Hi there. I've been lurking for some time now, posting an occasional comment or question. But many of the stories shared have resurfaced a few memories of the house in which I grew up. I thought it would be fun to share them and attempt to give back to the group that has given me much to think about. This may be long, so you may choose to print it out and read it at your liesure.

First of all, let me tell you a bit about the house itself. It's located in "The Avenues" of Salt Lake City, Utah and was built in the 1800s. To add to the ambiance, there is one of the largest graveyards in the nation right across the street. It was fun growing up across the street from a graveyard, especially around Halloween, but I don't think it really had anything to do with the strange occurances in the house.

There would be the usual sounds of an old house - the creaks and groans and occasional footsteps on the stairs. The basement was very eerie, as most are. There was one room in the basement, however, that was the most disturbing. No one ever went in there unless it was very necessary. And no one stayed in there longer than they had to. My brother and I would swear we saw eyes watching us from that dark room sometimes.

My family moved into the house when my older brother was 3 or 4 years old, and I was born into the house not long after. The "experiences" tended to center around my brother and seemed to sympathize with him and his having to deal with a bratty younger sister always playing with his toys and tagging around after him.

THE DREAMS:
My brother had many dreams in which it seemed the house was trying to communicate with him. He told me of many dreams in which the house "told" him about previous residents, one dream being of small children writing on the living room walls, and an adult, maybe a parent, yelling at the children. Not long after, my parents decided to do some remodeling in that room and had a "wall stripping" party. Friends and relatives spent days at our house scraping off what seemed like hundreds of layers of paint and wallpaper. Sure enough, one of the layers had writings in what looked like crayon and markers of things like "1 + 1 = 2". My brother and I told my parents about the dream he had had, and they brushed it off as coincidence or a child's imagination. (My father has since passed away, and my mother is still an adamant disbeliever in the supernatural.)

One night my brother and I were in our seperate rooms on the upstairs level. (The upstairs consisted of a hallway with my brother's room on one end and my room on the other.) My brother had about 7 or 8 posters hanging up in his room at the time, some on the ceiling and some on the walls. I was laying in my bed reading when I heard these posters falling. Wondering what was going on, I went into my brother's room and found him sitting up in his bed with a look of astonishment. Every single poster had fallen at the exact same time! By this time we had become used to unusual occurances and accepted it as the mischeivous ghost having some fun.

Another occurance happened when I was 9 or 10 years old. A friend and I were playing "school" in a room that had been made into a study. I was sitting on the floor, busy writing on a chalkboard and my friend was making up assignments from a book. My parents had been doing some kind of construction in the house, and this room was often used to store excess junk. So it was not unusual to have a small piece of wood laying on the floor next to my leg. This particular piece of wood had a pointed end, which started to poke my leg. I was concentrating on my work on the chalkboard and didn't pay much attention to it at first. I thought it was my friend inadvertantly pushing it as she moved about. Then it became annoying, so I turned to tell my friend to stop poking me with this piece of wood when I noticed that she was clear across the room - nowhere near me or the wood!

Similar thing would happen - just small, friendly reminders that something else inhabited the house but us. Our parents never seemed to be bothered by anything, though, and always told us that it was just our imagination.

THE BUBBLE PEOPLE
The occurances weren't always taken so lightly, however. I do remember seeing "the bubble people" at night, which were like small, round colorful lights that hovered around my room, usually seen from the corner of my eye. They had faces that showed expressions of giddyness, happiness, and playfulness. I feared them at first, and would go running downstairs to my mother who would escort me back up to bed, telling me it was just my imagination. (Many years later I would discover that my brother also saw the bubble people, and we finally decided that it might not be our imaginations afterall.)

One night, however, I was laying in bed, trying to fall asleep, when I saw a very large "bubble person" by my bedroom door. It was a very dark night, and he was showing up quite vividly, just hovering there. And, unlike most of the bubble people I saw, he didn't disappear when I stared at him. He was also not as happy-looking as the other apparitions. In fact, he had a kind of malevolent look to his expression. And he was multi-colored rather than one solid color, which was again unusual for the bubble people. After staring at each other for a while, I decided to get a closer look. Gathering up all my courage, I crawled out of bed and slowly approached it, never taking my eyes off it's floating face. Then I realized, Hey! This is probably just my brother and cousin (who was staying with us at the time) trying to scare me! In fact, this did look kind of like a paper-mache mask my brother made in school. With a sigh of relief, I swatted at the mask to show the pranksters that I caught their little joke. To my amazement, my hand went right through the apparition! And it was still there, right in front of me! Terrified, I ran downstairs to mom, screaming and crying. Once again, she told me it was just my imagination, and stayed with me until I finally fell asleep.

SKELETON IN THE COUCH
We had a cream-colored, plush-upholstered (sp?) sectional couch in the living room that, similar to velvet, would appear to darken and lighten when you brushed the fabric one way or the other. One day my brother and I were watching TV when I noticed a perfect skull imprinted in the back of the couch. I thought maybe my brother might had "drawn" it there with his fingers earlier, and told him it was pretty cool-looking. He looked at the couch and said he hadn't drawn it. Then he pointed out the rest of the skelleton - the torso, legs and arms. All perfectly proportional as if someone very artistic had made it. My parents had been out of town during this time, and noone else had been in the house. So who could have drawn this skelleton into the couch? It spooked me out, so I brushed it away, never to see it resurface again.

THE DOLL
My great aunt travelled around the world and brought wonderful souvenirs (sp?) for us. One of the presents she brought for me was a crocheted doll from I think it was Brazil. It was kind of spooky-looking to me, and I never really liked it, but it was a present from a beloved relative and it was mine.

On several occassions I would find the doll in my brother's room. I would always be infuriated with him for taking my doll, and would snatch it back to put in it's proper place (which was on the downstairs bookcases, since I couldn't sleep with it in my room). Inevitably, it would find it's way back to my brother's room. When I would yell at him for taking my doll, he would claim that he thought I had put it there. He didn't like this doll much, either.

Then we moved out of the house to a condo on the upper east side. I never remember packing the doll, and neither did my brother or mother. As a matter of fact, we had all seemed to forget about the doll. But a few days after moving into the new home, it was there in my brother's room.

When my brother moved out, he left the doll on the bookshelf where I liked to keep it. Then one day it wasn't on the bookshelf anymore. And sure enough, when we went to visit my brother in his new apartment, there was the doll. I mentioned the doll to my brother, telling him that he should have told me he was taking it. But he insisted that he didn't take it. A few years later, he moved from that apartment to another, and left the doll in the old apartment for the new tenants. He didn't like the doll and didn't want it. Yet again it followed him to his new residence, showing up in one of the packed boxes. He finally accepted that he would never be able to get rid of it and simply packed it up whenever he moved.

TODAY
Today my brother lives in the old house with his wife and son. Strange occurances rarely happen anymore, he says. Every once in a while he will not be able to turn off his computer (He will turn it off and it will come back on. He will turn off the power source and it will come back on. The only way he can keep it from turning itself back on is by unplugging it. And this is with relatively new wiring in the house.) And his 3-year old son sometimes talks to someone no one else can see. Perhaps just an imaginary friend, perhaps not. But my brother has vowed never to tell him that what he sees is "just his imagination."

Thanks for listening. Comments/questions welcomed.

SN