Hey all. I "promised" months ago to share some of my family's ghost stories and then got really busy at work and let is slide. Someone just asked me about that, so I will post here some of the stories I grew up with, beginning with one I wrote for a Halloween contest that I actually won! The Haunting at Haight House We moved into Haight House when I was three and my sister a new-born; my little brother would come along just a year later. Haight House was a huge, barn-red farm house planted in the middle of endless corn-fields in Midwestern Illinois. Though it had once belonged to a prosperous local farmer, it had long passed hands to become employee lodging for the industrial farming concern my father had just gotten employment with. Before moving in, my father had walked through the house, alone, making mental notes on repairs that would need to be done, corners that would need to be cleaned, furniture that would need to be borrowed. The main entryway had a long staircase that led to the second floor, with a rickety banister that he never got around to shoring up. To the right of the entry was the master bedroom with a dressing room at the back that would become our play-room. To the left was the living room, with a small room off in the corner that would become my sister's bedroom. The kitchen was in the back of the house, once a summer kitchen, later attached to the house with a hall and a pantry that would later become our bathroom. Until the installation of that bathroom, the three seated out-house in the yard would have to serve. The banister, on reaching the second floor, wound around a long hall, becoming a rail over the stair-well. At the top of the stairs to the right was a small room that served as my bedroom which later I shared with my brother. Turning left, one passed the attic door: the attic was actually the space under the slope of the roof that had been walled off to make the hall. Going down the hall and turning left again there was the “big room”, another large bedroom, a duplicate of and right above my parents’ bedroom, also with a dressing room that would serve as storage. As my father walked back from the “big room”, he paused and opened the door which led into the attic area. The afternoon sun shone in from the window at the end of the hall so that, when he opened that door, a beam of light reflected against the wooden beams and planks that supported the shingles of the roof. In that rectangular spot of light, my father saw projected the silhouette of a man, hanging by the neck from a roof beam, swinging slightly. There was no man hung there, but when he investigated further, he found the cut-off end of a piece of rope tied around that beam. My mother, on hearing about this, decided she would never enter the attic and so, she didn't. The door was nailed closed to keep the kids out and that was that. My mother was actually quite sensitive to these happenings. When close to giving birth to me, her first child, she awoke one night to find her father standing at the foot of her bed. She woke my father, who claimed to also see his father-in-law standing there, though he did not hear the exchange between his wife and her father. She asked what he was doing there, he replied that everything was okay, the baby would be a boy and the birth would be trouble free. The next day, my grandfather's brother drove out to our house to tell my mother that her father had passed on, a heart attack in his car, parked on the side of the road. I was born a little later, a boy, with no complications. Perhaps this was why she never entered the attic. The house itself was noisy. Being in the middle of nowhere, fully exposed, the wind blowing across the open fields would make the wooden structure rock and creak. The stairs complained when anyone went up or down. That banister moved of its own accord often. We ignored those sounds, they were a part of the symphony that made up our lives in Haight House. For years, the “big room” was reserved for summer visits from family. We kids were specifically prohibited from entering that room. One summer, though, none of my aunts or uncles were coming to visit and my parents thought it would be nice if I used the room, giving me privacy from having shared with my little brother for so many years. I moved into the room as soon as school was let out. There was a rug on the floor that didn’t quite reach the walls; a large, heavy bed with the head stead against the wall and the foot firmly set on the rug; of course, all of my boy-things scattered about on the floor. The noises began the first night I slept in the “big room”. My mother awoke in the wee hours of the morning to the sound of someone pacing back and forth across the floor on the upper side of her bedroom ceiling. The steps were heavy and loud, as if, she said, the walker were wearing hob-nailed boots. She sent my father up to investigate, to tell me to get back in bed and let her sleep. When he entered the room, he found me twisted in my bedclothes, snoring lightly. He returned to bed to find his wife, also, sound asleep. Some days passed without my mother noticing the pacing man. I had dreams of an older man walking from the door of the “big room” and stopping at the door that led to that attic space. He opened the door and went in. That was all. I had that dream night after night. My mother woke a few nights later, to the same, slow, heavy pacing on my bedroom floor. She listened to the sound, wondered how those boots could stamp so clearly on the wooden floor when she knew there was a large carpet covering it. The steps went from one side of the room to the other. She then heard them go to the door of the “big room” and begin to walk along the upstairs hall. They stopped, suddenly, she thought perhaps in front of the attic door. She woke my father and told him that there must be someone in the house. My father again climbed the creaky stairs, being sure to put his weight on the outer edges so they would screech less. As he reached the top of the stairs, he noticed, in the moonbeam that bathed the hall, clods of earth on the floor, beginning at the door of the "big room" as if someone had walked that way with dried mud on his boots. The clods stopped in front of the attic door. They did not seem to return to the “big room”. The door to the attic remained nailed shut. When my father entered my room, he again found me soundly sleeping. However, once his eyes were accustomed to the dim light from the two windows, he saw all of my boy-things scattered about the floor, making an impossible obstacle course for the pacing my mother had heard. He also saw that the carpet that once covered the floor had been rolled to the wall, without disturbing the toys and books scattered about, without disturbing the foot of the large, wooden bed that had rested firmly upon it. He took me up in his arms, took me down to sleep on the sofa and I was moved back into the smaller room with my brother the next day. We were later told of how old Mr Haight, the former owner, on losing his wife to illness, had left the downstairs master bedroom, to sleep upstairs, alone, in the "big room". When he lost his property to the bank, he had hung himself in the attic. The house had stood empty for many years before it had been acquired by the industrial farming concern my father worked for. We were the first family to live in that house since the suicide. We lived there seven years, sometimes sensing Mr Haight’s presence, sometimes just living with no events. Many years later, I heard that the house had burned to the ground. (There are many more stories like this one, I'll add as time goes on....) peace, revel.