HAUNTED MAINE

(Discussion Board Files courtesy of Matt Muller)

 

 

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 22:01:06 ESTFrom: <IO01255@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-storiesSubject: A reaaallly long, true story...All right, I have been meaning to post this story for quite some tome now but just haven't gotten around to it until now.  This story is fairly long, and is very much true.  If there are any questions that you have about what happened that I may have left out  please feel free to ask me questions or whatnot.  I would be happy to answer them. The whole thing started for me a couple of years ago when my girl friend and I were driving on some old back roads in Newport, Maine.  We were driving around the area that she grew up in, and were looking for an old friend of her's house.  We drove by an old dirt road, and she mentioned something about that creepy old house.  Being curious of such things, I asked her what she meant.  She said that there was an old house at the end of this dirt road, and the house was haunted or something.  It was getting dark, and I naturally wanted to go check it out, but she looked rather scared when I mentioned that we should go check it out.  I asked her why she was so scared, and she said that she went there a couple of years before when she was in high school with a few friends.  She heard that the house was built on old indian burial grounds, and that the house was supposedly haunted.  They all walked towards the house, and during the day time, and she described how a feeling of dread suddenly came over her as she got about 50 feet away.  She went a little closer, and suddenly felt incredibly ill, and began to vomit.  She felt horribly frightened, and left the area, with her friends not knowing what was going on. I was impressed, and didn't wan't to make her any more scared than she already was, so I didn't bring it up again. About 6 months later, I was living in an apartment with a couple of other roomates.  One of the guys had happened to live in Newport also, and I asked one night if he had ever heard of the house that was supposed to be haunted.  He looked at me a little funny, and told me that if I and some of my other friends sat down for a while, he would tell us a story about the house, and what had happened to him.  I knew all of the different people in the story, and afterwards made a point of asking them each about different parts of the story to verify it, and all of the stories were the same. My roommate, Steve, sat down, lit a cigarette, and began to tell us the story.  About a year back, Steve and Percy had some friends that were some pretty hard core stoners.  They were all sitting around at a coffee place one day when one of the stoners made a remark about the house, and how he and his girlfriend had gone inside, and the doors closed by themselves and how they saw some image of a vase start to appear above a banister. They both freaked out, and left through a window.  Steve and Percy laughed, and thought it would be a fun place to go check out that night with some other friends.  They had a couple of friends from Connecticut who were up visiting who they thought would enjoy it, and a couple of other friends that had heard of the house, but had never actually gone up to see it, so that night, at about 10:00 PM, they all drove out to the old dirt road that was the driveway to this old house.  The two female friends from Connecticut, Steve, and Percy got out to walk up to the gate, but the two other guys chickened out, and stayed in the car.  So, the four of them walked up to the broken down old iron gate.  There were some big chains on the fence, and they had to walk around the gate into the forest to get around.  The road was very dark, and the canopy of overhanging trees above the road kept most of the moonlight out.  They walked and joked around for a few minutes until they saw some light ahead.  They continued walking and they entered into a huge clearing.  They saw the dark outline of a big old house up ahead, and a lake beyond.  Steve describes how they had gone on a very bright night, and how the moon was low enough on the horizon so that when they got closer to the house, the house was silhouetted in the moonlight in front of them, giving a very creepy appearance to it. They all started feeling unexplainably creeped out, but they all laughed it off and proceeded.  They got to the house, and tried the doors, all of which were locked.  They searched around a bit more, and found that one of the windows were open.  They opened the window, and climbed in one at a time.  They pulled out their flashlights, and looked around.  It was an old, dusty room with only a sofa in it with a cloth over it.  The place was cold, and the air smelled damp and musty.  One of the two ladies from Connecticut started to shake a bit.  (It should be mentioned that this woman had some interesting psychic experiences before, and was sensitive to "haunted" places)  Steve asked if she was all right, and she explained that she felt a little strange, but wanted to go on. They walked around the first floor, checking out the kitchen, a couple of creepy old side rooms, and finally came into a room that had red vertical stripes for wallpaper, and looked something like an old game room.  They looked around a bit, and eventually looked around the fireplace and saw a picture hung there.  The picture was oil painted, and was a scene of a woman in a bathtub, back towards the looker.  Her arms were reaching back, and held up her long, thick red hair.  The picture was simple, but very intriguing.  They all stood there for a few minutes, looking at the picture and getting quite into the image.  Steve described how all of them just wanted to look at the picture all night, but how someone finally said something, and they decided to go check out the rest of the house.  They went upstairs to the second floor, and looked at the 5 or 6 rooms up there.  All of the rooms had much junk in them, and the wallpaper was hanging from the walls, and the plaster was flaking from the ceiling. Some of the floors looked rotted, and moved  much when you tried to walk into them.  They went up another flight of stairs to the third floor. They found a very similar setup to the second floor, but with more interesting stuff.  They found a room that had a lot of newspapers piled up here and there dating back to the early 1900's.  They found some old medicine bottles, and were reading off some of the names on them when all of a sudden they all suddenly felt very afraid.  The woman who was especially sensitive grabbed ahold of Steve's arm, and begged him to take her out of the house, immediately.  Steve was feeling pretty wigged out to, and agreed.  All four of them went directly to the stairs, and started descending. They house then started feeling really eerie, and as they walked down the stairs they all were feeling an increasing amount of fear and the feeling that they should get out.  As they were almost back to the first floor, the woman holding Steve's arm stopped and whispered nervously to Steve that there was someone down there, in the room they had to go into to get out. Steve looked at her, made a nervous laugh, and led her down the few remaining steps.  They went to the room where they opened the window, climbed out one by one and walked quickly back towards the road.  About halfway back to the road coming out of the woods, the woman with Steve stopped, and just stared at the house for 2 or 3 minutes.  Steve stood there, watching her, and finally asked her what was going on.  She said "There's someone watching us from that window... I can see him"  Steve looked, but couldn't see anything, and then convinced the woman that it was time to go.  They went back to their car, felt a lot better, and drove home. The next day the two women left for home.  The next night, Steve had a very strange dream.  He said he was standing in a room, and there was a woman standing there in front of him in the doorway.  The woman was wearing a light, white nightdress that was softly flowing around her.  Her hair was a brilliant, striking red, and her face was beautiful.  Steve said that the whole dream consisted of him just standing there, looking in awe at the woman's beauty.  He woke up, feeling good about the dream, but not thinking much of it until he had the same dream again for the next two nights. On the fourth day after the house excursion, he met up with Percy again at the local Dunkin' Donuts.  When they sat down, Percy looked to Steve and said "You wouldn't believe this strange dream I've had the past few nights.."He went on to describe the exact same dream to Steve about the woman, and the red hair, and everything, but differed at the end.  Instead of the dream being nice and peaceful, the woman ended up turning into something horrifying, like a vampire, and ended up scaring the bejeesus out of him when he awoke from it.  Steve was stunned, and told Percy about the similar, but less dramatic dream that he had been having.  Both of them felt a little freaked out by it, and then Percy told him something else that had happened that week. Percy was lying in bed, not looking forward to the dream again that night, when he heard a strange buzzing sound  coming from outside.  He said the sound was quiet, but got louder and louder.  The sound was high pitched, and disturbed him.. He heard the sound moving around his second floor window for a a long time, and then sounded like it came through the wall, and into the room.  Percy was horrified, and looked up into the darkness for whatever it was that was making the sound.  The sound was above him, and seemed to be moving around in the air, continuing to make its high pitched buzzing sound.  Percy grabbed some courage, and reached over quickly to turn on the light.  As the light went on, the sound disappeared, and a large square wooden box he was using as a table fell over on the other side of his room, sending stuff on top scattering around.  There was no reason the box should have fallen, as it was a sturdy square frame, and he found no sign of anything being there.  His window was still closed, and the was no way anything should have been able to get into the room. Steve and Percy looked to each other and realized that this was all probably coming about because of their visit to the house.  They decided that they should go back the next day, and try to find out more about what was going on in the place...---------------------------------------------------------------------------This is where I'm going to stop writing for tonight.  I'll write the next part tomorrow night.  I'm not sure how far I'll get, but it'll entail Steve going back to the house, their use of a Ouija board, and some very weird discoveries there, along with more stuff about the further dreams they had, and the very frightening things that happened at both of their homes...Again, this is all true, but just happens to make a decent story...Have a pleasant evening....Eric Anderson  io01255@maine.maine.edu* * *Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 14:50:41 ESTFrom: <IO01255@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-storiesSubject: Finally the 2nd part of the Long Story Please excuse me for not keeping to my promise of posting the next part of the story QUICKLY.  A bunch of things came up in my life, and I hadn't had any time to sit down at the computer to type... But here it is now, for your reading enjoyment...Let me re-emphasize that this story is totally true.  I have verified almost everything (every MAJOR point) in this story with the people that it happened to, and all of the stories are the same.  Also, if you have any questions about anything that might not make sense to you in the story that I may have left out, or if you have any questions in general about it, please feel free to write me about it.... But enough with the prologue...--------------------------------------------------------------------------The day after Steve and Percy got together and talked about their shared dreams of the beautiful red-haired woman, and the strange but disturbing incident in Percy's room with the high pitched buzzing, the two of them got in a car, and drove out to the house again, this time in the morning. They drove to the old road leading up to the house, got out, and walked to the house.  The place seemed considerably more cheery in the daylight, and the woods not half so menacing.  The field around the house seemed alive with summer growth, and the house didn't look half so creepy.  Actually, they found the house to be quite beautiful.  It was old looking, and very rundown, but they easily could see how the house must once have looked, large and proud on the waters edge.  They went in through the same window they had before, and walked into the old room with the chair with the sheet draped over it.  They noticed now that the room had an all wood floor, but was thick with dust and dirt and of years of neglect.  Water stains around the windows, and the floor all warped.  They looked around into the other rooms, and saw much of the same.  The kitchen was filthy, and there were old cupboards broken, and an old stove that had parts of it falling off. They looked around the house, noticing how many of the rooms had numbers on the doors, which struck them both as strange.  They both talked to each other about how beautiful the place must have been, and how they both felt genuinely sad that the place had fallen apart so much.  They walked back into the opening room, with the wood floors and the covered chair, and both decided that they should both clean up the place. Now, while Steve was telling me this, I was instantly shocked by the idea of Steve wanting to go out of his way to clean...  He was my roomate, and I knew how unclean he liked to live, and how he avoided cleaning whenever possible.  I interjected to tell him this, and he said that that's why it was so strange, because he was really getting happy about the idea of cleaning this old place, when normally he would never even think of doing it. Percy was the same way, and they both suddenly felt compelled to start cleaning the place. The two of them left, and bought some cleaner and a bucket, and other similar supplies and returned to the house.  The decided to start cleaning the old wooden floor first, and cleaned until about dusk, then left. That night, again, they both had the dream of the beautiful woman.  The next morning they returned to the house, and started cleaning on the floor again. The floor was large and took a lot of work to get just the major dirt and caked on dust off.  They cleaned and cleaned on it until Steve got to a certain part of the floor that as he took away some of the top dirt, had a large dark stain.  Steve stopped, called Percy over and they both started cleaning on the big stain.  As they started scrubbing on the stain, the water came up a reddish brown, and they both looked to each other, both of them thinking the same thing about what the stain was from.  They both laughed it off, and got as much of the stain off as they could. A little while later, they heard someone step onto the porch outside, and they were both startled.  A friend of theirs named Jim stood on the porch, looking into the windows.  Jim happened to live in the area, and saw their car at the opening of the road, and walked down to see what was going on.  The two of them told Jim the story of what had happened, what they had dreamed, and how they both felt compelled to clean up this old place.  Jim told them about how he used to play in the woods around the house when he was a kid, and how he had found some strange old markers and piles of stones in the woods.  He showed some of them to his father, and they went back and looked them up. It turned out that a lot of the markers were markers associated with indian burial grounds, and the area was known to have been a place the Indians had populated many years ago.  Steve and Percy stood there, wondering what it was all supposed to mean, when Jim looked to them and said, "Lets find out who your employers are..." and left, returning a little while later with a Ouija board.  Steve was very cynical about the board, as he didn't believe in them, and thought it was all a big joke.  Jim asked them where they thought the best place in the house would be to speak to something and Steve and Percy both agreed to a room on the top floor that had a bunch of old newspapers and other scattered papers.  They both felt a strange sensation there when they had visited with the girls a week ago. The three of them went to the top floor, and into the room.  They sat next to a window  so they would have enough light to see by, and started to use it. Steve and Percy tried first, and the oracle did begin to move, but Steve quickly freaked out at the first time a Ouija board had ever moved in his hands, and asked Jim to do it for him, as it felt to strange to Steve. Jim got on and they immediately began talking to a spirit that called herself Cathrine.  Cathrine was very evasive whenever asked about questions about herself, and said only that she used to live in the house.  It was also mentioned that the house used to be an old inn.  After a lot of superficial questions, they began to ask more about the house.  When asked if the house was built on a Indian burial site, she said Yes.  Are the Indian spirits mad about this? Yes.  Is there something bad about the house? Yes.  Is there a bad spirit that lives in the house? Yes.  Was the stain downstairs on the floor really blood?  Yes...  Where did the blood come from?  Murder. They all stopped.  Murder?  They started up again.  Were you murdered here?No.  Did the murder have anything to do with you?  No.  Why did the murder happen?  Adulterer.  So someone caught someone fooling around? Yes.  How did they die?  Gun.  Outside it was just starting to get dark out.  At this point they found it harder to get any more information about the murder. What was the name of the murderer? (pause) peter. They asked a couple more questions, and didn't get much that they could understand.  They thought they would close up.  Is there anything that you wish to tell us before we sign off Cathrine??  (pause) beware...After the last E, the oracle stopped moving, and they all looked to each other, feeling incredibly creepy.  Suddenly, their attention was snapped back to reality as a truck started rumbling down the road to the house.  Steve grabbed the board and stuffed it under his coat.  They ran down to the window to climb out, and saw a man walking towards him.  Jim knew the man as the guy who owned the property, and he walked up to talk to him.  Jim explained that they were looking around, and the man was worried about them being vandals or trying to steal some of the older antiques that were still in the house. The three of them left after a brief talk and drove home.  Both Steve and Percy were both quite disturbed at the end of the conversation with Cathrine, and didn't wish to return to the house. Some time went by, and both Steve and Percy were both still having their dreams of the beautiful woman.  Steve also began having some other strange things happen at his house.  He explained how he had started to see what he called "Shadow People" around his home.  The "Shadow people" were always at the corners of his eyes, and he could never get a good look at them. He would walk through his house, and he would see something moving, or a dark figure looking at him, and he he whirl around to look at it, and it wouldn't be there.  This started to really wear on Steve, and he would constantly be paniky around his house.  He also started having experiences where he would also hear the high pitched buzzing noise, just like that of Percy's experience.  He said he had many different times where the buzzing would happen, but he only told us about one particular event.  While telling us about the things that happened at his home, he seemed even more nervous when talking, and smoked a little more heavily. One night when he was lying in bed, he heard the buzzing.  It was a high pitched buzzing, different from that of an insect or of something mechanical. It was a strange noise that he said that trying to imitate just didn't reproduce it's frightening quality.  The buzzing was downstairs, in the cellar somewhere a bit in front of, and under his room. The buzzing started, and Steve felt the pang of fear in his stomach again, like he felt whenever it happened.  The buzzing continued for a short while, and then began to move, slowly up the cellar stairs.  There were no footsteps, or any other noises other than that of the buzzing getting louder, and of it moving in it's placement.  The buzzing came slowly up the stairs, and came up into the hallway, then grew louder as it moved down the hall towards his room.  Steve was quite frightened, and pulled all of the blankets up around him like he would when he was a child.  The noise grew louder until it came just outside of his bedroom door, and just stayed there, not moving or anything.  The buzzing kept on and on, and then finally moved further down the hall, and sounded like it went into his brothers room next to his.  The noise faded as it went into his brothers room, but suddenly grew loud again as it went into the closet space that was right behind the head of his bed.  Steve was frozen with fright, and could do nothing but hope the sound leave him soon.   The sound then moved again, down, and sounded like it went into the pipes below his room.  He could even hear the sound echoing in the copper pipes as it moved beneath his room and then descended into the cellar. The noise did this cycle 5 times that night before finally going away. Steve was quite shaken by the experience, and the other similar experiences that happened in his house.  One morning he was shocked to hear his father talk about the strange dark figure he had seen at the foot of his bed when he woke up in the middle of the night the night before, but went away as he blinked his eyes a few times.  His mother, in the same room then commented how she had woken up in the middle of the night one night to see the doorway to the bathroom connected to their room lit up by the bathroom light behind it, and two dark figures silhouetted in the light.  One of the figures was standing, and looking towards the bed, and the other figure was crouching down on all fours, with its head bent down... she looked at the figures for a few moments, and then they faded away before her eyes...  Steve was quite relieved to say the least that he wasn't going crazy, and that the thing she was seeing weren't all a part of his imagination. This went on for over a month, both Steve and Percy avoiding the idea of returning to the house, and both of them becoming more and more frightened by the strange things going on in their homes. One night, both Steve and Percy were at the Irving truck stop in Newport, getting coffee and something to eat, when an old friend of theirs, Mike, came in.  He had been away for about 3 or 4 months in another part of the country traveling.  He had just gotten back, and hadn't talked to either of them since he left.  He sat down at their table, and immediately started talking about a "Strange bunch of dreams about you guys that you wouldn't believe.."He went on to talk about a dream he had over 7 nights that involved a house he had never been to before, and a number of different rooms in the house.  each dream involved a different room, and a different friend or couple of friends.    As he described each room, Percy and Steve looked to each other as each description of a room was exactly the description of different rooms of the house.  Each of the rooms also had a figure of a demon in one of the corners, but the demon never did anything. Steve told us about only three of the dreams, one involving a couple friends and something bad happening to them at the house, the next one where Mike and Steve were sitting in the middle of a floor in a room filled with lots of newspapers and striped wallpaper, and they were both using a Ouija board, which was strange to Mike, because he wasn't one for using them. They both sat in the room, and the oracle started moving under their fingers, and kept speeding up until neither of them could keep up with it any longer, and it flew from the board, and started gliding on the walls, and then on the ceiling, and then finally flew back towards them and struck the floor leaving a dent in the floor.  The last dream, though, involved Percy and Mike. Both of them were standing in a room with wallpaper hanging from the walls, and the plaster falling from the ceiling.  The demon this time came from its corner, and stood before Mike and Percy.  It turned to Mike and said..."Choose" Mike was confused and asked it what he was supposed to choose from..The demon turned and struck Percy very hard.. Percy went down to the floor and got back up, bleeding. It turned to Mike again and said, "Choose" Mike was terrified, and stammered out something about him not understanding..The demon turned and struck Percy again, Percy collapsing to the floor. Once more, it turned to Mike and said "Choose" Mike didn't know what to say, but said "I choose life!" The demon raised his hand again to strike Percy again, but didn't, and turned to Mike, raised 2 fingers and said , " Two Strikes...."And then Mike woke up...Steve and Percy were dumfounded by the dreams, and told Mike all about what had happened, and how the descriptions of the rooms were exactly like the rooms in the house...Steve and Percy looked to each other, realized just how strange things were, and decided that they had to go back to the house...  To find some closure. They were both sick of being frightened by every little thing at their homes, and the wanted to find out just what they had to do to get rid of all of this. They didn't know what they were going to do, but they decided to go to the house that upcoming weekend, a few  days away...----------------------------------------------------------------------------And that is where I have to stop typing for now.. I must be getting to work. I shall post the rest of this soon, perhaps even tonight...  Have a pleasant night....Eric Anderson io01255@maine.maine.edu* * *Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 17:43:39 ESTFrom: <IO01255@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-storiesSubject: 3rd part of the Very Long Story..Steve and Percy talked about the dream with Mike a bit more, and told some of the other people in the dreams about the dreams.  They stressed though, that they shouldn't go to the house, because the dreams had some bad events happening to them at the house, and just in case, the people shouldn't go to the house.  Everyone involved promised not to go to the house. The weekend came, and Steve and Percy got ready to go to the house.  Some things unexpectedly came up, and they weren't able to leave for the house until that evening.  Percy was very ticked off while they were going to the house that they had to wait until nightfall to go to the house, and Steve was just feeling a bit anxious about the whole thing. They parked down the road from the driveway this time, not wanting the owner of the property driving by and thinking they were vandals and coming to investigate.  They walked to the driveway, and down to the gate, and then down the road.   About halfway down the road, they heard voices, and they got off the side of the road into the woods to see who it was and let them go by. When the voices came next to them, they recognized the people as a couple of their friends that had promised not to go to the house, but were just now coming away from it.  Percy got really angry, went out into the road and confronted them about it.  There was a brief argument, and the two continued on their way back to the main road.  Percy and Steve continued on to the house. They reached the house, and went in through the window as they had done before.  Steve noticed that the house had a strange feeling to it this night. There seemed to be something in the air, and Percy being mad seemed to heighten it.  Steve held the flashlight, and they walked around the first floor. Nothing They went to the second floor, and then to the third.  They went to a room in the corner that had a lot of peeling wallpaper and plaster falling from the ceiling, and stood there.  Steve was wondering about what they were going to have to do, when suddenly Percy fell very hard down to one knee.  Steve turned towards him to find out what happened.  Percy was doubled over at the waist, and his arms were clutching his stomach.  Steve bent down to him, and felt suddenly as if the house had come alive.  There were no noises, there wasn't anything, but the place suddenly was hopping with energy. Steve became very frightened, and reached down to help his friend up. Percy complained of severe pain in his stomach that just suddenly hit him without any warning. Steve put Percy's arm over his shoulder, and told him that they had to get out of the house immediately.  Steve helped him to the door of the room, and Percy had another stab of pain in his midsection.  Steve, not a terribly strong person, fought to keep him standing as he helped him down the first flight of stairs.   Steve flashed the light at Percy periodically to see how he looked, and he was horrified to see Percy getting paler and paler, and his strength was leaving him just as fast. Percy continued to moan and to hold his stomach, and only was able to move because of Steve holding him up.  The presence in the house was at it's peak now, and Steve expected something to happen at any moment. He looked to us in the room, and said "The house was hopping with evil. I know it sounds cheesy, but there was this real sense that if I couldn't get Percy out of there, that he was going to die, and I could feel the house like it enjoying it or something..."Steve descended to the first floor, and fully expected something to reach out of the walls and grab the both of them.  Percy was weaker still, and his complexion was extremely pale, his moans were even weak now...Steve helped him out of the window somehow, and climbed out right afterwards. With Percy's arm over Steve's shoulder, they moved away from the house as quickly as possible.  After 10 feet or so, as Steve was bobbling with the flashlight, Percy looked up and said "Who the hell is that?"Steve looked to us, took a drag off of his cigarette, and said, "I looked to where Percy was looking and saw the figure of a man standing there in the bushes.  He wasn't all that tall, and he wore this strange blue and red uniform, almost military looking but I don't know.  His face though, his face was the most horrible part.  He looked at us and had this immense, evil smile on his face.  It was the absolutely most evil thing I have ever seen in my life.  It was full of hate and pleasure and of things that I don't even know.  It scared the shit out of me, and then he just disappeared..."Steve carried Percy farther, with Percy not looking any better at all. At one point about a quarter of the way down the road, Percy raised his head and looked to Steve and said in a voice that was Percy's, but not like Percy would talk, "I have to go back to the house..."Steve freaked, and started going faster down the road, telling Percy to fight him, to fight whatever was going on with him.  He got to the end of the road and Percy started looking a little better.  They got to the car, and Percy seemed even better, the color returned to his face, and some of his strength returned.  When he got into the car, though, he passed out. Steve drove them to the local Dunkin Donuts, and Percy woke up again. They went inside, had some coffee and doughnuts and felt better. Steve looked to us and said "That was about a year ago.  I haven't been back there since.  The bad things stopped happening at our houses, and the dreams stopped coming.  But I really have the feeling that things still aren't resolved there..."We all sat there in the dim light of a candle that still burned, and all I could think about was going to the house.  I looked to Steve and said-"Lets go to the house Steve.."  He looked to me, smiled, and agreed. The other people in the room though I was crazy, and a couple didn't want anything to do with going to the house.  But our friends Pat and Trish did, though still being hesitant about it. So it was planned that the upcoming Friday, we would all go to the house and see what happened.  I talked to Steve afterwards about the story, and he felt that the reason that Percy had been so affected by the house was because he went there all mad and thinking, and kind of opened himself up to being influenced.  I had a lot of ideas of my own about when things could and couldn't affect me, from a lot of experience with a lot of strange happenings using the Ouija board. I had always been able to talk to things easily on the board before, and had been told that I had a very strong soul, and I was very protected. (There is a whole other set of tales behind that that I won't bother to get into, but suffice to say, I had a good amount of experience with weird things in the past) So, we planned on going to the house on that Friday, at about 1 or 2 in the afternoon.  Pat, Trish, and I waited for Steve to get back from work but he was terribly late, and didn't get to our place until about 5. Steve looked a bit panicked when he got to the house, and we left immediately. Along the way, he told us that something strange had happened at work, but that he had to tell us something that happened to him as a child for it to really make sense. When Steve was younger, he had a friend in Newport that he used to hangout with all of the time.  The strange thing was, though, was that they lived in a house that did some weird stuff now and then, like the toilets would flush in the middle of the night for no reason, and the doors would open and close after being latched and such.  Many times as a kid, when he would stay over, these things would happen while they would be up late at night, and they would talk about the ghost in the house, and they would get freaked out and have a lot of fun. Once, when the family went on a vacation, they paid Steve to come over and mow the lawn while they were gone.  Steve was mowing the lawn on one hot summer day when he got thirsty, and went into the house to get a drink of water.  He was drinking his water when he heard the sound of giggling coming from up the stairs.  He thought it was weird, but tried to ignore it. The sound came again, the sound of children giggling from up the stairs. He felt a bit strange, but he decided to go check it out anyway.  So, being a suave kid, he walked up the stairs looking like he had something else to go upstairs for, trying not to make it look like he was going upstairs to go check out the sound.  He went up the first flight, and he heard the children giggling above him.  He went up the second flight and saw nothing. There were some stairs to the attic, and he heard the giggling come again. He walked up the first couple of steps nonchalantly when it suddenly hit him about what exactly he was doing...  He promptly turned around and started walking down the stairs now, trying to act cool, but speeding up as he went down until by the last steps he was practically running. He got to the kitchen, scared out of his wits, and caught his breath.  Then from the room next to him, he heard the sound of the giggling kids...He bolted out the kitchen door and ran to him bike, and peddled as fast as he could the rest of the way home...So, Steve told us the story, and then said, " I went into work this morning, and in the other room I heard the guys saying stuff like 'wow, weird..'until one of them came into the room I was in and said I should go check out the screwed up message on the phone message system.  I walked in and they played it for me.  The message was of a disturbing high-pitched buzzing noise, and the sound of some children giggling... It lasted for about a minute, and then hung up.  I played it again, and it scared the hell out of me.  It's like they left a message for me or something. "We all looked to each other, and had nervous smiles... We drove the hour drive to the area of the house, and parked up the street from the driveway.  We walked through the woods to the road leading to the house, and then down the road to the house.  The house was just as he had described it, big and rundown.  You could tell how beautiful the place had been at one time, but now it was all just run down. We went to the window that Steve had gone in before, and found that it was broken, with the glass littering the floor inside.  We all climbed in, and we figured we had about an hour or two before we had to use our flashlights. We decided to check out the house first, and use the Ouija board that we brought afterwards.  He showed us where the stain in the floor used to be, and indeed, the stain in the wood looked very blood like.  We went in and looked at the picture of the red-haired woman in the tub, and it was a beautiful picture, but didn't seem as entrancing as it did to Steve and everyone else that night long ago.  Even now, Steve found it strange how the picture entranced them.  We checked out the cellar, descending the very narrow stairs down to a very creepy basement.  It extended the entire length of the house, and had a big hole in the ground that we figured must have been an artesian well. We left the cellar, as it was icky, and went up the stairs to the second floor. Steve explained that most of all of the furniture and stuff that was there was gone now.  The owner must have taken it all. The rooms in the second floor were terribly run down.  The wallpaper peeling from the walls, and the floors in many of the rooms not feeling safe enough to walk in the middle of.  We went into an old bathroom that had a very strange feel to it, it had old tub, old decorations, and very old sink.  I didn't like it in there all that much.  We went up to the top floor, and into the room where Percy had fallen in pain.  There was a dent in the floor where his knee had come down hard.  We went to the room that used to have all of the newspapers, and we found a dent in the floor where Mike had described the dent to have come on his dream with the Ouija board. We sat down here, and began to use the board.  Steve and I were using it, as Steve had gotten over his fear of it a while ago.  We tried talking to something, but had no real luck.. It was dusk now. We decided to change rooms, and go downstairs.  We started talking to a spirit, and asked it to put Cathrine on the board.  It said no, and refused to do it.  We tried repeatedly to get Cathrine on the board, but were unable.  We did, though, as it turned dark out, talk to Peter. Peter was very hostile, and had a bad feeling to him on the board.  We demanded that he allow us to speak to Cathrine, but he refused. He said that she could not speak to us at night, because he controlled her then. That was strange to us, and we questioned farther, but could get nothing. Then Peter became even more hostile, and began swearing at us, and saying some horrible things about the woman that was with us until it suddenly stopped in mid sentence.  It started again, with something that was leading into something nasty, but was again cut off in mid spelling.  It would go very strong, and then all of a sudden stop.  None of us could figure it out.  This happened a couple more times, until I asked Peter if he was being restrained.  He said Yes.  Who are you being restrained by?(pause) Eric. Everyone looked at me.  You mean I am restraining you? Yes. Then an idea ran through my head.  Are you being restricted by one of my guardians?  It went quickly to yes.  I asked to talk to the guardian, and Peter quickly left the board, and I talked to what was supposed to be my guardian.  It turned out that It was protecting all of us from Peter, and that was the reason the house didn't seem all that nasty tonight.  It said that I was there so that Steve could finish everything, and so he could find out what was needed.  We found out that Cathrine was being held to the house by Peter, and that Steve could release her by writing something, and reading it in the house.  We asked what he had to write, and it said that he would know.  After a short time talking with us, it left, and we couldn't get anything else on the board.  It was all right though, because we had been in the house for quite some time and we were ready to leave, and all rather happy about the whole guardian thing I don't understand everything about it, but it's something that has come into play before.  I'm still trying to figure it all out.  Everyone felt happy and playful as we left, and Steve felt relieved.  On the way out to the main road, we were looking around in the dark woods, and saw something glowing in the woods.  Yes, glowing green.  We all were quite interested, and Pat bound into the VERY dark woods towards the glowing.  We waited, and he came back and handed us each a piece of glowing green wood.  We figured it must have been some phosphorescent fungi or something, and we played with the stuff for the rest of the walk back to the car.  One the way home, Steve, who is a very talented poet, felt suddenly very inspired and wrote a very long poem into his notebook by flashlight light. A few weeks after we had gone there, Steve returned to the house alone, and read his poem aloud in the house.  Nothing happened, and he left, feeling good for doing it.  A lot of other people have gone to the house since then and have said that whatever was there, isn't there any more.  The house seems very dead, and lacks the presence it used to have.----------------------------------------------------------------------------So, that's the story.  Everything I have written on this story is very much true, and that's why it's such an interesting story for me. If you have any comments or questions about the story, or anything that didn't quite make sense to you, feel free to write me about it.  I'd love to hear from you!  Have a pleasant evening, and I look forward to reading all of your stories in this newsgroup in the future. Thank You,Eric Anderson   io01255@maine.maine.edu