This story a part of the True Ghost Stories page on Obiwan's UFO-Free Paranormal Page. Please do not copy or distribute without permission from Obiwan and/or the original author!
From: Laurel_Held@LCN1.lcn.org
To: obiwan@ghosts.org
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 12:58:40 -0400
Subject: Frank
This story was submitted and posted to the Castle of Spirits site. Please feel free to use my name and e-mail address.
LC
lheld@lcn.org
When I left Virginia, I had managed to find the love of my life after the worst marriage of my life. I joked that I had to get married, to move to Virginia, to get divorced, to meet my soulmate.
After spending two years in Virginia, we decided to return to my homestate of Ohio. My father had bribed us with a free house. My grandmother had owned the house when she died and my uncle had died in that same house shortly after. The house had been a rental for about 15 years and was the eye sore of the block. The deal was renovate it and it was ours.
It was a big task and we actually thought twice about it. The house was dark and creepy -- almost as if it was unhappy. The house was built in 1928 and you could tell someone at one time had really loved this house and had put a lot of work into it. It had fallen into disrepair and the house was visibly sad looking.
It all began one summer evening at dusk. I had been left alone in the house for the first time and I was scraping linoleum glue off of the kitchen floor. From the basement, I heard thumping right under where I was sitting. The thumping then began to run the length of the house, as if someone was in the basement pounding on the ceiling. Although I was freaked, I continued to work. And sing. I sing professionaly in musical theater productions. My singing seemed to calm the noise. Especially older songs from the 30s and 40s. Even to this day, when I play Glenn Miller, an exuberant peace pervades the entire house.
The noises continued and the presence in the basement was so thick. You would be working on something down there -- rinsing out paint brushes, laundry -- and you always felt someone over your shoulder watching, almost supervisory. Making sure you were doing a good job. My mother and I both felt it but decided to not tell my fiance about it. One day he approached me and asked if I felt like I was being watched. I had to confess. The presence was in the basement, up the stairs from the basement and about two steps into the kitched. It never usually went any farther.
A pattern began to emerge -- the thumping and rustling would begin around 6:00 pm every night and last until around 11:00 pm. Almost as if the person was coming home from work, retiring to the basement for an evening of work on some project and then would go to bed. Sometimes he would even open and close the refrigerator. My dog would stand in the middle of the kitchen and bark at nothing.
As we were cleaning up the basement, we closed the door to the fruit cellar (a little room about 4' x 10'). Big mistake. That night we heard such noise from that basement, like something was trapped and fighting to get out. We never closed that door again. To this day it is still propped open.
We began to get a little fed up -- especially when you came up from the basement with laundry and something chased you up the stairs. You could audibly hear the swish swish of trousers rubbing together and footsteps behind you. He had called my name once and even went so far as to goose me one day when I was vacuuming.
We eventually went downstairs and had a little conference. We told him he was welcome to stay but this was our house and we really loved it and were doing our best to fix it -- we didn't want to see him or hear him anymore because he was frightening us. All was pretty much quiet. However, the day it all ended was when we had glass block windows put in the basement. The workers had removed all the old windows and the basement was aired out for the first time in years. I think he finally decided it was time to move on.
My next door neighbor who is 72 and has lived in her house for 49 years told me about a man named Frank who had lived there for about the same time. He had loved the house and had put a lot into it. I think he was trying to make sure that we took care of his "baby."