Great thread! I love/hate ghost stories!! I've got one that I rarely tell because I feel like a crazy person when I tell it, but here goes.
When I was 16, my parents moved us to an 100 year old house in Elgin, Il. At the time, I was really angry about the move because I had to leave my first boyfriend of 2 years and well, you know how teenagers can be.
It was a 2 story house(built by our neighbor's father)and my room was directly to the left at the top of the stairs.
It was the beginning of the summer when we moved in and we slept with the doors open because the house had no air conditioning. Very late one night, my sister and I were sitting at the foot of my bed watching a movie when I heard someone walking up the stairs. Because it was such an old house you could hear basically every footstep. So, thinking nothing of it, I assumed it was my mother coming to check on us because we were up so late. I waited to see her enter my room but she never did. I waited for a couple of minutes and got up and checked the door but no one was there. I thought nothing of it and went back to the floor to watch the rest of the movie. It was at this time that I noticed my sister was asleep so I decided to wake her up so she could get into bed and I decided to let her sleep with me. As I was getting ready for bed, I heard the footsteps up the stairs again and again waited to see my mom. But there was no one there. I remember listening closely this time to double check what I was hearing. I distinctly heard very very slow footsteps coming up the stairs. And this time, because my sister was awake, she heard them too. At this point, I was kinda scared, but still convinced that for some reason, one of my parents were walking up the stairs and just turning around and going back down(even though I didn't hear any footsteps going back down). I tried to act calm so as not to scare my sister and we tried to go to sleep. I think I remember hearing those footsteps 2 more times that night, so needless to say, I didn't get much sleep.
The next morning, I asked both of my parents about it and they denied walking up the stairs at all. Sensing that I was scared, they told me that old houses were very loud and you could hear them settling at night. I wasn't buying it. I knew what I heard and I heard someone really walking up the stairs.
After a couple of months of this, I eventually got sort of used to it. Not that it didn't wake me up sometimes(and scare the you know what out of me). I think it helped to have my sister sleep with me though. I seriously was scared to sleep alone in my room at 16!
Other wierd things happened in that house and occasionally I would have the impression that there was someone standing in my doorway. I never saw them but I just had that feeling that someone was just standing there and staring at me. I even woke up for no reason in the middle of the night with that feeling. I remember just laying there in bed and staring at my doorway just waiting for something to move.
It was extremly creepy!
We only lived there a couple of years, but a few weeks before we moved my mother came in with some groceries saying that she just had a conversation with our neighbor and previous owner of the house(the one who's father built the house). She said that he told her about his grandmother(now at that time he was in his 80's)who used to live in that house with his family and that she was confined to a wheelchair. He also said that she died in that house.
At that moment, everything made sense to me for some reason. I just knew that it had to be her walking up the stairs every night. And she did it in death because she was unable to in life. You'd think that that would have scared me, but for some reason, I felt comforted by this knowledge. Like a puzzle had been solved and I didn't have to think about it anymore.
Strange huh?
Carolyn
