Ever wondered who lived in your house before?

[PC Gaijin]

So I was playing the SFC version of Clock Tower late last night. It's a damn creepy game that I would recommend you check out if you're looking for freaky survival horror (I thought it was a lot scarier than games like RE or Silent Hill). Anyway, after I finished I went around to lock all the doors in my house before going to bed and started thinking about the house I live in.

It's actually the house I grew up in. My father passed away awhile back and I inherited it, so I've been living here the past year and a half. It is fairly old being built back in the 1880s, or at least my father thought that was when it was built. I do remember finding newspapers from the 1880s stuffed in the walls for insulation when my father was restoring the house about 20 years ago. It's also big with five bedrooms, 15 foot ceilings, Victorian style, etc. As a kid all my friends were afraid of the house and didn't want to stay over night. It didn't help that we lived way out in the sticks and coyotes would come up late at night and holler. Actually, the coyotes still do that even though more people live out here than 20-25 years ago, haha.

My older sister was into horror/ghosts/spooky stuff back then, and she always tried to engage me in conversation about how creepy our house was. I never cared about that kind of thing so I was just like, "sorry sis, this isn't the house in The Shining, let's move on." However, I started wondering last night about who lived in this house before? It IS over a hundred years old so lots of people must have lived here at one time or another. Whatever happened to those folks? Who died in the house? I know my father passed away at home, so that's at least one. I've never believed in ghosts or the supernatural, but it is something to think about. Who lived in YOUR house before you? Especially really old houses, like maybe some in the east or northeast that are hundreds of years old?

[Keranu]

Clock Tower is a sweet game .

Anyways, my house is freaky as hell. It was built in the 1880's I believe and the person who lived here before was a real nut case and swore the house was haunted. I've had my share of ghost experiences many times in this house and I can testify that some of these cases (like seeing a actual ghost) were before I even knew about the previous owner being crazy about them, though I knew she was an odd person when I first met her.

The usual ghost case I seem to get is objects falling out of no where (once even a very strong and stury bookshelf that had been up for months just collapsed out of no where while I was in the room using the computer), the sounds of people walking up and down the staircase when no one is there, various creak/walking sounds, and more recently, the feeling of someone actually standing on the top steps of the stairway when walking up it at night (one night I SWORE someone was there and I even said "Whoa, excuse me" until I noticed no one was actually there).

For the time I actually did see a ghost, it was around 1am. As I turned the corner to enter the kitchen, straight dead on two rooms away I see a light-like, ghostly figure floating in the middle of the room. My body felt as if it were just stunned in place and I stared at this object for some seconds, until it started to slowly float away to the left until I couldn't see it anymore because the wall covered it's vision. I was way too freaked out to go in there and look around, so I made my way up to my bedroom as I originally planned.

Now here's the freaky part about this. I later found out from my mom and brother who commonly talked to the previous owner because this house was kind of a big part of her life, that this woman was so crazy about ghosts that she actually sprayed holy water on the walls in the room where I saw the ghost. The reason for this? Because it happens to be known that the room I saw the ghost in was actually built ON TOP of a very small graveyard back from the 1800's or earlier. My town is very old and we have quite a few graveyards around and they aren't far apart.

I described the ghost as "light-like", because it seemed like the figure was made of light. The reason why I don't think it actually was light was because it's shape seemed something impossible to make with light from the light source and windows in the room, this figure as I like to call was a bit distored human shape, it had a more pointed head, arms that kind of swayed to the right side, and no legs, but a tail kind of thing that swayed to the right side. When I examined the room, I checked the windows and looked for any light source that could have caused this. Because of how the windows were placed, no light goes directly straight ahead into the window, instead the light source is located to the right of the window, which means it couldn't have caused this figure to make it's arms and tail sway to the right, it would have to be to the left because of this.

When the figure moved to the left, you could assume it was a car that caused this. Because of the time, cars usually aren't driving at this time and when they are, the go faster than how the light was actually moving and it must've stopped right before my house for awhile. I do not recall any cars during this sighting, I think I would've known about them.

There are many ghost-reported experiences in my town, I even knew a kid who would talk to the previous owner of my house before I moved in and he talked about ghost stuff with her before. Very freaky indeed.

[Ninja Spirit]

One shocking fact I know about my house (considering that I'm black) was that it was built in 1972, and Pagans and KKK lived in there before us. My dad said he found pentagrams spraypainted in the closets.

[PCEngineHell]

One shocking fact about our house is that no one haunts it but us,and the only pentagrams drawn on the walls are from my children

[Dark Fact]

I think now is a good time to refer to an expert on this matter:

HE WHO TELLS IT LIKE IT IS!!!

[OldRover]

The house I grew up in was built in 1851, so needless to say, it's seen a lot of people come and go. The house I live in now though...I have no idea of its history.

[PC Gaijin]

Interesting link Dark Fact. I forgot to mention in my original post that I'm a big skeptic of things like the paranormal and conspiracy theory. I just like to read about those topics. I would have to actually experience a paranormal event before I'd ever believe it. For example, I think if something like what Keranu described happened to me...well, I'd definitely move.

[esteban]

The house I grew up in was built in ~1920's -early 30's and I have little knowledge of the previous owners... except that they had a fondness for advocado-green and lemon-yellow formica when they updated their kitchen in the early 70's.

My current home was built in 1941 and we purchased it from the original owners... who we *kinda* got to know (as much as you can when bidding on a house, etc.). The previous owner, Alex, did a lot of home renovations himself, and we found several areas where "Alex loves June" was written (behind kitchen cabinets... "I love June" is etched in the cement behind the flowerbeds) and stuff like that.

We adopted June's cat Tommy, who lived in the garage (though now he spends a lot of his time indoors). In fact, we really, really think that the reason our bid was accepted was due to the fact that we love cats and that we said we would take care of Tommy. We know other couples were interested in the house and made bids...

Anyway, June was going to come back and visit Tommy and her old home a few years ago... but I think it was too emotional (or depressing) and she cancelled on us. So we send her pictures of Tommy for Christmas -- just so she knows that he is doing well .

I know her husband Alex died, which prompted her to sell her home, and every so often I wonder if he died in the house (and if so, where, and under what circumstances). It's kind of morbid, or macabre, but sometimes I wonder about it.

[Keranu]

Freaky, but I think I know the answer....

June MURDERED Alex in their own home!

[OldRover]

One shocking fact I know about my house (considering that I'm black) was that it was built in 1972, and Pagans and KKK lived in there before us. My dad said he found pentagrams spraypainted in the closets.

Likely neither...the KKK doesn't tend to use Pentagrams (not from my research anyways), and Pagans use a pentacle, not a pentagram. Plus you'd never have a pagan and a KKK member living together. Sounds like it was lived in by cultists.

[GUTS]

^^ or kids, hell I used to draw swastikas all the time when I was young because I thought they looked cool.  That was back in the 80s though when everybody wasn't a crybaby and people just said "hey that's not a good symbol to draw" instead of "Oh my god you need help!  Get him some medication!!".

[Ninja Spirit]

OK miscommunication here. I asked my dad about the whole thing recently and I heard wrong. He said he saw "KKK" painted on the street in front of my house, and yeah nodtveidt you're right cultists lived in there and had symbolism all over some of the walls.

Before I was born (1982) the house was a total wreck.

[OldRover]

Correct swastika:


Nazi Germany's perversion of the swastika:


Anyways...cultists suck. They make such a mess of everything.

PS: Get me some medication!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111oneoneoneone

[Keranu]

^^ or kids, hell I used to draw swastikas all the time when I was young because I thought they looked cool.  That was back in the 80s though when everybody wasn't a crybaby and people just said "hey that's not a good symbol to draw" instead of "Oh my god you need help!  Get him some medication!!".

Haha, yep those were the days. Don't forget another line people use these days, "You have serious issues!", though that one is starting to get dated, that was more of a 1999 thing. Now it's medicine as you said.

[MotherGunner]

Most of the time you can trace records of who lived in the house through city or county records.  Doing a little research can help.

[GUTS]

Remember back when you could take toy guns to school too?  Man I remember lugging around this huge M-16 looking squirt gun all over the neighborhood back when I was real young, it didn't even have the little red tip and it looked damn real (at least I remember it looking real, I was a lil tyke though so who knows how it really looked).  I feel bad for kids who didn't grow up in the 80s or before, it seems like it would suck balls to grow up now.

[Keranu]

The millenium can blow me.

[esteban]

Remember back when you could take toy guns to school too?  Man I remember lugging around this huge M-16 looking squirt gun all over the neighborhood back when I was real young, it didn't even have the little red tip and it looked damn real (at least I remember it looking real, I was a lil tyke though so who knows how it really looked).  I feel bad for kids who didn't grow up in the 80s or before, it seems like it would suck balls to grow up now.

I don't remember anyone at my schools bringing guns, but we certainly had fun playing with them in the neighborhood. I thought many of them looked very realistic (as you said, we were kids). I loved going to the surplus stores and getting all the old army belts, pouches, decorative pins, hand grenades (they bored out a hole in the bottom and removed the explosives, of course), etc.

When my parents gave me the hand grenade, I almost died. It was the koolest thing in the world, as far as I was concerned. It even included the tab and pin at the top (to detonate it)...

The funny thing is that my obsession with the military when I was a kid (I memorized weapon specs for cannons, guns and mortars!) eventually led me to read tons of war history (my dad would bring home a new book every few days, it seemed), which led me to develop a much more critical view of the military and weapons industry.

I don't know if kids today would be allowed to bring in a real hand-grenade for show-and-tell. Man, that was one of the best days .

[PC Gaijin]

My dad had one of those hand grenades when I was kid. I was poking around the attic one day with a friend, and my friend found the grenade in a box. He pulled the pin, and I thought we were going to die. It had been bored out though as stevek666 described. When I was a kid there were weapons and ammo all over our house. My father was retired from the military and collected guns (besides, he grew up a country boy hunting his whole life, etc.). None of the guns were locked up, and I knew where they all were and could easily get my hands on them. My father always drilled gun safety into my head as far back as I can remember though, so I was never tempted to fool around with them.

[esteban]

My father always drilled gun safety into my head as far back as I can remember though, so I was never tempted to fool around with them.

Yeah, that's the most important thing. If there's one thing that the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts did effectively, it was helping me and a bunch of my dumb-ass friends to be responsible around guns -- even BB guns. As far as the camping thing -- well let's just say that you shouldn't spray PAM (or was it WD-40?) near a fire . And let's just say it is somewhat scary to share a tent with a dumb-ass who kept a bunch of candy bars in his sleeping bag ("for a late-night snack") when it should have been up in the trees with the rest of the food (bears).

[GUTS]

Haha yeah gun safety was a huge thing for me too, my brother and I had it drilled into us at a young age when we got some weak ass Daisy BB guns.  The first time I ever shot a gun with someone else I was blown away by how retarded they were with the gun, all swinging it around and shit, I thought everybody was taught to always point it up unless you're shooting and NEVER even for a second point it at anything living.

[Keranu]

I stay far away from guns because I know I will do something crazy with one by pointing it near my face due to obsessive compulsion.