Haunted House For Sale

In 2010, I purchased my first house. It was a small two bedroom home built in the fifties in Lafayette, Indiana. The bones of the house were good but it had been trashed by the previous owners. There was enough cat hair on the carpet to knit a Siberian tiger, all of the light fixtures had been taken out and sold and someone had knocked holes in the drywall in the bathroom. On top of all of that, the living room and the larger bedroom were painted blood red and navy blue, respectively.

Before the construction began I walked around taking 'before' pictures. In the larger bedroom, an odd smear of light showed up in the photo. I chalked it up to bad camera settings, changed the settings and took another picture. The smudge of light was still there. I remember going 'Maybe there's a ghost in this room, *snort*!'

After replacing 60% of the floors, the walls of the bathroom and Kilz-ing and repainting every room, I moved in with my elderly corgi dog, Miranda. I moved into the larger bedroom. It was on the Northeast corner of the house but it stayed very dark for most of the day. Since I worked late evenings it let me sleep until 10 am with no trouble.

Miranda never had problems holding her bladder but the first night she woke me up three times to go out. I chalked it up to her being nervous in a new place. A week passed and she still didn't settle down. At times it was obvious she really didn't want to go out; she'd jump up against my bed, rush down the hall, then stop in the living room and lay down. After that, I started shutting her out of my room at night.

One night a few weeks later, I wake up at about 2:30 am. I'm staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out why I'm awake when I see a small light near the ceiling. My first thought is the street light is hitting the pull cord on my ceiling fan but it's too far over for that. Also the streetlight doesn't really reach to the back of the house. As I'm pondering this, the light starts to move. It waves back and forth as it starts drifting down towards me. I'm never at my best when I first wake up, so I just think. 'Oh, it's a lightning bug.' roll over and go back to sleep. The next night the same thing happens. The light starts dancing around the ceiling and I roll up a magazine and stand up on my mattress to squish this bug. When I put the lamp on, there's no bug and no light. It's at this point that I realize it's November and I hadn't seen one lightning bug when I was working on the house all summer. I remember Miranda's desperation to get me out of that room and said 'Oh, it's a stupid ghost!'

Now I am not a fearless person. Frightened mice darting around my feet will have me shrieking like a 1950s housewife and if I find a little garter snake in the yard, you'll have to pry me out of the nearest tree. But ghosts never bothered me. Until this point all the ghosts I had encountered had either been benevolent or indifferent. I have a personal theory backed up by absolutely nothing that aggressive entities feed off of fear and most of the time just saying 'yeah, yeah I know you're there; it's cool with me if you hang around' diffused most activity.

A few days after this I was sitting up at my computer doing an assignment. Miranda was laying at my feet sleeping until about ten o'clock. Then she got up and moved out into the hall. She lay down facing me, but in a few minutes she was back by my side pawing at my leg. I knew the reason for her 'get out of the room' routine so I stopped and loved on her and told her it was just a light dancing around the room and it couldn't actually do anything. I finished my assignment and went to bed, shutting Miranda out of the room like normal.

That night at 2:30 I suddenly felt the bed shake like someone had kicked the foot board. I knew the ghost was trying to make a point, but I wasn't impressed. I told it it had to do better than that and went back to sleep. A few nights later I fell asleep on the couch watching TV. At the witching hour I woke up to Miranda nudging my arm, looking back down the hall towards my bedroom. I sat up and gave it the 'I know that you're here and you can stay' speech only tacking on a 'but stop scaring my dog!' rider. That seemed to calm things down. I still woke up in the middle of the night for no reason and Miranda would still try to get me out of the room at night so I moved my bed into the sun room. It was mostly peaceful though I do remember one night waking up to the feeling that someone was punching the underside of my mattress. Miranda was allowed to roam the sun room at night so I suppose it could have been her, but I don't know how a geriatric corgi could do that. I snapped 'Stop that! I'm trying to sleep!' and it stopped.

Months later, Miranda was not doing well and I was worried about her being alone during the day, so I bought a puppy; another female corgi named Bunny. I hadn't had Bunny a week when Miranda suffered heat stroke and the shock sent her into a stroke. I rushed her to the emergency vet but they said there was nothing they could do for her so I had her put to sleep. Now I had an eight week old puppy who was alone all day and I worried about her. So I purchased another puppy; a male corgi named Bear.

Things were peaceful for a few months then I started work on the remaining 40% of the floors. The sun room was getting tile floor so I had to move my bed. I moved it back to the large bedroom. That night I went to bed and the puppies came in and curled up under my bed where they usually slept. No sooner were the lights out than Bear starts growling. He was only four months old at this point and I had never heard him growl in anything other than play. He definitely wasn't playing. He finally snaps at something, then lays down and goes to sleep. From then on I had no problems with lights or waking up in the middle of the night. Occasionally Bear would tear off down the hall towards that room growling and barking then come strutting back like 'Yeah, that's right!'

Eventually the floors were finished and I moved back into the sun room. One night I wake up at 2:30 and I can't move. I wasn't scared; like I said, I'm not at my best in the morning so I figured it was sleep paralysis. I just thought it would pass in a second. As I'm lying there I see a streak of light zip down passed the edge of my bed. Then I feel someone pull my hair. My hair isn't long enough to get caught under a pillow or anything. This was a definite yank. Abruptly I am very angry. Very, very angry. It was bad enough the ghost tried to scare me with lights and bed shaking but now it was pulling my hair?! I pushed up against the pressure holding me down. It was weird because my chin and stomach came up first like my shoulders were being held down. Then I felt the pressure pull away almost like it didn't expect me to get angry. I sat up and told it to get out! I was sick of this and it had to leave right now! (liberally sprinkled with profanity)

After that I had no activity. However, I was dog-sitting someone else's pet (unneutered) while Bunny was in heat, so I would lock him into that bedroom at night. He never protested going into the room, but at 2:30 in the morning I could hear him scratching and crying to get out. I just moved out a few months ago and the house is still on the market if anyone would like a haunted house...