Well, it's time for me to de-lurk and submit a story. I've been subscribing to the Ghost-Story-of the-Day mailing list for 6 months and have been lurking around a.f.g-s for a couple of weeks now.

One thing about my screen-name "Casper" however. It is not meant in disrespect, but is an old nickname I received in my early 20's after getting sick river tubing. My pallor was as white as a ghost, hence "Casper". We already had two Scott's in our group of friends, so the name "Casper" came in handy to tell us apart. If anyone is offended by the screen-name, feel free to refer to me as Scott, but *not* "Scotty", which is the second reason I go by Casper.

Anyhow, back to story at hand. This story is true as far as I know. It was relayed to me by my wife, as it happened at her job. She is extremely cynical and skeptical, and would not have believed it if she had not "heard" first the evidence. Here it is:

*** The Haunted Halfway House ***

Around 1983-1984, my wife (who I'll call Roseanne to keep her anonymity) trained as a social-worker specializing in troubled teen-aged girls, worked at a new County program called "NorthStar". It was a halfway house for teenage prostitutes, both court-ordered and voluntary. It was a secure and structured place to counsel the girls until safe arrangements could be made to send them to foster care or back to their families.

The house was (I'm not sure if the program still exists) located off Lake Street and 35W in South Minneapolis. Not a good neighborhood safety wise, but an interesting one for it's old Victorian houses. This house was a fairly typical Victorian with it's 4 stories, narrow winding staircases, and elaborate dark woodwork. It was a rather gloomy and depressing place, but the location was ideal for the program. It had a sophisticated security system with a panic button wired directly to the Police, partly to deter irate Pimps coming in, and court-ordered girls from running away.

Because it was a 24 hour residence, the counseling team, Roseanne among them, took turns doing "All-nighters", mainly consisting of babysitting the girls until the next day and doing minor paperwork.

Strange things happened from the very beginning when the house was being remodeled for it's function as a halfway house. Workman would consistently return in the morning to find lights on that they know they turned off, and tools moved about. They just attributed it to vandals and only mentioned it passing to the program supervisor.

During these "all-nighter" shifts, many of the counselors reported odd noises and footsteps. Thinking at first that they could be the girls moving around, they would investigate and always find them asleep. One counselor thought she heard footsteps directly behind her in the dimly lit hallway, but turned around to see nothing. Others, including Roseanne, heard footsteps coming down the winding staircase to the main floor, where the base of the stairs are directly opposite the Counselor's office. The footsteps would end at the bottom, but they could look directly across their desk and see no one.

The girls in residence had not heard anything beyond the normal creaking and groaning of an old house, but would always complain about missing or moved personal items. Not usual considering their backgrounds, but interesting in context.

The most obvious occurrence happened during a taped counseling session. A room is set aside on the 3rd floor for these sessions and are always tape recorded (audio only). Nothing happened out of the ordinary during the session, but while listening and transcribing the tape, a male voice, way down in the background, was making mocking comments to the conversation. It was definitely *not* there during the session, and not a remnant of a badly erased tape - new tapes were always used. Several of the councilors heard the tape, including my wife. It was obviously not revealed to the girls, as well as any feeling they had regarding the hauntings - these girls had enough problems without worrying about living in a haunted house.

Roseanne left the job after a couple of years for reasons unrelated to the occurrences, but kept in touch with some her fellow counselors. Nothing more out of the ordinary happened besides the strange noises. One councilor did some background research and discovered that a hanging suicide occurred in that block, but the records were not specific as to which address.

This is all second-hand through my wife, but I consider her to be reliable source. It makes for a good scary story for our kids and friends, and hopefully for you. I'll return with another posting later with old Boy Scout legend from my past.

<*> Casper <*>

From: srornat@spacestar.net (Casper)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Haunted Halfway House (addendum)
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 06:50:35 GMT

First of all I would like to thank those fellow a.f.g-s members for their kind comments on my first posting. I too would like to see more stories and less flame wars and scams. Seriously, would any intelligent person even consider buying into these schemes? We're all here to share a common interest or we'd be subscribed to another newsgroup. So let's have more stories: true, legendary, or just a good spine tingler. I know mine does when I read some of these stories, and I *can't* read them too close to bedtime.

After showing the posted "Haunted Halfway House" story to Roseanne (she hates the pseudonym, but it's too late to change now), She reminded me of some parts of the story that I had forgotten. Therefore here is an addendum to the original posting:

******************

The "panic-button" was disconnected soon after the program started. The girls kept setting off false alarms, so the cost became too prohibitive. The neighborhood was a bad one however, with a murder and various assaults happening nearby. Because of this, the overnight counselors were more than usually alert and prone to be scared at noises and bumps, except for my wife, who on one occasion remarked that she was more scared of someone outside trying to get in, than some ghost who had not hurt anyone. She even joked about the ghost "protecting" the house. Of course, it was assumed that the girls were setting off the security system, some of the system was sound and motion sensitive and *could* have been set of by the "entity".

Other than just sounds, there were also fleeting glimpses of a shadowy figure that some counselors would see out the corners of their eyes. Nothing distinct, just a "shadow" that would not be there when you would look directly at it. Some counselors reported a cold spot or breeze and a general uneasy feeling when the footsteps were occurring.

It was the counselor who had the most psychic "receptiveness" (her term) that had the most sightings and "hearings", and also was the counselor who conducting the session where the voice on the tape appeared. The counselor didn't know whether she was just more aware, or for some reason was attracting the entity. At any rate, most of the counselors had experiences, but none of the girls ever had any reports of unnatural goings on.

The house was previously used as a halfway house for adult prostitutes, closing under mysterious circumstances. One of the theories was that a previous resident "client" had met an untimely end and was watching over the new girls. That was only speculation, but it was as good as any other theory.

Well, I gotta go back to Gray 17 now. Bye.

<*> Casper <*>