My Suburban Pittsburgh, Pa Haunted House

My house was built in 1905 as a combo general store/home. As was common in those days, the main floor was the store and the upstairs was housing for the store owner. Attached to the house was a store room used for dry goods. Under the store room were horse stalls for the delivery horses.

Over the years we have often heard footsteps and voices. The smell of cigarette smoke is sometimes unbearable. Since my husband and sons have allergy induced asthma, they cannot be around smoke. There are times when they have asthma attacks due to the presence of smoke. According to their doctors, the mere smell is not enough - they need to be exposed to actual smoke.

Then there are the moving objects. You need your keys/dog leash/sunglasses. You look where they belong. You look in all the usual places. Nada. The next day you find the necessary object in plain sight on the coffee table. No one put it there - it just appeared.

The basement of my house connects to the garage. It used to be an open area between the house and storeroom. Wagons were pulled into the space for loading. A large door on the side of the storeroom opened above the wagons and dry goods were lowered into the bed of the wagons. The far wall of the garage is the back wall of the old horse stalls. (They have since been converted to an additional 4 garages.) Often while doing laundry I can smell horses. The mixed smell of hay, manure and horse is recognizable to anyone who has ever been around a horse barn. Since there have not been horses in the stalls in about 90 years, it seems unlikely this is a residual smell. Very early in the morning I have even heard horses snort and stamp their hooves. Again, suburban area - no livestock anywhere near me.

Finally, there is the Man in Blue. Our house is on a hill. When parked in the main garage the car is angled such that getting an accurate read on the various fluids is difficult. Routinely my husband pulls the car out and parks across the street before checking fluids. One morning last week he pulled my car onto the street and checked. He walked back into the open garage to get oil. I was talking to the neighbor. The color drained from her face as she looked towards the garage. When she was able to talk she told me a man in blue work clothes had walked out of the garage behind my husband. The man turned right and proceeded up the sidewalk towards my front door. Then he vanished. Since I've seen him several times, I wasn't nearly as shocked as she expected. He always comes out of the garage right behind someone. He always turns and walks towards the front door - the main "store" door.