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Sharing The House I Grew Up In

 

I grew up in a small town in South Australia. I have two younger siblings, a brother and a sister. My parents were typical working class, and purchased a "fixer upper" home circa 1930s, when I was small. It had a very old looking second bedroom and a long, old fashioned room that served as a playroom for me, until my younger brother and sister came along and it was redesigned into two rooms. I remember seeing the door to this old playroom fling open on its own more than once, and also recall being in the room and feeling an overwhelming feeling of panic, screaming for daddy to come and get me.

All three of us were poor sleepers as babies, me being the worst. As a small child I remember being terrified of half of the house. We all at one stage slept in the same room at the front of the house, and all of us were scared of the people in the room, or as my brother told me once "I keep seeing the faces".

There was always a lot of activity in that house. There was one particular spirit that seemed attached to the property, who we started seeing more strongly when I was around 12, although I do remember him earlier than this. He would lurk in the second hallway of the home, around a perimeter that circled the inner fireplace, which we thought made sense being believers in the spiritual, and also knowing this to be the oldest part of the original home. He was a big man, gave the feeling of being a labourer of some form, and my mum often saw him walk past her in the kitchen, turning around to talk to my dad before realising that he wasn't home, and this was our ghost friend.

I have the ghost the nickname "Sampson"- a play on our street name. We never directly spoke to him, and he never hurt us or I feel meant to scare us, although I never once slept well in that house. Even my dad, a non believer at the time, reported seeing the same big man's shadow through the windows, and to him the presence appeared as a man outside, whom he often investigated fearing an intruder, only to find no one there. My mum asked a psychic about the spirit, and she said he was attached to the house not to us, and he meant no harm, and to not worry about trying to send him away.

The house was always cold, and although I was less scared as I got older, and stopped seeing Sampson as a shadow at my bedroom door, he was still there as a shadow out the corner of your eye, and there was always a feeling of coldness and sadness in the house.

Our family has since moved on from the property, but one of the new owners has mentioned to my sister that she always feels watched.

It recently came to our knowledge that prior to my parents buying the house, a man hung himself in the living room, right in front of the fireplace that seemed to be a central point for all the activity. This poor man is likely our "Sampson". We did make a point of saying goodbye to the home and to the spirit, but I feel bad now that we never made the effort to try and move him on, or to cleanse the house before we left.

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

Lealeigh (5 stories) (512 posts)
 
5 years ago (2019-09-12)
This story brings me back to 25 years ago when my cousin was staying with us in my Grandmother's house.
She said that she saw a face reflected in the glass of the window at night. So did I, but I had learned by that time not to look at the windows at night and just go to sleep.
My Grandmother wouldn't allow us to close the curtains because she said it made her house look sloppy from the outside.
It was the faint reflection of a man reflected from the inside of the room and it wasn't always there. Nothing in the room could account for it.
I was thirteen and she was eleven. It was as if he was sitting on the floor because I could only see him from the shoulders up.
Bibliothecarius (9 stories) (1091 posts)
+2
5 years ago (2019-08-04)
Greetings, BiancaB, and welcome to YGS.

First, I'd like to reassure you that your family did nothing wrong in letting Sampson remain. You state that "I feel bad now that we never made the effort to try and move him on, or to cleanse the house before we left." You did not have sufficient knowledge at the time to determine whether or not he needed help; now that you know more about the situation, it is too late for you to do anything directly. You have to let that fact go instead of blaming yourself afterwards.

Two ideas come to mind: 1) If your sister is still friendly with the new residents, you may wish to have her tell them that Sampson died under sad circumstances. 2) If Sampson was sad or depressed when he died, that wouldn't necessarily correlate to some of the other experiences your family had; the new family may wish to keep Sampson around, for reasons I'll explain in the following paragraphs.

Your brother said "I keep seeing the faces," which is -obviously- more than one face. The violence with which the playroom door opened does not sound like it is compatible with Sampson's quiet trips around the inside and outside of your home. Sampson may have been a suicidal man, but that doesn't automatically make him a *bad* person. After he died, he may have realized the scope of the paranormal activity in the home and decided to stay to protect the next set of residents.

Suicide is a tragedy for those who are left behind, as it seems like the only hope of peace to the suicidal person; it is not often that the suicidal person wants anyone else to suffer, merely that he or she cannot continue in pain. Sampson's presence was probably a good counter-balance to the effects of the other supernatural activities in that home.

Best,
Biblio.

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