Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 15:52:23 -0700 (PDT)
To: stories@ghosts.org
yourname Trent
email sputnik@xmission.com
Location: Vernal, Utah, USA
This story a part of Obiwan's UFO-Free Paranormal Page. Please do not copy or distribute without permission from Obiwan and/or the original author!
This is a story that I did not directly experience, although I do have vague memories of this house that my aunt lived in. This house is in Vernal, Utah and is still there. My aunt moved in years ago with her first husband when I was 4 or 5.
Shortly after she moved in the craziness began one night while she was doing bills in the kitchen. She heard a voice "coming out of the wall" that told her to "go to bed." She said that the demeanor of the voice was very insistant and angry sounding. This alarmed her greatly and she immediately called for her husband Ron. He came bounding up the stairs and asked what was the matter. After explaining what she had heard, he admitted to her that as he ran up the stairs he felt a coldness that passed "through his bones." They weren't sure what to think but they were certainly aware that something strange had happened.
My aunt said that it was at that time that she decided to do a little research into hauntings. For about two months her power bill had been unusually high and she had electricians out twice to check the lines and try to find out why the bill was so high. The first book she read stated that it's common in haunted houses for the power bill to be unusually high. After this, she was wary about what was happening in her home.
It was a few weeks later that the next event took place. Her three eldest children were out in the garage in the middle of the day. Tad, the second oldest, seemed to be the focal point of this entity that inhabited their home. The ghost hated him according to my aunt. In this garage there were two 2x4's mounted on the wall, with a gap in between which was used to hang axes, picks and shovels. The 2x4's were close off on each end by wooden blocks. There was a pick on the end, nearest to the three children. Tad was working on a motor cycle while the other two helped. Ronnie (the eldest) saw the pick literally rise up out of the wooden rack, and then fly with a downward arch towards Tad. Ronnie had the quickness to shove Tad out of the way as the pick hit the cement garage floor with a loud clang where Tad had just been kneeling. The way this wooden rack was made, the pick had to rise up and out before it could fly horizontally towards Tad which is exactly what Ronnie had witnessed.
On another occasion my aunt woke up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. She heard a noise which at first sounded like the air vents blowing oddly. It grew louder and she said it sounded just like the heavy breathing of a man. Not sexual, just slow, heavy breathing. She tried to wake her husband but he would not wake up. The breathing noises became louder and louder until they were so loud it seemed to fill the house. She was still quite calm but very aware that what she was hearing was highly strange. All at once, the breathing stopped and all was quiet again. She eventually went back to sleep and told her husband about it in the morning. He checked out all of the ducts in the house and the furnace and found no problems.
My aunt decided to do some research about the previous owners. She went to the country records office and obtained the name of the woman who had moved out before my aunt bought the place. She called her under the pretence that there were possible property tax issues and that she needed to know who's name the property was in before hers. The previous owner told her that the property and house used to belong to her husband before he died. The property had been in his family for several generations and had been passed down to each son through the years. Upon his death the property was left to his wife (previous owner) and she turned around and sold the land and house and moved away with the remaining children. My aunt thanked the woman and they said goodbye. She went to her neighbors and inquired about what kind of man he was. The neighbors told her that he was a very controlling man and was often heard in heated arguments with his wife. He was not a pleasent man to be around they said and was quite adamant about his property rights and trespassing etc. It is my aunt's belief that it is this very man who haunts the house and is pissed that his wife sold the property and did not like a different family living there for the first time in nearly a century.
My aunt's relationship with her husband broke down while they lived there and she ended up moving to Salt Lake City with a divorce pending. Ron stayed behind alone in the house for a few months while the divorce was finalized and he found work elsewhere. Ron told my aunt one day that a few weeks after she had left he was downstairs in the basement headed for a small room where he kept some tools. The door was open and as he was about to pass through it he stopped in his tracks. He had an overpowering feeling of evil and that if he stepped through that door someone would be behind it and would kill him. Ron is a burly, seasoned welder who is afraid of very little in this world, but he just could not bring himself to step through that doorway that day. He said he just knew that harm would come to him if he did.
After the divorce was final, my Aunt came back to Vernal to pick up some things and take care of a few things around the house before they sold it. Rather than pay for a motel, they (she and her kids) decided to spend the night in the house in sleeping bags on the front room floor. It was late and they were being noisy laughing and carrying on with each other. Suddenly, a voice that sounded like it was coming from the center of the room, tersely and angrily told them simply to "shut up."
That is all my aunt has related to me from her and her family's personal experiences there. I know there is more that she has not shared, specifically events that surrounded Tad whom the man hated most. Those I will have to pry from her some time in the future. Part of the man's land was taken by the county and used to build a highschool on. I have heard sparse rumors that some sort of ghostly presence exists there, but knowing high school kids.......
My own brother remembers the house, specifically the basement which he says has an overbearing sense of malevolance. None of my family members liked the house. Recently (summer of '99) my aunt paid us a visit and we drove with her to the house. It's still there with a family living there. We did not ask the current owners if they have experienced anything.
Obiwan notes: Sounds like genuine Weird Stuff to me. If the aunt was the only one seeing/hearing things, we might conclude that she has a very vivid imagination. With the other witnesses to back things up, however, it does indeed seem like there was something weird going on at the house.