READERS TALES
Haunted
House on Mauxferry Road
Me
and my family are not sure whether we believe in the existence of ghosts or paranormal
happenings, but we do know that several events took place in our home that we have never
been able to explain.
In 1978, my parents
moved me and my younger brother and sister during the summer between my 8th grade and
freshman year of high school. We moved from a small town about 30 miles south of
Indianapolis to an old farm house 8 miles south of town. Our lane was 1/2 mile long and we
were completely surrounded by our neighbors' fields. The house was two stories and was
over 100 years old when we moved in and it stood on approximately 3 acres. I don't recall
when we started noticing things happening, but they were spread over a period of 6 to 7
years.
The scariest event
happened to my brother who was approximately 15 at the time. Late one night, while my
parents, my sister and myself were out, he called his girlfriend. He later told us that
when he had come downstairs, he hadn't bothered to turn on any lights and since the phone
was at the foot of the stairs, he sat down on the steps. He swears he heard the back door
open and close, then he heard footsteps coming across the dining room floor heading
straight towards him! He quickly flicked the light on and was astounded that no one was
there!
Another event
happened to me and my sister. I was, by then, a junior or senior and my sister was in 3rd
or 4th grade. My parents took my brother to a basketball banquet and we didn't expect them
home until late. We decided not to wait up for them and had gone upstairs to my room. We
hadn't been in bed long and we were still wide awake and had been talking, when we began
to hear voices and the sounds of pots and pans being moved around like someone was
cooking. I asked my sister if Mom and Dad had come home and maybe I hadn't paid attention.
(My bedroom window faced our lane. When someone came up our lane, the headlights reflected
into my room.) She told me no, so we decided to check things out. We thought
maybe we had left the TV on. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, it was dark
and everything was quiet. We didn’t know what to think, so we went back
upstairs, got in bed and settled down. Within a few minutes, we heard the voices
again, along with the pots and pans. Needless to say, we stayed in bed until we were
sure my parents were home.
My mom also had an
encounter with our unseen guest. She was standing in the kitchen with her back to
the door, when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped because she
hadn’t heard anyone walk across the floor to her (the floor creaked as they do in
older homes) and she turned around to see which one of us had scared her, but no one was
there. She came into the living room and asked us which one of us had tapped her on
the shoulder. None of us had left the living room.
Mom also had
‘something’ touch her one night after she and Dad were in bed. They had
been in bed for a while, and Dad’s snoring was keeping Mom awake. She says that
while lying there, something very cold brushed along her cheek. She pulled the
blankets over her head and snuggled against Dad. She says that was the only thing
that happened that ever made her feel afraid of whatever it was in the house.
My mom, myself and my
younger sister, at various times, smelled perfume in rooms where we knew no one had used
any. If my brother ever smelled it, he never said so. We also, at different times, would
see someone walk through the dining room while we were in the living room. This was only
by peripheral vision. None of us ever saw the 'ghost' while we were looking directly into
the dining room.
One afternoon, me and
my mom decided to use an Ouija board to see if we could determine what was happening. We
asked the board if anyone had ever died in the house and it pointed to yes. We asked in
which room and it spelled out sewing room. (This was a small room off the dining room my
mom had turned into her sewing room.) That was enough for us and we put the board away. A
few days later, we asked our neighbor if they knew if anyone had ever died in the house
and they told us yes. An old man lived there and he had died in the house. None of us had
prior knowledge of this until our neighbor told us.
The voices, the cold
brush on the cheek, the tapping on the shoulder and the footsteps only happened once
during the time we lived there. The perfume and the ghost sightings happened once in a
while over the years. None of us though ever felt threatened by what happened, except for
the cold brush on mom’s face. And one odd thing, none of this was ever experienced by
my dad, only by my mom and us kids.
-Kathy.
