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The Overlook

 

This is the story of a house we lived in where very strange things happened. This was between December 1998 and May 1999. When we had moved in, we made a sign that we put up outside of the gate, calling the house "The Overlook". Which we thought really fit the house, because if you looked in from an outside window, you would look down the long passage, and all you see is glass doors, much like the little boy on the tricycle in The Shining.

It is an 8-bedroom house with three passageways, the longest passage is 118ft long. The house has 22 doors leading outside, 2 leading to the front yard and 20 leading to the back yard. The long passage contains a lounge, a huge built-in bar with a storeroom, the pantry, the kitchen and it ended at my parents' bedroom door. The dining room also led off this passage. The dining room is big enough to contain two full dining room tables, each with 6 chairs, and a pool table. The rooms are enormous, and, as the house is relatively old, one could suppose that many of the strange things we encountered there could possibly have been imagined. We were two families living together in this house, four adults and five kids.

Thinking back to everything that happened in that house, the least scary thing that happened was that I had a paranoid fear of my parents' bath. Not the entire room, just the bath itself. If I had to use that bath, I caught myself repeatedly picturing a dead woman lying in it. Moreover, it really scared me.

My youngest cousin and I both had experiences in the passageway where the other bedrooms were situated. My bedroom was the second one in the passageway, and it overlooked a bathroom. My cousin and I frequently heard the sound of a woman being strangled in the passage, always in the spot between my bedroom door and the bathroom door. You could clearly hear her fighting to breathe, but most of the time the noise ended. One night I was up alone, and my bedroom door was standing open. I had gotten into bed and as I lay down, I again heard the woman gasping for breath. I lay and watched the bedroom door, heard the sound of a hand hitting the wall, followed by someone falling to his or her knees. She started crawling into my room, heading straight for the head of my bed. She was completely white, and her face was not visible at all, as she kept her head down, but she had pitch-black hair. She stopped next to my bed and I was so frightened I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, she was gone. It led me to wonder if the gasping in the passageway may have been the start of her murder, and that she may have died in my room.

The bathroom across from my room had a huge shower, we were four girls, aged 10, 12, 14 (myself) and 17. Sometimes we would all cram into the shower together, claiming it was to save water, when in fact we were too afraid to be alone. One Saturday night we all were getting ready to shower, the water had been running and the two younger girls were already in the shower. Suddenly the water stopped and steam started coming out of the showerhead. With that, the bathroom light started flickering on and off, the light seemed to change to a dull purple colour and eventually went out altogether. Of course, we all started screaming and bolted out of the bathroom. When the adults came to check, the water was back and the light was on, nothing out of the ordinary.

My youngest cousin frequently heard someone scratching on her carpet when she was alone in her room, always early in the morning, around 6:30AM. Her sister, who was the eldest of the four girls, would wander around the house late at night, going to the kitchen for water or whatever the case may be. On a number of occasions she saw what appeared to be a figure, all in black, sitting behind the bar counter and he appeared to be holding a cigarette, though all she ever saw was the floating ember.

We had a New Year's Eve party and after the party had died down and the guests turned in for the night, the kids were sleeping in the bottom lounge, adjacent to the dining room. One of the kids woke up in the early morning hours and heard people still chatting and laughing and glasses clinking at the bar. Therefore, he got up and went to the bar, only to find it deserted, not a single person there. He decided he must have imagined the noise, but as he lay back down, he heard the voices again, this time coming from the kitchen. Again, he went to investigate and found nothing. When he lay back down for the third time, the voices were back in the bar, and as he looked toward where all the girls were sleeping, he saw the figure of a child, dressed completely in white with pitch-black hair, crawling around between the sleeping girls. At this point, he said he squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to sleep.

As every event occurred, we told the adults about what we saw, and they all claimed that none of them ever had any such experiences in the house. Of course, they did not believe us. However, it just so happened that my father ended up working for a company where two sisters worked as receptionists. They had grown up in that house, and they proceeded to tell my father all of the stories of creepy experiences in that house that we all had, adding that their grandmother had died in the bathtub. This explained my fear of the bath.

We still drive by the house occasionally, and the house has not been sold in the past 13 years. People tend to move out within 6 months of moving in.

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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, triden07, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

triden07 (70 stories) (279 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-31)
Hi Jav

Yes, very big ones! Through Tim, I now know exactly what happened in that house. I have submitted it as a story but still waiting for it to be published.
Javelina (4 stories) (3749 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-31)
triden,
This is the story you captured my attention with first. Has there been any new revelations about the overlook?

Jav
triden07 (70 stories) (279 posts)
+1
11 years ago (2012-10-08)
I actually found some information out about the house, through my friend's husband, who can communicate with the dead. I know it sounds strange, but he actually communed with a few spirits this weekend while they visited with me and he was able to recount what happened in every house we told him we had experienced hauntings in. He could describe the rooms, knew where each spirit was, and how each one died, even though one of the instances he gave comment on, happened in a house my mom had stayed in when she was 18 years old! It was the strangest experience I have ever had.

He also was able to give me more information on Granny and little boy, but i'll write that as a story and post it soon.
PeachyPumpkins000 (16 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-06)
I'm sorry if I used some of your words, Sarah. I did not mean to...
PeachyPumpkins000 (16 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-06)
Fantastic story and very well told. I'm so glad that I decided to come back and read it because the title was not appealing at first. But I am completely proven wrong. This is going on my favorites.
I would absolutely love to check that place out, even though I would probably run out immediately after walking in, haha. I am very easily scared.
Well, I am very glad that no one in the house was hurt or anything like that. It was very interesting to here about the bathtub incident. Very creepy...
Thank you so much for sharing 😊
sarah84 (2 stories) (18 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-04)
i would have loved to go there and check it out for myself. Fantastic story, sends shivers down my back just thinking about the woman and the elderly woman in the tub. So much history in that house, you should try and find a written history of the house so you know exactly what happened there, you may even find out about the smoking man your cousin saw.
Blessed be ❤
triden07 (70 stories) (279 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-04)
Hi guys!
Beautifuleden, the address is no 9 Tsessebe Street, Nimrod Park, Kempton Park. The view from the street is nothing compared to being inside it, I promise you.

Let me give you guys an idea of the enormity of this house. Keep in mind, its a single story house. Starting from the very left edge of the property you had, the jacuzzi room, my aunt and uncle's room (with an on-suite bathroom), my cousin's (oldest of us girls) room, my youngest cousin's room, my sister's room, my room (opposite my room is a single toilet and then the big bathroom), my cousin's (only boy) room. This passage was around 110ft long. Then the small passage led off to the right, this passage was about 50ft. At the end of this passage, to the right, was the front door with a huge foyer. To the left you entered the long passage, entering the lounge containing the safe and the bar. Going past the bar you have the dining room to your left, with steps running into the second lounge, where we watched tv. To the right is the pantry, then the kitchen, then my parents' room. You enter into the first room and have the bathroom with THAT bath on your right. Leading through glass doors where my parents's bedroom was situated. The house really is enormous, so much so that if you put music on in the bar area, you barely heard it in my aunt and uncle's room.

The night the woman crawled into my room, I don't think I have ever been that scared in my entire life. I can't figure out how it happened that I ended up being awake alone. I remember being so afraid that I'd flip the light switch on at the start of the passage (this is entering the long passage going to my bedroom, so passing the bar) and run like the devil was chasing me past the bar, and switching the passage light off again at the other end. I never walked that passage in the dark. And the one night that the house was full of people and us girls had to sleep in the lounge by the bar, I didn't sleep a wink. It was December, which is full summer here, and I was covered head to toe in blankets, sweating, but absolutely refusing to open the covers.

From what I could gather, the girls were teens when they lived in the house, so, mid to late 1980's.

My cousin never mentioned smelling the cigarette smoke, though she said the first time she saw him there she thought it may have been her dad, so she talked to it, and the only thing that moved was the ember of the cigarette. Ofcourse, until the day she died, nothing scared her. She found the whole experience funny.
beautifuleden (2 stories) (66 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-04)
Hi Triden, I loved this story! I am also south african, could you please tell me the address of this old house! If I am ever nearby I would love to drive past and check it out! Xxx
southerntk (4 stories) (75 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-03)
I think there is probably more to the story of the grandma's death in the tub. Maybe there was some domestic violence going on and the stress triggered a heart attack in the grandma. Definitely some strong residual energy that has to do with violence. I am glad you don't live there anymore. I love big old houses. I would like to have stayed there a while. I realize it was very frightening but maybe the woman was trying to tell you something that happened to her, maybe something that was never reported. Good story. Most likely though if all this happened only like a decade or so ago, it is residual. It would be interesting to know exactly when the grandma had the heart attack and who lived with her then.
Javelina (4 stories) (3749 posts)
+1
11 years ago (2012-10-03)
triden,
I enjoyed reading your account of experiences from that house. What an interesting place to have lived. I realize it was frightening at times, but the way you describe the place... It sounds massive. I had an Aunt who lived in an old place like that, big and long. Sunken bath that you could fit several children in to bathe at once. Long hallways that us kids would run around crazily playing tag and hide and go seek. I loved that old house, but it wasn't haunted like yours.
I believe much of what you experienced to be residual images and sounds left over from the previous occupants. The bathtub the grandmother died in may carry residual memories of her being found that way by another family member and the emotions were so strong that they have clung there ever since. The guy at the bar late at night smoking... Did anyone ever smell the smoke from the cigarette? Not that it is important, I am just curious if there remained any residual smell at all.
I don't know how you could ever have slept in that room alone after seeing the woman come crawling in. I have the creeping willies just thinking about that! If I had seen her coming at me? I'm sure I'd have done just what you had, but I certainly wouldn't be walking that hallway alone!
All of this going on in that house, and the information your father became aware of later on, leads in only one direction. Haunted House.

Thank you for sharing,
Jav

~And the fact that it is constantly changing hands is a big red flag in my book. Anyone out shopping for a home to buy should remember to check into how many times it has been bought and sold and how long the average amount of time is until they are selling it again~
Gargoyle (51 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-03)
Imagine calling the house The Overlook! Even the title of this story got me sitting up straight!
I couldn't stay the night in that house, never mind live there!
Although I do know of other people who hav had to live in houses like that. I suppose sometimes you don't have the choice.
Thanks for sharing... Great story.
😨


Gargoyle
triden07 (70 stories) (279 posts)
+3
11 years ago (2012-10-03)
The girls said she died of a heart attack. Ironic.

There were murmurs from the neighbors when we lived there that there was a family murder in the house. The husband killed his wife and 2 kids there, but we never did actually investigate the claims.

The other story was that the house was built by a diamond smuggler, but no one could tell us what happened to the guy. So, given all the loose ends, there may very well be a very rich (pardon the pun) history behind the house.
Miracles51031 (39 stories) (4999 posts) mod
+1
11 years ago (2012-10-02)
triden07 - as I was reading your story, my thought about the woman in the hallway wasn't as much that she was murdered, but what if it was health related instead?

Ironically, right after I read your story, I read another on here called "Black Angel Shaped Observer" that describes how she feels during an asthma attack. Anyway, just a thought.
SirenBelva (7 stories) (64 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-02)
Was the grandmother who died in the bathroom murdered? Just wondering why the residual hauntings in the home sound so violent. Creepy for sure!
triden07 (70 stories) (279 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-02)
Thank you Qua

I actually forgot about the radio behind the bar. We loved to put on music and dance around there, the room was so big we always had fun. But the strangest thing was, we would be listening to a CD and the radio would suddenly jump to the tuner settings, run through radio stations, and it wouldn't stop until you switched it off. This always happened when it was just us girls in that room.

About a month after moving in there my eldest cousin came to me one Sunday night and asked me if I had ever noticed the footprint burnt into the carpet right as you enter the bar. I never had noticed it until then. It appeared to be the footprint of a child, I'm guessing around 3-years old (as i'm comparing the size in my memory to my 5-year old twins' feet). You could clearly make out the five toes and the perfect shape of the little foot.
Qua (39 posts)
 
11 years ago (2012-10-02)
Amazing story. Love the part where the grandmother died in the bathtub. I think you're instincts are accurate. It reminds me of the haunting of the pre-war house my family used to stay in.

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