drilled holes to find nests, but there were none! Very strange indeed. What's even stranger is that my mother swears the infestation was only in that room, and then it vanished completely.
THE VOICE AND FATHER’S GHOST
My mother isn't exactly a skeptic, but for the most part that is how I'd describe her. She has a hard time believing things unless they are presented to her in a fashion that she deems logical. And she believes in a lot of what happened next.
One of my earliest memories is a voice calling to me from the corner of my room one evening, just calling my name, over and over. I remember feeling compelled to go to it. When I found nothing in the corner except a heaviness in the air, I screamed and flew terrified down the steps. This is one of the things my mother says I dreamed. I disagree. Completely.
My father passed when I was seven, and then weird things really began to happen. Perhaps it was because I was getting older and remember more, or maybe his death genuinely worsened the house. My sister, my mother, and I all saw him after he died, sitting as plain as day in several areas of the house – and then he would vanish. I'm sure, though, that my father wasn't the only unearthly presence in the house. He might still be here, but I know he would never try to scare me.
Next page: The Ouija obsession
