Profile for KimCan

(1 stories) (19 posts) (karma: 0 points)

Hi IrishGal! I love those Sears mail-order homes! A cat and a dog ghost sound like good company.

I am sorry to hear about Mrs. D! She always took such lovely care of her home and garden! Her place got more and more beautiful while our house just got more and more run down. I know that we were not the neighbors she would have chosen to have next door, with all of the pets and children running around! I hope Mr. D. Is well! Even though they didn't see eye to eye with my parents, he always had a kind smile for us kids.

What she told you about the history of the home is the same thing she told us and about all we ever knew. I often wondered if maybe there had been a smaller house or some other kind of structure on that lot before the man built the house for his daughter. Given the age of the two neighboring houses it didn't make sense that that lot would have been completely vacant. I'll probably never know.

A young couple bought the house from my parents. It needed a lot of work, but one of their parents was a contractor or a carpenter or something and they hoped to fix it up themselves. They didn't stay long. After that a For Sale sign seemed a permanent fixture in the yard when we would pass through town.

You are right about raccoons in the porch attic! We would have them removed and they would just come back. I hope that with all the changes the house is now finally raccoon proof! (And that whatever else was there has moved on!)

This might sound pretty wacky to you, but I have a theory about the light in your dream. I grew up in a haunted house and while there I had one nightmare that filled me with such profound fear that I have never forgotten it. In my dream I was lying in my bed when a blazing white light began to shine in through the windows. I was horrified of the light but what was even worse was that, as I watched, frozen in fear, the light began to dissolve the walls of my bedroom, and then the furniture, until it was just me on my bed surrounded by white light. I felt desperate to hide from it, and then I suddenly woke up with a pounding heart.

Now this dream mystified me for a long time. I love the light and even had a bizarre out-of-body experience when I was 10 in which I was engulfed in white light and felt amazing peace and happiness. So why would one of the worst nightmares of my life involve white light?

Here is my wacky theory; I believe that whatever was haunting our house was, that night, projecting its fears into my dreams. It was not me but the entity who was terrified of the light, and had made our house its hiding place.

Reading your story, I wonder if whatever was in your apartment messing with you that night felt that it was hiding in your apartment from the light behind the door?

Great story and well written, too. I could almost see it happening as I read.

So tragic for a young mother to die of an ear infection. I think the 1930s would have been too early to get antibiotics anywhere though, since it didn't go into mass production until the 40s. Hard to imagine life before penicillin!

Hi Jennifer, I've read a few of your stories and you strike me as a very reasonable and credible person so I was surprised when some people responded so negatively to this story! I would expect folks around here to be more open minded, but I suppose we all have our biases. I'm also sorry that that silly woman at the spa said those things about Catholics. I'm an evangelical Christian, but most of my family is Catholic, and they certainly don't worship idols.

All the best!
Kim

Wow, that is pretty spooky! So, from where the figure is standing, would he have been look down at your friend?

Sorry Jess, that would really freak me out too! I have a little one on the way and there is already so much to worry about with out having to worry about unseen intruders! Since you asked, my advice is to seek God's help because he loves you and because the best way to fight spirit is with spirit! Please keep us posted!

It could definitely have been the spirits. Even if they didn't strike you as malicious there is probably some sad reason they were there, instead of crossed over, and that sadness could have affected you.

On a side note, I've had bad experiences with black mold. In my last apartment building the downstairs apartment flooded and became moldy and I felt ill and depressed until I moved out, even though my apartment was fine. It's nasty stuff!

Very freaky! It seems like, from the places that he chose to stand, he wanted to make it clear that he was supernatural. Probably to get a reaction out of you. That would scare the heck out of me, I'm glad you've only seen him twice and I hope you never have to see him again!

Hi IrishGal! I can't wait to hear about your West Dundee experiences! Our old house isn't the one you mentioned. It's a brick house on Oregon, long time residents would remember it as a house with half a garage but it's recently been massively renovated.

Hey, have you heard anything about the Clearwater being haunted? Back when it was the Dundee Theater there was a lot of strange activity there and people said there had been for years. I wonder if it is still going on!

It sounds like a great place, but I don't think I would have been as brave as you and stayed there by myself!

Next time I'm out that way I'll definitely have to drive by and see if we can spot the lady in the window.

Pjod, you sound like a wonderful brother!

My brother, sister and I grew up in a haunted house and the three of us have dealt with it very differently. My sister completely refuses to talk about anything paranormal and if someone pushes the subject she gets very upset. My brother has become obsessed with all things paranormal and has even joined a ghost hunting team. I, on the other hand, will never intentionally seek out these things, and one of my biggest fears is buying a haunted house.

Even though the three of us have responded to what happened very differently I feel like we have recovered from it because of our faith. I think that when you become aware that there is something dark and mysterious in the universe that may mean you harm it becomes even more important to remember that there is also a force of love in the universe that has the power and the desire to protect and help us. You mentioned that your brother is Irish, is your family Catholic? (I don't mean to stereotype but my family is Irish and just about everyone in it is Catholic.) Maybe you could go to Mass with him or encourage him to pray the rosary? Just my two cents.

Personally I would not try to communicate with this thing through meditation, nor would I honor it with offerings. It has acted in a malicious and violent way and I would no more try to reason with it than I would with a wild animal.

I'm not Catholic but I think Wardo makes a really good point - Catholic priests tend to be more open to and familiar with this kind of phenomenon than many of our protestant clergy. I also really recommend praying and spending time in the word of God. Good luck!

Great story, very well written! It mystifies me that some people would say this was NOT a demon. What, do they think someone's dead Aunt Mathilda has nothing better to do in the after life than terrorize a nice family?

Very interesting experiences! Have you felt threatened or watched in the house? Because, while it's possible that it is your father stopping by to say hello, it could also be something less welcome. I think that if it is your father you should be able to speak out loud and tell him that you love him but that he is frightening you and your husband and ask him to stop. If it is your father I think he will honor your wishes. If it's not your dad, then you need to get whatever it is out of your house because in my experience these things tend to escalate and that's no fun. Personally, I'm a Christian and I have found praying in the name of Jesus Christ to be very effective. Good luck and keep us posted!

Hi Trudy82! What a small world! I did go to DMS, but I'm 31 now so we probably weren't there at the same time. I graduated from Dundee Crown in '96.

I'd never heard of the Dole Mansion until I read your comment but I looked it up and it looks really spooky! You should write a story about your time there!

Your experience with the dark figure in your room is very freaky! Interesting that you were going through depression at the time because my brother, who definitely had the worst experiences at our house, was depressed too. Sad to think that kids who are already having a hard time might also face a greater risk of being terrorized by some malicious spirit. Actually, it kind of pisses me off!

Anyway, glad you found my story! I'll favorite you so that if you submit any stories I can read about more of our Fox Valley ghosts.

Since removing the ring didn't work, has your colleague looked into other things he can do to stop the activity? The sooner, the better, in my opinion. In my experience activity that appears mischievous at first can turn malicious in time.

Hi Hayle, I don't know what part of IL you live in but the town I lived in was West Dundee. The theater I worked in there as a teenager was also haunted, and there were always rumors that the cemetery and old Dist. 300 school building (now a home for Seniors) were haunted as well. It was a pretty old town by IL standards. Many of the houses in my neighborhood predated the Civil War. The house right next to ours was home to the very first well dug by the original settlers. (Well, the white ones, not the Native Americans.) Perhaps the history and the natural features of the town may have made it a more active place? I've heard that nearby Barrington is also quite haunted.

Hi Meowmix_Symphony and Kissofdeath13! Thanks for your comments:) It all happened so long ago that it doesn't scare me very much to think about it anymore but it does make me sad that we put up with it for so long. My advice to people going through anything like this is that ignoring it and hoping it will go away doesn't always work. In my experience faith and prayer works, and some of the other advice I've heard on this website sounds really good too.

Thanks Jazzalazz! I don't know if those shadow figures I saw were actually ghosts or just another trick being played on me by whatever was in the house, but I definitely didn't enjoy it.

Thanks Paranormal_believer94! I was afraid it was too long for anybody to read, lol. There was even more stuff that happened in the house, but I just couldn't include it all!

Recently I've heard that limestone and water can magnify hauntings and I think this is really plausible because our house was a block from the Fox River and there was so much limestone we used to pull chunks of it out of our garden!

Hi Moonshadow, I've had a similar experience. When I was very young (about 5) there were several occasions when I got up in the middle of the night to use the washroom and through the bathroom window heard the sound of small children playing outside. On each occasion they were laughing and calling to one another and it sounded like there were at least half a dozen of them. Our house was about a block away from a park and at the time I assumed that these were really lucky kids whose parents let them go to the park in the middle of the night! I told my parents about it and they told me the noise was probably caused by teenagers but I know that it was the sound of young, grade school aged kids.