Several strange things would happen now and then in the two story house with basement that I grew up in.  The footsteps going up and down the stairs going to the upstairs was so common we thought little of it.  Sometimes it sounded like the house expanding and contracting, but now and then you could hear the steps squeak just like someone was walking up or down them.

I lived in the south upstairs room.  The attic door to the west would open nearly every night.  Since there was a latch on the door and I would latch it when I saw it open it was somewhat disturbing to find the door open so frequently.  One night I pushed a large box of books against the door thinking to hold the door closed.  The next morning I woke to find the door was still closed.  Thinking I had accomplished my objective I got up and walked past the foot of the bed to see the heavy box had been pushed away from the door.  I opened the door and it meshed up perfectly with the box.  The conclusion was the door itself had been opened with enough force to push the heavy box away.

This experiment was done day after day with the same results and my sister Gina was a witness to the fact.  Now and then I would hear sounds in the attic like someone was walking either on the roof or the floor joist in the attic.  Now and then the East attic door would open but not as frequently as the West.  Now and then things would be placed in a certain place and I would return to find they had been moved without any explanation.

The Foreman house was next door to the west of our house.  Two old school teachers lived in that house.  Our basement door opened directly facing the old faded yellow house.  One day Mrs. Bly died and Mrs. Foremen sold the house to my dad.  Dad wanted to remodel the house and use it as a rental.

Most of the door locks on this old house could be opened with a standard skeleton key.  Dad kept the house locked but one night I got up and snuck over there with my flashlight. I went inside and walked through all the rooms making sure all the doors and windows were locked.  I found a wheelchair in the east bedroom beside the bed.  This was Mrs. Bly's room.  I was not aware until then that she had or needed a wheelchair.

The room to the south of that bedroom was filled with dresser drawers and boxes completely filled with books.  She was an English teacher.  There was very little room to walk in that room because of the boxes of books.  They lined the walls and were stacked one upon an other.  They were stacked against boxes around the walls.  All the drawers in at least three dressers were filled with books and boxes of books were stacked upon the top of the dressers.

There was a short hallway to the kitchen, bathroom, back porch and another room on the southwest corner of the house.  There was a floor furnace in the center of that hallway.

I made my way into Mrs. Foreman's room and closing the door behind me I lay down upon the bed.  It was around midnight when I heard footsteps that shook me from my nap. I got up and made my way to the door and listened.  The steps came from the southwest room across the floor furnace and into the living room.  Thinking someone was in the house I flung the door open and shined my light into the room.  The footsteps stopped in the center of the room but no one was there, my heart leapt.  I backed up, closed the door behind me and locked it.  I moved to the window, unlocked it and waited.  The footsteps started again, they came to the door and I saw and heard the doorknob turn.  I lifted the window.  Thinking my mind was playing tricks on me I returned to the door and shined my light under it thinking I would see someone's feet on the other side, but there were no feet!

Finally the footsteps moved away from the door toward the east bedroom.  Again I opened the door and looked and again the footsteps stopped.  I closed the door again and locked it.  Again the footsteps came to the door and the doorknob turned.  At this point I realized I was dealing with a ghost.  I jumped out the bedroom window head first and ran home to think about what I had just witnessed.

It took me a full day to bring my courage around to make another trip to the Foreman house.  I had to know the truth and to find that truth I had to return to that house again.

The following night I went to the house after everyone in our house was asleep.  I went through the house as before checking doors and windows and making sure no one else was in the house.  Satisfied I was alone I returned to the west bedroom closing the door behind me.  Not long after midnight I heard the footsteps just as before coming from the southwest room down the hallway across the floor furnace and into the living room.  The steps on the floor furnace that was turned off was very loud and distinct but now I noticed something else, an irregularity in the footsteps.  The sound of the footsteps was a thump clunk sound over and over again like someone limping with a wooden leg.

I listened, the footsteps entered the east bedroom and became fainter.  I opened the door and listened.  They went into the room with all the books and then I heard a squeaking sound like a door opening, a moment later I heard it close.  Now I heard the sound of the old wooden wheelchair moving into the east bedroom.  I waited for awhile and heard a few soft sounds and then nothing else.  I returned home and told my sister what I had heard the next day.

Gina and I went to the house in the daytime and I walked her through the house showing her step by step what I had heard, our journey ended in the room with the books.  What had made that squeaking sound?  There were no other doors or anything in that room that we could find that could make that sound.  Finally I noticed a peculiar joint in the wallpaper in the northwest corner of that room.  I couldn't get to it because of the books and one dresser that was pushed up against that corner of the room.

We realized the amount of work required to get to that corner of the room and had second thoughts wondering if it was worth the trouble.  Finally our curiosity got the better of us and we began moving boxes and books until we could get the dresser.  We removed books from the dresser drawers until we could move it.  We pulled it a few inches away from the wall and I pulled on the crack in the wall with my fingers.  It squeaked open.  "That's the sound I heard" I told Gina.

I had the narrow doorway open just wide enough I could fit my head through it.  It was fairly dark inside and I found a tall box on the floor.  I reached inside and found leather straps.  I took hold of it and pulled up and out came a wooden leg, Mrs. Bly's wooden leg.  That's why she had a wheelchair in her bedroom.  This explained why the ghost's walking was uneven and strange sounding.

The ghost of Mrs Bly walked the floors of the house for many years even after the house was remodeled.  Numerous people heard the footsteps through the house at night.  Some of those people were renters who left shortly after.  One renter told me "There's something in that house."  Despite me telling them there was nothing to fear most of the people who rented the house left because of the strange sounds at night.

A friend and I had heard the story of an old man who was very rich and didn't keep his money in the bank, he hid it somewhere around his home.  One October night we went out there to find the old house.  We found a gate into a cornfield.  We found some old farm equipment.  We found an area grown up in horse weeds eight to ten feet tall.  Looked as we did with our flashlights we could not find the house.  Finally we split up and he went one way and I went another along the edges of the area covered with horse weeds.  Finally I turned my light off and stood there in the light of the moon.  Something in the horse weeds caught my attention. I saw the silhouette of a house a short distance into the horse weeds.  I turned my light on again and the image vanished.  I turned it off again and there it was as big as life, the shadow of a house standing a few yards into the horse weeds.

I called my friend and showed him what I had discovered then we entered the area of weeds to find the house.  What we found shocked us.  The house had fallen down and the roof was setting upon the collapsed ruins of the house.  The only door we found was the door to the cellar under the house and a set of concrete stairs lead to the door.  We went down and looked at the door but considered the rest of the house was inside that cellar and might be too dangerous.  We left and went home and never returned again.

The story of the headless carriage woman who would take her horse and wagon to the spring for water each day is a sad tail that has been told for many years around the area where I grew up.  This story takes place at the Twin Culverts.  I'm not certain when the culverts were built but I know they are very old and made of stone blocks.  I have pictures and videos of the culverts I will try to find and put a link to on here.  A rail road track runs over one of them.  The place known as "the rattlesnake den" is near them.

The story went that a husband would go to work and his wife would work around the house.  Every day she would hitch up the horse and wagon and go to the spring on the other side of the culverts to get water.  Then one day the husband came home, they argued and he blew her head off with a shotgun.  The story said the bloodstains were in the floor and the wall.  They cleaned it many times but the blood stains always returned.

The house was remodeled and the for awhile the bloodstains were gone then one day they returned.  The people living in the house literally had to paint over them to get rid of them but once again in time the stains returned.  I realize how many times we've heard the story of the bloodstains that insisted to proclaim a murder had taken place, but this is how the story was told to me.

I had heard stories of people who told they had seen the headless woman going for water at the spring.  My dad and I dug the spring area out once, I knew the place fairly well.  I spoke with people who swore they had seen the ghost with their own two eyes and I talked to quite a few people who said they knew someone who had seen the ghost.  I even had a friend who lived just the next house down the road past the culverts (not under them).  He said he had seen the ghost of the carriage woman.  I found my friend dead in that house on his kitchen floor at 2am!  He had been murdered! Strangled to death.  He had dark bruises around his neck.  Several items had been taken from his house that same night, one was a saddle.  They believe a person known only to me as the "Mule Woman" killed him and took the saddle.  She swore he gave it to her before he was murdered.  Jerry Bugg said "It is not true."  He said Darrel told her no and the the day before he was murdered the saddle was still in the shed but the night he was murdered Jerry was with me and the saddle was gone.  I had seen the Mule Woman before.  She was a short round woman, very stout, unkept, and down right ugly.  The sheriff said Darrel was at the sink and was grabbed from behind and strangled to death.  Jerry said Darrel slept in the nude, but when we found him he had his briefs on.  The way they were twisted seemed to indicate they had been placed upon him by someone else after he was murdered.

I was told a "witch" moved into that house and built a wooden fence around the place to keep people from seeing in.  A lot of us came to the conclusion that something was seriously wrong with that place, the culverts and the houses on either side of them.  The negative energy around those places is very strong.  If a person believing in the occult and dark magic considered a place with such history as being a powerful portal to the places of dark energy then this is one of those places.  A witch of dark magic would consider this place as having the dark energy they might draw upon for their craft.

I knew the people who lived in the house where the woman's murder was said to have taken place and they said the bloodstains were factual.  I had done jobs for those people but never once remembered going in their house.

One night a few friends and I decided we would go to the culverts, park in the middle of the first one and just wait and see if she would come by.  It wasn't long after midnight when we heard the distinct sound of carriage wheels on the gravel.  I turned on my lights but couldn't see anything.  I turned them off again and the sounds came nearer.  I turned them on again we saw nothing but certainly expected to see something the sound was that clear.  Finally the sound came right through the tunnel past us and on down the road but we saw nothing.  The sound was real enough to indicate to us that something, perhaps a ghost did exactly as we had been told at that place.

I've had quite a few paranormal experiences that involve things other than the spirits of the dead.  Telling some of these experiences got me kicked out of a church and caused certain religious people to judge me harshly.  My friends understand but other people sometimes find these stories too creepy and some simply choose not to believe it.  The Bible mentions there are spirits of all kinds yet religious people seem to think all spirits still on the earth plane are bad, but there are also angels and there are ghosts, I know because I've seen them.

There is an update to this story.  Ritualistic candle burn marks were found on the wooden floor of this room.

When we got married we moved to Fort Smith, AR.  We lived in an apartment complex near the airport for two years.  We discussed the fact that we were throwing our money away paying rent.  We considered that if we were buying a house our payments wouldn't be that much different but we would be investing in property.  We set out to find us a house.  We said a little prayer hoping for God to guide is to a nice house.  We searched for about a month and then one of our friends came and told us about this house she had looked at but couldn't afford.  She wanted us to take a look at it so we went.

When we walked in the door the owner was showing another couple out.  When he saw us he stopped, looked up at the ceiling and said "Thank God he said he would send someone who could live in this house."

This set off several warning flags in our minds right off.  First of all he acted like he knew who we were.  Second of all he said "someone who could live in this house!"  I looked at my wife and asked "What did he mean by that?"

When he returned he was very excited and shook our hands and began telling us all the improvements he had made to this house.  Then he told us that he had bought it for rental property but no one seemed to be able to live here for very long.  He said some people literally left in the middle of the night and never returned.  He said some people went crazy and began tearing the house up and he had to evict them.  Then he decided that if he couldn't rent it he would live here himself and soon found out that something inexplicable was going on here.

He told us these things up front then gave us a discount off the price and even offered to loan us the closing fee on the house so we took it.

We moved into the house and for the first few months it seemed fairly normal.  Then one night we thought there was someone in the house, I got my gun and flashlight and went to see who it was.  Finding no one in the house and the doors still locked I went back to bed and a few moments later we heard footsteps again walking past our bedroom door and through the living room.  Again I went out and looked but no one was there.  This was just the beginning of the troubles and the start of the real story.

The footsteps became more frequent at night and sometimes we could hear them in the attic.  Our attic isn't very tall.  A person has to crawl through it but these were footsteps like someone walking.  On several occasions we heard our bedroom doorknob turn but when we looked it wasn't moving.  The knobs make a distinct sound and we both heard it.  We were frightened and after a few days we were exhausted from fear and very little sleep.  At that point we knew why the other people hadn't been able to remain in this house.  We would have left as well but we had no money to go anywhere, we had no choice but to stay.

As the days went by more strange things began to happen.  The toilet would flush in the middle of the night when no one was in there.  The TV would come on by itself and we would get up and have to shut it off.  Finally we would hear things crashing in the living room and come in to find certain items had been thrown from their place and were several feet to a few yards when where they had once been.  Other things got turned on in  the middle of the night. 

One day I came into the house and during that time Matthew was staying with us.  I felt someone had entered the house behind me and thought it was Matthew.  I talked as if talking to him as I walked into the back bedroom which was my office at that time.  I asked him something as I entered the room expecting an answer that didn't come I turned around.  There behind me stood a shadow in the form of a person as large as a man.  For a moment I stood there in shock looking at the shadow figure then it moved away and went down the hallway into our bedroom.  I ran after it but when I got into the bedroom it had vanished.  This was the first real solid shadow figure I had ever seen up close.  I knew we were not alone, something else was either living in our house with us or visiting from somewhere else and I didn't like it.

My first thoughts were that it was ghosts but these things were malicious and not friendly at all.  I had to find some way to get rid of them if I could.  As the days passed the freaky things in the house escalated.  About two AM one morning we were awakened to the sound of music playing.  I told my wife to go see what it was.  She told me to go see what it was.  The music was creepy, something I've never heard before in my life and it was coming from the southwest bedroom.  That room was colder than the rest of the house even in the summer time.  Slowly I opened the door and there on the floor I found a very old hand held battery powered Space Invader game.  It was turned on and playing the strange tune.  No one had been in that room for more than a week, at least no one that we knew of.  The game had been in that room for months, in a box of junk.  Who had taken it from the box, turned it on and put it in the floor?  I had no answer.

I prayed night after night for God to help us resolve this problem and I would pass out from fatigue, that's about the only sleep I got during that time.  My fear turned to anger and I decided that we were not leaving, they were, what ever they were.

One night during all this paranormal disturbance I got up from bed then turned around and saw me and my wife laying there in bed.  At first I was a bit unnerved but this wasn't the first time I had been outside of my body.  In a few moments I realized I was OBE and I knew why.  I went down the hallway and saw a short shadow being moved across the hallway from the bathroom into the living room.  I followed it.  I went into the living room and looked around.  I saw several strange looking shadow creatures moving around in the living room.  Some of them were like lizards and some were like dwarfs but they were all shadow things three feet tall/long or less.  I saw them messing with things in the house and I saw some of them leave the house but others appeared shortly after.  They crawled around on the furniture and the lizard things went up the walls.  Some of the dwarfs hid behind the sofa.  At one time there may have been as many as a dozen of these things in the room with me.

I began grabbing them and throwing them out of the house into the front yard and cursing them as I worked.  As soon as they realized I was attacking them the ones left in the house began to scatter.  I chased them around and caught them sometimes two at a time and threw them out of the house.  As I threw the last of them out of the house I was in spirit standing in the front yard and I saw three children standing in the road watching me.

The children, one girl and two boys were in age from around 10 to around 15 and the older one may have been around 18-20.  They were all dressed in 1800 style clothing.  There was no color in them, they were all shades of gray.  Being as curious about them as they were of me I went to them and tried to talk with them.  I spoke but when they spoke I could see their lips moving but I heard nothing.  I was standing right with them only a step away and could see them clearly in the spirit.

The following night I got out of my body and set out on patrol.  Once again I found those little shadow things in the house and I ejected them as quickly as I could.  Now I saw a few more children standing in the street watching me, along with the original three.  Once again I tried to communicate and I could see they saw me but I could not hear what they were saying.  The next night was the same thing but now there were more ghosts standing in the street.  Night by night passed and by the time three months had passed there were less shadow things to throw out of the house and there must have been nearly thirty ghosts now including adult ghosts standing in the street watching me throw the shadow things out of the house.

I also found out where the shadow things where coming from.  They were coming up out of a dark hole at the southwest corner of the house.  This dark hole opened into the southwest bedroom.  This kind of thing is referred to as a portal some call them a vortex.  It is an opening or doorway between this world and the underworld, place of dark spirits.  I had never seen one until now but I had heard of them by several different names.  Looking into the hole in the spirit it looked like a very dark cave.

I told my wife what I had seen and we went into the southwest bedroom.  I knew something was odd about that room.  I began to peal some old wall paper off the east wall and about knee high I found a drawing on the wall.  A drawing that looked like a snake with fangs and another that looked like a dagger sticking into a bleeding heart.  The paint in the room was lead based pink.  A very bad color for a room if you ask me.  We continued to strip the room down to the pink or first layer of paint and we found more drawings.  Against the south wall at the bottom right hand corner of the window was a dark circle drawn in pencil just as the previous drawing.  I didn't know what to make of it.  Under the lower left corner of the west window we found what looked like a frog with it's tongue sticking out.  They looked like a child's drawings.  I had the feeling they meant something, but at first I wasn't sure what.

One day during the day a friend of mine who I've mentioned in this story decided to take a nap in that room.  Shortly after 1pm he came into the living room in a sweat.  He said he had a nightmare.  He said that a red headed man wearing a plaid shirt woke him, yelled at him. The man told him to get out of his house or he would kill him!  My friend was very upset about it.  He said "It was just like it was real.  There I was in the room and there this guy was big as life."  (Note: One of the witnesses said they only saw the head of the man but I forget which one.)

I had a young lady in the house who was sensitive to spirits and along with a few others as witnesses I took her into that room and hypnotized her.  She was not aware of my friend's story or the images we had found on the walls.  The process was simple.  Once she was hypnotized I simply told her to look around the room and tell me what she saw.  She saw the snake standing in the east side of the room, the portal or cave like thing on the south and the frog she said was outside the window sticking its tongue into the room through the window.  Then she saw the red headed man and she became so upset I had to wake her.  Then I told them all what we had found and told them what my friend had seen.  I came to the conclusion this had once been a child's room and that child experienced the "things" in this house.  They expressed themselves in their writings upon the walls that were later painted over.  The hypnotized sensitive saw the images of the things in the room, perhaps just as the child had seen them.

I was never able to find out who lived in this house first, I would love to have known.  I'm still thinking about trying to find out who they were, I have a few questions for them.  Who is the red headed man in the plaid shirt?  My friend saw him and the sensitive saw him and both of them were frightened of him.  They said he was very angry.

I was born on the 12th of December in the year 1951 in Pearl, IL.  I grew up in a haunted house, and the house next door was haunted also.  These things happened when I was a teenager but they are still quite fresh in my mind.  The following ghost stories are things I personally witnessed.  Some stories will include a background story.