This story doesn't involve me - in fact, the occurrence happened thirty or so years ago when my Mom was young. It was she who told me the story, and here I am relating it here. My aunt Nonny and her new husband had decided that living with the parents simply wasn't appropriate anymore, considering she had six siblings and that three of them were young enough to still live at home, so she went out house hunting, as you do. When she went to go and see this one particular house, though, she took my Mom along with her, to get her out of the house and get some fresh air.
So, my Mom went with her and her husband to this relatively old house, and almost immediately she could tell something was off. Really off.
She described it as though there was something hateful in the house, glaring at them and hating them, and as though something terrible had happened there. She was shivering and absolutely petrified for no apparent reason, and really wanted to get out of there. Nonny, ever the pragmatist, told her to pull herself together and get over herself.
Despite these words of advice, Mom couldn't ignore the feeling that she was trapped and continued to be in this state of utter terror. For some reason, she was convinced that there was something very, very wrong, and it was in the cellar. One tiny little problem - there was no cellar. Still, she kept on that there was a cellar there, and that the door was behind the bookcase. Mom had no idea why she knew this, but she was desperate to open the cellar door and equally as desperate to run for the hills and never set foot in the house again.
Nonny, embarrassed and exasperated with her sister's behaviour (as anyone would be when faced with a sibling about to go into hysterics over an unsubstantiated feeling), somehow managed to convince the estate agent to move the bookcase aside to prove there was nothing there. This bookcase, may I add, was one of those heavy, old-fashioned ones, or so she says, and it took both the estate agent and Nonny's husband to shift it. And, to everyone's surprise, there was a door.
The door was prised open, and mom immediately felt a release, as though there had been something trapped in there and now it had been set free. She describes it as though it was a gust of wind or a release of pressure in the air. The estate agent was amazed (and probably a little creeped out) because he had no record of there being a door there, and certainly no record of a cellar.
They thanked the estate agent for his time, and left. Nonny never did buy that house, instead choosing a nice, normal flat she'd found earlier. She never let us talk about it either, saying it was nonsense and Mom simply had a lucky guess.
Later research on Mom's part showed that there had been something terrible happen there, that a family had been locked up in there and after they'd been freed by the police they'd sealed the cellar away. Whilst they didn't die, I expect the emotions, the fear they experienced, must have left an impression in the cellar that my Mom felt and responded to. But that's speculation on my part.
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