Three True Tales of Terror: A True Hauntings' Collection Read online

  Three Tales of Terror

  A Collection of True Hauntings

  Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  The following stories are all true accounts of real hauntings that happened to the author. In some cases, names and locations have been changed for privacy reasons.

  Contents

  Note from the Author

  Let’s Connect

  Four Months of Terror

  A Summer of Fear

  The Maple House

  Want More?

  About the Author

  Rebecca’s Other Books

  Two Weeks’ Excerpt

  Windwood Farm Excerpt

  Copyrights

  Let’s Connect!

  Come find me on social media!

  Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/rebeccapatrickh/

  Website: www.rebeccaphoward.net

  Email: [email protected]

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebeccaphowardwrites

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/RPHWrites

  Instagram: https://instagram.com/rphwrites/

  Note from the Author

  In 2011 I began collecting local ghost stories and urban legends for what would eventually be the Haunted Estill County books. For several years I interviewed people in the community, read their emails and letters, and took stories from social media platforms that people sent me. It was a lot of fun listening to their stories and hearing their tales. As an Anthropology student, I had a keen interest in culture, especially how folklore could be shaped and spawned by a place–its geography, isolation, heritage, and morality. I had another reason for collecting these stories, however.

  I wanted to feel less alone.

  As a child I’d had a few “spooky” experiences but they were all benign–feeling like my grandmother was watching over my after she passed away, seeing something from the corner of my eye, etc. I wasn’t necessarily afraid of ghosts. My mother always said they couldn’t hurt me. When I was ten, however, something happened that would change my perception of the world around me. That experience is documented in Four Months of Terror.

  Once we moved from that house I continued to have paranormal experiences throughout the rest of my life. They were usually isolated incidents. I am not a psychic or medium; I can’t talk to dead people. Somewhere along the way, however, I must have become more sensitive to these things.

  I’d shared my experiences in the Mount Sterling house, and later the house in New Hampshire, with my closest friends over the years. I even blogged about a few. I didn’t think of sharing them in a book until long after the Haunted Estill County books were released. Suddenly, with kids of my own, it became important to me to get these incidents down on paper. I’m not the spring chicken I used to be and the older I get the more important it feels to remember my past. I guess we all feel that way.

  The stories that follow are all true and did, indeed, happen to me. The Maple House was originally published under a pen name due to some of the incidents that occurred, especially the tragic one. In addition, I still live in the town where the house is located and wanted to respect the owner’s privacy.

  I don’t have any clear answers as to why many of these events occurred, or why the houses were haunted. I’ve updated Four Months of Terror to offer a plausible explanation but, the fact is, I might never know.

  I’ve appeared on a few different podcasts and radio shows over the years and sometimes get asked “do you think it was just scary because you were a child?” I don’t think so. We spend our time trying to protect our home, trying to protect our children and what’s ours in any way we can. When something threatens that, we react. Sometimes we simply react internally. In all three of these stories I felt threatened and my reaction was solid fear. How do you defend yourself against something you can’t see, can’t fight back? For me, that’s the worst kind of attack. Eventually, it can even drive you a little insane.

  One of the biggest misconceptions about hauntings is that they are similar to what we see on television–big, scary events that are unquestionably paranormal. In reality, true hauntings are usually made up of the small, the mundane. The events are quiet, almost imperceptible at times, leaving the affected person wondering if they’re paranormal at all. I know that in all three of my stories we never started out thinking it was a ghost in our midst. That didn’t come until much later. Instead, we figured the noises to be old pipes, the visions a trick of the light…even a person breaking in on us at one point.

  Many reviewers have remarked that my experiences weren’t that “scary” or not really “filled with terror.” I think this is partly due to the fact that thanks to horror movies that get grittier and more volatile as time goes by we are almost desensitized to fear. But when you’re home alone, in the dark, in the one place where you’re meant to feel safe and secure, any invasion on that is terrifying, especially when it’s something you don’t have any control over. (It’s also important to remember that in the first story here I was a child and am remembering it from a child’s perspective.)

  I get a lot of people asking me, especially in the case of the second story, why I didn’t do more research and try to find out more about the place. The simple truth is that life has gotten in the way. I was happy to leave there, happy to be gone, happy to move forward. Carrying out research on the place, contacting previous employees, and learning more about it wasn’t something I cared about at the time. In fact, I wanted to forget about my experience there as much as possible. It wasn’t until much later, when I began writing about the hauntings, that I forced myself to really remember and think about my time there. I love a good story as much as anyone and, like others, I like for there to be a “reason” for a haunting. Sometimes, however, there just isn’t one. And sometimes the reason doesn’t seem to justify the events to our liking. I’m afraid that’s life, though, and I try to be content with it when I can.

  I hope to leave the readers with a few questions and as many answers as I can possibly offer. I’m always open to more insights and questions, however, and encourage readers to contact me at [email protected].

  Peace,

  Rebecca

  Four Months of Terror:

  The True Story of a Family’s Haunting

  By Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  Moving

  Growing up, my family had what you’d probably call a fairly typical southern Appalachian view on ghosts: We assumed they existed but unless they were family, we tried to steer clear of them. I don’t ever remember anyone around me believing in anything like demons or ghouls or some of the scary things in the movies, but it was perfectly fine and acceptable to believe that, should a light in the kitchen flash off and on, Great Aunt Ellen must be up to something. Ghosts were treated almost like an afterthought, a joke. Or maybe just an extended part of the family.

  Unless you didn’t know the people doing the haunting. Then, things got a little cloudy.

  Looking back, I have dozens of memories revolving around supernatural or paranormal explanations of things that went on in our lives. If it was snowing it was because the old woman in Heaven was shaking her featherbed. If there was thunder it was because the angels were bowling. If you couldn’t find your hairbrush even though you knew you’d left it in the bathroom, it was because a deceased relative was trying to send you a message. The paranormal was such a part of our world, and our culture, that the para part of the word didn’t necessarily have to be there.

  I was never scared of ghosts. Growing up in a time when Scooby Doo taught us that most ghosts were just mean guys in masks, I didn’t fear things I co
uldn’t explain because I assumed everything could be explained. And besides, even if it was a real ghost, I was always told they couldn’t hurt you. You just had to be polite, try to figure out what they wanted, and carry on about your business.

  At the age of seven, when my grandmother died, we had her wake at our church for two nights before the funeral. Some of the family, who had traveled from faraway states, even slept in the pews. Most everyone spent this time talking, visiting, and even keeping up a prayer vigil.

  Me? I gathered some friends and set up a small circle of chairs in one of the Sunday school rooms and tried to hold a little séance to talk to Nana.

  It didn’t work. I was highly disappointed. My mother was not amused.

  I also tried hypnotizing my friends a few times because I heard that souls could travel outside the body even when you were still alive and I figured that would be a lot of fun. I must have heard about astral projection somewhere and been confused about how it worked. My friends humored me and told me they were “totally under” and flew through the air and stuff.

  As you can see, I was a little bit of a strange child.

  I still got scared, of course, but not of ghosts. In a way, the idea of them wasn’t that much different than having an imaginary friend and I had a whole slew of those. I would have been happy to glean a sign from Nana, either one of my grandpas, or my Uncle Jimmy. In fact, I did my best to coax them out. I knew they wouldn’t hurt me or scare me.

  Instead of ghosts, my fears were of intangible things I could never quite put my finger on or explain: the things that might lurk in the dark, someone breaking in on us while we were sleeping, the knot on the oak tree that looked somewhat human and always seemed to be watching me…

  And then, when I was ten, we moved into the house in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. We only lived there four months, but that was all the time I needed to learn that not every haunting is a good one and that most things to be feared are those that can’t be explained.

  Mount Sterling is a small town in central Kentucky. It’s not so small that it doesn’t have a Wal-Mart (it does), but it’s not so big that it has a mall. Most of the restaurants there these days are chains and, like many of the towns its size across the south, the downtown area is drying up and giving way to urban sprawl.

  It’s a beautiful town, however, with its older homes and well-maintained buildings on Main Street (even if some of them are empty) and the beautiful rolling farmland that surrounds it. You really can’t find a lovelier place in most of Kentucky and its charm is widely appreciated by those who visit it every year for the big gathering in October.

  The town’s big claim to fame is its annual Court Days, where the entire downtown area is taken over by vendors hawking everything from knockoff purses (hopefully not stolen but you never know) to fried apple pies. You really have to see it to believe it. I think one year there was around 100,000 people who attended. I believe it because I’m almost positive I stood in line behind at least half of them for use of the porta potties.

  We moved to Mount Sterling for my mother to take a teaching position in the next county over. There weren’t any houses available for rent in that county, so we had to look farther afield; thus, we ended up in Mount Sterling. There actually wasn’t a lot of possibilities there, either. Still, Mom was happy with what we got. The house we rented was located downtown which made it easy to walk or ride my bike to many of the small stores that were still in existence at the time.

  I was excited at the prospect of living downtown. As a child of the 1980s, things were still relatively safe and parents didn’t need to keep a close eye on their kids like they do today. Most of the books I read and shows I watched had kids my own age running around downtown, going to the movies with friends and eating at restaurants and I thought that sounded fabulous. Of course, I didn’t know anyone there yet and hadn’t made any friends but I figured I would eventually and together we could rule the streets with our bikes and roller skates.

  I’d never lived in town before, only out in the country, so this was a real novelty to me and I aimed to make the most of it. Times were different then and it was perfectly safe for a ten year old to have run of the neighborhood without worrying about someone killing them or snatching them. Those things still happened, of course, but they happened to other people in other places. The great devil worshipping scare of the early 1980s was mostly over by then so parents weren’t so afraid of sending their blue-eyed, blond haired children out to play, only to have them snatched up by cultists looking for fodder for their rituals. (A genuine scare a few years earlier, although it was completely unfounded.)

  We were also excited about this move because it brought us closer to where we were originally from, Wolfe County, and we missed living in the area. We’d been living in Martin County for the past several years and both my mother and I were homesick. All in all, it was a happy move for us. It’s important to state that upfront. We were glad to be moving back to our home base, excited at the prospect of living downtown in such a pretty area, and thrilled at the idea of a new adventure. We were two gals ready to take on the world, one moving box at a time.

  The house itself was interesting. I didn’t see it until we started moving in, but I was excited about it because it was old. Built in the 1800s (that’s as close to a date as I can get), it was probably a grand house at one time but was falling into neglect by the time we came around.

  We didn’t care.

  We loved the winding staircase, hardwood floors, old stone cellar with multiple rooms, and stained glass windows. I was sure that since it was so old there must be secret passageways in it or a buried treasure or something wonderful and I spent the first few weeks trying to explore it.

  I might have been young, but I had a fondness for history that drove some people around me insane. I loved anything to do with the Civil War and antebellum south. I also had a penchant for old, abandoned houses, English manor homes, and things with tunnels. (I blame my mother for my love of the Gothic. I was named after the Daphne DuMaurier book Rebecca.) A little quiet and pensive by nature, my idea of fun was to curl up in the corner somewhere with a book. I read everything I could get my hands on and, at that age, saw adventure and romance in just about everything. The old house offered my imagination a wealth of opportunity and I was excited for this next new venture in life with Mom. It wasn’t California or Nashville (my choices) but it was something new and different.

  From the outside, the house didn’t look like much. It was white with a long, thin stretch of a front porch and “half” a story on top which really meant it just had two rooms up there. At one point, the house had been used as apartments so its layout was a little odd and it had two front doors.

  Both upstairs bedrooms had what used to be working fireplaces but had since been bricked over. I took one for myself and we used the other one as a guest room. A large stained glass window was at the top of the stairs in the landing and despite the fact that the house was actually pretty big in size, that’s all we had on the second floor. On the first floor there were two large bedrooms (one of them a more recent addition built within the past twenty years), a living room, family room, two bathrooms, a utility room, a sitting room, and a large kitchen. One of the bedrooms was at the front of the house; the new bedroom was at the rear, off the kitchen. My mother took the one at the front.

  The kitchen was spacious, big enough for a large table and chairs still with plenty of room left in which to move around. Being an older home, all the rooms had doors that could be opened and closed. “That will be good this winter,” Mom muttered as she showed me around on our first day. “We can trap in some of the heat.” We were always worrying about utility bills. The last house we lived in didn’t have heat and some nights we ended up sleeping at the school or at a friend’s. We didn’t want to have to go through that again.

  The bathrooms boasted claw foot tubs, antique fixtures that were probably original to the house, and wallpaper that looked at least f
ifty years old. When you peeled it back other layers were revealed behind it, like flipping through a deck of cards.

  Surrounded by some of these old world charms, I immediately began pretending I lived back in some old south time period and this was my plantation house. It didn’t matter to me that we had neighbors on either side of us. With the overgrown backyard I could barely see them. I think I even started sleeping in my mother’s nightgowns, pretending I was a southern belle getting ready to have her coming out party.

  As a child, I didn’t see most of the neglect. On the outside, the paint was peeling, the porch was sagging, and there were bald spots in the grass. On the inside, the whole house could probably have done with some re-wiring, the grout in the bathroom needed to be replaced, there were scuff marks in the kitchen floor, and some of the rooms slanted a little to one side.

  I still thought it was probably the nicest house I’d ever lived in.

  The First Month

  Our first couple of weeks were uneventful as we tried to unpack and get settled into our new home. We had a lot of stuff and even though it was a large house we had trouble making everything fit. In fact, one bone of contention we had right off the bat was that our landlord, an old man who was hard of hearing, actually started bringing in his friends to give them a tour of the house just to show them how much stuff we had. He had a habit of doing this at all hours of the day and night and not knocking first. He caught us both in awkward phases of undress and bathing. I can still remember lying in bed, half asleep, and hearing the front door open. “Cover up!” Mom would yelp, afraid that my (her) nightgown had slipped and I might be exposing something.