Ghost Stories

At the age of nine, I moved with my family from the hamlet of Howlett Hill, New York to the village of Warners, New York; a distance of approximately 9 miles. Both towns exist on the western side of Onondaga County and both border the town of Camillus - Howlett Hill being closest of the three aforementioned townships to the city of Syracuse.

The house in Howlett Hill still exists; albeit with considerable remodeling and many more neighboring structures than when this writer resided there as a child. The two-story house in Warners, built in the 1870's, has since been torn down to accommodate the widening of County Route 173 and the reconstruction of the Canton Street bridge over the CSX railroad tracks. Now you know the locations, but all in all, geography is not what is important to this story...

It was often difficult to get a good night's sleep during the 14 years that I lived in the now non-existent house in Warners. Even at night, trains would rumble and click-clack along the tracks across the street, but we quickly got used to that noise. No, it wasn't the sounds emanating from the outside but instead those inside the house that would interfere with the sleep of this writer, his parents, and his sisters!

Within days of moving into the house in March of 1971, I would be awakened in the night to the sound of a back bedroom's door latch clicking and clattering noisily. My sisters claim to have never heard this sound - including the one who slept in that room! But, my parents will confirm it as the door opened from their room into the bedroom in question on the other side.

The first night this ruckus awakened me I was inclined to get up and walk into my parents' room. When I entered the darkened bedroom and approached the door the latch went quiet. When I returned to my bed the latch commenced to rattling! I re-entered my parents' room while they feigned sleep and this time I walked right to the door; the rattling latch having again gone quiet. I touched the door latch and it was very warm - much warmer than the 68 degree air in the house. I let go of the latch and returned to my room. Of course, the rattling resumed and this annoyance would continue off and on for weeks. One night I was actually able to see the latch handle moving up and down! The sister who occupied the bedroom denies having anything to do with the rattling latch and I believe her.

Another noise that would sporadically awaken this writer and other members of his family was the sound of slow, heavy footfalls on the stairs that led from the living room upstairs to the bedrooms. I would hear thud-thud-thud and an accompanying creaking on the wooden stairs; sounding as though someone or something was laboring to ascend the staircase but never quite reaching the top. This nerve-wracking cadence would be heard early in the morning, around sunrise. Over the course of the 14 years that I lived in the house, I heard the "Stair Walker" four or five times, and in each instance I'm assured that everyone else who lived in the house was still in bed!

Unidentifiable voices would be heard by all of us who lived in the house and by visitors as well. At any given time, we would hear multiple voices whispering, adult female voices laughing, and the distressed cry of a baby. Additionally, in the form of adult male voices there would be moaning and indecipherable gibberish.

I have described audio manifestations of this supernatural activity that took place in my old Warners home. Were there any visible manifestations? - Oh, indeed there were!

The first apparition that I witnessed was that of a young girl who sat on the floor near the foot of my bed. She appeared to be dressed in pajamas and was playing with dolls. Her hair was done in rag curls and she may have been five or six years old. She looked up at me as in a confused, sleepy state I stared down at her. Her face registered surprise and then her image disappeared from my darkened bedroom.

As previously mentioned, the house was built in the 1870's. While I cannot confirm this next tidbit as fact, the house was purportedly built and first lived in by a man named Zachariah, his wife, and his young daughter. As the story goes, this Zachariah murdered his wife and young daughter and deposited their bodies into a well that existed in what became a small patch of woods behind the house. I had already been regaled with this story - which is purportedly documented in a book written about the history of Camillus and Warners that I cannot locate - before seeing the apparition of the young girl. While I did not know it then as a 10 year old boy, what I saw was a deceiving "familiar spirit."

My family and I would see a large man, nearly seven feet tall, carrying a small coffin. We would see another man, small in stature, dressed in a suit and bowtie. I believe now that this bowtie-wearing apparition was a familiar spirit of Zachariah, the man who purportedly built the house and who is not to be confused with the Biblical prophet Zechariah.

I was awakened one night to the apparition of what appeared to be a young Native American female wearing a headdress of two feathers that was lying on my bed with her back facing me. One of my sisters claims to have seen this same Native American woman sitting on the foot of her bed. On another night, I was awakened to find the apparition of an adult woman clothed in a bustle dress, likewise lying next to me in bed with her back to me. These images were not the fantasies of a pre-teen male who was awakening sexually. These images were instead supernatural and frightening.

Other, even more startling and disturbing apparitions were viewed not only by my family but by friends and relatives who would visit. There was a hand that would float through the living room when the lights were off. There was a pair of scissors that would float from room to room as though it was cutting a long piece of paper or fabric. Translucent blue and opaque orange orbs the size of beach balls would hover and drift at night in various rooms around the house.

I recall a night during the summer of 1975 when I could not sleep. I was being kept awake by the overpowering fear that the house was going to catch fire. While in the end there was no fire, I did notice at one point during the night one of the orange orbs hovering outside of my bedroom window - wobbling side to side. Indeed, I was being taunted and tormented by the orb.

There was much strife and depression within the rooms of that house. The atmosphere was often mentally and spiritually oppressive, like Pharaoh himself was present and overseeing the activity.

There were other apparitions and unusual occurrences, but over time memories begin to fade. Aside from the apparitions, there was the incident of the Ouija plectrum that went flying across my bedroom as I played the game with a friend. I was a wide-eyed teenager that did not know what I know now - that the occult and its games and practices are to be left alone. Around this same time, circa 1976, my mother and I moved a wooden vanity in my parents' bedroom from one wall to another. After moving the piece of furniture, its mirror lifted up out of its holder and smashed at my feet. The mirror did not fall; it lifted several feet into the air before smashing on the floor!

The apparitions were always translucent and either white or blue in color; save for the orange orbs. These paranormal sightings and soundings took place on a fairly regular basis from 1971 until 1985, when my parents were finally able to sell the house after 7 years of off and on effort. The paranormal activity was the primary reason for their desire to sell.

So, after living with this strange activity for so many years, do I believe in ghosts? The answer to that question is an emphatic NO!

The beings in that house were not individuals who had died unexpectedly and were then condemned to float about the earth until they could arrive at a place of peace over their deaths. You see, when you die, you immediately go to Heaven or Hell, you don't wander in some sort of earthly purgatory seeking clues to your untimely demise. When you die, your spirit departs this realm and does not linger about lifting door latches or playing with dolls at the foot of a bed. Likewise, when you die, you are not morphed into scissors or blue and orange orbs.

The activity in the house in Warners was purely demonic - as all similar activity is. These were familiar spirits; demonic entities made to look like the little girl that may have been killed by her father, a large man who may have carried her coffin, the short man who likely resembled Zachariah her father, and others that would appear to be from the time that the house was built. These were very convincing apparitions who deceived us into believing in ghosts. Once the belief was planted by what we saw and heard, we spent far too much time thinking, sometimes provoking, and often being fearful of these entities from the Supernatural that existed in the house. We didn't know Jesus nor did we think about Him, and that is precisely what Satan desired.

If you have accepted, in repentance of your inherent sinfulness, the saving grace extended by Jesus Christ through His death on the cross and resurrection on the third day - you will go to Heaven upon your death or upon His return to rapture His church; whichever event transpires first.

If, through the free will that God has given you, you refuse the blessing of the sacrifice that His only begotten son made for all of us, you will spend an eternity in Hell - separated from our Holy, Triune, God - who is Father, Son (Jesus), and Holy Spirit. If you choose to believe that all religious paths will get you into Heaven or that because you are a "good person" you will spend an eternity there you are mistaken. We can never be a good enough person, no matter how much we give to charity, how kind we are to others, or how purely we endeavor to live our lives. As human beings we are not righteous enough on our own; not me, not you, not Gandhi, Buddha, Oprah, or Obama. We all - each and every one of us - need to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved.

There are mediums who claim to talk to deceased family members and deliver messages of comfort and hope to bereaved survivors. These mediums are only serving to further the satanic deception that comes from a lack of knowledge in the word of God and a gullibility that allows one to embrace the sensational. And in that gullibility, deceived hearts are being broken. You cannot talk to the dead as they are no longer accessible by mortal man. In the same way, the dead do not come back to visit us.

Ghost hunters may run through abandoned buildings, chasing after what they believe to be ghosts or the spirits of the deceased. But, what they are truly chasing is at best a made for television hoax or at worst spirits from the demonic realm. There are no prank-playing ghosts prowling the earth looking for their break into show biz!

This world is full of haunted places, but it isn't ghosts that are doing the haunting.