Well, this might not be my first experience, but it is my first really memorable one. All the ones before also happened here.
I was a teenager, more than twenty-five years ago. The house I grew up in was old, over a hundred years old, not far from the center of Keene, NH. It had once been a duplex, with one home on the first floor and one on the second. My father had bought the house from both families, and he converted the second floor into bedrooms for my parents and their four sons. I shared what used to be the upstairs kitchen with my brother John.
It was late at night, at least ten o'clock but possibly later. I had been sitting on the couch downstairs reading. I was alone in the house. I leaned back and took my head from my book, as I had just finished a chapter. The house was quiet, as it should have been. The door to my parent's room upstairs opened and someone walked from it, through my brother Jeff's room and into my room. I heard my door close.
At first, I did nothing. I just listened to the sound of someone upstairs. Then it struck me. I was alone in the house, and that did not sound like the footsteps of anyone in my family. I've lived there all my life. I know the sounds that my parents and my brothers make when they walk around upstairs, and these footsteps didn't match any of them. Only one conclusion: a stranger was in my house!
Actually, I wasn't afraid. I assumed it was a friend of my brother John's. John probably sent him up to get something for him. I quietly padded upstairs and through Jeff's room to the door to my room. I stood at the door for a moment and listened. I could hear someone in my bedroom. Someone was walking around in the room. It didn't sound like he was searching for something, but more like just casually walking around doing things.
Slowly, I put my hand on the doorknob and turned gently. I wanted to surprise whoever it was. I'd get a good laugh out of scaring my older brother's friend. The footsteps in the room beyond did not stop. I then flung the door wide open and stepped in, a wide grin on my face.
My grin faded quickly. The room was dark and empty. My brother's bed came out from the far wall to the center of the room. My bedroom was in one corner. The sound of footsteps vanished as the door opened, and there was no one there. No one was in the room, and no one could have left the room in the time it took me to open the door without being discovered.
I had certainly heard the footsteps of someone who was not in the room, but who sounded quite familiar in the room. What I heard in my room that night was the ghost of someone who used to live there, and still does probably to this day.
I don't live there anymore, and that was not the only experience I had to then. But to this day, it still drives my passion in the paranormal.
It is for that reason that I wrote the
Strange World Storytelling Game.
Go to
www.strangeworldrpg.com for more information on the game.
Tags: Paranormal Strange World Ghost
