The Room At The Back Of The House

I have been looking through this site for a little while now, and I have finally decided to share my story. I'm not really looking for advice, but if you have any input I'd be glad to hear it. You never can have too much information when to comes to things like this.

I want to start off with an introduction. I am a 22 year old female that resides in Mississippi, but my heart is in Louisiana. I was raised in a family of Catholic, Cajuns, so the belief in the paranormal was something that almost everyone in the family (minus my father) had. Because my mother's family (who I was raised around) was from the backwoods and swamps of Louisiana voodoo, magic, spirits, and demons all existed in my family's world, and I as a child was (unfortunately) very aware of these things.

Even as a child I was very aware of the paranormal. I would tell my mother about the "nice lady in the pretty flowered dress" that I would see and talk to. There was even a very mean man whose face I couldn't see, but I just knew he had to have a very mean face because he was so cruel. I often saw things out of the corner of my eye, or I would tell my mother of the things that happened to me at night or at other peoples' houses. She tried for the longest time to tell me it was bad dreams or just my imagination, but she finally realized I was being honest and could not ignore it anymore.

My grandmother was the most supportive of my abilities. She never let me think that I was bad, or that I was wrong in some way. She pushed me to talk about things. The sad thing was that when I began to be more open to the paranormal I gained a new respect and fear of things that went bump in the night.

I really have digressed since this is not a story about my past. It is a story about my present and the new home that I now live in. The house isn't too terribly old. It was built in the 1940's or 1950's. It was one of the cookie cutter houses that were so popular at the time. There have only been two families to live here (supposedly only one, but we found out that really it was two). There was a family that lived here a few years (not sure how many) and then the couple that we bought it from. They added another room to the back of the house, and that is the room that has caused me many sleepless nights.

My parents bought this house for my best friend and I to rent. We were both students at USM Hattiesburg. It was a convenient location and the people seemed sweet at first. By the time we bought the house we realized something just wasn't right with the older couple who had raised their children here. We moved in, and from the beginning I knew something wasn't right. We would sleep out in the living room (because we didn't have furniture), and I would watch the shadows move unnaturally through the house. It all originated from the back room that had been added.

That room was going to be fixed up. In order to do that, things had to be ripped up. My parents, the owners, started to demo the room. We ripped out walls, ceiling, and floors. In the wall of the closet we found something that made me very uneasy. There was a pile of razor blades about two and a half feet tall and about a foot wide in the walls. After tearing everything up, the noises and shadows became worse, and the worst feeling of dread I had ever experienced washed over me. Whatever was in that room was mad that we had torn up the room.

My roommate started a new job working the night shift a few months after we had moved into the house. I was left alone in what I had come to realize was a haunted house, at night, alone save with my two dogs. There were nights were I would wake up and someone was walking around in the house or talking. The dogs would be staring at the door and growling. (Keep in mind they are used to spirits. I have a little girl that follows me wherever I go because of something I own. The dogs don't mind her a bit). Finally one night we hear a big bang and crash. I jumped up, grabbed something heavy to hit with (just in case it was an intruder), and ran out the door, one of the dogs on my tail. There was nothing there. When I started to look I realized one of the toys for our dogs was not in the hall way. It was lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, and hovering around the back room was a dark shadow. Along with this incident there were a few others. I always wanted someone to be around when I went back there because I was scratched and grabbed while in that room, and a friend of mine (who is much like me when it comes to ghosts/demons/voodoo) was scratched badly when she went in. The "man" in the room was angry and dangerous.

I saged and salted the room, many a night (and even some days) I stood at the door and drew a line of salt telling whatever was in that room that it was not welcome and would not be allowed to enter the house. There were some nights where I knew that it was powerful because it would cross the salt line, but I would just go back, draw my line and repeat myself. Eventually I began to feel a little more at ease. The other ghosts of the house (Dot, and another man who won't tell us his name, and my little girl) tended to be more relaxed after that. We only had one last issue with that back room, and then it was fixed up by my father and uncle. The room no longer scares me as bad, but when I'm home alone at night I still find myself avoiding the vicinity of that room, and I try to NEVER have my back to that door.

Our new roommate has never had a bad experience. In my opinion (two of my friends agree with me) that the man did not belong to the house. He somehow got in with something that was in the room (we found some really weird things when we demoed the room) and when everything was gone there was nothing binding him here, so he left. All I know is I hope he never comes back, and better safe than sorry when it comes to the back of the house.