Growing up, I was raised by my Paternal Grandmother, my Great Aunt (her sister) and my Great Aunt's daughter (my adult cousin.) We all lived in a cotton mill house in a town in North Carolina. I experienced many unusual and often frightening events in that house, especially in my early childhood years. One of the things that I remember is the sound of the phantom fire builder.
I had no room of my own and would take turns sleeping with all of the three adult relatives. It was in my grandmother's room that I would hear this particular phenomenon. Granny's room was located directly behind the kitchen and there was a fireplace in her room and one in the kitchen that shared the same chimney. We heated exclusively with those fireplaces in the old days, which meant in the wintertime somebody, either my Great Aunt or my Grandmother, would have to get up before dawn and get the fires going so the house would be warm for the rest of us.
Several times I woke up in the early morning hours, and lying there in the darkness with Granny snoring beside me I would hear the sounds of a fire being built in the kitchen fireplace. I could plainly hear paper being crumpled and placed, kindling and coal being stacked and the sound of the fire being stoked with a poker... Only nobody would be up, yet. The sounds would just fade away and sometime later one of the old folks would get up and really start the fire.
I suppose this probably would fall into the category of a residual haunting, where a past event plays over again and again like a movie, but nobody ever seemed to hear it but me. I never saw anything, but I was too terrified to get up and take a peek into the kitchen. It sure was scary to a little kid lying there in the darkness listening to the phantom fire builder at work.
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