The foundation of a future 'believer', here we go.....

Had a few extra moments here, and a thread on another forum had me thinking back to a time long ago, a time where it all began. I've mentioned in the past that some day I'd put my childhood expierence(s) down for all to gander upon but until now never pulled the trigger. Well, consider this the 'bang'. It's probablly the foundation as to why I have such an interest in the paranormal, and oddly enough it also is probablly the reason I am a skeptic as well. This may turn out to be a long, rather uninteresting read, but I feel compelled at the moment to get it out while it's somewhat fresh in my mind......

I was the youngest of 3 children in a less than wealthy family. I had 2 older sisters and I guess you could say we were an average Itallion family, just a bit further removed from the 'old country' than some. My mother was half Itallion and half Indian(Abenaki) and my father was all but full Itallion. To simplify this, we did not speak Itallion but we were never too far from a good spaghetti dinner. My mom was a 'at home mom' until we were old enough to watch after ourselv's, and my father was a ex marine, a Viet Nam Tunnel Rat, and a common construction laboror with barely a highschool education. We survived off of what my father made, and even in the late 70's this was barely enough to get by.

After having to move out of a basement apartment located in the 'poor' section of Albany NY when I was only 3, we moved to a old farm house somewhat off the beaten path in Loudonville NY. It was everything a late 18'th century farm house encompases. It was massive! 2 floors with a dozen bedrooms. It had a connecting 'servant' house that was occupied by another family, a family having 4 children. There was a large openface barn with a rusted weathervain atop, and it had a lot of land surrounding it despite being encroached by modern structures and roads. The inside was fairly nice, everything was BIG! Huge rooms, plank hardwood floors, and cieling to floor windows. All the woodwork, stairs, casings, ect were crafted in a way long dead to carpentry. it was actually rather nice, but the most dominating feature was that it was old, and falling apart! Both the barn which was probablly 5000sq ft and 40ft high, as well as the 8000+ sq ft house looked, from the outside, about as well as the ~200 year old outhouse appropriately placed on the underground creek just left of the side door. No, we did not use it as there was plumbing(and electricity) in the house, but point of fact is that it was still there and functional.

From my earliest memories until we moved out of the house are dominated by surreal expierences that took place in that house. Infact, the reasom we moved out is because my mother was repeadidly awoken by a 'young looking millitary man with light blond hair stadning above her with what looked like a pipe, getting ready to hit her'. Apparently that was the last straw before we packed up and left when I was just eight years old. But that was the end of it all, lets go back to the begining. Before I do though, let me just say I am not going to tell a story here, just point out the highlights. It would take far too long to include everything in a chronological mannor so I'll just puddle jump it.

I suppose you can say it began with your classic banging, phantom steps, scratching, poking, ect.. It was common to hear all these things all through out the day. And quite frankly, nothing I suppose all to uncommon with old houses. However, let me fill in the black sketch with color. I can remember sitting on the couch with my father one evening watching tv. Behind us was a wall that seperated the living room with the hallway that held the stairway to the upstairs. It was very open, very wide, and led from the front door straight back to the kitchen. Well, one night while I was sitting there the banging was so loud and violent I could feel and see my father and I actually vibrating from the repetative banging. The best way I could explain it is as if there was someone on the other side of the wall(in the hall way) pounding, in a rapid motion, with his fists on the wall as if he was trying to bust his way through. My dog at the time, a young golden retriever, stormed in to the hallway only to have the violence suddenly stop. I'll never forget the look in my fathers eyes as his stare tried to ease my uncertainty.

My dog 'Todo' was somewhat of a savior in this house, he literally had no fear of the entities, and would try and attact or intervien every chance it got. Most times it would quickly dissipate and others my dog came away worse for the ware. One time our front door had a loud bang at it. Normally, this in and of it'self was not enough to get my dog riled up as she was very passive and was not the 'barking and intrusive' type. However, this time my dog bolted for the door. When my mother opened the door no one was there. The front of our house was wide open, the house had a large covered porch from corner to corner and was about 60ft wide with about 4 acers of open, groomed space from our front door to the road. No big deal really, but after shutting the door and my back now only ~2 feet from the closed door ,the pounding started again. Before I could even flintch my dog actually leaped up and over me(knocking me down) and busted through the window. And with a bloody face, he stood there on the porch looking around as if baffled. Later that day as I was outside pushing my bike around(because I did not learn yet to ride it) I saw a bush manifest in to my dog with a large spike through it's head. Lap after lap around the house it remained in all it's horrifying glory. Even then being only 5 or so, I remember thinking it must just be a trick or something, but this was no trick. And only when Mr. Apples suddenly appeared did it transform back to it's original bush form.

Now, who is Mr. Apples you say? He was my 'Imaginary' friend. He would appear as a tiny form on my bedroom window sill or in full form here and there. He would sit on my bed telling my stories at night, and dance and sing as a tiny form on my window sill at other times. But here is where it gets strange... Everyone knew about Mr. Apples because I spoke of him all the time. He was an older man, perhaps in his 60's and dressed in out dated clothing, a white suit and top hat to be exact, sometimes with a black caine, sometimes without. Always cheerful and usually 'fatherly' as he seemed to have my best interests in mind. Now, there is nothing out of the ordinary here, that is until others started to see him. Shortly before we moved, we were being babysat by an older aunt. I was about 7 and my sisters were 8 and 10. I clearly remember the knock at the door that night. It was a nock made not by hand but by a piece of wood. My aunt Debbie answered the door and there in his white suit and top hat was Mr. Apples. I saw him mouth the words 'Are your parents home' to my aunt who was suddenly interrupted by the phone ringing, This part is still very clear in my mind! She turned her head just for a second as if to acknoledge the phone ringing, just then Mr. Apples looked at me and winked before turning in to dust. I use the word 'dust' because that it what I remember thinking as a small child sitting on the floor watching it happen, but now I see it was just mist, vapor, or whatever as it disipated in to nothingness.When she turned her head back, he was gone. This really freaked her out, and my Aunt was visably shaken the rest of the night. Mr Apples played a large part in this whole thing, but I do not want to waist too much time on him because there is just too much to tell...

Both my sisters use to sleepwalk in to my room, stand at the side of my bed and simply stare at me with a evil grin. There was no rhyme or reason to it, but it was very frightening! This was not an every day occurance, but happened quite often. I can tell you this with all honesty, it use to scare the hell out of me. Most times I would lay there just paralyzed with fear, afraid to move or take my eyes off the evil stare. Although sometimes I would cry out for help and they would 'awake' visably shaken from the expierence as well. Oddly enough, Mr Apples never once came to the rescue here as he did many other times that involved potential 'bad' things'. Like the time I had climbed upon the stove to get to the cookie jar and fell off backwards. He had cought me. Not physically, but as I felt myself falling backwards in slow motion, I could feel myself being held up like a feather by something inside, as if my soul was slowly floating downward and holding my physical body along with it. As I laied gentally on the floor, he stood at my feet in a semi transparent mist and again 'winked' before vanishing.

As I mentioned earlier that there was a 'servents' house connected in which another family lived. One spring there cat had kittens. I remember being called over a few mornings after it had them to see a box full of little puff balls. There had to be 10 of them!! It may have been a day or so later, one morning when our neighbors mother came knocking at the door. She was talking to my mom for a bit, then my mother grabed me and we went to there house. There we saw an empty box where once baby kittens lay snuggled together. Shortly afterward we all began to look for the kittens. I remember thinking that the mommy kitten may have moved them or something, but I'm not sure if this was just a thought or if I was actually told that. None the less we spent the better part of the morning searching to no avail. Later that night when my father and theirs were home, we all began to search again, all the adults and all the kids. It was at some point that someone noticed the mother kitten would not leave from in front of this perticular wall, and would whine and scratch at it intermittently. It was at this point that someone inspected closer and sould hear faint noised coming from inside the wall! To make a long story shorter here, the wall was actually ripped apart by there father and inside the wall, scattered all about were the baby kittens! some just inches off the ground, some near the ceiling! It was virtually impossible to get inside that wall, let alone for baby kitens only days old. Even as a kid, I knew that was not right.

My father and there father dealing with this type of thing together was not out of the norm. In perticular, I remember the night proof was given to all! After years of living there, we all expierenced things to varying degrees. However, some simply ignored it, some tried not to believe, and some like me had no choice. Anyway, outside of our house, just off the side enterance was an outside passageway to an underground cellar. Now, this was nothing more than a enterance way to a virtual dug out hole in the ground under the house, but crafted as a cellar. The walls were of brick, no windows, and no way in or out besides the cellar door that lay almost flat on the ground. When you oprned the door there were about 6 stepd of stone that led straight down to the cave/cellar. For a few nights in sucession, there was the constant noise of someone stomping up and down those stone steps. Up and down, up and down. All night long. And if you think about it, it's not even possible to walk the steps without the door being open because if you were to be even standing on the bottom step your head would be hitting the door above. Anyway, after a few nights of this, my father and theres actually got shot guns, and we were all out there that night listening to this stomping going up and down the steps. At one point my father ripped the door open while Floyd, the neighbors father, shined the light and we all saw that 'dark form' bolt in to the cellar. They went in after it but found nothing. Nowhere to hide, no where to go. Nothing was there. Soon after they came up and shut the door(s), the stomping began again. It was the first and only time I remember seeing fear/uncertainty in my fathers eyes.

Anyway, I think I'll just stop there. I could literally go on forever with this kind of recantations, and as usual, once I try and go through it in my mind it just gets overwhelming. I will say though that even though I found perticular situations odd, fearful, or downright horrid, I never felt any of it was outside the norm for reality. I mean this was the world I knew and as far as I knew this was just the way things were. It was not until we moved away that I started to understand that it was not normal, and the world may not be that way for everyone. And although I have had a few expierences with what one would call paranormal since then, it was the only time in my life I can label as 'haunted'. Simply put, it never followed me/us and I never really expierenced this type of thing again. Even now as I think back to the clairity of it all, I still question it's absolute truth. Was it just the imagination of a child? Simply an old house mixed with some unusual situations that fooled everyone in to thinking 'ghosts'...? As much as I want, and rightfully should say 'NO', I still cant help but be skeptical. The bottom line, weither I want to believe it or not, is it was a lasting pool of paranormal expierences that molded me. And to that I can not deny.

Thanks for reading a bit of my past, and hopefully I will add more to this in time as I find myself strolling down memory lane. But truth be told, I usually dont like to think about it too often as it makes me confront things that I guess I'd rather not. Feel free to comment as you wish. I'd love to hear from our resident paranormal investigators on this and to see if they ever came across something like it. Also, the house burned down shortly after we moved away and a upscale community of 6 or 8 million dollar houses were built on the land. I always wanted to go knocking on the doors asking if they ever expierenced anything. Oh, and before I forget. I think back to Mr. Apples, and often wonder if when we first met he introduced himself as 'Mr. Appeling', or 'Mr. Applegate' or something, but to a small child I would have thought 'Mr. Apples', lol.....

Anyway, thanks for letting me share!

Sorry for the long read, and bad spelling...

Was it too long of a read? :/

I enjoyed reading it. I hope you post more stories.

Originally posted by eldard
I enjoyed reading it. I hope you post more stories.

Thank you eldard.

I plan on adding more of it in time. It's kind of odd, but sometimes the memories just come rushing back all at once like they did last night.

Wow. That was a very interesting read and I too would like to hear more about it. A funny little thing with me is that when I was about six years old and in the bathtub I told my mom Lucifer was my best friend. Now see, my mother claims that her and my grandma never told me a thing about him and in church they didn't talk about him much either from what I can remember Well... yeah... according to her and my grandmother I gave them quite a fright. Not to mention, the way I quit talking about it was when my mom told me something about Lucifer feeling sorry and repenting for his sins and that maybe he was trying to say that through me. After that they said they never heard me talk about it again. Funny how stuff plays into your later life though sometimes.

reply to post by Rishiana


Thanks, it seems that everyone has a story to tell from there childhood. I guess I kinda wish I did not have so many. It kinda screwed me up for a while when younger...

Originally posted by HomeBrew
reply to post by Rishiana

 

Thanks, it seems that everyone has a story to tell from there childhood. I guess I kinda wish I did not have so many. It kinda screwed me up for a while when younger...

Heh, heh, heh.... I suffer from nightmares of war now. Before that I was just a regular child who didn't have any weird experiences except for two when I was six or seven and then my experiences started up again when I became fifteen years old. Now I'm into spirituality.