01/14/2003: Thanks to Sara Miller of Chillicothe in Ross County for submitting the first story of the Contributed Stories section! She tells of the experiences that she and some of her friends had at a friend’s house located near Austin.
Let me tell you about my friend’s house. I can’t tell you exactly where she lives, but I can tell you it is somewhere around where Route 35 goes from two lanes to four lanes; as you are going towards Chillicothe from Jackson. When we were younger, we always had sleepovers there, only because all of us loved (and for me STILL loves) ghosts. Every time we were there, something weird would happen, even if it was the usual furniture moving upstairs. I don’t know exactly how old it is, but I can tell you, it’s old. You can just tell by looking at it. It at least dates to the late 1800s or early 1900s. I don’t think anyone really knows the true history of the house.
Some days I would get a weird vibe that wasn’t all that bad and other days I couldn’t go to the bathroom by myself. It’s kind of funny to think about it, but it’s the truth. The usual thing that would happen (like I said) was furniture moving. We would always run upstairs and nothing would be moved. As soon as we walked back downstairs, we would start to hear it scraping across the floor again. In her parents’ room, her mom had two antique-looking dolls, an old man and old woman, sitting on the shelf. You could go into the room, place the dolls so they were facing each other, go out of the room, shut the door, and stand there just to make sure no one entered the room. Five minutes later, when you go back in the bedroom, the dolls would be turned away from each other.
I remember one time, during the day, we were all trying to watch a movie. The electric kept going out, so we would all drag ourselves to the basement to flip the breakers. We always went everywhere together because, when it came down to it, we were all chickens. Plus we were just freaked out that the electric wouldn’t stay on. Probably about the sixth time the lights went out, we made our way down to the basement. At this point, we all thought it was funny. So we went down the old wooden stairs, a few of the missing, and onto the dirt floor. My friend who lives in the house flipped the breakers and we were all just standing down there talking about how creepy it was down there. Even though it was July, it was incredibly chilly. Moments later, there were three knocks on the basement’s brick walls. We high-tailed it out of there! The lights didn’t go out anymore that day or evening, we were the only ones there the whole time.
We always liked to go upstairs, even though the rooms up there were rarely used. We always heard whispering and giggling up there. Doors would always open and shut right in front of us, and we would always find footprints of a tiny child, even though she had no younger siblings. Sometimes when you were upstairs, you could see a glimpse of a yellow cocker-spaniel type of dog out of the corner of your eyes. Other things have gone on that I have not witnessed. My friend and her mom actually saw a ghost. Three different ones to be exact. One was a black man in the kitchen smoking a cigarette, the second was a man in a suit and top-hat in the main bedroom, and a woman.
We have always wanted to bring an Ouija board in her house, but she refused to let us because, “she has to live there and we can leave whenever we want.” She claims it used to be really bad when she was younger, right after they moved in, but things have calmed down drastically. She says things used to be violent. One night her sister (who has a house of her own now) once had a knife thrown at her, only missing her by inches. Her mom was laying in bed one night (in the same room that the man in the top-hat has been seen frequently) and she felt like two hands were around her throat and she could not breathe. Many more things have happened here, more than I can remember.