Now, I'll hit the things that have happened in my waking life and have absolutely no association with sleep what-so-ever. I'm also only mentioning things that I encountered and not things that my mom said happened in my baby time, because I can't validate those with my own feelings. If I wasn't present, then I don't really count it. The previous post in this series is Dreams Part 3. We'll talk about Kingston because that was a super creepy house. I also believe it to be a portal house. It was the house my mother grew up in and the one my grandmother moved out of in 1984/1985. A Georgian Revival from about the 1870s or 1880s. My grandparents moved into it in about 1950. I don't know how old I was, but I was still sleeping in a crib, because I specifically remember the bars. I don't know if I could move and just didn't, or if I was so young that I couldn't sit up yet. I only remember my limited view being straight up at the ceiling and also I could see through a portion of the bars near the top. I remember hearing noise above me through the ceiling. I also remember feeling like there was someone else in the room that was awake. A fourth person and not the same feeling as my mom or dad. The kitchen and dining room were connected by a small passage; the butler's pantry. My view of this room is limited because at the time I couldn't see it clearly. There were deep recesses on either side and a bright light coming from the ceiling to the right (if I was in the kitchen). The light was only concentrated right where it emitted and couldn't penetrate the rest of the area. The left side was in complete darkness. The feeling was oppressive, fear, trapped, and harm. If I was told to leave the kitchen to go play somewhere else in the house or to go and fetch something, I stood at the entryway into the butler's pantry for what felt like hours. I specifically wouldn't look to the left, only straight ahead through the other entry into the dining room; willing myself to move through the space, but yet I wouldn't. I'd practically beg someone to walk me through. Sometimes they did. If they didn't, I would only run through, because they adults got mad and agitated that I wasn't going. The feelings intensified while in the passageway and from the left it felt like long black bony skeletal hands reaching out to touch me. From the dining room, a long hallway blocked your way to either the playroom, the downstairs bathroom (attached to the playroom) or to the front sitting rooms. The problem with the hallway was never the right side (towards the front sitting rooms), it was to the left, directly past the playroom door and all the way down the hallway to the backdoor. The feeling was dark and heavy and foreboding down the left side, and much brighter and airier towards the left. The single light was in the middle of the hallway and there was no exterior light was flooding in though their were transoms. The specific creepiness was this chest down from the playroom door (which I later learned was the Victrola. I'd never opened it because it creeped me out so bad and it was a non-descript chest. Even in the non creepy basement at my grandmothers new house, the room it was in was the only creepy part about the basement, and that room felt creepy before I ventured in and new that chest was in there.), also the back stairs and the closet under the stairs. Both the back stairs and the closet felt about the same as the butlers pantry; oppressive, fear, trapped, and harm. I hated having to go up the back staircase and I hated if the closet door was left open. The energy felt feminine; scared and trapped and masculine; danger and harm. I'd be gotten if I went in there. I'd always stand there are the entrance to the hallway (either from the dining room or from the playroom) for a long time. Willing myself to cross the hall, but not doing so. Eventually begging someone to escort me across, always with the adult getting upset at me. Out the back door was a porch, you went down the few steps, turned to the right and back again and there was a small door to the root cellar. Inside my grandmother did keep some root cellar type things, but there was also an electrical box and utilities that had been crammed in there long after the house was built. There was a thing that lived in the root cellar. It wasn't just old energy like the butlers pantry, closet, or back staircase, or possible ghosts. It was a round furry black shape with teeth and red eyes. It didn't fill the space, but it wasn't little either. Probably bigger than my four year old self, smaller than my thirty-eight year old self. It lived in the far back corner and the feeling was of hunger. I never went in by myself, but I feel like it would have eaten me. The playhouse, which later I would learn was the servants quarters and laundry area. The entire building was pretty spooky feeling. It was slightly divided in the center and the space closest to the entrance had been the laundry area. It was brighter and less spooky. The other side had been the sleeping area and was always dark in light and feeling and it was just like the back staircase, the closet, and the butler's pantry. The garage was also, for lack of a better word, supernaturally dark, though both garage doors would be open and it was a bright day and some sort of sunlight should be getting in, it's like it just couldn't go very far. Just the other day I was helping my dad look for something in our garage and it reminded me of this. Only one garage door here was open and the sunlight penetrated at least 5 feet into the garage and the rest was darker as it wasn't being lit up, but you could still make out the shelving units and such and it just seemed like a garage would normally feel and look. Dark in those places but not D A R K. No, when I say the light wouldn't penetrate these rooms and spaces, that's exactly what I mean. Where the angling of the light and the lack of trees should mean that the light could come in 1/4 - 1/2 way, it would only go in by mere inches and not feet. And the darkness was too dark. You didn't feel creeped out because it was too dark, you felt creeped out because the darkness held something creepy. It's a big difference. I never went inside the garage and it wasn't opened enough, but it felt different than the other spaces where you would feel trapped and that harm would come to you. I honestly can't remember exactly how the space felt, unlike these other spaces, because I didn't experience it very often. Twice maybe. But it didn't feel nice. Not erratic or hungry like the things in the library closet or the root cellar. More subdued. Almost like if you let your guard down, that's when it would strike. I also couldn't tell you if this was residual energy/ghost or a thing. The library, which at the time just held the twin bed set that I own now (one of the beds is what I sleep in), and was my aunts room while she was growing up, but apparently was originally the library. I didn't like that room, but more specifically what lurked in the closet. The door had never been opened for me or by me, but I could feel it in there. It was cagey like a wild animal, sensing I was there and wanting to get at me. I could see in my minds eye that it was a skinny black shape with a huge, crazy, grinning mouth, and bug eyes. Once while visiting my grandmother, she trooped me up the front stairs and directly to the left was the library door, which always stood open (all the main doors did). She sat me down right at the entrance to that room, opened the closet door. The light of the room would only penetrate two inches in, unlike the closets in the other bedrooms, and there was a lot of day light coming into the library that day. She pulled down a tin, wind-up dancing toy. I didn't realize it was horrible in the sense of its racism, as it was Be Bop The Jivin Jigger. It was a black man with racist black face. It's really quite terrible. I didn't see it as a black person though, as an African American. No, I saw a long, skinny, human figure with black skin, popping eyes and a crazy grinning mouth. It was like she was pulling the thing that lived in the closet outside in some horrible toy form. Also, this is the first time I'd ever seen this toy, was on this particular day. She turned him on and he was doing his dance, she left the closet door open, and she left me alone with the crazy dancing thing and the crazy thing in the closet. I remember being frozen. I could only look straight out the door across to hall to what had been my mothers room. Looking with only my eyes towards the stairs wondering when grandma would come back up. Looking with only my eyes towards the closet and hoping thing wouldn't come out. I knew, as in a feeling inside me, that if I stepped one hair over the threshold into that closet it would snatch me. If this dancing thing stopped dancing, it could come out and get me. There was one breath of space where he stopped dancing, the feelings from the closet escalated, and my grandmother made the top step. The thing receded back into the depths of the closet, my grandmother put the dancing toy away, shut the door and led me downstairs. And still to this day I have no idea what that was all about. Was my grandmother testing limits? Did she just run to check on lunch and come back in the nick of time? It felt so... staged. Like she was testing something. My grandmother felt things, but denied that such things existed because they scared her so much. She greatly disliked that house. She greatly loved me. She was also sort of crazy, not delusional in making paranormal things up, but crazy because she couldn't deal with the torment. I didn't know it at the time, but later I would find out that after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother experienced phenomena in his bedroom (they had separate bedrooms - they were born in 1898 and 1909, and weren't marrying their first loves and getting married's just what you did. A marriage of convenience and not love.) and would keep the door closed and locked. That was in 1978. After I was born, she bought The Sister a cardboard and plastic (but official) Barbie Penthouse and when I was old enough to play with it, it was in his old bedroom. I would go up there to play and be by myself. Things would be fine and then I'd get the feeling that I wasn't alone and was being watched. The energy didn't feel bad. Curious and slightly happy, I suppose. But, being so young, just the feeling of being watched in a house full of spooky, I'd always leave quickly. I think it was him though, watching the granddaughter he never met playing with dolls, wishing he could have met me. I didn't know it growing up, but my grandfather was compelled to drive by that house every day for ten years. It was vacant and the heirs weren't selling it. Finally he purchased it, not knowing what the inside looked like and with all the contents included. A lot of those contents now reside in my house; trickling in over the years since about my baby time until my grandmother passed away and her belongings were divvied up between my mom and aunt. I also didn't realize it, but in my thirties mom would talk about how silly and stupid her sister and mom had been when she was growing up. That grandma insisted everyone have a flashlight to turn on just in case, that my aunt, when they were young and shared the library room together, had to have the music box on to go to sleep and if it was forgotten she would scream and cry until my grandmother turned it on. My aunt was also deathly afraid of the library closet. At least as far as my mother knew, which was when they were young and shared the room together. After that she didn't know or care. I didn't mention to her that there was a thing in the closet. Also that my aunt hated the root cellar. Didn't tell mom about the thing in the root cellar or my experience either. It creeps me out that my mother didn't realize that her house was fucking creepy, with five other people did know (grandma, aunt, brother, sister, myself) - hell, my dad probably found it creepy, but he's the type to not talk about stuff, so I don't know for certain. Or the times my sister and I would talk as adults, without her knowing what I'd gone through, she'd describe the creepy feelings of the same places in that house. Which things felt like things and which felt different. Or how the Monster Chair in the hallway wasn't creepy in itself, but it was creepy because it was a monster face in the creepy side of the hallway. Which is how I felt about the Monster Chair that's been in our house since 1985. We love the Monster Chair. It wasn't creepy, it just had a monster face in a sea of creepy. Or how our brother felt the same things in the house and to get my sister to not feel bad, told her that they could hang out in the closet because he knew that if he was there, it wouldn't get her and then maybe she wouldn't be scared anymore. They talked more growing up because they were closer in age. It's not that he felt he had to protect his younger sister from the "supposed" bad things. He could also feel the bad things because he could describe them without knowing her knowledge and he knew that the harming energy was male and only harmed females. With another male there, it wouldn't get her. I don't know where my mom got her information from but apparently the couple who had the house built couldn't have children. They lived in what we called the playroom (it was a nice, large room on the bottom floor with its own bathroom). They let their college age nephews live with them. They slept in the library in the twin beds that I now own. According to her story of unknown sources, the nephews were pretty evil and would lie in wait and then grab and rape the house maids. She listed the sleeping quarters, the butler's pantry, the back staircase and the back closet as the places where the incidents happened. None of us kids ever told our mom the feelings or the places. I just said, escort me and I don't like it and it feels bad. I never described the energy and mom didn't know about my fear of the library closet, the back stairs, the root cellar, the playhouse (laundry/servants), or the closet under the stairs. If she didn't know her house was creepy, then she couldn't have picked up on any negative feelings. Also, what report would list those specifics? Perhaps she could find the owners, or that their nephews lived with them, but what else would a report contain? Did the people who sold the house to my grandfather state some or all of these things? Did he relay the information to my mother? Even if this was the case and he did know about the sexual harassment and rapes, he would never, never, ever have told his daughter. So... ya know, that begs questions. We'll rap this up, but there are a few incidents at the newer house my grandmother had. At Kingston, I slept with my parents in my moms old bedroom, but once she moved, I was given the twin beds in the front right part of this new house. They're antique birds eye maple twin beds with a short dresser and a tall dresser. This is the bedroom set I inherited. These beds when they were in the library at the old house my brother and sister slept in them when visiting. The beds never felt bad, just the library room, the closet, and later after inheriting the set, the mirrors attached to the dressers (which I have since removed and they are stored in a closet here). I felt like I was being watched from them, which is not a feeling I have with most mirrors. It is, if the story is to be believed, the same bed set used by the evil nephews. So, that was my room at the new house. The Sister, The Brother, or The Aunt, when visiting had the adjoining room containing the antique cherry bed set (both items came with the Kingston house). It was the bed set my grandmother used while living at Kingston. One visit, my grandmother thought it would be a treat for me to graduate from the twin beds to the double bed in the other room. I could not sleep in that bed. Not at all. No one ever has any trouble sleeping in the twin beds. Not anyone in our family, nor family friends who've slept in them. But, the cherry bed gave me fits. If the bed could have talked and had hands to physically eject me from the bed, it would have! I moved back to the other room for my remainder of visits to her house. I did mention that one room in the basement. It was right when you came down the stairs and was the first door you'd encounter and the only one on the left. There were no windows in it, unlike the other two rooms or the bathroom. It creeped me out and I would always take a flying leap off the bottom step, sailing past that open doorway and into the rest of the hallway, running until I made it to the Barbie room. I'd run past it to get back up the stairs. It's not that the room didn't have windows. The part of the garage off from that room was really dark and it wasn't creepy, nor was the little closet in the garage. This room was creepy, because of the Victrola. I never knew that the wide, low chest in the creepy hallway was a Victrola, and I couldn't remember what it looked like by the time the lights were turned on in that room and I saw what was in there (at the new house). But every time the lights turned on, my eyes immediately went to the back side corner of the room and landed on that chest. 'I don't know what's in there, but I don't like it' were my thoughts. When it was mentioned there was a Victrola when we were cleaning out the house, I said I wanted it, because I love record players. My aunt took it and said, "You don't want it.", and though she didn't look mean, she looked a little stern or fierce when she said it. My mom was mad because she thinks that her sister just takes anything anyone wants. Then I was asking, so where was the Victrola, I never saw it. When it was said that the chest in the basement was the Victrola and mom said it always resided in the hallway at Kingston, my eyes grew really big and later I told my sister that I'm glad my aunt took it. It's like she knew. 'This is creepy, it's not for you.' Perhaps my aunt, in her brain, doesn't really know what she's doing, but deep inside, she knows. Every single thing that disappeared from the house, that she supposedly took (some things I know she did take, others I don't know for sure), all of it was creepy. Every single bit of it. The gold tone lamp with the rough jewel toned "stones". It was really pretty to look at, but also there was something just really wrong about it. She did make off with that lamp, because we saw it in her house. You know what, whether she meant to or knew it or not, she worked some mojo on it. Because that lamp wasn't nearly as beautiful, the kind of beautiful to lure you into a trance and you just wanted to touch it, but it also didn't feel wrong anymore. It's almost like a horcrux is the only way I know to explain it. In the Harry Potter books people were drawn to the horcruxes because they were really beautiful, but they were super creepy too. Once they were destroyed, the item didn't have that ethereal beauty anymore, but also they had no feelings at all about them. My aunt's basically destroying horcruxes. Perhaps since we're not in Harry Potter Land, they'd just be haunted items? My aunt and I have always gotten on well. I always felt this weird connection between us. Almost like I was her daughter. I'm not and can't be, as we aren't blood related, but I think it's the connection that she knows I experienced the same shit as her. We're the same in some ways, and there's that connection. Because I wasn't upset when she said I couldn't have the Victrola. She said I didn't want it, and something pinged and I thought, yeah, if she's telling me that, then it's true. It's like her true self/soul/whatever was speaking through that simple sentence to my true self/soul and we both knew, even if my mind didn't really understand. There's one last item in this super long post. No matter which house, my grandmother insisted that you have a flashlight on your bedside just in case. Every night that you stayed with her, it was important to her to make sure you had a flashlight. You were also not supposed to get out of bed.
One might think that these are old fashioned customs. Perhaps they are, but that's not where she was coming from. There was no tone of, "no damn kids running around my house at night" or "to use the outhouse, I mean bathroom, take the flashlight." No, it was an imperative need, a fearful need, a safety measure. She wasn't full of fear or dramatic, but there was that desperation in her voice. It's not safe to wander the house... at night. It's not safe... to not have light. We already knew the house was creepy, so we wouldn't have gotten out of bed unless we really had to. My event happened at the new house. It wasn't as creepy as Kingston, because the entire house and the contents and the residual energy and the things were the entire house. At the new one, it was just things and energies attached to certain items that were brought along in the move. It was creepy, but barely, compared to Kingston. I was about thirteen or fourteen and it was just me visiting her. It was the middle of the night, but I really, really had to pee. The same rules (flash light, no getting up) applied at this house too. I went to the powder room toilet (because I was still in the cherry bed set & they connect, and there's a door from the powder room out into the den). I was also pretty thirsty, so thought I'd go to the kitchen to get some water. The lights are off in the house, but you can see somewhat because there are large windows in the den and breakfast nook area's. My grandmothers bedroom is right off the kitchen and breakfast nook area. When I came out of the bathroom I looked toward the breakfast area and my grandmothers bedroom, hoping my toilet flushing didn't wake her. I saw no one. I make my way across the den, which didn't take long and when I make it to the breakfast nook my grandmother is standing there like a zombie. It was super scary, honestly. It's like the old lady in M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit. Only when the old lady is just standing there, staring out, and not doing anything. It's scary and spooky because she wasn't there and then within seconds she was and she's just standing there, staring out into space and her hair looks frazzled. But, then I'm thinking, "Is she OK? What if she's having a stroke or a heart attack or something?" I remained calm and advanced just two paces not wanting to get too close and asked, "Grandma? Grandma are you OK?" Nothing. "Grandma? It's Sarah. Are you hurt? Are you OK?" Then her eyes focused and she was her self, but also far away. "My granddaughter... yes. (then slight panic) What are you doing out of bed? It's not safe, you need to be in bed." "I was just getting some water." "No, no, go back to bed. Quick." "Are you sure you're OK?" "Yes, yes, go back to bed." So, I did, and I turned to look back when I made it to the powder room door and she was gone. I have no idea if she was possessed or not. She acted like what they a possessed person would act like. Does she know that it's not safe because they can get her and she roams the house at night because of the things/energy? Or what if she's a medium and doesn't know it, and things happen, but she's also fearful of Kingston and just brought that over to the new house. I honestly... just don't know what the hell that was about. Fast forward to my late twenties or early thirties with my sister and I talking. I mention that Grandma did something odd when I stayed over. "Was she standing there, blank, in the middle of the night?" My eyes grew large. She'd gotten out of bed at Kingston to use the bathroom. No one was in the hallway, and when she left the bathroom, grandma was there, in the hallway all blank like when I saw her. The Sister found it creepy, but then wondered if something was wrong like an ailment, like I did. Kept saying grandma and are you OK and it's me. Then grandma snapped out of it, but like she was recoiling her thoughts back to the present. "My granddaughter... yes." then suddenly more alert, "Why are you out of bed!?" That's the only times I know of that happening. Once for either of us. Different houses though. The strange thing is, I don't think it was a common occurrence for her, our grandmother, I mean. I shared a sleeping birth on the train to D.C. with her and nothing weird happened. I also shared the pull out sofa bed with her one trip, because she had problems with her eyes and they'd just done surgery and it was darker in the Barbie room than her bedroom. Nothing weird happened that night either. She didn't change into a different person, she didn't get out of bed, she didn't try to eat me.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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