Old Houses / New England / Ghost Stories
What’s That Sound Above Your Head? Is Your House Just Haunted — Or Is It New England Haunted?
You’re never alone in an old house
Who’s busting up all these dishes?
I found a pretty transferware potshard in the backyard this morning, while feeding our chickens. I’m always finding bits of broken dishware around the property.
It’s just another reminder of all the people who lived in our house over the past 140 years. They’re not as gone as you might think. And wow, they sure loved to smash dishes.
I don’t watch ghost shows on TV, and I don’t spend much time thinking about apparitions. They are unavoidable, however — just part of the scenery here in this New Hampshire town.
Welcome to the Granite State!
New England is, by the way, the first place I’ve lived where people talk openly, in professional settings, about ghosts.
When I asked a realtor to show me one particular house, she looked hesitant.
“Okay, but I have to warn you first. It’s wicked haunted.”
I asked why the old high school was torn down rather than converted into condos. My neighbor assured me it had been absolutely necessary.
“Oh the town had to tear it down,” he said. “It was wicked haunted.”
Well, that’s your problem right there!
I’ve been told that granite increases the likelihood of having ghostly friends hanging around your house.
Let me tell you, you can’t dig down more than a foot anywhere in this state without striking granite bedrock. Our new house is built on a solid granite ledge, with just enough wiggle room down there to drop a furnace and water heater.
For this reason, no one bats an eye when I tell stories like this.
Hey, cut it out! People are trying to sleep here
One night late, after we first moved into our late Victorian, I toddled down the u-shaped staircase for a glass of water. While I was standing at the sink, glass in hand, someone started throwing furniture around in an upstairs bedroom.
You know what I mean. Breaking chairs and that sort of thing. I just stared at the ceiling, listening.
I don’t have to tell you that the bedroom was empty aside from some dust bunnies. Our furniture hadn’t arrived yet. My husband was snoring away on a camping cot in another bedroom, oblivious to the whole thing.
And after that, you went back to sleep?
Yes I did. The house I lived in before this one had a friendly host of entities that —
- walked up and down the stairs in the evenings
- kept our guests up all night with music
- filled the front parlor with the scent of roses
- ensured our doors were never locked, even after we replaced all the locks and deadbolts, and installed motion detectors
- hinted to a friend of mine that it was time to leave by opening the coat closet door as she watched, with increasing alarm, from the sofa
Neighbors began gingerly asking if we noticed anything odd in the house.
Then we ran into the people we’d bought the house from at a cocktail party one night. They asked casually if we’d noticed anything “moving” around the house.
We said, “No, why?”
“Well, when we lived there, the furniture would move around on its own.”
The husband-and-wife team had had a couple of glasses of wine by this point, which is probably the only way I ever heard this story. They went on to give details. “It started when we began renovations.”
We grabbed some wine for ourselves as they started to dish.
Every morning when we came downstairs, the couch and the dining room table and everything — just everything — would be upside down and sideways and in the wrong room. We found the 100-gallon aquarium was on top of the piano — that sort of thing. We’d try to put everything back where it was supposed to go before going to work. Then when we got home, everything would be all over the place again!
So the bar is understandably high on hauntings in my world.
If all I’ve got is some unexplained racket upstairs, I’m going back to sleep.
Someone’s wrecking the place!
A week after that first encounter my stepson and his new wife came to visit, on ten days’ leave from the Army. They too stayed on the cots in the main bedroom, while my husband and I went back to our old house for a day to tie up the legal ends.
At 12:17 that night, we received the following text.
“We’re so weirded out. Who’s downstairs, busting up the place?”
“No one.” Then I added, “But you’re both soldiers, for Pete’s sake.”
And then “I think you can take ’em.”
“Nope. We’re staying put.”
When my husband and I returned to the house the next morning, our brave soldiers were still upstairs, huddled in the bedroom.
The entire house was quiet and empty, just as we had left it. Dust motes floating through sunbeams.
Eden-like quiet.
No sign of intruders.
Don’t you have a gun or something around here?
A year later, my husband and I were in Washington D.C. with my son. My stepdaughter, who was staying in our guest bedroom, called in a panic.
“I just got home, and someone’s throwing shit around in the attic!”
This is not what a father wants to hear when he’s 500 miles away.
“Don’t you have a gun or something around here somewhere?” was the next thing out of her mouth.
“Calm down and call 911,” her father said. “Go outside and wait for them on the front porch.”
Now, if you’ve read this far in the story, you can figure what happened next
The cops pulled into the driveway. They listened to her and then systematically searched the entire house, basement to attic.
The house was — to put it simply — unpopulated.
“Isn’t there somewhere else you can look? The crawlspace under the roof or something?” she asked.
The cop who was writing all this down raised an eyebrow. “The crawlspace?”
“I’ve heard that people can squeeze inside the walls.”
A look passed back and forth.
The other cop said, “Miss, we’ve checked every place in the house where a human being could hide.”
My stepdaughter scowled at the house, then nodded.
“That’s okay,” she said. “The whole place is wicked haunted.”
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Many thanks, my friends!
