My Aunt & Uncle's
Rental House:
By:
"Teddy"
My Aunt and Uncle had a
knack for renting creepy houses. Every single one that I remember had what I
think now, was a haunting. I believe part of that was due to the chemistry
between the two of them. It wasn't a very happy marriage, but those were the
days when you didn't get divorced, you lived with it, especially when there were
children involved. So I think my Aunt and Uncle in some way potentiated what was
already there. But this one house was a real doozie, and I heard, saw, and felt
some of the happenings myself.
It was a flat-roofed house
in the woods, further out than the suburbs. There was a creek that encircled it,
and there was a wall of sliding glass doors that looked out on the little meadow
that was encircled by the creek. Beyond the creek were trees. The house was
snuggled into the shade so that it was cool, winter and summer. It had a great
fireplace; the builder had embedded marbles, metal toy cars, and other
memorabilia from his childhood into the motar of the
chimney.
But as soon as you pulled
into the driveway, you noticed the quiet. It was a sort of darker and creepier
than the "outside world" just a little ways away. You felt like whispering. But
no one was afraid or gave a lot of thought to it the first day. My family helped
theirs move in, and when it started getting dusk, everything was unloaded, and
we headed home for dinner, they were going to "camp out" in the new house, and
finish unpacking the next morning.
We had been home just a
little while, less than an hour, and they pulled up to our house and asked to
spend the night with us. The story they told us we thought at first was a joke,
but it wasn't......they were SCARED and they were SERIOUS. It started almost as
soon as we left. They had two dogs that started whining and cringing. Then
something started banging on the sliding glass windows so hard they were afraid
they would break. The dogs ran off and my Uncle yelled at whoever was pounding
on the glass to stop it. He looked outside and could see no one.....but the
banging kept going.
They all got hit with a
kind of panic and my Uncle herded everyone into the bathroom, which was across
the livingroom from the windows. He took his gun with him and started shouting
that if whoever it was didn't quit it, he was going to shoot. It still didn't
quit. They could see the glass moving when it was "hit." He was really upset and
tried to shoot but the gun jammed. They slammed the bathroom door shut while he
looked at the gun, but he couldn't unjam it, so they decided to make a break for
the car and come to our house, but he had to kick the bathroom door down,
because it had locked and he couldn't get it unjammed either!
They did spend the night
with us, and went back the next day. For ahile, all seemed ok, but pretty soon,
things started to happen. One of the biggies I remember, was because we all went
over to try and find if we could help figure out what it was. They still kind of
half-thought/half-hoped that it was somebody playing a joke of some kind. They
had started to hear moaning and groaning come from the creek at dusk
and during the night. My Dad took his gun and joined my Uncle in hunting
the source of the noise. They would go to where it seemed to come from, and it
would then seem to come from somewhere else. They shot at it, thinking to scare
the jokester into revealing himself, but no one ran, yelled, and the moaning
never stopped. They never could track it down, even when the two of them tried
to sneak up on it. I heard it myself, and it sounded like someone in pain. It
was very human sounding, and it continued to happen all the time they lived
there. ( which was a year or two.......the more I think about it, the more
I can't be sure; I was about 9 at the time, I think).
The dogs they had
eventually ran off. And then came the animal mutilations. They raised rabbits
and chickens as a source of food and income. (Ok, this is enough to scare me, a
vegetarian since I was in my teens....but, it was accepted back then....anyway,
back to the story.) There was a path through the woods to the pens and coops,
and they started finding chickens and rabbits along the path with heads, legs,
wings, torn off. My Dad and Uncle spent many nights out there lying in wait for
the animal or person who was doing this, but they never heard anything, and it
even happened while they were out there, watching. They never saw anything. And
even stranger, the rabbit coops, you would have had to open and close back up to
get a rabbit out, and the doors where never left open. This made them think that
it *couldn't* have been an animal. And the chickens never raised a fuss.
Chickens are really noisy when they are disturbed!
Another thing that happened
was that red "eyes" would look in through the bedroom curtains at night. I
stayed over with my cousin and we saw them .... we'd run out with flashlights to
see if we could catch them, and there was never anything there. Then in a little
while, they would be right back. They glowed right through the curtains, like a
red colored penlight would, and there was a pair of them just like eyes. We
never saw any tracks, and I don't know why I wasn't scared to
death.
My cousins *were* scared to
be home alone. If they had to come home when no one else was home, they would
hang out by the dirt road, by the mailbox where it was "ok." They were junior
high school age, I think, (13, 14 or so), ...old enough not to be scared to be
home alone. The whole place had this unfriendly, watching-you feeling. And I
remember a particular smell that was *always* in the house....like a tiny gas
leak or something. Just a sort of ozone smell....something different. Not really
bad, you could just detect it. I don't remember anyone else mentioning that, and
I smelled it in every creepy house they lived in. May have been something
significant, maybe not.
Anyway, my Aunt got to know
some people around there and started being nosy, and found out that the guy who
owned the place had both drinking and gambling problems. This homeplace he had
chosen and bulit over the years intending to retire there. Then, one night, he
put it up as stakes in a game of poker- and lost it, while drunk. He tried to
buy it back, but the guy wouldn't sell, and I guess thought it was funny that he
lost something he cared for so much. A couple of months later, he put a shotgun
in his mouth and blew his head off on account of losing it. They were the first
ones to live in it after he died. I don't think he had ever lived
there.
That's the whole
story.....not really dramatic, but the creepiest thing I've ever witnessed.
Since I've been thinking of writing this up for a few days, I took a drive by
there not long ago. They remodeled the house; there is a second story on it, and
the sliding glass doors are gone. In fact, there are hardly any windows on it at
all anymore. The lawn that the creek encircled is all bare, doesn't even look
like grass grows there. No one has planted flowers or spruced it up....it looks
really depressing. I didn't have the courage to knock on the door and ask if
they had experienced anything weird, but I'll bet you they have....it still
feels just as weird to me. I took a few pictures, but I haven't downloaded them
yet to see if there is anything on them. I'm almost afraid to
look.....LOL!
Someday I'll get around to
writing about the other places this Aunt and Uncle lived, but this was the "big
one." The others were interesting, but not as spectacular in the happenings, and
didn't have such a history.
--Teddy