This is going to be fun to write, not that I’m some paranormal investigator but I’ve had a few good experiences going all the way back to when I was a kid. Growing up in a house that was built in 1870 and was, as my aunt described it, twice cursed, gave me plenty of material alone. But through the years working in other old houses and going on tours through old cities I’ve even managed to get a picture of a shadow figure. Read to the end for that one. Anyway, on to the story telling.
The ghost in broad daylight.
In the early 90’s my father and uncles had a favorite spot for water skiing, it was on Santuit pond on the Barnstable side. There was a cranberry bog that had a small beach that we would spend an entire day at. There were trails through the surrounding woods, places to fish, and as long as we stayed off the bog the landowner didn’t seem to have an issue with it.
On one particular day, I was sitting down, probably haven just eaten and either my dad or his friend Duane pointed across the bog. On the far side of the bog, in broad daylight, was what appeared to be a native American on horseback. He didn’t seem to be wearing a shirt, had a large, feathered head dress and had a blanket draped over the horses back. I stared at it for a few seconds, watching it walk slowly down the far road. I turned away for a second and when I looked back it was gone.
Nellie Baker
I was the sixth generation to grow up in the house built in 1870 by Ozial Baker. According to my aunt he built the house for his new wife, Nellie. She was never happy with the way the house was built, she sunk her savings into helping to build it but was never on the deed for it or the property. When her two sons each wed, she did her best to damage the marriages. One son built a house down the street to get away from his mother, getting his wife and children out from under her roof but at the cost of his mental health. The other brother’s wife bought the house across the street but refused to get divorced.
Aunt Sis
My aunt believes that due to her unfulfilled and unhappy life, Nellie haunts the house and has a dislike to women who stay there. She saw Nellie at least once and could feel the cold and sadness in the interaction. On the other hand, my uncles all seem to have had positive experiences, or at least not malevolent. When my father moved back into the house with his second wife, she was harassed constantly by the spirit. At one point she was locked in a closet that had no lock, she was screaming to be let out, but my father couldn’t hear her. Personal items were moved or hidden constantly; I would have just assumed this was all coincidence if not for my own encounters.
My Encounters
At least twice I was awakened by a tapping on my shoulder, this was in my bedroom in the early morning, I was probably oversleeping and needed to be roused. One day I was alone in the yard, I had a fort just out back that only kids ever went into. As I rounded the fort I was about to walk in the door when I distinctly heard laughing coming from inside. Until that point I had assumed she kept to the house and the night, but there I was, middle of the day and in the yard. The only time I ever saw her was again in the early morning, there was a chest full of her belongings that had previously been in the back of a closet but was moved to the top of the stairs. As I walked out of the bathroom, I had an uneasy feeling and looked up the stairs to my right. At the top of the stairs was a white figure, I froze for a second before crossing the living room and sat facing the stairs. I could only see the bottom steps from where I sat and I stayed there terrified until the sun started to illuminate the house.
The Harwich house
In 2002 I worked under the table for a carpenter named Sean, he took a job updating a Cape style house in Harwich for a real estate investor. I learned quite a bit working that year but as the days got shorter into the winter Sean kept talking about a ghost in the house. At first I thought he was just messing with me, so I just joked about it. I drew weird pictures on the studs and other stupid things. Sean started telling me about how he had strange feelings and didn’t like to be in the house by himself after dark.
Ghost Steps
When we got the upstairs drywall put up we had a lot of mudding to do. There was a staircase that came up between the two upstairs bedrooms. I was working in the left room and Sean was working on the right. The second-floor bathroom wasn’t completed so Sean grabbed his light, announced that he was going to drop a deuce and went downstairs. this left the hallway and the right bedroom dark as I kept working on the mudding. A few minutes later I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, I glanced into the hall, but I didn’t see the glow from the work light and thought Sean forgot to bring it with him. A few minutes later I heard Sean coming up the stairs again this time accompanied by the light. I asked if he forgot his work light the first time. He asked what I meant, I said “You came up the stairs a minute ago without your light.”. Apparently, he had not, what I had heard was disembodied footsteps.
Next Season
In the spring after all the walls were done the house needed fresh paint. The owner had brought in a painter from Boston. The guy had no car and just stayed in one of the back bedrooms for a couple weeks while doing the job. The first week was fine, but he stayed in the house over the weekend while nobody else came by. On Monday he was ready to go, he told us how the last couple nights had been terrifying. Things going bump in the night, the constant sound of footsteps, he even said he heard an infant crying at one point.
I tried to go back by the house to see what it looks like now, but for the life of me I can’t figure out exactly where it is anymore.
The Orton Hotel
In Wilmington North Carolina there’s a pool hall in a basement of what used to be a four-story hotel. Built in 1888 the Orton hotel was perhaps the grandest in the city until it burnt down in 1949. Guests were evacuated and it was thought to have had no fatalities initially, but the bodies of several undocumented guests were recovered from the debris. The pool hall in what was the basement is the oldest continuously used pool room in the United States.
Haunted Pub Crawl
My then wife and I went on a haunted pub crawl in Wilmington in the fall of 2014 during a weekend trip, one of the stops was the Orton pool hall. Our host told us about all the experiences people had there as well as the history of the building. Before leaving my wife and I were at the end of the bar looking at photos of the hotel. Pictures from the morning after the fire, where the exterior walls were the only thing left of the hotel. She turned to me and said she felt water dripping on her shoulder. We both touched her shoulder, but it wasn’t wet. We paid our tabs, finished our beers and made our way towards the door as a group. I was one of the last ones out and before I left, I turned back to the empty bar and took a picture with my phone.
What I Caught
At the next pub I started going through the pictures I had been taking during the night, this was back when phone screens were small and the pictures weren’t very good, but I noticed something in the picture of the bar. Right at the end of the bar, next to the pictures on the wall, was a shadow figure, head and shoulders standing there, seemingly watching us depart.
Not to toot my own horn but I believe this basically makes me a ghost hunter now.
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