Not sure how to start... I am a lady in her fifties with no supernatural/paranormal talents. I have been reading stories on this site for a couple years, so I thought it might be time for me to do my part and put my story out there for others to think and wonder about. I haven't done it sooner because the length, but here goes.
My husband and I moved to El Paso, Texas in fall of 1998, along with our two year old daughter and three year old son. We first moved into a rental home. I only mention it because of the bad vibes there. The previous owners were drug cartel members who kept Rottweilers and were hauled off by men in black suits according to the neighbors. The house had broken doorframes on the front door and master bedroom, and other damage throughout that someone searching would do so we have no reason to doubt the neighbors.
The front bedroom was the smallest, and had the worst vibes. Our daughter never slept there a night if she could avoid it. She just waited until we were asleep and crawled in with us. We stayed there only six months, but other than general creepiness and ugly feelings nothing happened there.
We moved to our present home in spring of 1999. It was built in the 1920's, is a two story stone house with three bedrooms upstairs, living room, dining room, kitchen on the main floor, and a full basement. It is on a large corner lot with an unusual amount of trees and shrubs for the desert, and others have told me they think it is spooky.
The first odd thing we noticed was a large black and white photo of a baby boy, maybe 12 to 18 months old, blown up to almost poster size, hung in the smallest upstairs bedroom. It is so large it is blurry. You cannot help but think they would have taken a better picture if the child were alive. It is expensively framed and looks to be from the early 60's or even 50's. Couldn't leave that there - kind of afraid to throw it out - so I ended up putting behind the headboard of the bed in the master and kept unpacking.
Being the smallest bedroom, the picture room fell to the smallest child, but this was never a problem. From the very first night on, the daughter slept in her own bed and didn't bother us unless she had a bad dream or tummyache or some-such. We chalked it up to the bad vibes in the rental being gone, but we were very surprised at the sudden change.
My husband and I did not sleep so soundly. Three times in the first two months we went to bed only to hear a huge crash downstairs as soon as our heads hit the pillow. It sounded like a cement block crashing through the front window onto the hardwood floor. We would rush downstairs and find - nothing. No broken glass, no large object, nothing at all. We rationalized things like maybe all those VCR tapes the kids had out had fallen from an end table, but I really thought they were on the floor anyway and there wasn't something to blame it on the second or third time. Seems like something that sounds like breaking glass and a boulder crashing onto bare wood would be pretty easy to spot anyway. We chalked it up to 'something' or 'that was weird'.
About two months after we moved in, the hubby and I finally moved the last three or four large furniture objects to the floors they needed to be on and we were exhausted. When my head hit the pillow and I heard that crash I still sat up, but Hubby didn't. I looked at him and said "I'm not going." He grunted affirmative, and we went to sleep. We never heard another one of those crashes again. However, I would never stay down on the main floor at night alone. I had a creepy uncomfortable, unsafe feeling, only at night. I assumed I was wimpy and just went upstairs to read or something early if Hubby was away on business.
About a year later, I woke up one night to a child's voice softly calling "mamama, mamama" from outside the master bedroom. My son used to give mama an extra ma so I assumed it was one of the kids, probably him. I dragged myself up and out into the hall (more of a large landing) between the bedrooms. I was facing the bathroom, which had a kid's bedroom to either side and stairs to my right. I paused for the next "mamama" to figure which way to go. It came from the stairs. I stopped dead and listened, straining to wake up as fast as possible, wondering what the little bugger was up and roaming around for. It came from further, like the downstairs hall. Then the kitchen, and finally it sounded like it was in the back yard (I did not hear a door). We have an open window downstairs because we had an evaporative cooler at that time, not central air. That is how I knew it was the back yard.
I was just standing in the hall in shock, until I shook it off and took a couple of steps into the boy's room - he was sound asleep, ran a couple steps back to the girls room - SHE was sound asleep, and then I hauled back to my own bed and smashed up against Hubby with my eyes bugged out and hid up under the covers. I did not tell him what happened. I was too shocked. I DID NOT like it that the ghost used mamama like my kids. To me it meant it was watching us.
About a year after that (it was probably around 2001 or 2002), we were at my mother-in-law's house sitting around on the front porch one night and some of the family started telling ghost stories. Supposed to be true ones. So I got brave and told my mamama story; this was the first time I had ever told a soul. To my surprise, my husband said that he had SEEN the baby. He said that since we had moved to the house there were nights when he would wake up and see a baby at the foot of the bed watching. He has bad eyesight and without his glasses he assumed it was our daughter, so he would tell her to come up into the bed, but she would turn and go back to her own room. He had recently realized that this baby may have been the same size as the daughter when we first moved in, but now she was much taller - kids grow three or four inches a year at that age. Our son was always much larger than that, so Hubby had recently concluded that this was not our kid that he was seeing! Our daughter said it wasn't her, she always climbed in bed if she came over to us. I believer her, though she was only three.
My mother-in-law kindly sent me home with a Gatorade bottle full of holy water (Hispanic Catholics are prepared for the supernatural) and the next day I went around the house and blessed everything. Doors, windows, closets, open spaces, EVERYTHING. I prayed especially long in my daughter's bedroom where we found the photo. I talked to the baby and told it to call its mom, dad, or grandparents, and I talked to God and asked him to send loved ones to get the baby, or angels if need be.
We never saw or heard the baby again. Seeing as I had only heard it once, and that was at least a year before, you could say that nothing happened, except that I immediately noticed that I wasn't afraid to be alone on the main floor at night anymore. Now I was terrified of the first corner of the stairs.
Our stairs had three triangle steps creating a 90 degree curve at the very bottom. At night I was terrified to turn my back at that corner and go upstairs. I would run like mad up that first flight after I turned the corner (remember I was 40ish at the time - this was just silly). The corner itself didn't scare me, it was just having my back to it. I ended up getting the holy water back out (Gatorade is a pretty big bottle - I still had a lot) and blessing that corner and putting a religious statue and a decorative plate showing the life of Christ nearby and blessing those just to be safe. The fear was much less but iffy for a while, then it faded completely away like it just left or slowly wore away.
About six months or so after that the weirdest thing of all happened. We had left the kids at one of the sister-in-law's for a sleepover with the cousins, so we were alone in the house that night. I woke up and it was morning. Sun was up and bright. Hubby was not in bed, so I thought that maybe he went to sleep downstairs. It was May and pretty warm already (can get up into the 90's or even higher in the desert in May) and we didn't have the cooler working yet.
I wasn't worried until I got out of the bathroom, then I suddenly had the most horrible feeling that Hubby was downstairs dead on the floor and that I should go check on him immediately. I didn't; I shook it off and climbed back on the bed and lay down. Well it shook. Like shake-a-shake-a-shake. I sat up, and it did it again. Shake-a-shake-a-shake, I looked at the ceiling fan to see if it was an earthquake, and at everything in the room to see if anything was swaying like an earthquake and nothing was moving, but the bed shook again, shake-a-shake-a-shake. I leaned off around the bed to see if anyone was doing it and hiding, and nothing (Hubby wouldn't fit under it, trust me). Then I heard Hubby cough downstairs. Immediately the shaking stopped and the horrible 'Hubby is dead' feeling left. I went back to sleep, believe it or not. When you have your first night without the kids since they were born you do that.
I went downstairs an hour or two later and was making coffee in the kitchen when Hubby called me from the living room. He wanted to know why I had come downstairs earlier and gone out to the back yard. He had heard me come down the stairs and even heard the back door open and close.
We have a theory about this - that Hubby may have really been having trouble breathing. He has sleep apnea, and can stop breathing for long periods of time. Maybe the ghost was genuinely concerned.
Notice that the mamama voice went down the stairs and out to the backyard and now the bed shaker did the same thing.
That was the last really unexplainable thing that has happened in the house, and it was over 10 years ago. Recently we did some painting/fixing up in the kitchen that may have triggered a dream visit this past summer, 2015.
I was taking a nap, and in the dream I was in the living room when I heard a key in the front door lock, and the door opened. A very tall (around six foot?) lady came in, a little heavy but not terribly overweight. Her clothes reminded me of how my mother dressed in 60's, even the hair was a variation of what we kids called 'helmet head', popular with ladies back then. I did not know her. I would guess her age to be thirtyish. I was shocked and ran screaming up to her, telling her to get out of my house. She completely ignored me, gazing around over my head (I am not much over five foot). She looked around slowly and walked through the house, not in any rush. I ran circles around her like a mad hen, threatening her to get out. I felt strongly that inside she was empty, hollow, devastated, in an emotional dead space past pain and grief.
It didn't really register with me because I was focused on getting her out of my house, but I felt it. She walked through the house to the back door and went outside to the yard. In the dream I was trying to wake up because I was so upset, but no luck. I found a cell phone in the kitchen, and I called the cops, all the while looking out the window at the woman, who was just standing in the yard. A cop came and I showed him out back. He got her attention and spoke to her. He wasn't threatening her at all, just talking, but she looked at him, pulled out a pistol and shot him dead! I was still watching from the kitchen window, shrieking hysterically to police on the phone. Another cop was coming over the back wall when I woke up.
I almost never dream, and my nightmares are either dinosaur attacks or being naked in public. I can't but help thinking this was a message. This is my house (I have a key). I choose to ignore you (I treat you like a ghost). I want to be left alone (killed the cop).
That is our haunting; I am pretty sure the dream is part of it. Not the scariest ghost story, but that is because it happened over several years' time. If it all happened in a week or a month we may well have moved. Hubby has not had any additional experiences. My kids are 19 and 21 years old now and neither ever had an experience.
Most importantly, the house is too big for us now. What do I do with that giant baby portrait if we sell the house? I moved it to the back of a closet in the basement a few years ago, but I still have it. I really want to throw it out, but the other family members think that would be asking for trouble.