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Old Farmer Or Slave?

 

I've never considered myself to be sensitive to ghosts or spirits and I've never held a firm believe in whether they exist or not but I have always considered myself to be objective.

The events that have taken place since moving to our current home have led me to think I'm not alone here.

In 2014 we purchased the closest thing to our dream house our budget would allow. It's a very old farmhouse that had been through several renovations make it move it ready. This house was the homestead for the neighboring acreage about 100 years ago.

My first experience at this house was right after we bought it. I stopped up with some things that needed to be taken into the home before we moved in. I pulled into the driveway, put my car in park and was immediately overcome with the feeling that there was an old farm man in my back seat. It was so real to me that I refused to look in my rear view mirror. In my mind's eye I could see every detail about the man, his sandy grey hair, bright but sad blue eyes, his worn denim coveralls and tattered flannel shirt. I worked to gather my thoughts and got out of the car without looking at him or accidentally interacting with him.

While preparing to move in we needed to replace the furnace. A friend does this professionally and offered to help us. As this home once had a large double fireplace in the center we have a huge chimney that runs through the center of the house. While working on the furnace I noticed a small wooden boxed structure had been build to one side of the chimney. This box had a small rectangle "window" about a foot across and 7 inches tall at about chest height. As soon as I saw it I had bad feelings. I made a joke that the box was where they kept prisoners and the window was the way they were given scraps of food until they eventually died. (probably my imagination but again this little space felt wrong)

Not long after we moved in I began waking EVERY NIGHT at exactly 3:05 AM. It happens less during the warmer months but it happens a few times a week during the winter. For that 2-3 weeks I have woken at exactly 4:22 am to go to the bathroom (Note: we've not had our daylight savings time so it's equivalent to 3:22 during the winter.) Sometimes I feel like somebody's watching me in bed and sometimes the closet along the chimney (almost above the creepy basement box) appears darker than on other nights.

The dogs act strange sometimes. We have 2 small Chihuahuas in our old house they would only bark when someone came to the door. Since we've moved in here they will go to the laundry room door and bark into the dark at nothing. We've made sure the cats were not in that room and that the windows were covered, we can not explain it. Note: The laundry room is on old stone building that likely predates the home and could have been a summer kitchen or milk room on the old farmstead.

Remember the creeping box in the basement? Well closets are located above it on all the floors of the home. When the dogs are in my son's room on the second floor the are nervous and want to be held constantly, more than normal, if you won't hold them they will sit on the bed and stare or bark into the closet that is above the creepy basement box thing.

One last thing... Our foundation is made of stacked stone with the exception of one corner of the basement that is stacked concrete block. We thought it was odd that one section be a lot newer then the rest of the basement. One day a neighbor mentioned the home had been part of the underground railroad and the former owner had closed the opening in the basement where the salves would hide under the road outside of the home's foundation.

I'm sorry I've arranged this as more of a list of observations then a narrative. We've been here almost 2 years now and the dogs have settled a bit but I'm still waking up at night feeling like I'm being watched.

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Comments about this paranormal experience

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, 2drgns, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

RedWolf (31 stories) (1292 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-11-16)
2drgns,

I would suggest that you do investigate the history of your house as Pandora and Biblio have suggested. If the house was built before the Revolutionary War, where the British would confiscate houses therefore there was an escape hatch for the wife and children of men that went to war. There would be a tunnel into the woods. During the Civil war people who would be a part of the under ground Rail Road had the same thing. My husbands cousin had bought a house in Conn. Had a door in the basement that looked like a root cellar or a place to keep meat cool (rock walls) but there was a hidden door for slaves to escape through.

The man you could sense in your car and pictured in your mind could have been a past owner. As far as the sadness you sensed in him could be because he suffered a great loss, or he died leaving a wife and children behind. If you have a large property look around to see if you can find grave markers. Don't disturb the grave but saying a prayer over the grave would be a good thing, so would placing or planting flowers by it would give the man peace of mind to cross over.

Regards
Red
Pandora_PDX (23 posts)
 
8 years ago (2016-11-13)
Old houses are still the best. They have sooooooo much more character, and are built sooooo much better & more sturdy than newer constructs. I'd still take the old historic (possibly haunted) house. (Not that a brand new home can't also be haunted, as the land can affect it). But hey... At least you have a cool, old house. I really would take an old one ANY day. 😊
Bibliothecarius (9 stories) (1091 posts)
+1
8 years ago (2016-11-12)
Greetings, 2drgns, and welcome to YGS.

The basement box structure containing a peculiarly-sized window: Is it like a periscope which would allow glimpses through the window into the upper floors of the house? Is it a cabinet of some kind, with a larger space behind it, such that someone may hide in that area? Is there a secret staircase/ladder disguised within the structure of the chimney (as in the House of Seven Gables in Salem, Mass)?

You freely admit that you've listed information here instead of structuring a narrative, which I think is perfectly acceptable; you're describing your discomfort and the behavior of your agitated dogs, so there's a lot going through your head. However, in your eagerness to include as many of the listed items as possible, not all of your descriptions are clear enough to give you sound advice other than looking into the history, as Pandora suggested. My New England farmhouse has a quite narrow chimney, as it was built in 1862-63, and the underground railroad had been supplanted by running hell-for-leather away from the battles of the Civil War; I'm still having difficulty in organizing the spacial arrangements of the chest-height wall-mounted box in the basement, the opening or window within it, and the arrangement of the closets near/around the fireplace. Don't forget that the easiest way to disguise a hidden space is to put it in the middle of the house and offset all of the other areas around it so no-one can spot the "missing" space by walking from one room to the next and notice that the dimensions don't match.

Please respond with some clarification, so that we can be of more help.

Best,
Biblio.
Pandora_PDX (23 posts)
+3
8 years ago (2016-11-11)
I guarantee you if there's slave stuff connected, that the energy associated, is there. (I still can't believe people did this to one another. All across the globe, every race to one another)...
But African slaves being held or hidden there is just heart breaking. You gotta do some serious time at the library and see what's up with the history of your place. Almost guaranteed to have something. Especially if your neighbor is right. As old as it is, there has to be deaths as well.
Not a super exciting story, but I bet there's some history there. Let us know if anything else happens. Stay safe!

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