I'm finally getting around to sharing my ghost story after several friends insisting that I share on Reddit. Here it goes...

I moved from Orlando, FL to Western North Carolina with my parents back in 2002, specifically a small town named Swannanoa (just east of Asheville). We rented a 3 bedroom split level house that had a massive backyard with a very old barn in the back. The house was situated on a large slopping hill (or mini mountain as I used to call it). I lived in this house for almost 2 years with my parents and 3 year old brother (I was 20/21 at the time). From the day we moved in my Mom and I had a weird feeling about the energy of the house (which we didn't say to each other for many months after). It was difficult to explain the sensation I had in the house and can best explain it as never feeling alone in the house, as if you could "feel" someone in any give room with you, kinda like how if someone enters a room that you are in and you just sense their presence without having to actually see them in the room.

The first paranormal occurrence I remember was when my mom was in the kitchen cooking, we had a large island in the middle of the kitchen which my mom had just brewed and placed a large pitcher of tea on. I recall seeing the pitcher of tea sitting on the middle of the island as I walked back to my room, a few minutes later I heard it glide across the island counter and smash on the ground. It startled the hell out of me, especially my mom. I ran in to the kitchen and she told me that as she heard the pitcher slide on the counter she turned just in time to watch it glide off the edge of the island counter and "fly" 6 or 7 feet across the kitchen and smash against the wall. While I was listening to my mom make sense of it all, my step-father also walked upstairs, he is the worlds biggest skeptic, he laughed and said to my mom, "you must have hit against the island and sent that thing flying", then he walked back downstairs. Both my mom and I have had separate paranormal experiences previously in our life, but even with those past experiences we are still both rational thinkers and tried to make sense of the situation before automatically ruling a ghost/spirit made that pitcher fly across the room (even though we couldn't come up with a logical reason).

A few weeks after the pitcher incident, I was sitting at the computer desk which was near a large window at the corner of the living room. I had a friend visiting from FL who was playing video games in my room (which was the the first room down the hallway on the right side). While I was on the computer I glanced over at the window which was to my left, as I looked over I noticed a couple of the blinds near the top start to move, but thought nothing of it. A short time later, starting at the top of the blinds, each single blind started moving from top to bottom, as if someone took their finger and went one-by-one slowly down the blinds all the way to the last one at the bottom...I sat there perplexed watching this and then got up and ran to tell my friend. He laughed at me and said it was my mind playing tricks on me. I looked for any possible reason that could have made the blinds do that. I turned the AC on/off to see if that triggered it for some reason (AC vent was about 4 feet away from the blinds) but it didn't do anything at all. The very next night, our roles were reversed. My friend was burning a cd on the computer while I was on the phone in my room, I heard him yell my name and run into my room and he said "I believe you!!!". The very same thing happened to him! I asked both of my parents if they noticed anything like that with the blinds, but neither one of them had.

Small odd things would continue to occur almost daily, like doors that were locked mysteriously opening, like the door in our kitchen which led to our porch that wrapped around half of the house (kitchen was near the back of the house, porch wrapped from back left corner of the house where kitchen was at all the way to middle of the front of house where the front door areas was at). My parents were sticklers for locking doors, almost like they had OCD, they would check & double check to make sure doors were always locked (they've always been like that). The kitchen door had a very strong deadbolt and standard knob lock, we seldom ever used that door so we would keep it locked 99.9% of the time, but that wouldn't stop it from occasionally being found open, often times you could feel that chill mountain breeze enter the house and look into the kitchen to find the door cracked or fully open. One night as I got home late from work I parked my car on the side driveway (we had a driveway that veered to the right of the house in an incline just long enough for one vehicle). From that spot you could easily see the barn sitting high up on the slope behind my house. At that time I hadn't had a chance to explore the barn, mostly because the grass was very high in the back yard and our landlord said he only mowed that area a few times a year. The barn was 2 floors, the first floor was made out of bricks and the 2nd floor and roof were made out of wood. On that night, I parked my car got out and looked up at the barn, I noticed what appeared to look like a lantern shinning out of the large window on the 2nd story of the barn, it then started moving out of view to the right and a split second later it went across the opening to the left side, as if someone was pacing back & forth, but it was too dark to see anyone. One night my little brother also noticed the light after looking out of my parents bedroom window (which faced the backyard/barn) and told my parents about it. I overheard him and rushed in their to tell my parents about it. The next day my stepdad pulled out our lawnmower and mowed a path to the barn, as we walked in their we noticed how dilapidated the barn was. It had some old rusted tools and a broken wooden ladder that led to the 2nd floor. The 2nd floor was completely impossible to get to, the wood up their was mostly all rotted away with only a few boards remaining, if anyone step foot up there they would fall right through. My step dad told me that my brother and I must have seen someone flashing a light up there from somewhere else because it would be impossible for anyone to get up there. I saw the barn light shine almost a dozen times while living there, my brother saw it, my girlfriend saw it and some of my friends also witnessed it one night...it was no flashlight.

In February 2003 my grandfather passed away. After the funeral in FL, I returned back to NC for school and work while my parents and brother stayed in FL to assist my grandmother adjusting with life without her husband of 40+ years. This is when activity at my house really picked up.

One afternoon I was playing on my drum kit in the basement (we called it the basement, it was actually the first floor of the house combined with the garage - an open space the size of the entire house). While playing on my drums I heard someone shout my name into in my right ear, it scared me so bad that I through my drumsticks straight in the air. I looked around and there was absolutely no one in there with me. At the time we had two beagles, they were both downstairs with me when this happened. I looked over to them and they were standing side by side whimpering a bit and staring at the wall right in front of me. That spooked the hell out of me, I grabbed my pack of smokes and walked outside for a cigarette trying to comprehend what I heard. That night I was terrified to sleep in the house by myself. I created a ritual that night that I would follow the next few weeks until my parents returned home. Before bed I would turn the bathroom light on (the bathroom was directly across the hall from my bedroom), I would then lock my bedroom door, turn the sleep timer on my TV for hours past the point I knew it would take me to fall asleep. I just didn't want to fall asleep to a silent house. On one night as I went through my ritual about an hour after watching TV, I heard a thump and and roll of a ball down my dresser (I had a signed baseball from the 2000 MLB All-Star game that sat on a pedestal it came with), the baseball had "fell" off the pedestal hit the dresser and rolled down it on to the floor. As soon as a I went to pick it up my TV shut off, hours before the timer was set to go off. Both adrenaline & fear kicked in as I tried to find my TV controller in the dark room, I couldn't find it so I made my way to the TV and right before I could reach for it the TV turned back on and the stereo in my room also turned on full blast - at the very same time. I felt so vulnerable and petrified. But that was nothing compared to what happened a few nights later.

We had a blizzard come through around this time, so there was plenty of snow on the ground. One night I was sitting on my couch watching TV waiting for my friend to come over for a jam session. As I was watching TV I started hearing shuffling coming from the base of the stairs that led from the basement to the upstairs hallway. A few minutes later I heard what appeared to be someone run up my stairs so I jumped up and hid around the corner wall waiting to see an intruder/robber bust open the door, but nothing happened. After about a minute of waiting I quietly walked into my room and grabbed my baseball bat, I then walked to the door leading to the basement, opened it really quick while getting ready to swing...there was no one there. My dogs again started whimpering, I turned on the basement lights and walked halfway down the stairs where I could view the entire basement and didn't see anyone at all. I went back upstairs, made sure that door was locked and continued watching TV. I couldn't figure out what I heard, it was too loud to be my 2 small dogs. A short while later I heard the same sound, only much louder, as if someone had work boots with weights attached and was running up my stairs! At this point I was completely convinced that someone had broken into my house, I ran right to the door just as the sound ended, unlocked and opened the door and swung my bat blindly at NOTHING. I dropped that bat so quick, slammed the door shut grabbed my cigarettes and walked outside to my porch that was covered in snow wearing a tank top and shorts, I must have smoked 15 cigarettes on that porch waiting for my friend to get there. Once he arrived he looked at me like I was crazy, I told him what happened and we went inside to investigate. We both took turns running up the stairs but we couldn't mimic the loudness of the steps that I heard. I was completely freaked out at this point. My friend believed me and actually told me some things that he kept to himself that happened to him on different occasions when he stayed over at my house. When he would stay over, he would sleep in my brothers room. He told me one night while sleeping in that room that his covers were slightly pulled and a different night the closet door opened slowly and closed abruptly. This struck a chord as my little brother would also say that his closet would "move by itself" but my parents would brush it off as his imagination.

A couple days later I would find myself opting to camp out in my GMC Jimmy rather than enter my home. I pulled up to my house one night after playing pool, about 2-3am. As I went to walk up to the stairs leading to my porch, I glanced up at my bedroom window and noticed the blinds pulled apart a few inches and what appeared to be a very dark figure in the opening, I froze and then watched the blinds slowly come back together. As if someone/something was looking at me through my own bedroom window. I will never forget that sight, I'm literally having goosebumps typing this out. I turned around, got it my car and drove behind a hotel off of I-40 near my house and slept in the car that night. I didn't care that it was in the 30's that night, I just didn't want to be anywhere near the house that night. The next few days leading up to my parents returning I stayed with some friends and my girlfriend those nights, only returning to my house a couple times in the day to feed and walk my dogs. I shared all of my stories with my mom, she was very receptive and also shared some strange things that happened to her and my brother in the house. A few months later my parents moved back to FL full time to be closer to my grandma. I stayed in NC but moved in with my uncle in a different town. There are so many more occurrences that I could share during my time living in that house, but those were certainly the highlights which will live with me forever.

EDIT: For those concerned about my dogs, they were never left alone for more than 8 or so hours in a day during that month (no longer than the average person leaves their pet while they go to work). As far as I could tell they didn't have any lasting effects after living in that house, and they both lived long and happy lives. They passed away shortly after their 12th birthdays, almost exactly a month apart. RIP Chico & Max...

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