Do you believe in ghosts? or haunted houses? I do. The funny thing is that I’m not really superstitious and not likely to believe most ghost stories but since I lived in one once, I do believe. I’d like to say that the house was a part of my youthful imagination, but I’m not the only one who experienced the hauntings and the house has been pretty well documented as being haunted.  Of course, I knew none of this when I was 6 years old and we moved into this house.

When I was 6 we, my parents and my three younger siblings and I, moved from Westborough, MA, to Keene, NH. We moved from a pleasant, old colonial with at least one room built in the 1600’s to an old center entry colonial that had once been a parsonage, and had at least one room from the 1600’s. This house was not nearly so pleasant.  It had been moved to allow for the creation of an Athletic Field and the foundation and basement, the garage and the family room over the garage were all newly added. These room were places where we all felt comfortable. The living room, dining room, kitchen and bedrooms were older, darker and susceptible to strange happenings. For example, there was a woman who visited my brother in his crib regularly. She was nice and my brother liked her. I’m pretty sure that this woman, whoever she was and whatever time she was from, she kept him safe.

On the other hand, I was visited regularlyby two children at the end of my bed playing some form of hide and seek. They were daring me to join them, which I never did, along with tan old man and a younger woman who would poke me.  Needless to say, getting out of bed at night was a trauma. Then there was a painting in our room. It was a portrait of a woman in a white frame, and many times there was someone else, a shadowy someone, in the picture, moving around behind the stationary woman. My younger brother and I saw this and still talk about his today. He kept the picture.  And there was the another brother was lifted over the gate at the top of the stairs and tossed all the way to the bottom hallway. Then there was the more traditional smell of burning rubber in the living room, smoke in the basement and other bumps and movements.

Lest you think these the ramblings of two young children, my parents eventually sold the house to Keene State College and it became a residence for a minister, then a dorm and finally a fraternity. Everyone who lived there thought the house was haunted, so much so that it appeared on the old Unsolved Mysteries three different times. They particuarly noted the revolutionary war soldier who occupied the front stairs and kicked things and people feeling that someone was poking them.

Have I ever experienced anything like this since then? No. And I’m happy to say the house has been torn down now for new construction.