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Living In A Haunted Convent

 

Late November last year my family moved to into an old convent built in 1914. It is a lovely big house of 10 small bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, huge laundry (with 4 tubs), a sitting room, library, tv room, 2 sunrooms and so much more. Anyway not long after we settled in we started to notice some strange things. There is a spare room at the end of the hallways we use as a storage room and the door regularly opens and closes as well as the light turning on and off.

Guest bedroom is probably the most haunted room of the house, one time our cousins came over to stay and my aunt slept in the guest room, the morning after they'd left we went in to change the sheets and tidy up but what we found was definitely rather unexplainable. The painting on the dresser had somehow flung itself off the wall and the vase that was in front of the painting was still in place, untouched. No windows or door were open in that room for the painting to blow itself off! So yeah... A little weird.

Then there have been things disappearing and reappearing in strange places. One time my mum had swapped the candle stick on the table for a vase of flowers and she put the candle stick away in a drawer and not long after we came back into the dinning room and they had swapped over again!

My older sister has this ring which always ends up in strange places, we were at a restaurant down the street and she lost her ring and when we came home it was on the tv! The TV! And she swore that she wore it down the street.

Also we have house central heating and it often turns on itself. We very rarely actually see or hear anything, but my older sister has mentioned several times that she's seen a small white dog walking around the house, when we only have three fat cats.

Certain rooms also have really strong energies, the library is a room which I myself don't really like going in there and I can't exactly say why, I simply don't know because it is such a lovely room. Another room is of course the guest room. In the kitchen too we sometimes get the smells of sweets baking, like scones and cakes and biscuits.

The ghosts in the house tend to be more active after someone (other than us) is in the house, which we find interesting.

We do strongly believe that we live with a bunch of lovely old nuns from a hundred years ago and we are very fond of them and we think they are fond of us too. There have been more strange happenings in this house that are more on the creepy and frightening side but they have nothing to do with the nuns so that is another story. We think the nuns protect us and in return we try our best to respect and care for the house. Comment below for any questions! And sorry if this was a bit boring.

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The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, Robin15, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

JuggaloJohn (guest)
 
5 years ago (2019-09-22)
❤ love the story. My experience, things moving is a playful sign. Ghosts are like jokesters. They play with my ink pens and items near them in my bedroom almost every night. The nuns may be protecting your family. I would do research on the building via library, internet, etc. Maybe you can learn names of the nuns to tell them aloud what you want and thank them for the beautiful place you all share. Have you tried capturing the activity? Personally I think you're lucky, I'd have fun in a place like that.
Robin15 (1 stories) (3 posts)
+1
5 years ago (2019-09-15)
Thank you everyone for all your feedback and comments and i'll try to answer some of your questions here,
1. Why are the nuns are more active during or after people leave? We honestly don't really know! They just seem to like us and not many other people. I wish I knew. Sorry!
2. The creepy frightening experiences. I'm still not going to go into great detail because it's something that happened to my sister and she said she'd prefer if I didn't recount it. But it was something that was in the garden, circling the house with an unpleasant energy. Sometimes "things" just visit for a while and then leave.
3. How we ended up living in the house? My father got a job in a nearby town and we came across the convent, we're renting.
4. The painting in the guest room. No my aunt did not witness the activity and knew nothing of it until we told her.
5. History. It only stopped being a convent in the last 5 or years. And the actual history of the place is unclear, what I do know is that at one point there lived 22 nuns in the house!

So I hope this answered some of your questions and excuse me if I didn't. I'll update on anything new I learn regarding the house and it's history.
Cherubim (14 stories) (245 posts)
+2
5 years ago (2019-09-02)
Great story. I've also had things disappear and reappear in strange places, seems to be a common thread in many of our stories here. Wonder why it's more active when people are there? I think it's wonderful that you and family respect the nuns and they are possibly still there. ❤
Bibliothecarius (9 stories) (1091 posts)
+2
5 years ago (2019-09-02)
Greetings, Robin15, and welcome to YGS.

I can speak from some experience that Librarians tend to get a touch possessive of our libraries. Even Librarians who do not have a degree in Library Science tend to look after the books under their care with a level of compulsive protection. It may be that the familiy's Library room has been a Library since the time of the convent, and that the Sister in charge of the nun's collection thinks she is still protecting her books from mischievous teens. [Sidenote: If your family turned the room *into* a library from some other function, it's possible that a past inhabitant of that space doesn't like the new arrangement.]

Librarians may appear somewhat stern and/or forbidding when we see a potential threat to our collections, but that's mostly a facade; we love that people come into our domain & we're able to help them find what they need to know. Most Librarians, in my experience, have strictly-enforced rules so that they do not have to discipline patrons, students, etc.; this give us the freedom to be more friendly to visitors.

Have you tried announcing your intentions when entering the Library? "Ah, a quiet place to read my book," or "I'm looking for a book about birds." This may have the positive effect of reassuring the presence (*IF* it is a Librarian) that you are not there to do any harm. If the presence or atmosphere does not relax after you've tried this a few times, then you're not dealing with a compulsive Librarian. I do hope that this advice helps to release some of the tension in that room without needing a sage/smudging ceremony. It is, I feel, worth a try.

I'm looking forward to reading more of your accounts,

Best,
Biblio.
Jubeele (26 stories) (895 posts)
+3
5 years ago (2019-09-02)
Hi Robin

Oh wow, your house sounds amazing! 10 bedrooms - do your folks run a B&B or you have a large extended family? It reminds me of my grandmother's old colonial house where I grew up in Singapore. We believed that it held spirits that protected the family, rather like the nuns in your house. The smells of scones and cakes baking in the kitchen could point to a nurturing presence, as if someone is trying to comfort and put you at ease.

My mother is convinced that all homes have their own 'house spirit' after a while and the energies in the household define its nature. Like happy hearts will generate happy vibes, and the opposite applies as well.

In what way are the ghosts more active after other people have been in the house? Have they experienced anything strange or were they made to feel unwelcome? Please tell us more about the "creepy and frightening" happenings and how the nuns protected you. Looking forward to hearing more from you. 😊
LuciaJacinta (8 stories) (291 posts)
+1
5 years ago (2019-09-01)
I really liked this story. I want to hear more!

I can relate because I also lived in an convent a few years ago for several months. We found ourselves homeless... Very long story... And reaching out for help to our church, there was a convent available for us to stay.

The order had been large and there were in fact 2 homes for the nuns. But, over time, new entries to the convent grew less and less until they just used the one home and the other was used for visiting priests or guests. There was a series of families in distress as well, such as a family whose house burned down or those who needed emergency housing like us.

Anyway, whoever visited or stayed before us could have brought whatever with them... My husband was suspicious that the convent was active with ghosts of some sort although I never noticed any. He didn't like certain rooms and was certain that it was occupied by the unseen.

Point is, maybe not the nuns but guests could have brought something in.

Anyway, I want to hear more of your stories OP.

I'd also like to know how you ended up there? Was it an outright sale? Coincidentally, I also knew 2 other families that bought convents through discounted sales. So, it does happen that they sell them sometimes.
lady-glow (16 stories) (3157 posts)
+5
5 years ago (2019-09-01)
Ha... I have always thought that nuns would head straight to heaven at the moment of their passing! Why would they prefer to remain attached to material things, like the place they called home during their lives, instead of joining God?

Robin, that house sounds lovely, though it must be quite hard on the pocket to maintain it.

What do you know about the history of the building?

When did it stop being a convent? Was it immediately turned into a residence or was it used for other purposes? Which order the nuns belonged to?

What makes you think that there's more than one spirit sharing the house with your family?

Isn't the heating system programmed to kick in automatically after certain temperature?
Is it a modern apparatus or is it an original fixture from the time when the convent was built?
Have your parents call a technician to check it?

When your aunt and cousins came for a visit: "The painting on the dresser had somehow flung itself off the wall and the vase that was in front of the painting was still in place, untouched"

Did your aunt witness the activity? Have you asked her if she was the one moving the painting?

I find your following statement particularly disturbing:

"There have been more strange happenings in this house that are more on the creepy and frightening side but they have nothing to do with the nuns so that is another story."

It's hard to fathom that a place meant to be for peace and prayers would be the center of negativity to the point of holding those good women trapped/protecting it... That is, of course, if it wasn't a convent as the one portrayed in the following movie:

Ithttps://goo.gl/search/St.+Agatha
🎥 St. Agatha

Looking forward to your feedback.

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