Freaked out today! Ghostly pranksters at it again!

Everyone loves a good prank, apparently even the spirit world. Poltergeists are truly the pranksters of the after life. 

There are many theories as to why these things happen, what causes them, and whose affected by them. From vengeful spirits to adolescent psychokinesis. (The ability to move objects with the mind). I personally don't have a good explanation for this phenomenon. In my experience, a poltergeist haunting is usually connected to a particular person and can happen spontaneously then stop just as abruptly.  Things could be quiet for months, maybe even years, then suddenly start up again with no rhyme or reason. Some are harmless. Things move around, doors open and close, things go bump in the night, and occasionally shit will fly through the room. Sure it's annoying but in most cases there's no real intent to cause harm to the living. Other cases it's the exact opposite. The intent to harm is obvious and the situation can go from bothersome to dangerous real quick. People have been pushed down steps (this happened to me once), other times large and heavy objects are thrown at people or a particular person in general. In these types of cases action usually needs to be taken quickly to protect the family involved. Often times moving just doesn't work because the spirt or spirits will attach itself to someone in the family.

For me, these intrusive encounters with prankster ghosts have been far and few between, and for the most part, non-violent. In most cases they leave us wondering, what it really a ghost, or can the event be explained away rationally. Those of you who know me have heard about my ghostly visits. I do live in a haunted house and most of the time my other worldly occupants tend to keep to themselves. I have had a few encounters that have been somewhat dangerous, especially to me and my husband. As I stated above, I've been pushed down the stairs. I have had a printer fly off a shelf above my computer and once the same printer nearly hit my husband in the head. Pictures have flown off the walls or shelves at us, and things have been moved around. Lights go on and off, doors open and close on their own, and occasionally my cats go nuts chasing things that we can't see.

The things that normally go on in my house are what I consider normal aspects of a haunting. Cold spots, orbs, whispers in the night. We have gotten a few good EVP's here, mostly in the basement or upstairs. I knew when purchasing this house that it was haunted. It sat on the market for two years with no interested buyers, despite the owners doing some major remodeling on it. The house itself was built in 1909. Its a two story home, three bedroom, with a wet, murky, musty basement that I hate, and an attic. The attic is pretty nice, They did some renovations up there and added two separate rooms. New carpeting was added to the house, new windows, and the dining room and kitchen floors were replaced. The price was low as well, much lower than a house like this is actually worth. So, why did it stay on the market so long, and why did people avoid this place like the plague? Well, three years before I bought the place, the previous owner had murdered his wife here.

The murder was so recent and it had really rocked the community at the time that it had happened. It's no wonder that the house remained empty. When we first moved in there were still memorials to the

wife all over town. People had posters of her, asking for justice, in their cars and yards. We live in a small town and when something like this happens, it affects everyone. Out of respect for the family I'm not going to name any names, especially since the husband is still in prison, I don't want to ruffle any feathers. I'll just leave a quick in memory picture here and move on.
I do want to say that I don't believe the murdered wife is responsible for any of the negative encounters we've had. She was a mother and a good caring woman. I think at times she does interact with my children, but not in a bad way. She's more protective than anything else.

So, back to my point, I know I have one. When I moved in here I knew that I was moving into a home where something terrible happened, and I knew there was bound to be some spiritual baggage along with it. I've had numerous house blessings done and I sage regularly, but that doesn't seem to stop me from bringing things home with me. I've always been sensitive to spirits and they seem drawn to me as well. This isn't always a bad thing but then I do tend to encounter my fair share of nasties, as well as the more friendly kind. In most cases I think they are playful spirits that are just that...playful. They want to make their presence known and what better way to do that than to float your coffee cup across the room when you're trying to watch your favorite episode of supernatural.

With that said, something happened today that I was not expecting and it genuinely freaked me right the fook out! Now, anyone that is a real horror film buff is probably pretty familiar with the movie Poltergeist. Most notably the little girl, Carol Anne, and her iconic television scene where she announced, "They're here!"  

Clip from the movie Poltergeist

Yeah, that scared the bejesus out of me for many many years and left a permanent scar on my otherwise normal childhood. Thanks dad for letting me watch that when I was five!
I won't even get into the lasting effects of witnessing a tree attempt to eat a little boy or the corpses bobbing up and down in the muddy swimming pool.  But dude, when the clown suddenly pulls the kid under the bed and we hear that maniacal laughter coming from a supposedly innocent toy, that's when I lost my shit! No lie, to this day I hate clowns and that's before I even watched the movie "It" by Stephen King. I never really gave it much thought until today when I started thinking back on all the horror films of my childhood (yeah I was a horror fanatic even then) and one thought kept creeping into my head. What is up with all these ghosts and children's toys? Seriously, why are toys always the first things that get haunted? Chucky and Annabelle aside, who were possessed by evil and sadistic killers, there are still so many movies out there depicting either ghosts inhabiting children's toys or toys that are just flat out evil. As if child ghosts weren't creepy enough, now we have demonic toys coming after us. What the hell man?

Clown from Poltergeist

Well, as it turns out, creepy toys aren't just in the movies and believe it or not, I have one of my very own that, until today, I'd actually forgotten about. To give you some background, when we moved into this house there was a garage sale right up the street. My mom, being an avid garage saler, just had to stop and check it out. I was actually looking for things to decorate my new home with so I decided to go with her. You can usually find some nice things at garage sales or even estate sales. Yeah, my house is filled with things that once belonged to dead people. (And I wonder why my place is haunted). So, while looking through the things at this garage sale, my mom comes across a doll house. It was nothing fancy, just a plastic doll house that opened up to reveal the inside, three levels. It had a nice sized kitchen, bath, living room, dining room, three bedrooms, and even an attic. What was really nice was the box of furniture and dolls that went with it. They wanted fifteen bucks for the whole ensemble, and being that the thing was massive and all the pieces were with it, it didn't seem all that unreasonable.

Mom figured the doll house would make a nice addition to my daughter's room. My daughter was eight years old at the time and loved dolls. I agreed that she would probably love the doll house so my mom went ahead and bought it for her. I decided to put it in her room, arrange all the pieces, set the doll family in the rooms and then surprise her with it when she came home from school. She came home, went to her room and immediately started crying. Now, she has autism so at first I thought that it was just the change in her room that upset her. Autistic kids are hell bent on routine and having this huge doll house in her room was something new that I thought she would just have to get used to, then eventually she would love it. That didn't happen. The first night she refused to sleep in her room. She didn't want to play with the doll house. Hell, she didn't want anything to do with it. I tried to show her how fun it could be but she wasn't having any of it. After a few nights of her being terrified of the thing, and consequently sleeping with me, I decided that the house had to go.

I didn't want to make my mom feel bad so I decided to take the doll house and stash it in the hall closest. It was out of sight, out of mind. My girl seemed happy with this new arrangement and that night went back to sleep in her own room. For the next five years that doll house has been tucked safely away in the hall closest and even I forgot about it, until today that is. I was downstairs, watching a movie on my computer, when I heard a loud bang from upstairs followed by the thud of something heavy falling over. I sighed and shook my head. My cats were trapped indoors because of the snow and they had been extra annoying lately, darting around the house, fighting playfully, and knocking shit over. So, when I heard the noise from upstairs I had assumed it was my cats at it again. I put it out of my mind and went back to watching my movie.

When the kids had come home from school my girl said that she was sleepy and wanted a nap so I told her to go ahead and lay down. She got halfway up the stairs and called out to me, saying that the hall way was blocked. I went up to see what she was talking about and found my old dresser that I kept on the top landing, toppled over and the clothes baskets on top of it knocked down and clothes strewn all over the floor.

The dresser, you can see it to the left, is pretty heavy. I didn't really think that the cats could knock it over but since only my husband and I were home all day and I know that neither of us had done it I just assumed that somehow my pesky kitties were the culprits. I sat the dresser back up and allowed my daughter to go to her room. I was busy picking up the clothes, not paying attention to anything else, when I suddenly heard my baby girl scream a blood curdling scream that seriously scent chills down my spine.

She came out of her room crying, "I don't want it, I don't want it!" I had no idea what she was talking about but seeing that she was so distressed I made a bee-line for her room and was literally shocked at what I found. There, sitting in the middle of her bed, was the doll house that had been stashed away five years prior! I was dumbstruck. No way could I blame that on the cats. That house was heavy. Even my ten year old son would have trouble moving it and he wasn't even home yet.
My daughter was in such a state of panic that I didn't even have time to think. I grabbed the house and carried it back out into the hallway and that's when I realized that the hall closet was standing wide open. I don't think that doors been open since our cat snuck in there to give birth about three years ago. I was perplexed as to why it was open now and why in the hell the doll house was out. More so, how the hell it had made it's way back to my daughters room!

I wasted no time shoving the thing back into the closet and closing the door. It took me a good half hour to calm my little girl down enough that she was able to finally take her nap. Afterwards, I snapped a picture of the doll house, now back in its rightful resting place, just so I could show you all how creepy this thing really is.

The actual doll house

Maybe it doesn't look outwardly creepy, maybe it does. I'll let you be the judge. It's approximately four feet tall, and when the sides are open it spans the entire length of my daughters twin bed. It may not seem that sinister looking at it now, but trust me, seeing it suddenly appear in a place that I know it was not in earlier, tends to give one pause.

Not much is known about the doll house, or the family from whom we bought it. I think the grandmother who sold it said that her granddaughter had simply out grown it. Whatever the case, it's here now but for how long I'm not sure. I may end up just getting rid of it all together. Perhaps the previous owner had had similar issues with the house moving around on it's own, maybe that's why she sold it. Maybe it's just my own household spirits having some fun with us. I don't really know for sure. What I do know is that my daughter is sensitive like I am. She sees spirits and has been known to even talk to them on occasion. The first day she laid eyes on this doll house, something about it inspired such fear and terror in her that she refused to sleep in the same room with it. That hadn't changed in the five years since purchasing it, as evident by her reaction when she found it sitting on her bed. Maybe she knows something that I don't and just can't communicate it to me. Then again, maybe it's just a harmless toy. What do you think?