Ghost stories - here are a few of my remembrances...
My parents built our house and we moved in a year after I was born in 1970 on Ron Sue Lane in St. Charles (STC), IL USA. So there were no previous owners. Nor was there any death on the property that I am aware of. The land was a wooded area in the middle of farm land before we built on it. Our house was on 2.5 acres of woods on top of a hill. Tribes of American Indians lived along the Fox River and in our town, but I am not aware of any direct history of them living on the same land as my childhood home.
I truly believe there was something "haunted" or creepy about the house early on and then worse after we "played" with the Ouija board. What really confirms this belief for me is my lack of fear in the 3 homes I have owned as an adult (2 of those homes were over 100 years old which have way more history than my childhood home) and watching my 3 children growing up with no nightmares/fear of the dark or something paranormal.
However, I am currently 45 years old in 2015 and still have nightmares about the house I grew up in. I actually have dreams that my parents gift my husband and I the house (which is close to $500k in my dreams). And I have to deal with the heartache of saying I don't want a house that is incredibly valuable. I can't tell my parents why because they would be insulted and I can't imagine saying yes because it's haunted.
My earliest scary memory was when I was 5 years old. We had a basement that had a smooth, concrete floor and a few supporting beams throughout. If I had to guess, our basement was 1500 sq ft. The basement was divided up front with a staircase, two medium-sized storage or work rooms near the staircase, followed by an open space only split up by 4 to 6 inch diameter metal beams. I used to go down to the basement in the morning and ride my tricycle all around before my half-day kindergarten that started after noon. I would tear around weaving through the spread out beams (there were maybe 3 in a row and 4th off to the side). The floor was pretty open and well lit by the ceiling light bulbs.
During my usual routine of riding around the basement on my red tricycle, I suddenly stopped in front of an old black storage chest. My Mom told me this is an old chest that one of her relatives used to transport their stuff to the US when they came here from Lithuania. My Dad had drilled pretty big holes in it (probably 1.5 inch diameter holes every 10 inches or so) because my older siblings would play in the chest a lot and my parents were afraid of it shutting and locking a kid inside of it. Well, this chest was always in a side section that we played in and never bothered me. Suddenly I had the impression there was a man in the chest looking out at me, he wasn't good, and I was scared. I actually believe I saw his eye through one of the holes. What made me realize he was in there is when his eye moved to watch me through a hole and it caught my attention. I raced across the basement, turned right and flew up the steps to our kitchen and this is my last memory where I had no fear of our basement. That fear still exists today 40 years later.
Soon after that incident my parents transformed the basement into a great family room with a pool table. In the middle of the night we would hear pool balls rolling around and cracking into each other through the air vents that led down to the furnace in the basement by the pool table. I know no one was down in the basement and something else was making the pool balls roll around.
I have 3 older siblings and my next older sister got a Ouija board somewhere around her 11th birthday when I was around 7 years old. This would be in the mid-1970s. I don't remember this story as much as I remember when my Mom just recently retold the story. I've asked my one sister and parents in the last few years if they thought the house in St. Charles was haunted. My sister said yes, I said yes, and my parents said no. My folks were shocked by our answers.
Anyway... It was a rainy summer afternoon. We were hanging out in our den which had windows on the south side of the room opposite of the TV where we focused our attention in the evenings. The room wasn't very big (maybe 12x15 ft). My Mom was lying down reading on a couch that was on a side wall and the kids were playing the Ouija board on the carpet next to her. While my mom read she said we asked a bunch of leading questions, accused each other of pushing the triangle thing around, and boredom was entering the room.
I guess my older brother or sister asked my Mom to ask the Ouija board a question. My mother was half snoozing and relaxing reading her book but she decided to play along. She asked the board, "What is my father's name?". If the board was to give an accurate answer, she expected her father's first name or her maiden last name. Instead of the Ouija planchette spelling out her maiden US name that she had all her life and that we knew, my Mother observed the planchette spelling out her father's Lithuanian last name. It was spelled and sounded much different than his US name. She knew that none of us knew that name. She was actually surprised herself and it took her awhile to realize what was being spelled out, as it wasn't a name she had referenced for years. Once she saw it was spelling her deceased father's Lithuanian last name, she was a bit freaked out but she remained calm for our sakes and told us to get outside and play as the rain was letting up.
I used to love playing with the Ouija board so much so I'd use it myself when no one would play it with me. My sister told me I should stop playing with the board as she heard from a friend in school that it was demons or bad spirits that came through the board. I didn't believe her and I had made a ghost "friend" called "3." I don't remember what questions I would ask 3. I think it was questions about whether certain boys liked me, etc. Well, the last time I used the board I was in my bedroom all alone. It was the middle of the day and decided to play with the board. I asked my friend 3 to talk to me. After a few general questions I decided to try and find out if what my sister heard was right so I asked it something like, "Are you from Heaven?" It answered "No." Then I asked, "Are you from Hell?" And it answered "Yes." I freaked out and pushed the board away and told 3 not to talk to me again unless it was in Heaven. I will never touch a Ouija board again.
The last experiences I'll share were the most significant. I was 16 and was finishing up some homework in my room. I was sitting on my bed with our dog (a big standard Poodle). I completed my work and was tired so I pushed my papers and math book onto the floor next to the bed. My bed was a small twin bed in the corner of the room diagonally opposite the door to the hallway. Next to my bed was a nightstand with my lamp and a glass of water on it. It was a few minutes before 10pm and my Dad was the last person still awake in the house.
As I started to fall asleep, I heard a sound under my open shelved bookcase across the room by the door. It sounded scratchy like a mouse or gerbil running around in circles on paper. It reminded me very much of what it sounded like when my pet gerbil would get loose, but I hadn't owned a gerbil for several years at that point in time. So I leaned over and turned on my lamp next to the bed. I could see easily under my bookshelves and there was nothing there. No paper, no mouse.
So I turned the light off and put my head down again. Then I heard the same sound again near the foot of my bed. I turned on the light and there was nothing there. I turned the light off and lied down again. Then I heard the sound next to my bed where I did have my homework papers. I turned on the light and poked my papers around. There was nothing in the papers.
After I turned off the light again, I heard the sound UNDER my bed. I turned on the light, but there was no way I was putting my head under the bed to look. So I kicked my dog off of the bed and shoved her head under the bed. She didn't seem to see anything and if there was an animal in my room my dog would have been chasing it right away. My dog jumped back up on the bed and lied down again while I turned off the light.
Then my bed started to shake. It was shaking very lightly. I honestly didn't know if it was my heart beating so loud or my dog's tail thumping on the bed. So once again I turned on the light and the bed was still shaking. So I took the glass of water next to my bed and held it on the mattress to make sure I wasn't imagining the shaking. The water in the glass sloshed back and forth. So at this point I jumped up and yelled for my Dad.
My Dad came running up to my room. When he got there the bed had stopped shaking. I told him the whole story so he sat on my bed in the dark with me for probably 15 minutes but nothing happened. He got up and announced he was taking the dog out one last time and going to bed himself. So he left the room with the dog and I heard him go outside. I lied in my bed in the dark (but the light was still on in the hallway) and it was all quiet for about 5 minutes but then my bed started shaking again. I jumped up and ran out of the room just as my Dad was coming back in the house. I slept the rest of that night in my sisters room.
A few weeks later the bed started shaking again without any of the scratchy noises happening first. My sister had told me to pray and that anything bad couldn't hurt me while I was praying. So I said the Lord's Prayer in my head and the shaking didn't stop. I then said the Lord's Prayer out loud and the shaking stopped midway through the prayer. I think I was more scared that it stopped when I prayed because it confirmed in my mind that the source was something evil. The shaking and praying happened one more time a few weeks later and then it never happened again.
My parents moved and sold the house 20 years ago. I am often searching the web to see if any of the new owners have had any issues. I haven't seen anything posted on the web about other people's experiences in that house.
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