My Ghostly Encounter in the House by the River

[guohua]

I heard this story from my mother, so while it's second hand, I never knew her to make anything up or lie about stuff. When she was little, maybe 6 or 7, she and her mother & step father had to rent a tiny little four-room house in West Virginia. It was made in such a way that you walked into the living room and could go forward to the kitchen, turn left and make a circle through both the bedrooms and end back up in the living room.

The "walker" in this house was a large dog. The metal bed frame she slept on was quite heavy, and several times throughout the night she would hear this dog come walking into her room, toenails clicking on the bare floor, and it would crawl under her bed. She could feel her bed scoot and hear the hair scraping as it moved. It would lay there for a while and crawl back out, and walk from room to room in the dark. Oh, did I mention that all the doors to the rooms would be closed while this was going on?

Other times she said it sounded like men were "pitching wood" in the attic area, like moving stacks of lumber. the door from her bedroom to her mother & step father's room was usually locked, but yet that door would swing open and shut all night. She also said some mornings she would wake up outside on the front porch under her grandmother's rocker, even the house was locked up at night.

The background story on this house was that no one stayed in it for long because it was rumored to be haunted, but they ended up in it for several months. Oh one more thing... she said one night her step father's brother was visiting and they all heard something moving around on the back porch. Her step father and his brother went to check it out, guns in hand, one going one way around the house and the other going the other direction so they could meet in the back. A large metal wash tub was laying on the porch (it had been hanging on the wall). When it started moving on its own, they figured it was a critter under it so they took a broom handle and flipped it over to let it out. Nothing was there.

They put the wash tub back on the wall and went inside. They heard it again a while later, so they looked again - nothing under it. They hung it up again, and the third time they heard it they both said it could just stay there!

Cool!!!
I like the part about the wash tub, may have been that dog again.