When I was young (I am now 30), I lived on a sheep-farm in a small town called Waikaka, New Zealand. The house we lived in was built by my grandfather (my dad's dad) and we had lived in it since at least from when I was born. I don't think it was always haunted, or maybe it was but the being was never able to manifest itself for years. Who knows.
I'm not entirely sure how old I was when the ghost activity began, but I know we moved out of that house a week after I turned 9, so I think it all began when I was about 5 or 6.
I have no doubt forgotten a bunch of the things that happened. I wish I had of written them down years ago while I still remembered them all, but nevertheless I still remember some of the experiences quite well, even though it has been over 20 years since it occurred.
The first night something happened to us, my dad was at the local pub (as he usually was), and my mum, myself, and my siblings (older brother and sister) were in the lounge (living room) watching Married with Children (funny some of the details I remember). My mum got into an argument with my siblings and sent them to bed, but I got to stay up for a bit longer. Eventually my mum and I also went to bed. I shared a room with my brother, which was adjacent to my parents bedroom, and my sister had her own room at the other end of the hallway.
I was drifting off to sleep when suddenly my sister is running down the hallway screaming. Apparently, she could hear deep, heavy breathing at the end of her bed. My mum could hear it too, though I can't remember if it was at the same time as my sister, or if my sister running down to my parent's bedroom brought the breathing ghost with her and that's when my mum heard it. Regardless, there was this ghost/spirit/whatever in our house doing this deep, heavy breathing and it was naturally freaking us all out.
My mum rung up my dad at the pub and told him to get home (he would usually stay there to very late). When he arrived he went through the house (with us all in tow), opening up every closet and door, trying to find what was making the noise (it had stopped by the time he came home). I remember he had a cricket bat (or golf club or something) in his hand, so I imagine he thought it was an intruder or, more likely, an animal of some kind. He never found anything and I don't think he believed it was a ghost. My dad, in fact, never experienced it himself for several months and I don't think he appreciated all the talk about it being a ghost. My dad had quite a temper back in those days and had been physically abusive to my mother earlier in their marriage. My mum recently told me that he got so bad living on the farm that she thought he was being possessed by the ghost.
Before we went back to bed that night, we got our outdoor dog (a dachshund mix) and tried to get him to come inside. What is probably my most vivid memory of that night, is our dog standing at the door where we were trying to get him to come inside and refusing to budge. He was visibly frightened and he would just not come inside (which was very strange because even though he was an outdoor dog, he was allowed inside the house.) I think that freaked me out that night more than anything else.
Anyway, the rest of the night was uneventful. But this was a somewhat regular occurrence. Maybe every month or so we would hear the deep heavy breathing. It may not sound that scary but for a young child like myself it was terrifying. I think living in a house where the nearest neighbor is a couple kilometers away magnifies the feeling of isolation and makes it scarier too.
My own scariest experience that I can remember is this. It was evening (sometime between 6-9pm I would imagine), and my mum was away. I think she may have even been at a church that evening trying to get help regarding our ghost problem. I was in my bedroom reading some book on King Arthur and my siblings and dad were at the other end of the house watching a rugby game on TV. I was in bed and suddenly I heard the breathing come from the corner of the bedroom that was opposite my bed. I remember being frozen with terror and thinking to myself, "If I pretend like I didn't hear it, it will leave me alone." Unfortunately, that did not happen.
After a few more instances of the breathing, I jumped out of bed and ran to the lounge and told my dad what happened. Even though I was crying and obviously scared witless, he started yelling at me to get back to bed and didn't want to hear anything about it. My siblings didn't say anything to stand up for me, even though they knew what I was going through. So I pretended to go back to bed by walking through the kitchen (which is connected to the lounge), but then I just opened and closed the kitchen door without actually walking through it. I hid under the table in the kitchen until my mum got home and then told her what happened, and she was irate with my dad and his response (or lack thereof).
My siblings and myself didn't (as far as I know) experience much else other than the breathing. Though my brother was sleeping in a tent outside our house one night and was woken up by a voice outside the tent saying something like, "Who are you? What are you doing here?" He came screaming outside and never slept outside in the tent again.
My mum, however, bore the brunt of the ghost's activity. During the day when she would be home by herself, she would feel a cold presence encircle her in the kitchen. When this would happen she would go outside and stay there until we came home from school or dad would come in from working the farm. She didn't tell us kids this would happen at the time; it wasn't until I was a teenager that she told me about that.
One other memory I remember well is this one time we were in the lounge and my mum got a call on the telephone. She went through to the hallway to speak on the phone. My siblings and I were in the lounge the entire time, but after her call finished she came back into the lounge yelling at us, wanting to know who it was who snuck up behind her and started whispering, "mummy." None of us left the room throughout the duration of her call. I was somewhat recently talking to my mum about the haunting and I brought up this story. She remembered it in the same detail that I did, except she is positive that dad was in the lounge with us too, while I had always remember him as being out working the farm while this happened. Funny how memory works.
Here is something my mum didn't tell me until a few years after we moved off of the farm: A month or so prior to the ghostly activities beginning, she woke up in the middle of the night to an angel standing by her bed (she assumes it was an angel because it was shining being). She swears she was definitely awake and it was not a dream. She says that it touched her and said something like, "Don't worry, everything will be OK." She didn't know what to think of it at the time, but in retrospect it looks like it may have been some guardian angel or a nice spirit letting her know that despite what was about to happen to our family, we would not be seriously harmed.
More recently, just a couple years ago, I was talking to my mum again about the haunting. (Strangely enough, no one in my family every talked about it once we moved out of that house, though I talked to my mum a few times over the years and talked to my sister really briefly about it a couple years ago, though she doesn't like talking about it because it still gives her the creeps.) Anyway, my mum told me a couple stories that I'm glad she never told me while we still lived out there. She said one night she awoke and the breathing ghost was creeping alongside the bed. Her arm was hanging out of the bed and she said when the breathing got very close, she felt something tug on her arm. Even to this day, about 20 years later, she says she will never sleep with her arms or legs hanging out of the bed.
Also, she told me that one day she had an ominous feeling about my sister. So she slept in her room that night. She awoke during the night to the ghost trying to strangle her. She said she just closed her eyes and kept thinking about how good will always defeat evil, and then eventually it stopped. She didn't tell us this happened at the time, for obvious reasons.
There are lots more stories of this house I could share. Some of them I have forgotten after all these years. As I've mentioned, we moved out a week after I turned 9, and thankfully it didn't follow us. My mum was always positive that if we could move out of the house, we would be OK. She didn't know why she thought this but it turns out she was right. Though a few years after we moved, I did have a few instances where I awoke in the night, paralyzed, and could feel an evil entity standing by my bed and, on a couple occasions, sitting down on the bed. I know about sleep paralysis, however, and so I'm not sure whether it really happened or if it was just my mind playing tricks on me. I guess I kind of hope it wasn't a ghost and that it was just my mind.
A couple things in particular I noticed about our haunting is that it always seemed to occur after a fight/argument had happened, and that playing gospel music only seemed to irritate the ghost and made it louder.
We had a church minister come to our house along with some of the parishioners (some type of Protestant church). I wasn't there but my mum told me that they were all seated around the kitchen table and could all feel a cold presence circling the table. My mum was able to get holy water from the local Catholic Church. The priest himself was not allowed to help us directly, but he told her that whenever the ghost did something, to go around the house and sprinkle every room and walk around the house outside sprinkling it too, while saying some sort of prayer. It seemed to keep things at bay temporarily, but I guess I don't know if the holy water and prayers actually did anything or if it was just coincidence.
The reason I'm posting this story after all these years is because my mum contacted me last year and told me the breathing ghost was back. She has heard it a few times. I prayed for her (and she got a medium who deals with this sort of thing to pray as well), and it has apparently not reoccurred. Strangely, my mum's twin brother was staying with them at the time and I feel like his presence may have somehow set it off again. My wife and I recently went and stayed at my parents place for a couple weeks (we live in a different country and so don't get to see them that much), but neither of us felt anything strange or heard anything.
One more thing I will add is that this whole experience left an undeniable effect on us (well at least me and my sister). I've never talked to my brother about it, but I suspect he just tried to forget about it all. My sister and I, however, had a lasting fear of the dark. For several years after we moved off of the farm, I was terrified of the dark and would sleep under my covers every single night, being so afraid of looking out into the darkness of my room and seeing something. If I had to get up in the night to use the bathroom, I turned on every single light along the way (seven of them). I had recurring nightmares for several years too, all of which invariably involved our moving back to the farm house. My sister also was afraid of the dark for years and never went to bed at night unless she had a light on (or the TV or radio), and she was like this until she moved in with her husband.
I often still think about the whole experience and wonder why it happened to us and what it was exactly.
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