Paranormal Story

From: Victor Cabilla (st93nvsx@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu)
Type: Ghost
Location:
Subject: Paranormal story

Hi, I just checked out the Archive and I thought you could use another story so here's mine.

Let me tell you about my ghost story. It took place in Monmouth County in Jersey on the shore many years ago. I had been living with my father and godfather on the weekends, and for five years we lived in a 3-story victorian-100 yr.-old mansion that they were fixing up. They were into that back then...finding messed up houses in good neighborhoods, fixing them up, and then selling for a tidy profit. Anyway, they had just finished with this mansion and their realtor had found a buyer and gotten it sold, so the realtor invited us to his house to celebrate the sale.

So we got together on a Sunday and went to his house for the day and stayed for dinner. It was a two-story house with basment and attic right on the river, and when we got there during the day....everything seemed fine and basicly merry. It finally started getting dark and we went inside to wait for the dinner that the realtor's wife was preparing. It was quite a wait before dinner, but the had some crackers and cheese out and I was satisfying my hunger with those and soda. After a while I had to go to the bathroom, and the realtor told me it was upstairs. So I walked up the stairs and when I got to the top, the hallway wraps around the banister of the stairs and goes back the other way on the side of the stairs. At the top of the steps there is the beginning of the hallway, and then there are three steps and a door leading to the attic. As I walked around the banister and made my way past all the doors on the side towards the bathroom at the end of the hallway (on the opposite sid of the hallway from the attic door).

Well, everything was normal and I finished my business and walked out. It happened pretty quickly then, but when I recall it....it always takes forever. I walk out of the bathroom, walking past the doors to the bedrooms on my left side, and lightly touching the banister on my right overlooking the stairway. I get to the end of the hallway and go around with the banister now being at the very top step of the stairs. Normally you take the first step without thinking about it, but for me....time froze. As soon as I stepped at the top of the stairs with my back to the attic door (and this is the part where my eyes start to water everytime i think of this story) a force took hold of me. The only way I could describe it is that time froze, I felt a presence behind me, and more than anything I felt more than heard, an incredibly strong rumbling, almost like an animal growling, but being slowed so much that it sounds like a tremendous earthquake. It was so strange because I felt the sound and heard it and knew that it only existed around me or inside me or something.

I flew (not really flew, just ran) down the stairs faster than I thought was possible. I was only 12 or 13 then and I'm actually amazed that I didn't totally freak out and tell everyone about it. I think that I was very disturbed by it, but for some reason....something I still can't explain, I temporarily forgot about the experience while we waited for dinner and were having dinner. Seems odd to somehow displace such an incredible event in your memory, but I did that and didn't really think about it the rest of the night until dinner. We had dinner and the adults started getting on hollistic and paranormal subject. My godfather is supposedly well protected by a very strong guardian. The realtor and his wife started telling us about their extraordinary house. They said that the previous owner was some sort of a psychic medium and that she did most of her work with gates and spirits in the attic! They then related a story of one night where they truly encountered something in the house.

They had just gotten to bed, and turned out their room light, when all of a sudden there was a sound as if something making tons of noise and messing everything up. When they turned on the lights, everything went dead, and they decided it was nothing and went back to bed. Several minutes later, the noises started again, except this time....louder and more disturbing than before. Again when they turned on the lights everything went silent, and the realtor got up and looked about the house, thinking some animal like a racoon or something had gotten in somehow and was causing a lot of mischeif. He even searched the attic and found nothing and then they again retired to their room and turned off the lights. Minutes later, the sounds returned again with incredibly ferocity this time, tremendous sounds as if there was a thunder storm inside their house. The noise stopped suddenly without turning off the lights and didn't reoccur. They then got a phone call a couple of minutes later right after the sounds dissappeared. It just so happens that the realtor's wife's father was in the hospital, and the caller informed them that he had just passed away.

While they were telling these stories, I suddenly remembered what happened to me earlier, but I kept my mouth shut and didn't tell anyone about until my father, godfather, and I got in the car to go home that night. While backing out of their drive-way, I told them about my experience that night. My godfather was troubled to hear this.

The weirdest thing about my experience is the fact that, for a good hour or more between the time that it happened to me and the time we had that conversation at dinner, I just forgot about the whole thing.....as if I just decided it was un-important and threw the thoughts out of my head.

Anyway, that's my story, and it did happen. Years later I inquired about the house from my father and he told me that he thinks the realtor moved out. During this time, I also had a powerful urge to go back to the house and do I don't know what. One of my very religious friends advised me against it and I ended up never investigating it further. I still drive by the house sometimes when I go home on vacation when I'm bored or something, but I haven't had any other strange experiences. To tell you the truth, I always thought I was going to have hundreds of horrible things happen to me the five years I was living in the Victorian mansion, but amazingly enough, nothing ever really happened there. Go figure. http://einstein.physics.drexel.edu/pages/students/cabillav/