I've shared this story before, so if it sounds familiar to anyone that is the reason. Also, I'm sorry it is so long.~
The Haunting on Kerns Avenue
There are some things in my life that have terrified me. Things I could never explain. They just happened. I guess that's par for the course when you are dealing with the supernatural.
I will share some of our family's experiences with you in this post. I cannot offer any concrete explanations on why they happened to me and my family. Only that they did.
The events I am sharing here began in November 1967. I had recently celebrated my twelfth birthday just before we moved into the house on Kerns Avenue.
We were thrilled when we found this wonderful house for rent at a very reasonable price. It was a huge three bedroom home, with a park directly across the street.
My two sisters and I would share a bedroom, and my brother would have his own bedroom for the first time in his young life. He had always had to sleep on the sofa until now. So he, of course, was deliriously happy. This soon changed once we came to realize that the house was haunted.
Since I was the oldest, I helped the most with the unpacking. I made trip after trip up the stairs to place things in their new spaces.
My parent's room was to the right as you reached the upstairs landing. My brother Billy's room was the first bedroom as you turned left at the stair landing.
We girls had the bedroom at the very end of the hall down from Billy's room. All of our bedrooms had huge walk in closets. My sisters and I laughed at how much our new bedroom resembled a hospital infirmary. I took the bed nearest the walk in closet. Big mistake! Although I didn't know it then.
We finally finished the bulk of our unpacking and it soon came time to go to bed. That's when the strange and eerie events began. They started innocently enough.
My parents heard footsteps of someone coming up the stairs. They thought that one of us kids had gone downstairs to the refrigerator or something. Mom called out to see which one of us it was. But no one answered.
The footsteps stopped right outside of their bedroom at the top of the stair landing.
Mom and Dad both sat up in their beds and looked out the doorway, but they saw no one. After convincing each other that it must be the sounds of the house "settling" they finally fell asleep. The following morning our parents asked if we had left our beds in the night and gone downstairs. None of us had. It spooked us though when they told us they had heard someone on the stairs.
One night in December, my parents sent us to bed early. They stayed downstairs to watch TV for awhile. They often stayed up late because they enjoyed watching the Johnny Carson show.
As I laid there in my bed next to that closet, an event occurred which terrified me. I was the only one awake in the room at the time--my two sisters were already asleep. Lucky them!
As I laid there, I began to hear a faint sound of musical notes playing. At first, it sounded far off in the distance. Then it became louder and sounded closer to me.
I looked around in the dark in puzzlement, when it dawned on me that the sounds were coming from the closet beside my bed. Chills ran up my spine! I listened as the sound became louder by the second. I felt as if whoever or whatever was making the sound, knew it had my total attention. I was frozen in fear.
The sound coming from the closet was tinny. The best way I can describe it is that it sounded like someone was plucking on nails that stuck out of a wall. It was being done in such a way as to make a melody. It wasn't an unpleasant tune. It's just that it wasn't supposed to be happening at all!
Finally, I was able to move. I bolted out of that bed and ran downstairs to where my parents were. I was crying hysterically by this time, and it took me a few minutes to compose myself enough to be able to relay to my parents what was happening.
My parents went upstairs with me to check the closet. Well, daddy did the checking. Mom and I stayed closer to the bedroom door. Wouldn't you know it, though? The room was now quiet. No musical notes wafting out of the closet. Nothing out of the ordinary was there at all. Dad told me to come look for myself. I inched my way towards the closet to take a look inside. Nothing. Nobody was playing musical nails.
My parents tried to convince me that I had been dreaming and I just thought it was real. They wouldn't listen to reason as I tried to convey to them that I had not fallen asleep that night. In frustration, I gave up and finally agreed with them. I mean, it was pointless to argue with them that a seventh-grader knew the difference between a dream and reality.
If I had been dreaming, which I was not; I would hope that my subconscious mind would be clever enough to come up with a more appropriate musical instrument than nails. A guitar, or a piano perhaps? Heck, why not a kazoo? My parents went back downstairs after tucking me in. There I was--all alone again in the dark. My sisters had slept through the entire concert.
As soon as I was finally about to drift off to sleep, the musical nail sounds began once more. This time, I screamed!! My sisters woke up then, I made sure of that!
My parents came running to our room. They were pretty upset with me at this point because by this time the music had stopped once more.
I begged them to let me sleep in their room. They wouldn't hear of it. They did make one consolation, though. They asked my sister on the far side of the room to switch beds with me. Mary didn't mind. She's a sound sleeper anyway. Of course, no one ever heard the sounds that night except for me. Ghosts seem to take a special delight in making you appear loopy to your family and friends.
Luckily, the rest of that night passed uneventfully. A few nights later, though, it would be my brother Billy's turn to appear loopy. Billy was asleep in his room when he began to hear a soft moaning sound coming from his closet. As he listened he heard the moaning become louder. I knew what that was like! But what caused him to bolt from his room in terror, was the sound of his matchbox car collection being hurled onto the closet floor by some unseen force.
Billy loved his matchbox car collection. He kept them "parked" neatly on the closet shelf. So, you can imagine the fear he felt when he heard them all crash onto the floor. Especially since no one was in the closet. At least no one that any of us could see. In Billy's case, I envied him slightly. He had undeniable proof that something or someone had been in his closet. His matchbox cars were all over his closet floor, in total disarray.
By this time my siblings and I had come to understand that there was something not quite right about our new house.
We began asking other kids in the neighborhood if anything strange had ever happened in that house. We learned from the neighborhood children that a man had died there many years before.
The rumors were that he had a brain tumor and suffered much pain. Hy died in what was now my brother's bedroom. Billy was ready then to give up his bedroom and sleep on the couch once again. My parents wouldn't allow that. They tried telling us that the neighborhood kids were pulling our leg.
We knew that even if no one had died in our house of a brain tumor, that didn't mean that Something hadn't happened there that caused our house to be haunted.
I would have thought that our parents would have been the first ones to realize that the house was indeed haunted. Both of them had seen ghosts quite recently before we moved in. Dad had his ghostly encounter the November before.
My Grandma died suddenly and we left to go to Maryland for her funeral. We stayed in my grandparents home that night of Grandma's death.
My mother was downstairs with her sisters and brothers and their spouses. They were trying to comfort Granddad and one another over the sudden loss of their mother.
Daddy slept upstairs just outside of two bedrooms where we and some of our cousins slept that night. There was a bed set up on the upstairs landing. I suppose it was a sort of loft. Daddy couldn't sleep, so he decided to sit up and smoke a cigarette. Now you young and impressionable people out there--do not try this at home.
Dad told us later that as he sat there smoking, he heard someone coming up the stairs. He waited to see who it was. He got quite a shock! It was Grandma! She spoke to daddy, saying "Everyone thinks I'm gone, but I'm still here." She then vanished before his eyes. Needless to say, daddy didn't get any sleep that night!
Mom had her ghostly encounter the summer before we moved to Kern's Avenue. My parents were fighting, and my mom went out on the porch to cool down. It was just after midnight. We lived in what they call a "holler." Meaning it's totally in the boonies!
There were no street lights within a 20-mile radius of this place that the locals called "Dry Holler." On moonless nights you could literally not even see your hand held in front of your face. It was eerie! I hated living there.
Mountain Lions would come down off the mountain and rummage through our garbage at night, looking for food. Oh, sorry--back to the ghost.
Mom was sitting out on the porch when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked over and saw a man walking towards her. She thought she recognized him as a neighbor who also lived farther in the hollow. She spoke to him asking, "Frank, what are you doing out here so late in the night?" As she asked this, he walked right through our car bumper and vanished! Mom screamed! All of us kids woke up terrified! Mom told us later that he seemed to have been dressed in an old Civil War uniform. That made sense since this was Virginia and all.
So, you would think that my parents would have been keen to the possibility that we had a problem haunting, right from the get go. Maybe they did understand this. They probably didn't quite know how to handle the situation, though. I mean, they had never had to contend with a ghost actually in our house.
Soon thereafter, I had my own ghostly encounter. I saw the one and only ghost that I hope to have to see in my lifetime. I was still the proud owner of the bed across the room. You know, the one that was as far as I could get from that closet.
It was the middle of the night when this event occurred. If I had to guess at the time, I'd say it was about an hour before dawn. I was awakened by something. At first, I didn't understand exactly what it was that woke me. All I knew was that I had been asleep, but now I was wide awake and my senses were on high alert. It was a feeling I will never forget.
I had a distinct knowledge that I was being watched. I then heard something rustle within the darkness. I discreetly looked over at the doorway, and stared straight at the personification of terror and evil!
There in the doorway stood someone looking in at us as we slept. This person watching the three of us was dressed in an odd long flowing, dark hooded robe. His body was so tall and large that he filled the entire doorway with his presence. My mind was filled with many thoughts as well as questions. Thoughts and questions I would never dare give voice to as this entity stood there watching me in the night.
I wondered why this presence was there. To me, he seemed to be the personification of the Grim Reaper even though he wasn't holding a scythe. I pondered his dress and realized that the rustling I had heard had come from the movement of his clothing. He seemed to be more of a thing than a human being. I never once thought that he was someone who had broken into our home. I knew intuitively that this being was not of this world.
The most unsettling thing was the feeling that I was looking at something that was purely evil. This heavy sense of evil emanated from him. I believe to this day that the mere presence of such an evil entity was what caused me to awaken. I was frightened to the very core of my being. I couldn't run from the room because this thing blocked the doorway! His silhouette didn't allow for too much light to enter around his being.
As I laid there and watched him, I realized that he never moved. He stood stock-still. I wondered if he was aware of the fact that I was awake and that I was looking at him. The darkness was so thick that I couldn't see any facial features whatsoever. I could only determine that the color of his hooded robe was a dark brown.
Finally, I did the only thing I could do. I covered my head with my covers and began to pray the Lord's Prayer. I dared not pray aloud as I didn't want this being to know that I was awake and had witnessed his presence. I laid there quietly pondering how I would get out of this room alive. When I ventured a peek, much later, thankfully it was gone.
After he had left, sunrise began to filter into our house. I ran to my parents' room seeking comfort and assurance that the evil entity I had seen would never return. My parents listened to me as I told them what I had experienced as this entity had been there just mere moments ago. I hadn't returned to sleep that night. After seeing this evil entity, I was left with the question that I never shared with anyone. Was this evil entity truly the Grim Reaper and if he was, who had he come for? That question haunted me throughout the time we lived there.
After the visitation of this evil entity, things began to worsen in our home. My dad and mom understood that we definitely had a problem. They were continuously being awakened by footsteps coming up the stairs at night. Daddy even stood at the top of the stairs to wait for the person making all of the noise.
One night, he said that he felt coldness pass through him as the footfalls made their way to the landing where he stood watch.
Our mother became so afraid of being alone when dad went to work and we kids went off to school. She would say that she would be upstairs making up the beds when she would hear the sound of a man moaning. She said that it would follow her into all of the bedrooms and even into the bathroom. She finally began to stay downstairs until we came home from school.
What convinced my parents to move though was this event. I suppose it was the straw that broke the camel's back:
Mom had a neighbor friend over one morning for coffee. Brenda lived two doors down from us. Mom decided to walk her to her house when she left. Mom didn't go inside her house, she just stayed on the sidewalk. Therefore, our house was always in Mom's view.
No one had entered it--from the front anyway.
When Mom got back to the house, she heard music coming from inside. It sounded as if someone had turned a radio on. Mom reached for the storm glass screen door to go inside. The door was locked. From the inside.
Mom had clearly not locked it before stepping out to walk Brenda home. Mom believed that someone had actually broken in, and was, in fact, still in our house. She ran down to Brenda's house and they called the police. When the police arrived, they found a window unlocked. One of the police officers used that window to get inside.
The officer opened up the front door for Mom to come inside. They went throughout the entire house. Nothing was missing. No more music played. No one was in the house. There was no explanation for any of it. No earthly one anyway!
Finally, the day came for us to move out. We were so happy to be leaving this frightening place. We learned from neighbors that we had stayed longer than previous tenants who had rented the house before us. We stayed for all of six months.
Only once after moving away did I return to visit a friend on Kerns Avenue. She had invited me to spend the night. My friend also wanted to introduce me to her new friend who now lived in our previous house.
I was a bit apprehensive as we approached the door of our previous home. We were invited inside. My friend and I went inside. We were led into the formal dining room area that I recalled so well. Secretly, I was thankful that she hadn't invited us upstairs.
I really liked the young lady who was now living there. Before my friend and I left, the young lady living there grabbed me by the arm and asked a question. I'm certain you can guess what she asked.
She looked at and asked, "Is this house haunted?" The look on her face was one of a person seeking answers to unexplained events. I couldn't lie to her, so I simply answered, "Yes." She then turned to her mother and stated adamantly, "Mom, See! I told you this house is haunted."
My friend and I took our leave. And that was the very last time I ever set foot inside that house. The house still stands. I often wonder if it's still a rental home or if someone has purchased it. Whoever resides there, I pray that they don't experience anything like the events my family experienced.
Submitted July 10, 2017 at 01:25AM by missesawiggins http://ift.tt/2t2Balv Paranormal
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