The Ghost in Our House

My roommate and I moved into a small cottage in western Pennsylvania about six months ago. At first, it seemed to be a nice quiet older home that had once been a part of a local mining community. Now we are not so sure how nice this place is or how safe after strange (and sometimes bizarre) things began to happen three months ago.

Though we haven't said much about what has happened until now, I finally decided someone should know what has been occurring. You know. Just in case. After all, it seems that everyone has a ghost story to tell. Either they know someone (or a friend who knows someone) who has had an encounter with a spirit (or at least something unexplainable) or they have had an experience that defies understanding and the only explanation is that it was a "ghost".

It all started with a bedroom door shutting itself. Typical event, right? Nevertheless, doors can do that because of how the door itself may have been hung crookedly or perhaps it is just off plumb a bit from the house settling. It could have even been possibly a breeze or a draft that pushed it closed. However, most doors do not then open themselves with a loud bang, either, do they? Even so, we just laughed and said, "It must be a ghost".

After the incident with the door, nothing else happened for several weeks. We worked on fixing the house up the way we wanted it to look, unpacked all our belongings, and generally just settled in. Nothing seemed out of place and there was no sense of any thing ominous going on. My roommate went to work every day while I continued to put things away, gardened, and did every day things.

One afternoon, I was in the kitchen washing dishes while admiring the view out the window sink window. There had been a lot of rain and the trees were already beginning to lose a great many leaves, yet they were still pretty as they whirled and floated to the ground. Concentrating on scrubbing a particular irksome pot, (I had made chili the night before); I happened to glance up and caught the rear view of a man walking past the window. The person appeared to be like an ordinary man with dark hair, though he did seem extraordinarily thin. He was dressed in what some might call a mechanic's uniform, a shirt and pant set that were both a utilitarian dark gray.

In most circumstances, this would have been a normal thing to see. Utility workers, deliverymen, and the mail carrier often walk by the house. Except - this window sits almost 15 feet up from the ground. The man was walking on air! Of course, I rationalized that the leaves had probably fallen in such a way that I thought I saw someone and never thought anymore about it. At least, not at that time. . .

One evening, not long after the incident in the kitchen had happened, I had gone to my bedroom for the night. The house is old enough that it is fitted with doorknobs and the plates have keyholes for the use of a skeleton key. While moving in, my friend had found one of them and had given it to me to use, so I had placed it on my key ring. Locking the door, I usually left the keys hanging and I continued to get ready for bed. However, when I turned around, I noticed that the keys were still moving, swinging from the key hole in a continuous back and forth motion. I stared for what seemed like several minutes before I yelled at the keys to stop! They did and became quite suddenly still. "Oh boy.", I muttered to myself.

For several moments more, I sat on the edge of my bed staring at those keys, wondering what I had just seen. Like most people, I started thinking of reasons why the keys would have swung for so long and decided I must have twisted them a little harder than normal therefore causing them to swing for a longer time. It could be nothing more than that. Nevertheless, I hit the door with the palm of my hand, hard enough to shake it on its hinges. The keys never moved.

The next morning, I was getting ready to go to the store and needed a specific credit card. My habit is to make sure the one I want to use is in front of my wallet. When I went to organize my cards, the one I wanted was not there. I took everything out of my wallet, then out of my purse, and finally took my room apart thinking perhaps I had dropped it and it had slid down behind the bed or my dresser. I could not locate it.

When my roommate arrived home from work, she too looked through my wallet and purse, laying everything out on the bed. The missing card was still missing. Ok. Maybe I had left it somewhere. The following day I had an appointment and I showered, dressed, and got ready to leave. Out of habit, I checked for my keys and checked my wallet. The missing card was now in the front slot where nothing had been placed.

Yet, other things began to occur with other ordinary objects seemingly being moved around. The cat dishes kept falling from a table, the dog's toy bones would be found under my friend's bed; our clothes would disappear and only later to be found in another part of the house. My roommate, being a little disgusted at these unwanted events, began to stomp around the room, and commented to the ghost (if there really was a ghost), to just stop and put everything back where it belonged!

However, the very next day there was the incident with a pair of box cutters.

My roommate uses box cutters where she works, so she has a few different ones. While rearranging her room, she had found two that she had not seen in awhile and placed them on her nightstand. She later went to bed and early the next morning she woke up, hurriedly dressed and went to work. When she came home, she went up the stairs to her loft bedroom and the box cutters had been moved. Not only were they now in front of her computer across the room, but they were both opened and laying perpendicular to each other. Not at all how she had left them the night before!

Consequently, we have started to wonder what is going on. Do we have a ghost or a poltergeist? If so, who is it and why are they doing things to us now after months of nothing? Did someone die in this house? Is it an adult or a child? Is it friendly or malevolent? Could these mostly innocuous events possibly get worse?

I don't know. If you think it is all a part of our imagination, I dare you to come spend a night. I won't promise - no, actually I cannot promise that you will be here the next morning. Or that you will ever be found. All I do know is that this morning while lying in bed and debating getting up to start my day, something - invisible to my wide-opened eyes - sat down on my bed . . . and . . . touched me.