Strangest Thing that Came with Your House

Does a ghost count??? The house we bought in Kalamazoo when we moved there for 4 years had a ghost....
I think I like Joan's pre-installed husband the best!!! I want to hear more about that!!!!

Well, I was talking about mine way back up the thread. Do tell us about yours sierra.....

....and yes the built in husband is a hoot Joan. Well, the being built in, not necessarily the man himself..... LOL

I want to hear more about this ghost! I kind of wish my old house was haunted...

Eileen

This thread has turned into a real keeper.

Here's another one...when I was married to my first husband (the wife-beating-alcoholic...nice guy ((NOT)) ), we lived in a little three-room shack (and I DO mean shack), way back in the woods, no running water but it rented for $25.00 a month, cheap even back in 1970. Every time we would come home after dark, I was afraid to go in, would wait til he went in and went through the house. I had the creeps there every time I was alone, even in the daytime. I never did get brave enough to look in the basement. I attributed the skittishness on my part to being pregnant (not to mention living in constant fear of the fist all the time!), but right before we moved out, we found out someone had hung himself in the house. Still gives me the shudders. I wonder if he left some kind of aura behind.

JoanMN, I had a boyfriend like that but didnt need the alcohol, he moved us into a trailer in Delaware for $400. amonth in the middle of nowhere with nothing on it. We had to clean the place out for the landlord to get in. We found a bathroom. I kept thinking wow this closet is filled over halfway, Where did they hang the clothes, wierd place for a window. After going down thru about a foot of garbage and unopened toys and junk I found a sink. wooaaahh. I finally found the toilet a little bit later right past the bag of grass seed and other stuff that shoulda been thrown out. I felt sorry for the little mouse I found in it but decided to get a cat to get them out of my cabinets. The mice were not very appreciative of the fact that I had taken their food stores of cake mixes and flour, They didnt like all those glass canisters either for some reason.

** Oh, ugh, what a job that must have been **

Being constantly involved in historic preservation has led me to many houses that people claim to be haunted. I get asked to visit these houses, and tell the owners how old they are, or if they are eligible for some kind of historic designation, etc. I have always found some common factual reason for so-called ghosts and never found a ghost. One couple had an old house that had light shining around a room brightly at odd times of the day (not night). It ended up being a a silver ornament hung on the curtain rod, and the old drafty window let in a lot of air on windy days that blew it around and caused reflections to dance on the walls.
Scary moaning in another home ended up being pigeons in the attic that had their cooing amplified by a long expanse of space above a hallway and a missing ceiling in one room. So folks, THERE ARE NO GHOSTS.

.........and from someone called 'woodspirit' too
LOL

When I was 10 years old, our family moved into an old farmhouse (90 yrs old, then). No insulation in those plaster walls and it got so cold in the winter in IL. I love to tell my kiddos that I slept in a bedroom without any heat until I was in high school. It wasn't much to talk about when I was little, mind you. :)

In the basement was an old coal burning stove surrounded by tons and tons of coal ash. Instead of carrying the ash outside and getting rid of it, they just piled it up in the basement. It took an entire Saturday of 8 people to haul off all of those ashes. And guess what we found underneath all of those ashes? You bet...a shovel!

smiln32, that is priceless! LOL

No one could blame them for not shoveling it out then, could they? Kinda reeks of lazy, huh?

Oh, my, this thread is funny! I would LOVE to have a built-in Grandma for my house! And Golddog, I found a bunch of keys buried in the yard, maybe they open your secret room?
You all have such great stories!

I've only found a few oddities in this place over the past year (we moved in last December.) I've found lots of spoons in the yard--six of them so far. I've also found some vertebrae (I'm hoping they belong to a deer or other large non-human animal--eek) in the yard, and the basement. The ceiling in the living room has that "moonscape" plaster on it that turns inside-out if you look at it too long. One of the bedrooms is even better--glow-in-the-dark moon and star stickers all over the ceiling. The house also came with a raccoon living in the chimney. We found sooty paw prints coming down the side of the house in the spring, and soon we found a Mama raccoon and her two babies coming in through the patio door to eat the cat food (we left the door open in the summer for air and cat circulation). Mama disappeared in September, but the babies still come around.

Still, nothing as interesting as some of the stuff other folks have found!
Rhonda

We have found at least three forks in the yard, and each one of them is different. My husband, who has no concept of germs, actually washed them and put them in the silverware drawer. Gross!!!!

I have "Uncle Emanuel" at my house. I moved in 25 years ago after my in-laws moved out. (The homestead farm) Uncle E. often slams doors, walks around upstairs (we hear footsteps), lures cats into locked rooms (?), knocks on doors, bangs the gate outside, etc. etc. I've never seen anything, so as long as it's only noise, I can live with it.

LOL Kelli, at first glance I thought the reply said found 3 folks in the yard LOL.
These are wonderful oddities.

No, no dead bodies in the yard, but nothing would surprise me anymore. The people who live next door said that they never had much contact with the guy who used to live in our house. One time they did, he came over and asked them to call the ambulance. His girlfriend had stabbed him. They requested that he come inside but he didn't want to bleed all over their carpet.

Sorry I brought it up Kelli, what a story! Nice that he was being so considerate, perhaps he just wandered around out back!!!

Ruth,

Luring cats into locked rooms? I'd be checking that out for sure. Yikes!

We have 'ghosts', but I don't think they are attached to the house. It's not that old and nothing tragic or even all that interesting happened in it. The land it's built on is something else entirely.

I, myself, once saw a soldier marching down the hall (I'm pretty sure he was Confederate). There have been many playful encounters and some scary encounters with things moving on their own, things turning themselves off and on, curtains opening, electronics going wacky. It's one thing when a light or a radio goes on and off for no reason - It's something else when you watch the switch move and no one is there.

There are 'ghosts', tho I can't say if they are 'restless spirits' or anything romantic or evil or whatever. It seems to go thru phases. We are in a quiet phase lately. We like it that way.

Cheri'

I just could not stay in a house like that!! one instance, of abnormal (beyond my father coming to see me after he died) and i would be out looking for a new house!! No strange, spirits allowed in my house, unless they are family!!. After My father died My two year old daughter would be in her room talking away like she was talking to someone( Just turned two now) and i would go up there and say brittany who are you talking to? pawpaw moma, don't you see him he stting right there, i took it at what it was worth and went on about my business, one night i caught a glimps of him walking out of my kitchen out of the corner of my eye, I was pregnant with my son at the time , brittany would ever so often be talking to him dah dah dah...The night I had Daniel It was about 2 am i woke up and he was standing over my bed, in a split second he was gone, (like i wasn't suppose to see him) Daniel was by my bed in the bassinet he stayed in my room the whole time till we went home, I think that is who he was looking at ) so when i get home Daniel was a fussy baby sick, I would put him in his swing (battery operated) to lull him, I had sat him in it hadn't turned it on was going to prop his bottle in there with him I was tired!! So I went to get a towel , came back and the swing was swinging on it's on not turned on going fast like it was on high, I said Thanks daddy keep up the good work , and went on about my business.. I was never afraid but this was family...
one day a couple of weeks later Brittany came up to me and said mommy Paw paw went to heaven. I said yes brittany i know that remember moma telling you about that. , she said no moma jesus came and got him here, and he told me he had to go to heaven he wouldn't be back again to see me. I cried so much that day. and i have never seen any thing else, I just don't think a two year old could have this much of an imagination, and i don't think i imagined what i saw either.

edited for spelling

This message was edited Nov 19, 2003 12:28 PM

Wow, springsong. That's a beautiful story.

Cheri'

Kelli, Howie and I would probably have done the same as your husband. That's why God made anti-bacterial dishsoap, we figure. There's nothing worse out in a yard then there is on a cuttingboard or knife used to debone a chicken, right?

What a touching story, Springsong.

I'm just kind of weird about germs sometimes - not Michael Jackson obsessive - but maybe more than the average person. I was always like that and probably was brought up that way. As kids, we never drank out of the same glass or shared the same popsicle, not with siblings, and certainly not with unrelated kids. However, I will eat berries and tomatoes off the bush and leaves of wild plants without washing them. Oh, I don't use the cutting board that came with the house, either. By the way, my house if far from spotlessly clean, but I know that those are my germs. ;-)

When we moved in, the previous owners had their washer/dryer installed in the kitchen. I knew there was no was in #@%! I was going to have my DH's dirty socks in the kitchen. That was changed in a hurry!

I am moving this back up to the top since we have a lot of new people join since this thread was active.

my brotherinlaw! He didnt want to move out of his old room!
we bought the family centennial farm and farm house. I didnt know what to say
but my dh told him he had to go! thank heavens!!

He was 25! LOL

Dori, that's so funny! Glad you bumped this thread, Kelli. It's one of my favorites.

The last house I owned was set smack in the woods, with no lawn, and with a winding driveway, so it was completely secluded. There was a sidewalk leading out from the back door, straight out through the woods where it stopped in front of a big oak tree; sort of a walkway to nowhere and of no purpose. After I had lived there for a few weeks, my nearest "neighbor" stopped by and while talking, asked if I knew that the fellow who had owned the woods had walked out one day and hung himself from that tree.After that, I would tell guests that if they heard footsteps coming up that walk and a knock on the door, DON'T answer it! I was single then, and admit to using that story to get young blonde fluffies to snuggle close in front of the fire.
THOSE were the days!
Don

ROTF, Don, your'e awful! Still laughing.

My mother-in-law apartment is made out of the single carport (now living room) and an add-on to that which was built for a beauty parlor (now bed room) It was just one big room with two posts in the middle to support the wall of the carport when they added on. I made a tall room divider between the posts that is solid on the LR side and bookshelves on the BR side. The strangest thing is a box-like ledge around the bottom of the apartment 10"high by 6" wide. We can't tear it out because all the plumbing and electrical is in there. They built it out of the main house for the electric and plumbing for the beauty shop. So I can't put any of my furniture against the walls! Somebody added a shower in the little bathroom that I have to have a step to get up into, and is smaller than the one in my son's camping trailer. But on the side that was the beauty shop I have an electrical outlet about every 10".

Whoever bumped this up deserves a medal, I haven't laughed this much in ages!
Pati

So glad to see this bumped. I still laugh at it all. Can you imagine we all actually live in these places? Gotta love it! D

Update on the corpse's found in the trunk. They were probably stillborn babies back in the sixties. The family had a history of some rare disorder that caused this. The mother has died so no answer to why she kept them instead of having them properly buried.
Bernie

Wow, that's pretty macabre! Sounds like some of the books I read, LOL.

I thought my house came with a compost pile, but I was wrong. When I tried to move it (it was visible from the front of the house), I discovered that it was a garbage pile cover with rotted leaves. I unearthed a whole swingset and 15 garbage bags full of awful, crumbly shingles! It took ages! But now lilacs grow there and I have a real compost pile under the tree.

A black chow named "Bear"came with our house.
And 10 years later,he saved my live from a rabid raccoon in my backyard.
Here,I was looking eyeball to eyeball with this huge raccoon,who look like a cute little creature from disneyworld.He was standing up with his hands up like you see the old cowboys would do in a western movie.My two small dogs were barking at him & I was trying to get them to leave him(raccoon)along.
Bear was under the deck about 50 plus yards away,a sleep-then I heard him coming from under the deck & I thought oh,no Bear will hurt this poor thing.
Bear came tearing out from under the deck,circle around to the back of this raccoon & struck him (raccoon ) with a force of lightening.I kept begging bear to let go of this poor thing-but he only released the raccon when the raccooon was dead.I thought oh,no this beautiful raccoon killed by my own dog.
The next thing surprised me too-all three dogs,left the raccoon alone,most time when a dog kills a wild animal they will eat it-not this one.I took the raccoon to the vet to be sent off & the rabies test came back postive.
I feel if it had not been for Bear's fast reaction,this raccoon would have attacked me.The vet said I was very lucky & if it had not been for Bear-the raccoon for sure would have attacked me & the other two smaller dogs.
So,be very careful of cute little creatures that come out from the wild.
My land is fenced-so don't think because your yard or land is fenced in-you are safe because a fence is nothing for these cute little creatures to get over.
edit to give name of the dog that came with the house.

This message was edited Aug 23, 2004 2:18 PM

My Neighbors,
I had a wild and crazy Apache Indian on one side, a Crabby old geizzer on the otherside, A very sweet but stubborn elderly lady behind me and A kind and generous young man in front of us. What is funny is that now all those have changed and now I have a Dear sweet BIL on one side, A quite young brewmaster on the other side, A Kereoke Gig master in front of us and a very nice lady and her daughter behind us. Living in a mobile home park, this is all subject to change, and it usually does.

Wow, Colie, what a story! I could almost see it happening. Thank goodness for your inherited dog!

No, Tombstonejan I never lived in Arizona. Well, you did say a crabby old geizzer and I am old and certainly am a geizzer.

ROTFLOL. You are too funny. This guy was mean and nasty. He used to beat his poor little poodle and with a broom. I had to report him to animal control twice. They finnaly took the poor little dog away from him. He move finnaly to another part of the park and got another dog and a new wife. Maybe he mellowed out. He was too far away to hear him. I'm sure that we will all be old one day but I sure hope that I never get like that.

golddog I am still sitting here waiting to see what is in that room, and I am not getting any younger so would you PLEASE go break those locks and find out, and let us know.