Barnum's

From: 
Story type: Ghost
Location: Denver, CO
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Tue Mar  6 05:56:01 2007

When I was eighteen, we moved into a house on the western outskirts of Denver proper, just across the street from Lakewood. This house was quite obviously very old. Due to the nature of the installations, it was apparent that the house had originally been built without a cellar, plumbing, or electricity, or with the requirements of any sort of building or safety code. The area of Denver in which we lived was once an estate of P.T. Barnum (Barnum and Bailey). We originally found this house because it was behind my girlfriend's mother's house, which was the heavily renovated servants quarters, complete with coach stable in the rear and huge burns under the carpet, the product of a pot-belly stove.

She had always complained about the house, and was not particularly fond of the fact that we were moving into it.

"Eyes stare at me from that window." she would say, pointing to a set of windows on the second floor rear of the house.

Of the boys moving into the house, all of us were well seasoned in supernatural encounters, and are very well practiced in distinguishing physical, neural, and supernatural phenomena.

Upon our initial tour of the house, a presence was certainly detectable, but it did not mean harm. In fact, it was somewhat playful. Continuing towards the rear first story of the house, the feeling would become stronger, and less playful, but still no malice. Towards the front of the house, things feel playful again. Ascending the stairs, the playful vibe would grow until it would dominate the second floor. That is until you reach the rear bedroom.

The first time I attempted to enter this room, I stopped dead in my tracks right inside the jamb. I looked about small well-lit white room and felt the shivers go up my spine.

We settled in and our fellow residents had no problem sharing their dwelling with us. One of the first nights there, I met a few of our room-mates.

The strongest fingerprint upon that house, other than whatever happened in that rear room, is the presence of a small girl, around the age of 12. I assume her life was taken by illness, as all of us who had seen her had only seen her in a faded pink night gown. There was no questioning whether she was around or not. She loved to play.

I worked graveyards with my roommate Syd at a sub shop that closed it's doors at 3 AM. We would usually arrive home between 4 and 6 and would generally relax on the couch and watch a little TV in the living room. The living room, dining room, and kitchen all led into each other along a side of the first floor. Sitting in the living room, watching through our peripheral vision, Syd and I would watch hoards of faint people shuffle about the kitchen.

Some months after we had moved in, we found a newspaper article from the 60's about the house. It seems that there were one a bunch of yuppies living here who had a son with down syndrome. Long story short, the parents decided to lock the kid in the cellar, where he existed for some years before he was discovered by authorities.

There were many, many, many incidents at this house and I can safely say that the year I spent in this house had a fairly profound psychological effect on me, which took me nearly two years to repair. I will post more specific incidents at a later time.

If you'd like to see some pictures of this house, you may e-mail me @ beblowski@bastardtrash.com