Back in the mid-1960’s, my family lived in a house that we knew was haunted. It was an old farmhouse in the middle of town, built sometime before 1900. There were two floors, a basement, and an attic.

There were five of us siblings. Three of us slept in first floor rooms.

The second floor had two bedrooms, one large, where one of my brothers and I slept, and a very small one, which we called the junk room. There were five us siblings and we never threw out any toys. They were kept in the junk room.

When indoors, we frequently played in the large bedroom. We occasionally heard footsteps in the attic, at night, pacing from one end of the house to the other. We would then rapidly adjourn down the stairs to the living room where our parents would declare us to be, and I quote, “Nuts”. This happened a number of times. We lost count of the total.

One day, we were ordered to clean up the junk room and sort all the toys into new cardboard boxes. I say new boxes, but they were obtained from the alley behind the main street stores. The clean up was accomplished rapidly, which was understandable if you knew our mother. The room was very tidy. Our mother was pleased.

Here’s a side note on the junk room: It was always cooler than the rest of the house, except for the basement. We would not go into the junk room at night, alone. The closet was terrifying. Its door would not stay closed but never swung open while anyone was in the room. The junk room door had a separate lock, on the outside of the door. It appeared to be original to the house. We kids kept that door locked when we were not in that room. We often wondered why that door needed a lock on the outside.

One night a few days later, my older brother and my sister were playing “Sorry” in the large bedroom. They suddenly came screaming down the stairs into the living room claiming that somebody was in the junk room, apparently trashing the room. My dad grabbed a baseball bat and went up the stairs, with the rest of the family a reasonable distance behind.

The junk room door was still locked. He opened it, turned the light on, and declared that, and I quote, “You two kids are full of shit. There’s no one in here and the windows are closed and locked.” He continued, “Weren’t you kids supposed to clean this place up? We got you new boxes.”

The room was trashed. Toys were everywhere, but not broken. The boxes were empty and half ruined. The closet door was ominously open. Our mother did not say a word in our defense. She said she did not believe in ghosts.

A good twenty years later she admitted that she thought the house was haunted, too.

First shared in the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgSRtIshDfs&ab_channel=JeffreyKelley

For the reading impaired, an audio version of this quasi theory may be found here: