Real Life Ghost Story: The House on Elizabeth Avenue

My husband and I high-fived as we placed the last boxes from the moving van on the living room floor. The mortgage closed the week before and we were excited about starting anew in the house on Elizabeth Avenue. Seemingly, it was a perfect day for a move, with the blue sky covering us like a tarp.

The only problem was the heat. The weather report warned of a 100 degree day and was confirmed by the sweating penguin thermometer which was crudely tacked on the kitchen wall. The house was not equipped with central air conditioning, a fact that did not seem as important when we first walked through the house on an unseasonably cool June morning.

I thought it was odd that the door of the second bedroom was closed as I walked to the bathroom looking for a towel to wipe my brow. I opened the door and noticed, despite the closed window, the room was at least 20 degrees cooler than the rest of the house. It became known to us, appropriately enough, as the cold room.

As the weeks passed and we slowly worked through unpacking our cardboard boxes, I noticed strange things in the cold room. The door would be closed even though my husband and I would purposely leave it open. Oddly, you would never see it in the act of closing. You would only notice it after it shut while you were elsewhere in the house.

One day I opened the door and walked in to investigate. As I made my way to the closet, I stepped on a wet spot on the floor with my bare feet. However, the ceiling above the spot was dry and we had not even been in the room for days.

My husband had maintained that there must be some logical explanations for the cold room. He said there must be a draft entering the room which made it cool and caused the door to close. I insisted a draft could not be the cause since the window in that room was always closed. He did not have an excuse for the wet spot on the floor, however.

Another day I stepped out in the backyard to plant some flowers. After I finished, I realized my watering can was left on the kitchen table. As turned the knob to the backdoor, I discovered it was locked. I had not locked this door and no one was in the house. I retrieved the spare key under the mat and unlocked the door. When I stepped in I heard a door in the house slam shut. I gingerly crept to the hallway and noticed the only door closed was the cold room. I then heard a shrieking that could only be described as a man in pain. With my heart thumping, I scooped up my car keys and ran out of the house.

I waited patiently until my husband came home from work and walked back in the house with him. The door of the cold room was cracked and appeared as it had inside. My husband laughed at my story and offered I must have accidentally locked the back door before I went outside, the draft slammed the door, and there must have been a TV on to explain the noises. He said these words confidently, but I could see in his eyes he did not believe them.