My childhood home was haunted

My dream goal is to become a published horror author. This may include dabbling in other genres slightly, as my book ideas include everything from aliens to dystopian, but they all have a dark twist. Already, I have started hearing questions about why I chose horror to be my genre of choice. To be honest, given my life experience so far, horror fiction felt like the most natural fit for me. Let me explain.

First of all, I have always been an avid reader. Some of my favorite books have been by Stephen King or have involved some sort of supernatural or thriller aspect. I love suspense, especially when it is driven by something unknown, like a creature lurking out in the night or vampires luring you into their lair. I think it’s the excitement that there could be creatures out there in the universe, although not exactly like we explain them in books, but that layer of uncertainty makes it all the more exciting.

As a pre-teen, my best friend and I had some of our favorite memories staying up all night watching the next scary flick. Some of them were cringe-worthy (thinking of you Dr. Giggles) while others forced us to stay awake all night before finally falling asleep once the sun filled the room with light. We would use the Ouija board to try and speak with ghosts and try to call for bloody Mary in the bathrooms. We loved anything supernatural. As we got older and could drive, we would even stay out as late as our parents would let us to try and search for haunted, abandoned houses in the outskirts of our small town. We never did find any, but we definitely became spooked enough while searching for them.

Although, to be entirely honest, I never had to leave town to find a haunted house. I never admitted to it while living in Nipawin, but I lived in a haunted house. Two elderly brothers had lived in our home before my parents bought it, when my older brother was around 4 year old and I was still an infant. I don’t know what age I was that I first started to notice that we weren’t alone in the house.
My first memory of the two brothers, or at least one of them, was when I was around 6 or 7 years old. I remember I had started out sleeping in my own room, but something happened after my parents went to bed. I can’t remember exactly what had happened, but I do remember that I was terrified, so I ran into my parents room to wake up my mom. I crawled into the bed beside her, convincing her that I needed to sleep in their room the rest of the night. Then she rolled over and likely fell back to sleep right away, but I sat and watched the doorway. I still remember it like it was yesterday, so I guess it must have scarred me enough to burn itself into my memory.

Now, you need to realize that the doorway to my parents was blocked by a section of wall. In the hallway, there was a closet that was set into the same wall as my parent’s closet, so the doorway was flush with the hallway instead of the inside wall of the bedroom. What I saw while peeking over the covers, hiding behind my mother’s back, was long, transparent fingers curling around the edge of that wall. I couldn’t see the full doorway, so those fingers were particularly terrifying. Then a transparent face slowly peeked around the corner and looked at me. I can’t remember what the eyes looked like or if they were just hollow, but that could be the fear blocking out part of the memory.

I am sure I ducked down to hide behind my mother’s back, but eventually I looked back up to see if they went away. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. He was standing near the end of the bed, at the opposite corner from where I lay. I remember him smiling, as if he found what he was doing to be funny. I remember him wearing a white, long-sleeve shirt with 3 or 4 buttons up to the neck. He was wearing long slacks with thin suspenders going over his shoulders. When he realized that I was watching him again, he started to dance and move back and forth at the end of the bed, his mouth pulled up into a big grin. I sat and watched, frozen with fear, my eyes watching the dance at the foot of the bed from my curled up position. I remember wanting to scream, but not wanting to wake up my parents in case I was imagining the whole thing. Eventually, he ran too far and fell through the wall of the bedroom. The bedroom was on the second floor, so I don’t know if he fell outside or simply disappeared, but the show for the night was at least officially over.

I thought I remembered a second man that night. But I don’t recall him dancing and running at the foot of the bed. I think he simply stood off to the side, near the door to the bedroom, leaning on the wall watching his brother’s little ghostly show. Looking back, I wonder if they had meant to be entertaining me that night, not terrifying me. My mom told me that they were kind brothers, although they didn’t have many family members, hence they lived together until they passed away in the early 1980’s before we bought the house.

Now, that is my most vivid memory of actually seeing the brothers. I also have other memories of the house terrifying me, and I assume that they were somehow involved, although I couldn’t see them to confirm it. I remember as a teenager, I kept my bedroom door open at night (in case I needed to run from the room quickly) and I would frequently hear footsteps walking up the stairs at the end of the hallway. They would frequently stop outside of the bathroom that was down the hall from my room. It sounded like someone walked into the bathroom and started tapping on the mirror (or maybe it was the cupboards?). Then, I would lay frozen in fear, watching a mirror I had set up on the opposite side of my room from my pillows so that I could see down the hallway through my open door. I would watch, my heartbeat loud in my ears, as I could hear the footsteps slowly leaving the bathroom and continuing to walk down the hallway until they stopped outside of my door. Unfortunately, I could never see anything in the mirror. It was always too dark in the hallway, so all I saw was a blanket of black outside of the doorway. Then the noise would simply stop, as if whoever was walking down the hallway towards me room just vanished.

It wouldn’t be until many years later, after we sold the house to move to a new town, that I found out that I wasn’t the only one having these ghostly experiences in the house. My family and I were sitting in a restaurant, ordering supper together, as my brother and I were both attending university. We somehow brought up the topic of the old house in Nipawin, and one of us mentioned that we felt it was haunted.

My brother went on to explain that he had multiple experiences in the house as well, sometimes with orbs of light flying around the room or the sounds of heavy footsteps walking around his bed. The one memory of his that stuck out for me was when he was in his teens and actually saw one of the brothers. He said that he had been laying in his bed in the basement bedroom and he looked up, sensing that he wasn’t alone. He said that a semi-transparent man was standing in the doorway watching him. The man was wearing a white, long-sleeve shirt, brown slacks, and thin suspenders. Eventually, he said the man just slowly dissolved and disappeared right in front of him.

As it turned out, my mother also had experiences in the house. She said that she would wake up frequently in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t be sure why she would wake up, but she would look around the room and then freeze in fear. She said there would be a shadow in the shape of a man standing at the foot of the bed, as if it were looking down at her and watching her sleep. She said she would close her eyes, trying to will her body to wake up, thinking that she must be dreaming, but the shadow figure would still be standing at the end of the bed when she opened her eyes. Then she felt that there must be an intruder in the house, so she tried to slowly reach for my dad under the covers to alert him to what was going on. Then, the shadow figure would simply disappear, before my dad woke up.

I guess we can say, without a doubt, that our old childhood home was haunted. I frequently wonder if the current owners of the house have ever noticed anything. The house went through a few different owners after we first sold, which also makes me wonder if others had been experiencing the hauntings like we were and chose to sell the house right away. Although it could be another reason that it sold so frequently at first. I definitely wonder whatever happened to the ghosts of the two brothers after we left, as they seemed to like us given that they would frequently show themselves and walk around us at night, but they never bothered to move objects or slam doors.
Now, looking back, I feel like they probably just liked our company and enjoyed that we could actually see them. I managed to find out where they were buried before writing this post, so I may have to stop by their cemetery to say hi. It would be really fun if my brother and I could spend a night in that house now that we are adults. We both love watching ghost hunters and talking about whether what is captured is realistic or completely fake, so it would be fun to have our own little ghost hunt in our childhood home to see if we could convince the old brothers to come back out and show themselves one more time.