Since my mom sold the house, I think it is safe to share these stories. Just in time for Halloween, these are real, honest-to-goodness ghost stories that happened to me or my family growing up in our house.

Let me just give a little background here. That house was haunted, no two ways about it. I used to be in my bedroom upstairs, and I would hear people downstairs, talking, walking around, etc. So I would go downstairs to see who was home and nobody would be there. Also, the basement creeped me out to no end. I was mostly terrified of the place. If you saw our basement, you would think I was crazy. It was a nice, finished basement, nice carpet, a bathroom with a shower, nice furniture, etc. It doesn’t make any sense. Therefore, I can only attribute it to a malevolent supernatural entity that wished me harm.

So, without further ado, here are 3 specific examples:

1. The walls bleed. We never actually saw them bleed, but there were stains on the wall that would sort of start as if blood had welled out of the wall, and then the drop ran down until it ran out of liquid. Just one fat, red drop, here and there. I’ve heard all sorts of explanations as to why this could be, but none of them ever made sense to me. One common explanation was that pipes in the walls are bleeding water, and it is either rusty or just looks red. However, that room was the attic later converted over to a bedroom, and there wasn’t any reason there should be plumbing up there, because there was no running water.
2. I once saw a man who didn’t exist. Growing up, people usually went to bed pretty early around my house. It was pretty common for me to be the last one up, because I had my nose stuck in a book that I couldn’t put down. In my room there was a little window seat by one of the other windows. At that time, I had my bed pushed into the little nook, with the window seat as my night stand at the head of the bed. When I realized that it was pretty late, I turned around and reached over my head to turn off the light. You know how when the light is on inside, but it’s dark outside, the window turns into a mirror? At the foot of my bed stood a tall man looking at me. He was neither smiling or frowning, just sort of looking at me somberly. Of course I flipped around as fast as I could, but there was nobody there. Aside from the fact that he disappeared, there was nobody awake in my house, and nobody in my family is that tall.
3. My brother was nearly dragged off to hell. Of all the creepy parts of the basement, none was creepier than the back room. This room contained the laundry area, a workbench and a pantry where we stored canned food. I don’t know why this part was particularly creepy, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. So my mom sent my brother downstairs to get something from the pantry. Naturally he was scared, but he got the food. The lights back there weren’t on a switch, but were instead on those little pull strings. To avoid being in the dark any longer than he had to, he decided to get a running start and pull the string as he went past, once he got up to full speed. He started running and pulled the light. Right at that moment, something from under the workbench grabbed his leg. Shrieking and kicking, he pulled himself free and dove out of the room. Behind him he heard terrible crashing. He kept running until he got upstairs to my mom where he huddled at her feet, crying. When she finally got him to explain what had happened, she decided to take him downstairs to show him that he was just being silly. When they got into the back room, there were things from the workbench lying everywhere. The bench itself was pretty high, so it is unlikely he would have knocked things off, but he especially couldn’t reach the shelves which went all the way to the ceiling. He was pretty small and there’s simply no way he could have gotten some of those things down.

Anybody else have any good stories? My friend Jeremy has a good one about a teddy bear balloon that tried to swallow his soul once, maybe he’ll pop on and leave it in the comments. (I still remember it like it was yesterday, even though it must have been more than 10 years ago when he told me, but it’s his story to tell.)