I can't begin to express how glad I am to have found this newsgroup. I have been interested in the paranormal since I was a kid; I'm now 25. I've posted one or two stories already and I have to say that I'm glad to get some of these things off of my back. Telling people you've seen a ghost is, unfortunately, not too socially acceptable. My wife believes me (she's had some experiences of her own) and she remarked that I seem to attract a lot of supernatural experiences. I've had more than a few strange things happen to me, so maybe she's right. But I digress. My interest (and experience) in the paranormal really began when I was about four years old. That's when we moved into a haunted house. Here's the story:

The house my family moved into used to be a small schoolhouse on the outskirts of a small city in Wisconsin, called Stevens Point. My mom went to school there when she was a kid. My dad bought it and remodeled it into a home. My mom told me that when she went to school there were always stories about ghosts moving around the schoolhouse. She didn't experience anything than and she suspects that most of the stories were just the typical 'haunted school' tales.

There was one strange thing that happened during that time. One Monday morning, the janitor was working in the basement and he noticed a patch of floor where brand new cement had just been poured. Now, no one had any idea why this new cement was there. No one had authorized it and no one had poured it. In short, no one had any clue why it was there. Then a report came in to the school that one night over the weekend, a car was seen in the driveway/parking lot of the school. None of the people who saw the car recognized it and no one saw it come or leave. It was then that the District Attorney, the Chief of Police and the town chairman decided to dig out the concrete and find out what was under it. I guess the feeling was that maybe someone of something was buried under there. So the new concrete was dug out and the dirt underneath was also removed. They dug down to the water table (it wasn't that far; 4 feet) without finding much of anything. They couldn't go any further than that because the sides of the hole kept caving in. To this day no one knows who poured the concrete or why. Whoever did it would have had to chip apart and break the cement that was already there, then fill it all back in with new stuff. I know that this actually happened because my grandmother saved the newspaper clipping about it. I've seen it and read it. So, to continue.....

A little while after my dad fixed it up and we moved in, we began hearing noises. It would sound like a baby crying somewhere in the house. It wouldn't be loud, but if the TV and radio were off, you could hear it clearly. It would cry and then take a breath and then cry and take a breath; it sounded exactly like a crying baby would sound. My sister and I shared a room upstairs, and we would hear it at night sometimes. When we yelled for our parents, they would come in, but the crying would have stopped by then. They didn't hear it at first and they thought we were just goofing around.

A little later, my older cousin was babysitting my sister and I one night. We were all sitting in the living room at night when the crying started. My cousin asked us what it was and if we were pulling a trick; we didn't know and we weren't. We told her that we heard it sometimes too. She started to look around the house, with us tagging along. No matter where we went in the house, the crying would always sound like it was somewhere else. We were very, very scared. We all waited up until my parents came home and then my cousin told them she would never stay in the house again. They asked what was wrong and she told them about the crying. It was then that they started to believe us. Apparently, they each had been hearing something themselves, but they thought it was their imagination.

This crying went on every now and then for the entire time that we lived in the house (almost 6 years.) No one had any idea what it was. My dad would go looking for it and he would never find anything; it would always appear to come from somewhere else in the house. Eventually he gave up. Nothing else ever happened, and we got used to it. No one liked it, and no one liked to stay there alone, but we figured that whatever it was, it wasn't going to hurt us.

I've told this story to several people and they've all tried to punch holes in it. 'Maybe it was a cat or kitten or other animal stuck in a wall and crying to get out.' Maybe, but I don't think it would last for over 5 years like that. 'Maybe it was a bobcat.' They were seen around the town and their cries sound like a giant cat meowing, but again I don't think it would last 5 years. And I've subsequently heard the cry of a bobcat and I know that the crying in our house didn't sound like that. 'Maybe it was a bunch of kids playing pranks on you.' Again, the fact that it continued for 5 years pretty much shoots down that idea. I don't think that too many kids had the patience to continue it for that long. Besides, it always sounded the same and you could never tell where it was coming from. I don't think kids could do that either.

I don't know what it was. I've heard a saying that goes something like this, 'Eliminate what it isn't, and what you're left with is what it is.' That's a hell of a paraphrase, but it makes its point. I've eliminated every natural explanation I know of. Therefore, what I'm left with is an unnatural one.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has heard about my old house or has any theories about what it may have been. After all, I may be wrong.

KRN