I was twenty-seven years old and was excitedly anticipating becoming a father for the first time, in just a few months. My wife, Kimberly, and I had just purchased our first home in preparation for starting out a family. The house was an old, brick farmhouse, built in 1898 by some of the first people to settle down in the historic, little village of Iona, Idaho. This is the same house where I had my experience with Charles, mentioned in a previous post. Read about that good time right HERE.
We were thrilled to be in our first home and I still remember those wonderfully terrifying feelings of responsibility and stewardship that would come over me from time to time, as the idea of being a property owner and a father began to sink in. And if I’m honest, me being me, the idea that the house could be haunted was also on my mind. A hundred year old house is bound to have a ghost or two hanging around, right?
I don’t remember exactly how long we had been living in the house when I had this experience, but I do know it was within the first few weeks or so. One night, after having gone to bed and falling asleep, I suddenly woke up for no particular reason. I was lying on my right side, my back facing the open bedroom door. In this house the master bedroom was right off the living room. I don’t know why I awoke, but didn’t think much of it and decided to roll over onto my left side.
As I did so, I was taken completely off-guard when I saw a little girl standing in the doorway! She was about six or seven years old and was wearing a white nightgown that had an old-fashioned look to it, like something you’d see the Ingles girls wearing on Little House on The Prairie—minus the bonnet. She had long, dark hair and was smiling at me.
I didn’t feel any fear. In fact, the thought that this was a ghost didn’t even enter my mind. She didn’t look like what I would have imagined a ghost to look like. She seemed solid, right down to her little, bare feet planted on the old, hardwood floor. My first thought was that a neighbor kid must have been sleepwalking and somehow found herself in my house. Yes, that was it.
I was about to ask her who she was when she raised one hand up in a sign of farewell, smiled sweetly, and said, “Bye … “ She dragged the world out like, “Byyye.” Suddenly, she became less substantial, like the dimming of a light, fading into transparency, her hand still up in the air. Before I had time to be scared or disturbed by this, she was gone. Vanished into thin air.
I remember experiencing a sensation of wonder more than fear as I tried to come to terms with what had just happened. What in the heck was that? I thought to myself as I rolled back onto my right side, once again putting my back toward the bedroom door.
As I rolled over, I caught a strange movement out of the corner of my eye. Some shadowy thing slipped into the bedroom at that moment. Flew into the room, would be the better way of putting it, I guess. The best way I can describe it would be if a black blanket of mist slipped into the room by flying through the doorway, up high near the top of the frame, and then floated up into the corner of the ten-foot ceiling. It hovered up there, watching us in our bed.
I was seized by such a fear at that moment that I suddenly felt paralyzed, like a charge of electricity was coursing through my body. I thought I could sense this thing spreading out across the ceiling, becoming larger. It began to descend, as if to completely drape itself over us. With sheer mental force, I powered myself out of that feeling of paralysis and turned on my back to face this spectral threat. But, there was nothing there.
I lay there contemplating what had just happened. The fear slowly dripped away as several minutes ticked by. I concluded that somehow I had dreamed the whole thing. And, maybe I did. To this day, I’m not exactly sure about that. Was it all a dream? I felt like I was awake, but … I just don’t know for sure. To be honest, maybe I don’t really want to know.
I never saw the girl again, or the strange, black shroud that had flown into our bedroom that night. I’ve spent the years since, telling myself that it was all just a bizarre dream. There was never any other evidence to make me think that there was the spirit of a little girl haunting the house.
Except for this one time when our dog, for no reason at all, got his hackles up and started growling at our darkened kitchen one night. But a dog wouldn’t growl at the ghost of an innocent little girl. Would it?
If you are enjoying my blog, please consider signing up for my FREENewsletter
If you have a personal story of the paranormal or an adventure that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.
The
images in this blog post were obtained through Google. The author does
not own these images and takes no credit for them. No copyright
infringement was intended.
As I went to do a little research on The Rogers Hotel in order to write up this blog post, I had no idea of the building’s already infamous reputation in the community for being haunted. And I certainly wasn’t aware of it when I got hired to work for a company that was using the haunted hotel as an office space at the time.
I did a little googling on the building to see what background information I could find on the place and was surprised—but not really—to see a few websites where the haunted building is mentioned. There has even been a paranormal investigation done in the place.
Some videos have been posted by the group that did the investigation on YouTube:
The Rogers was built in 1937 by Bronson Marshall “Brunt” Rogers, one of Idaho Falls’s first millionaires, for the cost of $300,000. Upon its completion, the hotel boasted 100 beautifully furnished rooms with attached baths that went for $2 and up. The hotel enjoyed celebrity guests over the years such as: Herbert Hoover, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, and Roy Rogers.
My own experience with The Rogers takes place in 2001 when I took a job as a graphic designer for a publishing company that had just moved into the building. The antique structure is comprised of three stories in which all the rooms have been converted into offices; my office was on the second floor, if my memory serves me correctly.
I was excited about this new job—I had my own office for cryin’ out loud, with a window and everything! And I loved the building, located in the historic section of Downtown, Idaho Falls on the corner of B Street and Park Ave. To this day, the old sign still remains on the side of the red-brick building. Painted in fading lead-based paint, it reads:
HOTEL ROGERS
One of America’s better places … to eat and sleep.
As I said before, this building was not only new to me, but new to my coworkers too, as they had just recently moved in. Well, it didn’t take long before a coworker shared a ghost story with me, and my new workplace began to take on a whole new meaning.
Apparently, two guys stayed after hours one evening to put together a few modular desks. They were on the top floor—what turned out to be the hotspot of paranormal activity—with the parts and pieces of a new desk spread out in front of them on the floor. They were kneeling side by side, hunched over the instruction sheet, trying to make sense of the instructions—you know how those things go. Anyway, as they were kneeling there, they both suddenly felt a hand clap them each on the back of the neck. They both turned in surprise, having thought they were the only ones in the building at the time. They expected maybe to see a coworker, perhaps even the boss standing over them. But, there was nobody there!
In wide-eyed astonishment they looked at each other, and without a word, jumped to their feet and got the heck out of there, the skin on their necks still prickling with the sensation of a hand being laid there. They returned the next day and were forced to confess their story to their coworkers and explain why they had left a desk in a state of complete disassembly for everyone else to find in the morning.
A saleslady, who’s office was located on the third floor, told me of a time when she was working. It was midday and everyone on her floor had gone to lunch, leaving her alone as she worked to finish up a rush job that day. As she concentrated on the work in front of her, she caught a quick glimpse of a man walking by her door. She didn’t see much, except to note that he seemed to be wearing a pair of overalls and a checkered flannel shirt. She found it very odd, as this was definitely not company dress code.
She got up from her desk thinking that perhaps the boss had come in from a day off and was heading to his office, just a couple of doors down. Maybe he’d just come back from camping or something, she figured; he maybe just needed to grab something real quick. Although, it was strange that he just walked past her door without saying anything. She went to the door and called out his name. There was no response. She stepped out into the hallway. It was completely empty; all the doors were closed and there was no place the man in overalls could have gone! A chill spilled down her spine as a very uneasy feeling creeped through her body. She decided the rush job could wait and left until some other workers could return with her to the third floor.
There were other incidents: doors opening and closing by themselves, lights flickering, footsteps, a disembodied voice, etc. A few more employees thought they too had seen the man in the overalls and some had actually given the wandering specter a nickname. I can’t recall what the nickname was. Something like Bill, I think.
Things apparently got bad enough that someone reached out and contacted some people who had worked for the company that had previously occupied The Rogers. These contacts all enthusiastically corroborated our suspicions that the old hotel was haunted, saying that their employees had also experienced similar incidents while working in the building. I don’t know if there’s any proof to the rumor, but we were told that the man in the overalls was probably the ghost of the hotel’s maintenance man who had worked in the building for years, until he was discovered deceased in one of the rooms one day. Dare I speculate he was probably found in a room on the top floor?
Naturally, these stories and incidents served to incite my imagination quite a bit. I would make excuses to walk the halls of the old building, looking for perhaps a shadowy figure lurking in a corner, the ominous creak of a door slowly opening by itself, or even Bill’s ghost gliding down the hall.
One evening, I found myself working late on a project that had to be done by morning. After a while, I decided to get up and walk around a little to stretch my legs and give my eyes a break from staring too long at a computer screen. As I walked around, I soon realized that I had the entire building all to myself. All three floors. Gulp!
I took possession of my faculties and decided that if I was ever going to see a real ghost, this was probably my best chance. Don’t ask me why I actually wanted to see a ghost; seems like a foolish thing to wish for now. With all of the courage I could muster, I began to walk the hallways of The Rogers, one deserted floor at a time. “Come on, Bill,” I said, now and then, as I made my way closer to the top floor, “Come on out and show yourself, if you’re really here.”
I know … Dumb!
For whatever reason, Bill chose not to manifest his presence to me that night, and to be honest, as I left the building to go home, I think I was kind of grateful he hadn’t. I refer you to my previous post: Charles
I kind of have this theory that when we’re actually trying to see a ghost or communicate with them, collect evidence, etc, we’re less likely to see something then if we just go about our normal existence. I think that maybe when we are in the act of pursuing an experience with the paranormal, perhaps we aren’t in the right frame of mind, making an occurrence not as likely. Perhaps, when we’re just going about our normal routines and daily lives, we are more relaxed and therefore somehow a bit more susceptible to a glimpse at the other side. Which leads me to what I count as my own experience at The Rogers.
At some point, I kind of forgot about the supposed ghost or haunting of the building as I went about my daily life there. I even began to doubt the stories I had heard from others. Not that I thought people were making up the stories, but I started to assume that people had probably just allowed their imaginations to get the better of them. Saw and heard things that just weren’t really there. Personally, I had just spent too much time there—many times all by myself—and had not witnessed any kind of paranormal activity. Not even an unexplained cold spot.
One day, I approached my boss and told him that my office needed a second chair for clients to be able to use when they came to see me. He told me that I could probably find a decent office chair down in the basement, where they had stored a bunch of office supplies and furniture when the company had moved in. Basement? Up to this point, I had no idea there was a basement in the old place. If I’d been on my guard, maybe the thought of going into the basement of an old hotel, that was alleged to be haunted, would have at least raised some concern. But, I admit on this occasion, I thought nothing of it, as I took the stairs, making my way down there.
The basement, itself, wasn’t particularly creepy as I remember it now, some sixteen or so years later. It was a pretty open space with an uneven cement floor and, indeed, it had a great deal of office furniture that had been stored down there: desks, chairs, filing cabinets, old computers, old fax machines, etc. The lighting wasn’t too bad, I remember. About what you might expect in a space such as that.
I began to rummage through the selection, in search of a decent chair that would fit well in my small office space. Before long, I had selected a good candidate and separated it from the conglomeration of stuff. With my primary task complete, I took a moment to have a look around. Maybe there was something else in the pile that I could use for my office.
And that’s when I took notice of the dark, far corner of the basement.
It was an empty corner that held this aura of being farther away then the rest of the room—detached somehow from the rest of the basement. It seemed a little darker than everywhere else too, as if the already weak light emanating from the lightbulbs down there just couldn’t quite penetrate into that one corner. Feeling somewhat drawn, perhaps like a moth to the flame, I took a few steps in that direction. But only a few steps.
I pulled up short, the dim corner gaping in front of me like the giant maw of some lurking monster that just might snap shut and swallow me whole, if I were to go any nearer. The skin on my arms prickled and I’ll be danged if I didn’t suddenly feel a slight chill in the air as I stood there, unable to go further—unwilling to take even one more step closer to that darker little realm of shadows.
I thought I actually felt a presence down in that corner. An unseen phantom watching me from the darkness, warning me, maybe willing me away from its otherworldly abode. For a long moment, I stood there wrestling with myself, questioning my instincts, trying to rationalize away these odd feelings of foreboding that had suddenly come upon me. In the end I chose to heed that sixth sense that was trying to tell me that something about my surroundings just was not quite right. I left with my chair.
Before heading up to my office, however, I stopped by the office of a coworker named Chris. I felt comfortable enough with Chris to tell him about my experience—I knew he believed in the ghost stories that had been circulating. I was sort of going nuts inside, wondering if I had just imagined those feelings in the basement, so I asked him to make a little trip downstairs, and see if maybe he might experience something similar in the far corner. Chris agreed to humor me and headed down to the basement while I waited in his office.
It didn’t take long for Chris to return. He was smiling, but looked a bit shaken up. I asked him if he had also had the uneasy sensation of being watched from the corner. He said that he had definitely felt uneasy while he was down there … and yes, especially while standing near the far corner.
I don’t think I ever went back down in the basement of The Rogers hotel during my employment in that building. And never again did I walk the halls, during after hours, audaciously calling out the building’s ghosts to make themselves known. To this day, and even immediately after my experience in the basement, I question what really happened down there. Was it just my imagination, after all? Was my mind just playing tricks on me?
I suppose these are questions that most people who experience a ghost sighting or paranormal event probably ask themselves. And to be honest, I don’t have an answer as to the truth of what really happened. But, I do know this: at that moment, as I stood there feeling as if the very walls of the room were yawning after me, my blood suddenly turning to ice water, there was no doubt. No doubt at all.
If you are enjoying my blog, please consider signing up for my FREENewsletter
If you have a personal story of the paranormal or an adventure that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.
The following true ghost story was told to me by a coworker of mine some years back, and has remained as one of my favorites over the years. It happened in Idaho Falls in the early or mid eighties.
This coworker of mine, Rick, was working at the time as a busboy at the old JB's restaurant on Broadway by the overpass. There was a young waitress working there at the time who I will refer to as Linda. Rick remembered her as a very hard worker that always seemed to be in a cheerful mood and easy to get along with.
Unfortunately, after a period of not feeling well, Linda went to the doctor only to be told that she was in the final stages of a very deadly and aggressively spreading form of cancer. Within a very short time the cancer took Linda from this world, leaving her coworkers at the restaurant reeling in shock at the sudden loss.
A few days after the funeral, Rick stayed late with the manager, John, to help close up the restaurant. When they had locked up the place they went and got in the manager's car, having carpooled to work that night. As they were getting ready to leave, Rick's boss started patting himself and quickly realized that he had left his cigarettes back inside. "I'll be back in a sec," he said, leaving Rick in the car to wait.
John was gone a lot longer than would have been expected for a simple task like retrieving a pack of cigs. Rick began to worry and was just about to go inside to check up on the guy, when John finally returned. According to Rick, the man was as pale as a sheet and trembling!
"Man," Rick said," you look like you've seen a ghost!"
John nodded slowly and whispered, "I did." He then related the following story to a wide-eyed Rick.
John was pretty sure he knew where he'd left his pack of cigarettes and quickly made his way through the restaurant to get them. Indeed, the smokes were right where he remembered leaving them. When John grabbed the pack and turned to leave, he was suddenly frozen in his tracks by a loud crash that came from the kitchen. It sounded like someone had just broken every plate the restaurant owned. He could even hear the distinct scraping sound a plate makes when spinning in its undulating fashion on a tile floor.
His first thought was a thief had concealed himself somewhere in the building and now, having waited for everyone to leave, was in the act of robbing the place when John had come back inside, scaring him. He figured the thief was trying to make his getaway and had accidentally disrupted a stack of plates in the process. Feeling more angry than frightened, John dashed toward the kitchen in hopes of snagging the little rat before he could escape.
Bursting through the back entrance to the kitchen, John was shocked to see nothing wrong with the place. There were no plates smashed into millions of pieces across the floor as he had expected to encounter. He shook his head. Was he losing it? Too many late nights? That's when he heard a thump and looked up to see the big double doors that the wait staff used when picking up orders from the kitchen. Both doors were swinging gently back and forth on their two-way hinges. Someone had just gone through those doors! How he had not seen them was beyond him, but the thief was getting away! John ran to the doors and shoved them open.
His blood turned to ice when he saw Linda! There she was in her waitress uniform and as real and substantial as any living person. Her back was to him, and in stunned silence he watched her walk down the little corridor that led from the kitchen to the dining area, as she had done thousands of times before her untimely death. Then she turned the corner and vanished into thin air! After realizing what he had just witnessed, John ran out of that place as fast as his feet would carry him.
JB's is gone now. Torn down with an Olive Garden in its place. I did manage to eat at JB's a few times though, after hearing this story. Each visit, as I ate my popcorn shrimp--as if it really were popcorn--I couldn't resist taking a moment to wonder and entertain the notion that each night, after the guests dispersed and the place grew quite, perhaps Linda would glide among the tables once more and pass through the kitchen doors, leaving them to swing gently back and forth in the dim silence.
If you are enjoying my blog, please consider signing up for my FREENewsletter!
Images obtained through Google Images and are not my own.
If you have a personal story of the paranormal that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.
The following true ghost story comes from a former coworker of mine, and is one of my all-time favorites. The story was told to me about twenty or so years ago, as we labored one day detailing cars at the small shop where we worked. For the purposes of anonymity, I'll refer to him as Steve.
Steve was about ten years older than I, and usually his stories were funny tales of some of the crazier things he had done in his youth. But for some reason, on this day the conversation had turned to the sharing of ghost stories. Maybe it was getting close to Halloween or perhaps, me being me, I had simply steered the conversation in this particular direction.
When Steve was younger and just getting out on his own--I would guess in the late 70s--he ended up renting a studio apartment that happened to come in the form of a small basement house. For those of you unfamiliar with what a basement house is: it's basically a half-built house. Imagine digging the hole for a basement, building your exterior walls--usually from cinder blocks--a few feet above ground, and then slapping a roof on the whole thing. Voilà! Basement house.
While living there, Steve never noticed anything strange or paranormal about his groovy new digs. Except sometimes, in the middle of the night, the little orange light indicating the gas oven was on would suddenly light up by itself. It was a frequent occurrence and Steve attributed it to an electrical glitch in the knob. But to be safe he would get out of bed each time and could always get the light to shut off by turning the knob on and then back to the off position. He didn't always catch the anomaly in the act, however, and would sometimes wake in the morning to find the light had come on while he was fast asleep. This was slightly disturbing, but not enough to worry him too much.
I'm not sure how long he lived there, dealing with the faulty oven light, but his days as a basement house renter came to an abrupt end one fateful night.
He awoke suddenly from a dead sleep to the click of the oven light, once again, turning itself on. But, when he opened his eyes, he beheld an old woman standing at the foot of his bed. He described her as looking like she had walked straight out of the 1800s. She wore a massive black dress: big shoulders, corseted tightly at the waist, and flaring wide at the hips. The bodice was stitched in elegant velvet scroll work with black buttons that ran all the way to the neckline. With her iron-gray hair up in a severe bun, she had the appearance of the strict head mistress of a girls boarding school. A detail that really stood out to him at the time was the huge, ruby-red medallion that hung from a silver chain halfway down her body.
Her face was as stern as the rest of her countenance, her eyes piercing him, as she raised an arm, sleeved in black lace, and pointed a bony finger at him. "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" she commanded angrily.
In stunned bewilderment he could only stare back at her, his fear-numbed mind racing and grasping for answers to questions he didn't even dare to ask.
Suddenly, the woman in black turned and walked away, vanishing as she passed right through the far wall.
Having no desire to disappoint the old woman, or risk any kind of return visit, Steve spent the remainder of the night packing up what little belongings he possessed. By morning he had moved back in with his parents until another apartment could be located.
But here's the kicker: that very next night ... the basement house caught fire and burned to the ground. The old mistress in black had probably saved Steve's life with her angry demand!
If you dig this kind of stuff, be sure to sign up for my News Letter for more news, updates, and information about my writing. It only takes a second.
Pictures via Google Images and Downton Abbey TV show: PBS
If you have a personal story of the paranormal that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.
This, my friends, is a true story about my own experience with a bona fide haunted house. An early experience in my life that probably helped shape me as far as my love and fascination with stories of the paranormal goes.
As a teenager I spent my summers working as a lifeguard and swim teacher at a little, outdoor, community pool. I loved that job and still look back on it with the fondest of memories. One of the things I liked about it was the chance to work with and get to know kids from outside my normal circle of friends and schoolmates. Many of these coworkers were a few years older than myself, including some college kids.
There was this one guy--I'll refer to him by his nickname, Teo (Tay-oh)--that in a real way was my mentor at the time. And although he was two or three years older than me, he had no problem including me when he and some of the older kids would go out and do stuff. I really looked up to him and for a few summers he was sort of the big brother I never had.
One evening as the summer sun sank slowly toward the horizon, Teo and I were lifeguarding together and just talking about random stuff when he asked, "Dude, have you ever been on Hell Tour?"
Hell Tour? I had never heard of it. Teo attended a different school than I did, and according to him, all the kids at Idaho Falls High were going on this so-called tour.
Hell Tour, it turned out, was a sort of underground tour of some of the creepiest and supposedly haunted places of Idaho Falls. You had to find someone who had been on it to act as a guide and take you. A big rule of Hell Tour: you never take more than one person at a time. I guess it just isn't as creepy with too many people along.
"Dude," Teo said, lowering his sunglasses so I could see his eyes, "tonight, after we close, I'm taking you on Hell Tour."
The pool closed at ten, and by ten-thirty I was seated in the passenger seat of Teo's car--a reddish Buick Skylark, I think it was, but I'm probably wrong. Whatever the make of the car, it only took a few minutes to get into the older neighborhoods of downtown Idaho Falls. And then, Hell Tour began.
It was pretty cool ... and creepy. The tour basically consisted of driving from one location to another, Teo narrating a spine-tingling tale for each spot: haunted houses, a knocking grave in the cemetery, a murder location. Many times during the tour, the hair on my arms and neck were standing on end.
Most of the stories, I'm sure, were just made up tales and harmless kids' fun. Like the old house on J Street with a room at the top where a blue light burned all night. According to the story this was a house inhabited by Satanists. Not so scary now, as I write this, but when your sixteen and sitting in a dark car across the street from said sanctuary of Satan, things feel very different. I'm sure many of you can relate.
I guess it was close to midnight when Teo announced that the tour was over. And then he said, "I'm going to show you one more house that isn't actually part of the tour. It's a for real haunted house with a scary story behind it, and I only know about it because my family knows the people that this happened to."
As we drove to the location, which was a bit off the beaten path of the regular Hell Tour attractions, a different mood settled upon us, as Teo began to relate the story to me. This was no longer a fun game of chills and thrills; kids messing around for the fun of it. This was serious stuff and I remember a certain constriction in my chest as Teo simultaneously finished the story while parking his car across the street from the house that I later nicknamed the Blood Home.
I now relate to you, to the best of my memory, the story of this house as it was told to me some twenty-eight years ago.
The story begins with a beautiful turn of the century home for sale in the historic downtown section of Idaho Falls, Idaho. I'm not sure of the date, but I'm going to say probably the early 1980s. A young family looking to buy a home in the area fell in love with the house at first sight--it really is a neat old house--and they scheduled an appointment with the realtor to have a look inside.
The married couple decided to buy it, unable to believe their good fortune at finding a house that met their needs so well and was within their budget. They scheduled another appointment so they could bring their kids over to show them their future home. This was supposed to be a moment of excitement and celebration as they'd been waiting a long time to make this dream a reality.
The family arrived at the home a few days later at the appointed time. The kids were excited, the parents, proud. The realtor lead the family up the walk and unlocked the front door. Everyone poured into the large front room. The husband put an arm around his wife as the kids went scurrying about, exploring and claiming bedrooms. Except one child. Their eight year old boy who had not set foot inside. The parents turned to see him standing in the threshold, eyes wide with fear, lips trembling in horror. The kid was almost hysterical and refused to enter the house.
They asked him what was wrong. I like to imagine that someone made the comment that he looked as if he'd seen a ghost. But I digress. When the boy had calmed down enough to talk, he told his parents that he didn't want to go into the house because of the people that he could hear screaming inside. Did he mean the rambunctious yelling of his own siblings? But their son explained that it was grown ups that he could hear. They were yelling and screaming in pain as if they were dying.
His parents asked him if he could see these people. He said he couldn't see them, but from where he was standing in the doorway, he could see a glowing, red stripe running along the walls of the front room.
Needless to say, the parents were quite distraught over this incident. Was their child suffering from some kind of psychotic episode? Hallucinating? They had never noticed any kind of strange behavior out of him before.
They apologized to the real estate agent and left, wondering if they should make an appointment for their son with a doctor. But, as soon as they left the property, the boy seemed absolutely fine. They made another appointment to tour the house for the next day, writing off the incident as, just one of those things. Unfortunately, the second visit played out much like the day before, and the family left again feeling discouraged and frightened. This house was quickly transforming from a dream come true into a living nightmare.
Now unbeknown to the family, their realtor was one who dabbled a bit in the occult; occasionally indulging in things like séances, psychic readings, and such. She reached out to a psychic she knew and trusted, and asked him if he'd be willing to come take a look at the house. The psychic friend agreed to come over and check things out.
Supposedly, upon arriving at the house, the psychic had a similar experience as the little boy. He too could hear the screams of agony and pain. He was also able to see the glowing red stripe, which he guessed to be blood that had been smeared on the walls at one time. Apparently, this instigated the two friends to conduct a historical investigation into the house.
They were able to discover that over a period of a few years, during the Great Depression, the house was abandoned. Periodically, vagabonds and homeless migrants would take up residence for a while, usually moving on after a bit. Research showed that there was a period of time when a certain group of people lived in the home that, according to the story, were a devil-worshiping cult. It just so happened that during this same time there was a rash of disappearances of people in the community.
At this point, anyone who has read my novel, The Summoning, might be seeing where I borrowed a little bit from this story.
Teo ended the story by telling me that over the years the house has been bought and sold more than the average home and people who live there quite often will claim that there is something paranormal going on within those walls. I stared at the dark windows of the house as Teo pulled his car away, a cold chill settling across my shoulders. The windows seemed like big, dark eyes staring back, watching us go.
I went home that night, my psyche definitely impacted by the story and the experience. Over the years I have shown this house, the Blood Home, and told its tale to several people. One Halloween some friends and I attempted to trick or treat there, but nobody was home. Eventually, the place lost its stigma of terror, and even though I really wanted to believe the story, I had reached a point in my life where I doubted there was any validity to it at all. It was surely just a cool, old house and nothing more.
It was Halloween, a few years later. I was watching one of the local TV newscasts, when the station ran a report on a "real" haunted house in Idaho Falls. You can imagine my face and incredulity when I saw the legendary Blood Home being showcased as a true haunted house! It had been converted into an office and the owner was leading a news reporter around telling him stories of footsteps at night, doors slamming and opening by themselves, and a picture on the wall, constantly askew no matter how many times the owner tried to straighten it.
Now, I have to admit that whenever I'm in that part of town, I like to find an excuse to drive past the Blood Home if I can. There are cars in the driveway these days and apparently someone is living there happily. But I can't help but to slow down a little as I roll past and stare. And sometimes, I could swear those windows still stare back.
If you have a personal story of the paranormal that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.
