I've wanted to submit this experience for quite some time now but three quarters of it belongs to my wife and she has just given Me permission to share her portion of it. It takes place in Middletown, RI on the sight of our Church's Chapel.
When my wife first started attending she was 10/11 years old and the Church Ward met in an old Colonial home that had been converted into the Chapel complete with a couple of classrooms in the basement. The property itself sits agent a Revolutionary War Historical Site, a British encampment and the home may have been used by the British during the War.
Many people, including the 1st Councilor of the Ward, felt that there was something/someone unseen in the basement and did not like being down there alone. One Saturday my wife's family was cleaning the Chapel, top to bottom, vacuum the floors, mop the floors... Clean the restrooms. When they were done and my wife's father was locking the door, my wife saw a face in one of the basement windows. It was a young man's face; he had short red hair and a short scruffy beard. He had a sad look in his eyes and when my wife pointed him out asking her Dad who the man was he faded away. The next day, Sunday when my wife went to her Sunday School class in the basement, she says she talked to the man... Not really saying anything but acknowledging his presence, she says that after she never felt scared in the basement again.
Flash forward a few years, the Church is expanding and has begun construction of a new building on the site of the old house. During excavations they discover a skeleton in the floor of the basement. After calling in experts it is determined that the bones belonged to a Anglo-Saxon male and that they date back to the time of the Revolutionary War. After some more searching and no other artifacts being found construction is allowed to continue. The bones were moved and buried in one of the cemeteries on Adquidneck Island. Once complete the old home site lies beneath the new parking lot but in the new building people still do not like going down there alone.
A couple of years later I meet my wife and begin going to Church with her. I have to admit the Basement did have an 'odd feel' to it. You never felt alone. It always seemed as if someone was watching you. One summer evening while attending a ward dance I was leaving the basement and as I turned to go up the stairs I saw the lower half of a man. I only saw his legs, from the waist down, Colonial pants and boots walking up the stairs. I froze as I watched them go up the last 3 steps and fade away. I shook my head and blinked a couple of times then made my way slowly up the stairs looking for anyone or anything that may have caused me to see what I had on those stairs. I found nothing. After that, I did what my wife did... When entering the basement I'd quietly say hello and that feeling of being watched never seemed to be so bad afterwards.
It's been years since either of us have been back to that Chapel but if finding the skeleton and burying him in a cemetery did not put him to rest, perhaps he still wanders the classrooms of that basement.
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