My Grandparents Farmhouse

Growing up being taught there were no such thing as ghosts, pop-pop's house proved us all wrong.

I was 17 when we moved in to pop-pop's house. He had died about 3 years prior. I loved him and missed him dearly. I cried for years over him. It made it harder to deal with his death looking at all his belongings and knowing he had lived there for over 50 years.

My sister was 12 and my brother was ten. We all had our own rooms there. My sister chose my dad's old room which she was excited about because we loved our dad. She slept there about 3 months and suddenly she was downstairs sleeping on the couch. I asked why she didn't sleep in daddy's room. She flat out told me that she was going up the stairs and heard a man and a woman laughing in her room. We made fun of her and called her crazy.

A few months later I was in my room at the top of the stairs. I was putting my clothes away and I heard a male voice say, "what are you doing?" Now my brother being a jokester and my dad never coming upstairs, I had my back to the door and told my brother to get out of my room. I turned around and it was dark and no one was there. I was petrified.

I threw my clothes on the floor, locked the door and went to bed. I did not move all night. I told my brother a few months later and of course I was labeled "nuts" like my sister. My brother got his payback.

A little while later my brother and his friend were playing football in the side yard. They were at least 30 feet from each other, they heard a woman say, "what are you doing?" They both came inside and were quite terrified. They told me what happened and finally acknowledged what my sister and I had experienced was real. It took a long time but I told my dad what happened. He never denied seeing or hearing things there. The most outstanding thing was that he saw a ghostly white horse run through the backyard when he was a boy. He told his parents and they told him he was sick, that he needed to go to bed. I was so glad he understood us and didn't tease or make fun of us.

After my dad died, my sister told me that the house shook violently and they heard the sound of a train coming through. My great grandparents ran a train station right in front of the house in the late 1800's. The tracks were gone when my dad was a boy. My sister said she smelled coal outside a lot.

When dad died my mother turned all the utilities off in the house such as the phone. My dad had his own phone because of the dial up internet.

I stood outside the window where he worked on the computer. The phone was turned off. I heard his phone ringing. I went back in and checked for a dial-tone. There was no sound at all. I thought maybe I heard the neighbors phone. Months later, my mom had heard it and my sister heard it. We call it the ghost phone.

My mom had to sell the house in 2010. It had been built by our family over a hundred years ago. My siblings and I were devastated. The new owners burned it down, but in my mind it's still there, our childhood getaway. Jumping off the porch and exploring the yard. No one will ever burn that down.

I still have a key on my keyring to the back door to the house. I call it the key to a ghost house.