
Haunted house art by currens on Pixabay.
Fast forward to the second and third haunted houses I’ve lived in. The two haunted houses are connected in space and energy and throughout time. We moved from Hellhound House to The Old House and I sighed with relief. But the first night in our new home, I heard chains and footsteps in the attic.
Chains. I know, so cliché for a ghost. And then something brushed against me and moaned. It was the moaning that got to me.
How The Old House Became Re-Possessed

Black Angus cattle image by Unsplash on Pixabay
Sure I was living on a registered Angus ranch with lots of cows bellowing. And so you say: “It could have been a cow.”
Yes, it could have been.
But it wasn’t.

Image by Peter_Hofheinz on Pixabay
Mom retrieved Dad’s old army cot from storage for scaredy cat Clara to sleep on. This time, however, my parents put the cot in their room instead of my brothers’—my brothers’ room was too small. There I slept until high school. And even while in high school on nights when the moaning was deafening and the touch of something cold against my warm flesh ousted me straight out of bed—on those nights—I sought safety on the old cot in my parent’s room.
While in college, I had none of those ghostly encounters. (Well, some but not until I moved out of the new dorm to an ancient dorm.) It was only when I returned home for a visit that the hauntings began again in The Old House. The hauntings were accompanied by my night terrors. On many nights during the summer, I woke my parents screaming.
The Old House was over a hundred years old. My parents did much to restore the home and clean-up the property. There were covered wagons in the pastures that were not for decoration but had been abandoned. And there were bones. Some human. Some animal. I buried the ones I thought were human in hopes of putting my ghost to rest.
After my freshman year in college, my parents decided to build a new house just in front of the old house with the goal to have the old house removed once the new one was finished.
On the very night we moved in—it was summer and I was home from college—the very night the young couple, who had bought The Old House, had it moved to their property, I woke to sound of all the new cabinets opening and then slamming shut.
I looked at my clock. It was three.
Something pulled my covers from me and a cold wind wrapped me in its icy grip. I allowed the wind to pull me to a door in the utility room. The door stood wide open though it had been dead-bolted and untouched for days. I shut and locked the door and returned to my bed. As I nestled back into the sheets, the smell of lemons permeated my room, and I wished more than anything that the old army cot was still up in my parent’s room.
But hey, I’d just finished my sophomore year in college and was to be married that same summer. Too old for such silliness. I put the light on in my closet and stayed awake the rest of the night.
The phone rang early the next morning. I answered it since I was the only one awake at the time.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi,” she answered. “We’re the people who bought your old house. I just wanted you to know it burned to the ground last night. Nothing left.”
I heard her crying. “Sorry,” I said. “How?”
“No one is sure yet,” she said.
“What time did it happen?” I asked.
“Around three this morning,” she managed before hanging up.
ProbeFiling
My entity wanted me know that he’d moved into the new house. And there he remains.
When I visited, there were always the mysterious sounds and the unexplainable. The night terrors were always a factor. There were times when he’d call my name or touch me, usually at three in the morning.
After my parents passed, and I inherited the ranch, I decided to sell the home and twenty acres. The home sat for two years before being sold. Whenever a real estate agent would bring someone to look at the home, something like snakes in the bath tubs, or stuff oozing from the ceiling, would discourage potential buyers. It was always something that could be explained like the snakes slithered in through the septic.
But I knew it was my ghost.
There were the flickering lights and light bulbs that popped and burst for no reason. Before moving from Texas, I should have investigated the history of property to see if I could figure out who the ghost is. I’ve never contacted the new owners to see if they’ve experienced anything unusual. As my courage grows, and as I disclose more of this information that has mystified me since my childhood, perhaps I will contact them.
In the mean time, I sense a ghost in my home here in Colorado, The Now House. I’m starting my investigations in the present and then I’ll work backwards. Next week we’ll discuss ghosts and smells, and what Carl Sagan says about being trapped in a third dimension.
I’d love to hear your ghost stories. Or what is your favorite ghost movie? I watched Sinister over the weekend. It stars Ethan Hawke and has definite creepiness. I recommend a watch for any ghost hunter enthusiast. Sinister 2 was just released but it doesn’t have Ethan Hawke and the reviews thus far are not compelling. But hey, generally what the critics hate I love, so will probably give it a watch when it comes out on DVD, because there’s just not that many great ghost movies out there.
Ghostly Photo of the Week
Photographer Neil Sandbach, while on assignment, captured the above image in 2008 when he was photographing some landscapes at a farm in Hertfordshire, England for wedding stationary. A couple planned on having their ceremony there. When Sandbach examined the digital copy of the photo on his computer, he discovered the image of what appears to be a ghost child.
Sandbach said he was sure no one else was there when he was photographing. Before the wedding, the couple asked the staff if they’d encountered anything unusual. The couple didn’t mention Sandbach’s photograph. The staff collaborated the story admitting they’d seen a young boy dressed in white on several occasions.
The Probe’s Mission Statement
The Probe is a blog devoted to the exploration of the unexplainable, to finding the truth in occurrences that resemble science fiction, and to researching and reporting on topics that could be flung upon the wall of weird. New posts are featured every week.
(Mostly on Mondays, but sometimes I release early, like on Sundays, if I have a writing deadline, or if I’m going camping, or if I have something exciting I just can’t wait to tell you. And sometimes I’m late if I’m camping or have family visiting .)
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This is really interesting. I’ve had a lot of ghostly experiences in my life, but it’s been so long since anything has happened that it’s easy for me to pass it off as childhood whimsy. However, I sometimes feel that it’s not houses that are haunted, but people. It seems there are some people where the haunts follow them, like you 🙂
Come on Travis, you gotta tell us about some of your ghostly experiences. I bet what you are calling childhood whimsies are still all around you, but as we grow older we push them away and refuse to see, or hear, or allow those unexplainable encounters to touch us. The older we get the stronger force field we put up around ourselves.
I used to think the ghost had followed me from one house to another, but each time it’s a different energy. Hellhound House ghost was evil. The Old House and The Repo House is the same ghost—a young male. (Please don’t ask how I know. It’d be embarrassing to explain.) But the ghost that haunts the house we live in now is a little girl. So though I think that your theory is partially true, I’m not sure it applies in all encounters. Thank you for commenting. I love hearing from you.