10/05/2007: Thanks to A.J. of Centerville for sharing this very intriguing story about how antiques may play a role in paranormal activity. The house was built in the 1960s, but is full of antiques from the 1700s-1800s…even a grandfather clock dated to the 1670s! In fact, there has been so much activity in the home that A.J. says it would take months to compile them all!
I have lived in the same house all of my life. A Dutch colonial house circa 1960. Obviously the house is not old…but what the house contains makes you feel as if you are in a house of the 1700’s. You see, my parents are two of the premier antique dealers in Ohio, specializing in antique leather books and wood furniture. People ask me if I believe in ghosts. They have NO idea. It all started when I was little…I was born in 1987 and since the days that I could point and walk, both my brother and I, have claimed to have seen people walking around the house. We would stand at the bottom of the staircase and just point up. My parents would move us and we would go straight back to it and point with our fingers moving them from side to side as if we were following someone with our hands. There was also a room in the house that contained a grandfather clock dated 1670s, and we would REFUSE to enter that room.
My memory of the strange events date back to when I was 6 or 7. I remember these days like they were yesterday. I was sitting in the breakfast room of my house, which is connected openly to the living room and kitchen. My brother and I were finger painting at the kitchen table when suddenly the dimming light above us slowly turned on. As weird as that would seem, we didn’t pay attention to it and my mom went outside to the breaker box in the garage just to see if something wasn’t right out there. When she went to come back in the room, she reached for the garage door handle and before her hand could touch it, it slowly turned in front of her. She stepped back waiting for it to open and come out, but this did not happen. She waited and finally came in only to see us sitting at the table where she had left us.
Another occurrence happened a few weeks later when I was laying in my bed. My dad had left for work and my mom, brother and I were still lying in our beds. My brother later claimed he heard strange noises coming from downstairs that he could only describe as dishes. He went to the top of the stairs and yelled down, “Who’s down there?,” and the noises stopped. He went back to bed, but only for a short time before he heard the noise again. “Who’s down there?,” he yelled from the top of the stairs. No reply and the noises stopped. This series of events happened one more time before he finally went downstairs only to see dishes covering the counter and drawers wide open. After running to get my mom, and returning downstairs, the kitchen looked as if nothing had happened. Later that same morning, my mom came into his room only to see him pointing frantically at the ceiling where he claimed something had been hovering above him.
We get new house furniture on almost a monthly basis with the interior of the house constantly changing because of antiques being sold and bought. This is what seems to cause the strange events to start back up. We have had plenty of unexplainable bangings, footsteps that sound like wood on carpet flooring, and an uncountable amount of strange lights and voices. It would take months to write out every event at my house, but without a doubt, the antiques that my house holds are of the “para”normal.