In My Haunted childhood Home, I talked about the basics of what happened in the house. Overall, there was a creepy feeling, something that shuffled along the hallway at night, and a door that frequently opened on its own. These were the constants.
Other things happened, too. I had a decorative Holly Hobby plate (yes, this was the 1970s) displayed in my bedroom on my bookshelves. While I was in there one day, the plate suddenly cracked. There were often several orbs of light in my room, near the closet, that could be seen at night (my sister also remembers them). On the rare occasions that I was alone in the house overnight as a teenager, I would sleep in my parents room with hall lights on. I could usually hear banging and knocking from the basement, so I also kept a TV on to avoid hearing those sounds. Maybe none of these sounds were paranormal in nature, but I never ventured downstairs to see what was going on.
My childhood friends tell me today that our downstairs creeped them out when they spent the night. One tells me that at a slumber party in the rec room, we tried to do a levitation game, where you each put two fingers under a person, chanting “light as a feather, stiff as a board” as you try to raise the person with minimal effort. I think somebody had read about it in a Judy Blume novel and wanted to try it. Strangely, I don’t remember this, but my friend said that we lifted the girl right up with two fingers each, as if there was unseen help. She and the other girls were freaked out about that. It is a strong memory of my childhood home for my friend.
The worst event happened when I was a teenager one summer. I’ve always been an avid reader, and summer break was a great time to stay up late absorbed in a book. It must have been past midnight, and I was up reading. The family cat was sleeping on the bed next to me. Suddenly, the cat sat up, staring straight into the corner of my room where I often saw the orbs at night. The hair rose on the cat’s back and he hissed/growled in the direction of the corner. Of course, I was on high alert and scared – what had brought this on? And then, the unimaginable occurred. Something from the corner of the room audibly growled back at the cat. The cat went tearing out of the room with me close behind, screaming as I ran up the stairs to my parents room.
I’m sure my poor parents thought I was being murdered. Reassured that I was physically safe, my mom got out of bed to come downstairs to check out the room with me. Of course there was nothing to see. For some unfathomable reason, we decided to move my bedroom furniture around in the middle of the night as a response to the incident, as if having the bed in a different location would make it all go away. That was the sum total of the response to the growling.
I’ve pondered this incident a lot over the years. At the time, my bed was located under my bedroom window. Maybe the cat was responding to something at the window, like a person or a dog. But the cat didn’t look at the window and his ears didn’t head that direction. The cat was focused on the corner opposite the window, and the sound distinctly came from the corner. And we both heard something, a low, distinct guttural growl. Was it a ghost messing around with us? Was it worse – was it a demon or other dark entity of some kind? I doubt I will ever know. Thankfully, nothing like it happened again.