When my family moved from New York City to small town in southern Westchester County, I was incredibly unhappy. But when I saw the house we were moving into, I was despondent. The house looked like what every second grade girl imagines a haunted house to look like. The house was a massive home on top of a hill with a menacing stone wall around. Built in the 1890s, it had only had 3 or 4 owners when we bought it--one of whom had done a criminally terrible job of renovating the mansion in the 1970s. They had destroyed all the turn of the century details and glamour the house had once possessed. I hated the house. Unlike our cozy apartment, this place had rambling rooms, servants' quarters, and "creepy" nooks.
Not long after we moved in, my parents began a massive renovation project. They ripped down walls, restored the parquet floors, and generally brought the house back to its original glory. Around this time was my first ghostly encounter. Feelings of being watched had started as soon as we moved in--of course no one believed a scared little girl. When the ceiling light in my bathroom crashed down, narrowly missing me, my parents dismissed it as a pure accident except the light fixture had four screws that had to be undone at the same time to get it off.
My bedroom was in the eastern wing of the house. One day, I was doing homework, listening to the radio on my massive boom box. This boom box had a huge knob on the very front, about a foot away from my bed where I was working. As I lay there, the radio volume began to turn down. As I watched, I could see the volume knob turn and the screen show the numbers decrease. Needless to say, I sprinted down to the kitchen.
Our house was L shaped, with a library on the second floor of the outside corner of the L. One night, home alone, watching TV in the library, I clearly saw someone walk past the door. Assuming I was hallucinating, or had watched too much TV, I tried to ignore it. But I looked at both of my cats who were sitting on the couch. They were intensely staring at the doorway, their fur on end. Later, they refused to leave the room even to eat. Needless to say, I was a little shaken up.
Sometime in high school, in a fit of teenage angst, I moved into the servants' wing of the house. One night, I woke to see a white shape that I assumed was my mother in her white bathrobe standing at the foot of my bed watching me. "Fine...I'm getting up", I mumbled and rolled over to check the clock...3am, why on earth would she be in my room at 3 am? Looking back, the shape was gone. In the morning, she denied she'd been in my room.
My house had a lot of other strange phenomenon: bad feelings in one of the other servant's rooms, cold spots, missing objects, etc but those were the main events. Overall, I believe my house was haunted. I think when we first moved in; the ghost/spirit of the original owner (who was rumored to have seen the house as her pride and joy) was upset with the way it was being maintained. After we finished a total renovation and restoration of the house, I never saw the ghost or felt a presence ever again. I suppose the ghost liked what we did with the place!
We moved out when I was in college. Although I hated the house at first, I was very sad when we finally left.
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Thank you for sharing.
Dan