Reports and Submissions

Hello:.  I just had a look at your website and was very intrigued. It brings back many disturbing memories of my own experiences. When I was 17 my parents bought a lovely big house in a newly developed area. The home was split into three levels, about 4,300 sq feet in all and quite spacious. It was only up the road from where we were originally living so while the removalists were loading the main furniture into the truck, my mother and I filled the car up with a couple of boxes of my clothes and things for my room so that I could go up to the house and start getting my room organized. I had been in my room for about 5 minutes, singing to myself and putting my clothes away, when I heard the front doors slam. There are two big wooden doors, and although I was up on the third floor, as there was no furniture in the house everything echoed. I remember thinking that Mum had been quite quick returning with more of my stuff, so I went down to greet her. I called out over the railings that looked down over the foyer yet to no reply. There was no answer, no one was there, and there were no boxes lying around. I didn't actually think anything more of it until many years later when I could look back and realize it was like the "thing" had come into our home and slammed the doors behind it, kind of like announcing that it "was here". My Father was away on business for the first night so it was just my Mother, my younger sister and myself left to unpack and organize everything. At about 2am, Mum came into my room and told me to stop walking around and go to sleep. I was in bed and she had woken me up, which I told her so. "I swear I could hear someone walking around." she said. "It's a big house, it's just creaking." I told her and we all went back to sleep.  Within a week both my sister and I began suffering from terrible nightmares. Especially me. I would often wake up sensing that there was someone in my room, like a prowler, and would have to switch my light on in a hurry to reassure myself. Most nights my father would get up out of bed because he could hear someone walking up and down the hallway outside of our rooms, and be convinced that someone had broken into the house. In the middle of the night the sensor lights around the house would often switch themselves on which didn't settle his nerves any. At the time none of us thought anything really odd about this. We were all just taking precautions.  One night about a month after we moved in, I woke up to see my then boyfriend sitting at the foot of my bed. I sat up to greet him and even gave him a hug, wondering why he wasn't saying anything or returning the hug. Then it occurred to me that it was the middle of the night, the house was locked up and I had also locked my bedroom door. Frightened, I jumped out of bed and turned the light on. There was no one in my room. I started shaking because I knew that it hadn't been a nightmare, I had definitely been awake. Finally I dozed off again. An hour later I was awake, and saw my boyfriend's face peering down over me. This time I let out a scream and switched the lamp on immediately. He disappeared. For the rest of the night I kept my lamp on and read a book until the sun started coming up. I felt safe to sleep when it was light. I told Daniel (bf) about what had happened when I saw him the following day. He was skeptical but he believed that I believed it. It was around this time my Father mentioned that he kept seeing a cat walking through the house. His business partner was the first to spot it and had gone looking around the house for it after it ran off, never to find it. My elder sister (who didn't live with us) had also claimed to see it on a different occasion. I hadn't seen it but started putting 2 and 2 together. There was something really wrong about our home. I often sat up late with my father watching the television with him, and then one night I saw him look to the side then turn calmly back to me and say, "I just saw that cat again, it walked into the wall". I didn't sleep well that night.  On another occasion my Father was in the rumpus room downstairs (which he had converted into his home-office) with his business partner doing some paper work. I was in the living room on the next floor talking on the phone to Daniel and watching TV at the same time. It was about 11.15pm. Dad came upstairs and said to me, "I just saw your Grandfather in the foyer." I went white. My Grandfather had passed away while I was living in Sydney some months prior to this. I jumped in a cab and left the house for the night, it had all become too much.  It might be a good idea to mention here that while I was in Sydney, my parents had gone interstate to attend the funeral. My elder sister, her partner and her baby son had agreed to stay in the house with my younger sister to watch over her. She [elder sister] phoned me up late one night in a panicked state. "Something's going on!" she exclaimed. "The TV in mum and dads room keeps switching itself on and off." "It's ok, " I tried to calm her. "Mum has a timer on it, just use the remote control to switch the timer off." "OK," she said. "Just wait there while I go and do that." Off she went and returned to the phone a few moments later only in more of a state that originally. "You aren't going to believe this," she said. "The cord is pulled out from the wall. Something's going on in this house, I'm hearing footsteps and seeing a cat. Now this." (It was at this time I became fully convinced that our house was indeed haunted.)  When I returned from Sydney, my younger sister had taken over my old room so I went into the one that she had originally been in. For the first couple of weeks everything seemed okay. I still had trouble sleeping but I wasn't seeing or hearing as much. Then one morning Leah [my sister] came into my room. "I had the most bizaar dream last night." she began. "I saw one of my friends walk through the bedroom door, then walk straight out of the window." To say that I froze with fear is an understatement, so I told Leah what happened the night I saw Daniel appear in that same room. We came to realize that whatever it was that was in our house was taking on the appearance of people that we knew, and it was mostly focused in that bedroom. Our parents agreed that something strange was going on. It was my turn the following night. I woke up to see a young man (maybe of about 18 or 19) standing at the head of my bed staring down at me watching me. He was wearing a red flannelette shirt and dirty blue jeans, with scraggly brown hair down to his shoulders. I couldn't see his face, but I was so paralyzed with fear I could do nothing but watch him turn to face the wall behind my bed head and walk straight through it. I began to scream and scream, then ran into my parents bedroom still screaming. My Dad turned his bedside lamp on and my parents tried to calm me down. "THERE'S A MAN IN MY ROOM I SAW HIM!" I cried. Dad got up to have a look, returning with words that I already knew he was going to say. "There's no one in there. I'll take a look around the house to make sure." I went back to my room but kept the lamp on. It was then that I was overcome with this incredible feeling of sadness, and this overwhelming sense that the man I had seen had been in a car accident. I can't explain why I felt that way, I just did.  Another time I was sent screaming into my parents room was when I woke up because I could hear my closet doors sliding open. I sat up and watched the stuff fly out, but of course upon checking my room my Father found nothing. At one point I was sure I was going insane, and I tried to convince myself that I was dreaming, but the reality was I knew that each time something happened I had been wide awake. On another occasion I had been helping my mother clean out the garage when we heard footsteps running across the ceiling above us (the loungeroom). Mum turned to me half jokingly and said, "You know if I didn't know any better I'd say this house was haunted." I had also been with my mother when we saw lights flash across the ceiling of her bedroom in broad daylight. Other stuff that happened were things like books flying out of the bookshelves, doors locking by themselves after you've closed them (especially if you went out onto the balcony off the loungeroom,) endless footsteps, voices, lights flashing on and off and personal items going missing. It all sounds very harmless but there was definitely a bad feeling in that house. You couldn't even stand at the top of stairs without feeling like someone was behind you ready to push you down.  I moved out after two years, and I feel confidant to say that now when I hear creaking I know that it's just my house shifting. My father told me that after I moved out everything seemed to come to a stop, which didn't make me feel great I can assure you. I often think about the couple of years I lived there, and how I survived the sleepless nights of terror.  Most people I tell don't believe me, and I don't expect them to. After all it all sounds so bizaar. But my family knows what went on, and I guess that's all that matters.  Take care,  Jade