A Haunted House In The Country

This happened to me so long ago that any details might be fuzzy but it's to the best of my recollection. I was a freshman in a high school that combined two grade schools so I was meeting a lot of new people. I met Jade, who was a sophomore, and we bonded over our love of animals and her quirky sense of humor. She invited me to spend the night at her place to go to a party that Friday night, so I took the school bus to her house after class let out with a packed bag and a promise my mom would pick me up the next day.

Jade's house was old. I can't say for sure how old but it was definitely from the 1800s. She lived there with her father, younger sister and brother and a cousin that lived in an elle that was closed off and had a separate entrance to the outside. Her mother had died of cancer when they were young. When we came in the front door of the main home, we walked into a parlor, which I had never seen before in my young life. It was decorated with fancy furniture, a piano and an old cathedral-style radio on top of the piano. The room had an air of disuse and a light layer of dust over it all.

We crossed the parlor into the old kitchen by means of a swinging door that separated the two rooms. The kitchen held a decent-sized farm table in its center, and we threw our book bags down on the chairs. She offered me some PB toast as a snack and I happily agreed. As we toasted the bread, the radio in the parlor came on, full blast. It was LOUD. I don't recall the station that came in but it was very loud music. We went back into the parlor and there it was, the radio, all by itself with no one around. Her brother and sister were younger and in the middle school so were not home yet. She turned it off with some lame excuse that static turned it on. I supposed it was logical enough. Except as we turned to go back into the kitchen, the swinging door started moving like someone had just pushed it from the other side. We burst into the kitchen, expecting to see her prankster brother or even her cousin but no one was there.

I insisted we go see her cousin since there was no other logical explanation for what we were experiencing. We went outside, around the corner of this large farmhouse to the separated elle and knocked. Her cousin let us in, where he had been working on an electrical problem with some music equipment. He was a rather large guy and not the least bit out of breath, like someone who had just run off after a prank. He looked like someone that spent far more time watching TV than running anywhere, quite frankly.

Less than an hour later her brother and sister came in off the bus. They didn't say anything as I described what had happened. Jade and I went to the party that night, I slept over and nothing untoward happened overnight. However, the next day a strong smell of lavender filled the yard as we walked to meet up with some other friends. When I remarked on the strong smell with no lavender bushes in sight, she finally told me her house was haunted. She was afraid I wouldn't stay overnight if I knew. I asked if it was her mother and she shook her head. She told me that when they moved in they started feeling this female energy around them and that minor things happened around the house-things moved, that sort of thing. Nothing threatening at all. Her mother (before she passed) found a bottle of perfume that had been left behind by the previous family. It smelled of lavender.