My great-grandfather used to own a farm with his wife and daughters. On the plot of land they had this two-story wooden house--it was nice until it grew old and they failed to remodel it or anything. You would walk in and there was this grand living room with two stairwells curving up either side of the wall to the balcony on the second floor where the bedrooms were.

The thing was, whenever you were on the second floor, you'd hear something that sounded like plates crashing to the floor, or doors slamming from the kitchen, and if you were on the first floor, you'd hear whimpering or screaming occasionally on the top floor. There was this one time where my great-grandfather was on the top floor, and his wife on the bottom floor. They met each other walking up and down the stairs. My great-grandmother asked what my great-grandfather was yelling about, and my great-grandfather asked why my great-grandmother was breaking dishes. It was what happened that night that convinced them to cleanse the household:

They were both sleeping on the top floor, when my great-grandfather felt the pressure in the air dropped. He got out of bed and looked up to see a pallid white orb drifting across the hallway outside. He rushes out to see it, and finds it hovering over the crib of his youngest baby daughter. He remained frozen, but after a moment, the orb drops into the crib and the baby begins wailing.

My great-grandmother calls a psychic, or a medium, I can't remember. They wanted to cleanse the house of evil or whatever was inside. The psychic asks to be left alone in the living room, and the two go off to the kitchen where they have a clear view of her. She lights some sage and pulls out this strange looking toy--it almost looks like a coconut made into a doll, so says my father. After chanting for a few minutes, it looks as if someone has just hit her and threw her onto the floor. She begins to partake in what looks like wrestling (again, my father's words, not mine).

She appears to get punched and smacked and kicked to the point where her nose begins bleeding from when her face is driven into the floor. Finally, she looks up at my great-grandparents and tells them the house has been cleansed, and the spirits are trapped inside the doll/coconut/whatever. My great-grandparents didn't believe her, nor did their daughters, but after that day, nothing bad happened in the house.

The doll would move occasionally, though. It wasn't disturbing or anything, kind of funny actually. It honestly looked like a shrunken hairy coconut equipped with scrawny arms and legs. It would be in the bathroom one day, above the fireplace the next. No one would admit to moving it; it just sort of switched rooms. There were times where a family member would feel unsettled in a certain room, so they'd pick up the doll and move it over to the room and the feeling would be gone. Next morning, it'd be on the kitchen or something, and everyone would assume someone had moved it. This went on for at least a decade.

One of the daughters of my great-grandparents turned out to be my father's mother, who, one day several years after my great-grandparents had passed away, takes her children (again, one of which is my father) and several family members friends to the farm for a barbecue and to stay the night. My father is assigned a room--he later finds out that it's the baby's room, the baby being my grandmother. That night, his cousin begins acting cool, and dares everyone that he'll break the doll open. Everyone, not wanting to cause any trouble, tells him not too. It's not that anyone believed in any of the ghost stories they had been told, but why break a doll in a house you don't own. Regardless of their protests, my father's cousin grabs an axe from outside and chops it in half. Nothing crazy happened when he broke it. It's what happened that night that sends chills down my back.

My father fell asleep. He started to feel cold in the middle of the night, and jumped up to see a white orb drifting towards him. His brothers down the hall had also awoken and witnessed what happened next--the orb drops onto my father's bed and he immediately loses his breath. He's pushed into the bed and gasps for air. He says it felt like hours before he was able to get up. He rushes out to the hall before stopping, noticing that plates were breaking downstairs. The lights were on, but the house was moaning and it felt like an earthquake was shaking the ground. The family runs over to the balcony to see my father's cousin standing in the living room, drenched in sweat, cursing up a storm. He runs out of the house, not to be seen until the next day, when he calls from prison saying that he's been charged with attempt at murder.

He was let go, as there was no evidence other than eye-witness testimony claiming he looked like a madman running down the streets.

As my dad tells me this story in all seriousness, I can't help but laugh. It sounded ridiculous. Until I asked his brother. And his sister. And my grandmother. And the cousin charged with attempt at murder. All of them have the exact same story, in near identical words, with the same expression of seriousness.