As daylight turns to darkness earlier in the night, and the prerequisite nip in the air is felt a little more each day, so too is the Halloween season. As has been tradition over the last several years, we like take this time to share with you a spooky tale or two about some of things that go bump in the night.

These aren't far fetched hearsay of poltergeists, tales of campy Old Town inhabitants, or stories of outright terror and fright, but instead are comprised of experiences and events we or our neighbors have been directly privy to. Let me preface our stories by saying that this is not a testament to our belief that our, or another's, house is any way haunted or otherwise occupied by a spirit, ghoul, or otherworldly energy. Nor is the telling of the details a snide dismissal of things we or others have experienced for the purpose of blog fodder. Rather, our descriptions are simply accounts of events and circumstances presented for your assessment, review, and amusement, and it comes at an all too appropriate time of the year.

In years past we've shared with you all of the odd details and experiences we've encountered surrounding the events we now lovingly attribute to a possible resident apparition, "Mrs. Bryan," the original 19th century owner of our home. For all we know, she may very well still keep a watchful eye over us and our projects.

Whether she's looking out for us and helping prevent damage from encroaching water, ensuring we know her feelings as they pertain to the selection of an appropriate style of historically accurate front steps, or keeping us on our toes by reprogramming our lights, the idea that her presence is felt, if only to remind us she's around, is not a definitive statement that her haunt is real, but instead a series of gentle reminders that we may not be alone in our home.

Lately, Wendy and I haven't heard or seen much in the way of Mrs. Bryan, and we began to speculate that, perhaps, she had left us, happy with our progress, and decided to move on.

The part of me that doesn't believe in ghosts realizes this is just talk. We mention Mrs. Bryan because it's fun, because we have an old house, because everyone wants to know if our old house is haunted...

While I'm wholly skeptical of the idea of a haunting spirit, there's a part of me that wants our visitor to be real. That part of me believes that, if it's possible, I'd surely stay around our house after I'm gone. That part of me is also a little sad at the idea that Mrs. Bryan could up and leave us just because she's satisfied with our progress.

Everything seemed pretty normal for some time and quiet in the way of spook induced behavior, until about a month and a half ago after Wendy mentioned aloud "You know, I don't think Mrs. Bryan is still around." It was nothing major, but subtle things started to act differently. Light switches in certain rooms started controlling lights in other rooms. I'd turn on two lights in the kitchen and sometimes only one would turn on. At other times we'd shut lights off only to have them turn back on a few minutes later. However, these are all items we can chalk up to smarthome automation. That is, until a normal, everyday dimmer switch controlled light started exhibiting the same behavior. Oh, and the other light on the same switch...yeah, it wasn't turning on or off.

I know this sounds a little strange, and it's probably hard to really grasp what was happening without seeing it, so we went ahead and got a video of it for you. Take a look and see what you think.

Since the day the "light event" occurred it's not happened again. I haven't touched the light switch, wiring, or lights since that day, but it just stopped happening as quickly as it started. Could it have been Mrs. Bryan letting us know that she's still around, still watching over us and the house?

While we like to focus on our own home and stories, it's important to realize that there are many stories that pertain to our neighborhood as a whole. A number of homes within our immediate surrounding blocks are 100-200+ years old, and each owner possesses their own stories. Sitting down and hearing about neighborhood tales is always interesting and gives great insight into what could be.

One of our neighbors and very good friends has a extremely creepy story involving a specific area in their house along their staircase and landing that highlights just what I'm talking about.

The whole series of events started shortly after they purchased their home in 1998, a small two bedroom house of an undetermined but very old age (approximately 1850's it's believed). Their young daughter was only a few years old at the time, but she's always had a very vivid imagination. One day, when talking about something innocuous, their daughter mentioned a "woman in white" that had visited her at night in the hallway.

Chalking her description up to her active imagination, they didn't think much of it and went on with their day. However, this wasn't her only mention of this lady. Over the proceeding years their daughter would occasionally mention the woman and the conversations she had with her, but it became less and less frequent as she got older until she simply stopped talking about her by about the age of six. Her parents reasoned it away as just a child's imagination, but it always stuck with them in the back of their mind.

During this time the couple had their second child, a boy. As he grew up they could see just how different of a personality he was to his sister, but there was one similarity that jumped out to them one day when he was about three years old. One day, when talking to his parents about his night's sleep, he mentioned that he was being kept up at night by "a woman in a white dress in the hallway that wanted to talk to him."

Floored, his parents immediately recalled the conversations they'd had with his sister years earlier, and how eerily similar their account of the mysterious stranger was. Not wanting to call attention to the event, they didn't pry more than to make sure he knew not to do anything this person might ask him to do. But both of this young boy's parents were shocked and couldn't believe what they were hearing.

By this point, the older girl didn't even recall her conversations or interactions with the woman with whom she'd interacted, but the boy's conversations continued. At one point, while up late one night, the boy's mother heard him in the hallway talking to nobody. She could only hear one side of a conversation clearly being carried on by two people, one of which was her son. The other side of the conversation was silent to her, but her son was clearly telling the person he was talking to that he couldn't do what she was asking because his parents would be mad.

No sooner than she got to the hallway was her son turned and walking back into his room. The next morning the boy's mother asked him how he slept and if he wanted to tell her anything. His response was simple, "Fine, I didn't do anything, just went back to bed."

After that night the boy never mentioned the woman in white again, and as he got older he lost all memory of her. To this day, he and his sister make no mention of the woman and their parent's attempts to determine if they recall her (in a roundabout line of questioning) are typically met with blank teenager stares. However, the house next door has been home to a series of good friends of ours that have each had cats. One evening, while spending some time with the neighbors, the conversation led to this story of the woman in white. As it turns out, the neighbor house's staircase is directly adjacent to the location where both of the kids had interacted with their woman in white, and both neighbors's cats would sit in precisely this spot and loudly meow at the wall.

It's said that children and animals have a heightened sense or perception of the supernatural. Is it possible that these two kids and the neighbor's pets were able to sense a presence of a spirit that still roamed the hallway or staircases of the houses? Perhaps the kids no longer saw the woman in white as they matured and grew out of this perceptive phase of their lives. Will we ever hear of another run-in with the woman in white? And if so, will we find out either what she is trying to do or why she's still around? Only time will tell. But I'll tell you one thing for sure, I'm intrigued!

Do you have any stories of unexplained events in your home? Or maybe a house in your neighborhood that's rumored to be haunted? If so, we'd love to hear all about it. We hope you all enjoy your day and have a Happy Halloween!

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Without fail, whenever we are introduced to a group who learns we live in an older home, at least one or two people always ask the inevitable, "So...is your house haunted?" Some people ask it bashfully, others more directly, and some even ask as if they are actually telling us it is surely inhabited by spirits.

When we're asked, our most common answer is, "Well, we don't know, but there have been a few weird happenings and we've experienced some things we simply can't explain." Our response is sometimes met with skepticism, and other times with shock, but most often, whether or not the person asking the question is a believer in ghosts, spooks, haunts, or the paranormal, our response is typically met with intrigue, and the desire to learn more.

Last Halloween season we shared two of the "ghost stories" we have about our home. The first, the legend of the peanut ghost, is rather innocent and innocuous. Today, we just laugh and point out how often we see peanut shells laying around, though most likely it is just trash left behind by squirrels.

The second story, the tale of Mrs. Bryan, is a bit creepier and more difficult to explain. We continue to see things out of the corner of our eyes, and on more than one occasion in the past year I've gone downstairs just to make sure there's nothing in the house, though I could swear I just caught a glimpse of a person.

This Halloween I want to share a third story, which is actually the most difficult to explain and has me creeped out to this day. This story is also the one that makes the least overall sense in my analytical, "there must be an explanation for this," sort of way. No matter what possible justification I can come up with, there's just no logical explanation for how it happened.

This all goes back to a night in 2010. Wendy and I had spent long rainy day inside the house. I had spent much of the day organizing the wreck of a basement (some things never change), moving and organizing some heart pine flooring that was original to our house and getting it situated and neatly stacked on the floor.

As it was getting later, Ollie let us know he was tired and wanted to go to bed. This was the routine we established with him, so when we was tired, we listened to him and got ready for bed. 

We tucked Ollie in downstairs in his crate, since that's where he liked to sleep, then turned in ourselves. We were both particularly tired after a fair amount of work that day, and we had more to get done the next day, so we hit the hay and fell into our slumber.

All was quiet until roughly 3:00 o'clock in the morning when I woke up and thought I saw a person standing in the corner of our bedroom. It was one of those instances where you wake up and your eyes start playing tricks on you. I sat up and started staring at the figure in the corner until the figure simply turned into shadows from the door. A bit confused, but sure my mind was playing tricks on me, I went back to sleep.

I slept soundly until about 4:15 when I was oddly awoken again, but this time by something different. I wasn't sure exactly what it was, a noise, a feeling, a person...I just knew I was awake, and it had happened rather gently. We're used to street noise, people walking by the house having loud discussions and occasionally yelling, the creaking of the house, and even fire truck or ambulance sirens, but this wake up was different than all of those, this wake up was quiet and close.

Though I was awake, I made a conscious decision not to shoot up and out of my laying position as I had done earlier. Instead I laid still, trying to figure out what had just woken me up. I'm not sure if it was more curiosity or lethargy, but I didn't feel a sense of urgency. I was laying on my right hand side, looking at the partially closed bedroom door when I began to focus on the illuminated wall switch with my open left eye. The other side of my face, still buried in the pillow, represented the half of me that just wanted to fall back asleep, but my left eyed stayed on the dim light of the wall switch as my brain tried to process what it was that may have woken me up.

After what felt like it could have been minutes, but was more accurately a second or two, the occurrence that had stirred me from my peaceful slumber only a short time earlier, the thing that I was trying to understand, that thing happened again. The sound was a dull but noticeable thud that seemed like it had just come from the foot board area of the bed. Accompanying the thud was movement. In my still groggy state I continued to fixate on the light switch, the only area of light in our otherwise darkened room. As the thud occurred, I could see the light switch begin to move in a slow oscillating fashion.

"What is this?" I thought, laying still and trying to figure things out. "What's going on here, and why is the light switch moving?" As my thoughts did their best to race through my groggy mind, seemingly stuck in a bit of mental quicksand, I began to realize what I was seeing. The light switch wasn't moving at all, rather it was the bed that was shaking, and I was moving as I laid in it. But how was this possible, how was the bed moving?

Again, no more than a second or two later, a third and very noticeable thud occurred at the bottom of our bed. It sounded as if someone was slowly bumping into our bed, but done so with a hand or arm wrapped in fabric to deaden the sound. The noise was enough to wake me from a sound sleep, and the rocking of the bed was enough to creep me out a bit, but it wasn't a hard strike or loud noise by any means.

After this third thud the cobwebs began to clear and my mind was absolutely racing. Initially I was worried someone had rammed their car into the side of our house (don't laugh, it's happened in our neighborhood before) or that the ground was actually shaking beneath the house. Without lifting my head I glanced back at my glass of water on the nightstand. Though my eyes were still a bit fuzzy, I could clearly see the liquid in my glass was not moving, which meant the room was not shaking and only the bed had any motion.

I was nearly frozen in bed, attempting to lay as still as possible, for I wanted to keep hearing and experiencing the thuds until I was able to figure out just what this occurrence was. No sooner, a fourth thud left the bed moving again, but I was no closer to a probable cause. "How was this happening?"

As I laid there waiting for the next sound, Wendy began to stir. I didn't want her to wake up or move, I wanted to figure out what it was that was shaking our bed. Ollie was downstairs and Mel was laying in bed with us, but was far too small and tired to shake the bed in the way we were experiencing. We knew our neighbor was out of town that week, and nobody was staying with us in the house. There seemed to be no logical explanation for why our bed was bothered.

After the fourth thud Wendy finally gathered her thoughts and began to realize that our bed was being bumped by something. A moment later we heard and felt a fifth and final thud. Wendy quickly sat up in bed and said "WHAT WAS THAT?!?!?" I told her I didn't know, but it had happened several times and I had been trying to figure it out. I looked down at Mel, who was laying in the middle of the bed by our knees, and he was absolutely alert. He was looking around, just like us, trying to figure out what was going on. At the same time, Ollie was downstairs sound asleep, no barking or noises in the least bit.

After that fifth bump, the sounds and movement stopped, seemingly as quickly as it started. Wendy and I started to try to come up with what had just happened, but we were at a loss. Was it a car or truck outside, an earthquake, something else? What had been thudding against our bedroom foot board hard enough to wake all three of us up in the middle of the night?

We checked online to see if an earthquake had occurred, I checked twitter to see if anything, such as an explosion, was being reported, and I checked Facebook to see if any local friends had noticed something similar, but nothing was popping up. Later, we even talked to friends and neighbors, none of whom had felt anything similar.

After a few minutes Wendy and I went back to sleep, still with many questions in our mind. When we woke up a few hours later to a sunny Sunday morning, we immediately began talking about "the incident." We again checked for earthquakes (because that's obviously the most logical thing and we needed to keep checking), still nothing registered. Then we started talking about how "Mrs. Bryan," a widow and the original owner of our home in the late 1880s, had had woken me up a few years earlier, and perhaps she was still at it. It may have been a bright and sunny day, but we had just had several days worth of rain. I thought to myself, "You know, I just put all of that heart pine flooring stacked on the floor in the basement, and though it was dry when we put it down, what if water started coming into the basement?" 

I mentioned my hypothesis to Wendy and headed down to the basement. During the previous day's rain, water started coming in through the basement walls and floor and pooling in the center near the blocked drain. The water was backing up form the center and crawling towards the stacked up flooring. By the time I got down into the basement, the water had moved back all the way to the flooring and the edge of it was sitting in the water. I quickly moved the wood and stacked it in the better location. Luckily, the water hadn't done any serious damage to the flooring, it just needed to be wiped off, but had I not ventured down to the basement it could have been ruined.

When I got back upstairs I told Wendy what I had found and we kept talking about what we experienced in the middle of the night. We were both somewhat dumbfounded and had no idea what to really think. Wendy's hypothesis is that Mrs. Bryan tried to warn us that the water was approaching the flooring but we chose to ignore her. I have no idea if the potential for waterlogged flooring is responsible for our early morning wake up call that morning, but I have no better possible explanations.

To this day, this is one of those events where I simply can't assign a dismissive and logical cause. Every time I think about it I get completely creeped out and wonder what it could have been that woke us up. One thing is for sure, when I wake up in the middle of the night now, I always lay still for a second to see what it was that startled me awake. I'm forever curious and absolutely hope to someday discover what it was that jarred us awake. 

Do you have any thoughts as to what could have awoken us from a sound sleep? Have you ever experienced something going bump in the night in your home? Maybe you've seen something out of the corner of your eye, or have experienced something you can't quite explain? If so, we'd love to hear your stories, and we hope everyone has a very happy Halloween!

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The account of circumstances and events that follow are all first hand experiences that we've had in the house. 

Before we begin, lets take a step back in time. Wendy and I have done some research on the families that have lived in our house over the past 125 years and what we've found has been interesting and thought provoking. Over the years, our home has served as a rooming house, two apartments, a home for a single bachelor, a studio and home for an artist, and even a home for a family of as many as six people. But the most intriguing inhabitants were the original owner and her son.

In 1886, Mrs. Caroline Bryan, recently widowed from her husband, George, moved from a block and a half away where she had lived in a grand and spacious home into the modest row house where we now live. Mrs. Bryan, along with her youngest son, Albert, had fallen on hard times after her husband's death. She once lived in a fairly lavish setting with maids and a house staff, but was forced to leave her comfortable surroundings as the family fortune began to dwindle. We believe the widow Bryan and her son were the first owners of the home, rather than renters, but it is known that they were the first family to live in the home that played a significant transitional role in their life.

Throughout the years, the home's facade and interior, especially in the first several rooms, has remained in a similar configuration to what Mrs. Bryan knew as her home. Unfortunately, minor changes had been made along the way that have stripped several of the original details from the home. Who knows when door configurations were changed, hardware removed, molding damaged, and door knobs updated, but we do know they aren't what they were when the home was built and Mrs. Bryan moved in. If there is one thing we are doing on our renovation, it is trying to restore and replace the detail elements that bring just a little bit of originality and feel back to what the house may have been like circa 1886 when Mrs. Bryan moved in.

Back in 2005 Wendy and I were settled in and working hard on our house. The previous summer our focus had turned to the home's exterior. A new neighbor's paint job and renovation had inspired us to replace our rotting siding and to paint the exterior. We were quite satisfied with the results and really felt like our home was coming along, but we had the issue of the unsightly front stairs.

The brick behemoth stairs had adorned the front of our home for who knows how long, but they sure weren't original and didn't work with the period of the house. Wendy and I began talking seriously about replacing the stairs but really didn't know where to start, we just knew we loved cast iron stairs. At about this time, some strange things started happening inside the house.

It all started rather innocuously. While sitting on the couch watching television, Wendy and I began to catch glimpses of movement out of the corner of our eye. This movement only ever appeared in the front two rooms of the house, the family room and dining room, and as soon as we would look, nothing would be there. We both chalked it up to simple figments of our imagination, but it seemed to be happening quite often, and it often happened in a manner that we would both actually see it at the same time.

Then, one day in early spring, I was on one knee tying my shoelace before leaving for work when someone a foot or two behind me said "Wendy..." It was a clear voice, above a whisper but below normal talking level. For some reason I assumed it was Wendy saying her own name, so I pulled my laces tight and turned to say goodbye as I was leaving...but nobody was there. The voice of the person that I had heard so clearly belonged to no one. I went upstairs to find Wendy still sound asleep in bed with no explanation of where the voice had come from.

Our conversations about replacing the front stairs continued until we caught a lucky break and, while watching the DC This Old House, found a contractor that could handle the job. (You can read about the whole saga of the stairs in our two part post about them - part 1, part 2.)

We had our contractor, Fred Mashack, out to give us an estimate for the work. When he ballparked the job, Wendy nearly choked on her lunch and said "Thank you for your time." She had no intention of following through on the job.

We were dejected, but she was right. We couldn't reasonably justify the cost, especially because the cost was doubled due to the fact that we would have to do the work along with our neighbors. We went on about our lives, occasionally bringing the project up, but always coming to the same conclusion, we just couldn't justify spending that much money.

Several days later, Wendy and I were headed up to bed for the night. We went through our normal pre-bed routine which includes leaving most of the lights downstairs on. Why do we do this? Because we have a single button at the top of the stairs that turns off all of the lights on the first floor. Think of it as a "goodnight" switch. When you press the goodnight switch the lights on the first floor fade off over about one second, so you can still see downstairs while the lights dim. On this particular night I pressed the goodnight button and glanced downstairs to be sure the lights were turning off. This is a nightly ritual with expected results, except something was different this night. When I looked down the stairs I distinctly saw the shoulders, back, and leg of a female figure in a flowing black dress silently walking/gliding away from the bottom of the stairs to the right, away from the stairs and into the dining room. This was roughly the location where I had heard the voice while tying my shoes. I was pretty sure my eyes were playing tricks on me, but it was distinct and convincing enough that I had to go downstairs to make sure someone wasn't walking around in our house.

When I reached the dining room the space was dark. It felt cold, but not empty, like someone was there standing in the corner to the left of the fireplace. I pressed the button to turn on the lights, and as they fade on as they fade off when I press the goodnight button, the room felt empty again. When the lights came up something caught my eye though. The red tassel hanging from the key in the door of the grandfather clock was swinging as if someone had brushed against it. 

The air conditioning was not running, the windows were all closed, and the swinging tassel stopped moving about five second later. I stood silently for several more minutes, waiting for the tassel to begin swinging again from a breeze I possibly hadn't noticed, but nothing, it was still. I went back upstairs, turned out the lights, and let Wendy know what I had just seen but was unable to explain why or how it had happened.

During the next week or two after the swinging tassel, things around our house started to malfunction unexpectedly. Individually these were technology annoyances or just plain inconvenient, but together they seemed to be more than just coincidence. Over the span of about three weeks we had three hard drive failures, including one that failed within 10 minutes of install, lights in our house lost their programming and started turning on and off randomly or when switches in other rooms were activated, primary batteries for two of our computer battery backups died and needed to be replaced, our DVD player stopped turning on, one of the digital inputs on our television went black and never came back, and we had a malfunction of one of our security system sensors. And then the plumbing issues started. It was just a string of problems that we had never experienced in our house, and haven't experienced since. And, they affected multiple systems. If it were only electrical or even on one circuit, we could chalk it up to a singular electrical problem, surge, etc.

Our final event in this little tale occurred during the night. I had a series of very vivid dreams involving our house and a Victorian woman who I felt like was Mrs. Bryan. She never introduced herself, but was dressed in a high neck and simple  flowing floor length dress. In the first dream I had an ordinary view of her in an unknown setting, possibly our house, where she was sitting in a chair. She was relaxed and talking to someone, but not to me. Towards the end of the dream, she turned her attention to me and said, "You're doing a good job, keep working, you're both doing it right."

The second dream had Mrs. Bryan interacting directly with me, showing me our house during the 1880s, how the alley to the left of the house used to pass all of the way through to the next street, how the house was unpainted brick, and how the front steps of the house were once cast iron. She wasn't showing me photos, but was showing me images that let me see the details. Figment of my imagination or not, it was a real treat to experience a dream like the one I had.

The final dream of the series was the most shocking. It was a brief dream without a setting with only an actor. The Victorian woman whom I assumed was Mrs. Bryan was back again and talking to me in a firm voice. She said, "Get up...you have to get up! It's open...GET UP!" I woke up suddenly and got out of bed. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I felt like I needed to listen and to get up. Wendy was still asleep but beginning to wake up. I told her what had happened and ventured off into the house. When I reached the first floor I could see exactly what Mrs. Bryan was talking about, and what it was that was open. 

Our basement is our wood shop/storage area/laundry area. It is dirty, has many dangerous items, and quite a few dark corners that Mel loves to sneak into and hide. Not to mention Wendy is always paranoid about things like Mel  "inspecting" the furnace when it kicks on, or Mel sneaking through the crawl space into our neighbor's house. For this reason, as soon as the basement door is open I can usually see Mel lurking, trying to sneak his way downstairs. And for this same reason, he is absolutely forbidden to go into the basement. If he actually makes it down, he will undoubtedly emerge with blackened dirty paws. 

In this case, when I walked through the dining room and reached the basement door I saw that it was open by about 10 inches, Mel sitting in front of the door, looking down the stairs, but not venturing down as he always does. I distinctly remember fully closing and making sure the door was properly latched the night before. How it had come open during the night is a mystery, and how my dream hinted that the door was open, another mystery, and why Mel's paws were clean and he hadn't ventured down into the basement, a little bit creepy.

When I got back upstairs I told Wendy about the dreams and about the basement door being open. She was a little weirded out (ok, maybe a lot), and wanted to know as much as I remembered. Over the next week we continued to have discussions about the front stairs and if perhaps we should just go for it. We also spoke with our neighbors, who had completed their own major renovation, and they were receptive to splitting up the cost. It was the perfect storm of homeowners who were interested in making a significant investment improve a major detail element of the homes, and throwing caution to the wind (on our part) and spending way more than we were comfortable spending. After we made the decision, Wendy had a one way conversation with Mrs. Bryan while sitting in the dining room of our home. She said something to the effect of "Mrs. Bryan, we're going to go ahead with replacing the front stairs with the cast iron stairs we've been talking about. However, they're very expensive, and if you want us to go ahead with this project, we're going to need you to stop breaking things in our home. If you keep breaking things, we're not going to be able to afford the project or to continue our renovation efforts. I promise we love this house and will care for it for many years to come, and I promise we're going to 'do it right'."

After Wendy had the conversation with Mrs. Bryan, the problems immediately stopped. We went ahead with the cast iron stair project and after several months of debate and effort, including proposals to the Board of Architectural Review for approval, much demolition, and several very big checks, we were the proud owners of historically accurate salvaged case iron stairs that could have easily been on the house when it was new in 1886. The night we finished up the install we took this photo from across the street. We were proud of what we had accomplished and couldn't wait to share the photos with friends who had been aware of the saga. When transfered the photo from the camera to the computer and opened it up, this is what we saw.

Do you see the small glowing ball immediately to the left of our door and the stairs? What do you think of the orb? Spec of dust? Maybe a bug? Perhaps Mrs. Bryan, checking out the finished work? All I know is that the orb isn't there in the previous photo, and it isn't there in the next photo we took. 

I hope you've enjoyed this tale of the unexplained this Halloween. If our haunting is in fact Mrs. Bryan, and her interest is in taking care of this home, we're quite all right with this ghostly inhabitant. After all, our interests are aligned.

We've had a few other things happen over the years, but we'll save those for another time. Until then, we hope you have a Happy Halloween and enjoy your spooky evening. And, if you'd like to share your thoughts on our spirit guest, we'd love to hear your take on it.

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When Wendy and I moved into our house in January 2003 we were met with a pretty tall task. Sure, we had a lot of renovation ahead of us, but the first task at hand was the daunting effort to clean up our newly purchased mess of a house. The house had been lived in by single men for going on 15 years, and their level of cleaning had left something to be desired. 

During our cleaning adventures, we worked inside, outside, in open spaces, and tight corners, we cleaned everything we could. One of the common things that we kept finding everywhere oddly enough was peanut shells. This may sound a little ordinary, and we didn't think anything of it at first, but that would soon change. 

At first we found them all over the flower beds in backyard. For these we just chalked it up to the squirrels we would see running all over the place. Then we started to find them left in front of the doors and on the sidewalk. We started to think that maybe our neighbor Paul, who perpetually "patrolled" the alley, ate peanuts and dropped the shells wherever he happened to be...and maybe even threw them over the wall into our backyard. At any rate, these shells were popping up all over the place, and we didn't have any explanation for it. 

We just sort of laughed off all of the peanuts and shells outside, but then we started to find them in some of the strangest places inside. We found several in the corners of the basement, and a couple thrown about in the dirt crawlspace. We even found one or two in the sun porch area. Then, during our cleaning process, Wendy started to clean under the sink in the kitchen. There was a removable piece of wood that covered the bottom of the cabinet. When Wendy picked up the piece of wood she found dozens of peanut shells piled together. They had been there for who knows how long, but they had been put there on purpose.

After the mass finding of peanuts, the "excitement" died down a little bit. We would still continue to see them around in the backyard and in front of the doors, but not much more than that. It was about this time that we started to joke that we had a "peanut ghost." He seemed harmless, but had a serious love of legumes. 

Several months later, I was headed off to work. As was my normal routine, I was rushing around the house, grabbing my lunch, shoes, and anything else I needed. I realized that I had put my backpack in the wash the day before, so I ran down to the dryer to grab it. Since it was completely empty, I packed it full of everything that I needed for the day, zipped it closed, and headed out to work. 

When I got to my office I opened my backpack to start my day. I unzipped the main area of my bag and sitting on top of my clothes and lunch was a single peanut shell. I laughed a little and called Wendy to let her know that I appreciated her little joke. I didn't know when she had the time to slip it into my bag, but complimented her on her efforts. The thing is, she didn't know what I was talking about. She wasn't anywhere near my bag, I was the only one who had put anything in or taken anything out, and I hadn't put the peanut into the backpack. How the shell ended up in my backpack is still a mystery to this day.

A little while later, Wendy and I were working on replacing the door at the very back of our backyard. The door that was originally there was an awful looking disaster. It looked like a port-o-potty from Greece.

We decided to tear that whole thing out and had build a new door with a curved top. Our hope was to build a brick archway to complement the door, so we decided to make our first attempt at masonry in constructing this archway. We built a wood form for the archway, got everything prepared and ready to go, and started to mix up our cement mortar. Do you see the bucket and bag of Portland cement in the bottom of the next photo? That's where our next peanut situation occurred. 

We had a clean empty bucket, clean pitcher of water, and a new bag of cement. I poured the cement into the bucket, then the water, then I began mixing with my drill. Almost as soon as I turned on the drill I saw a peanut shell sitting in the cement, but not covered in powder. It was as if it had been placed there by someone. Wendy wasn't near me, and I had just done this all in the span of a few seconds, never leaving the bucket, but the shell appeared. Almost as soon as I noticed it, the shell was mixed into the cement. I tried to find it again while mixing but it was gone. The shell ended up somewhere in the mortar that made up our brick archway. Incidentally, that archway fell during a serious windstorm on New Year's Eve 2008. Who knows if the peanut shell played any role in that event.

The final unexplained situation involving peanut shells is the most creepy to me. Wendy was away on business one spring back around 2004.  I was left to my own devices but was working hard on the house, trying to get some major things accomplished while she was away. I always want to give her some unexpected progress to come home to. This particular evening I was working on plastering the hallway and stairwell on the second floor of the house. I had put in a full day and was quite tired. 

With sore arms, I went into the bathroom to wash the plaster off of my hands. When I turned off the water the house was quiet, but I heard something very odd. It sounded as if someone was walking around in our attic space directly above our bathroom. I stood quietly and listened, and the footsteps continued for 30 or 40 seconds. It sounded as if a person was walking slowly, but with a somewhat heavy foot. Thump...thump...thump...thump, then suddenly it stopped after final and particularly loud thump that sounded like someone jumping away. It wasn't loud enough to hear if the water was running, but was plenty loud to hear in the quiet. I thought it could have been an animal on the roof, but didn't know how something large enough to sound like a person's footsteps could have gotten up there. Also, the sound definitely sounded like it was coming from our attic, and not the roof.

The thing with the attic space where I heard the noise coming from, there is no way it is large enough for someone to walk around. At that point in the attic there is a maximum clearance of about 20 inches, barely enough to even crawl around in. But I was sure I heard footsteps, so much so that I called Wendy to tell her what I had heard. I listened a bit longer, but they were gone, and I never heard them again. I stuck my head and a flashlight into the attic, not sure of what I might see, but all I ended up seeing was nothing.

Roughly six months later, a project we were working on required me to shimmy my way back into the attic. It is dark, claustrophobia inducing, and dirty. You have to wear a respirator because of the loose insulation, and it is never a pleasant experience. (Why can't we just have a normal large creepy attic, not this small one?) As I crawled back towards the area above the bathroom, I had an odd feeling that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I moved a few things out of my way and my flashlight beam caught something sitting in the insulation. As I moved closer I remembered the distinct sound of footsteps I had heard months earlier. My heart began to race and I looked down to see a nicely formed pile of about 20 peanut shells just sitting among the insulation. Is this the noise I had heard, was our peanut ghost pacing in the confines of our attic and depositing his spent peanut shells?

I left the shells undisturbed where they sat and covered the area with an old piece of wood. I've not been back to this portion of the attic since that day, so I assume they are still sitting there where I left them. We'll be doing some work in that area in the next few months, so I guess I'll find out soon enough.

We have no photos of ghostly figures, or gruesome displays of the paranormal, just some creepy experiences that make you think twice about whether or not we're really alone when we're home alone. Be it animals playing tricks, or some spirit or energy of the beyond, If we actually have a peanut ghost, it seems to be rather harmless.

I hope you've enjoyed our little story of the Old Town Home Peanut Ghost. We're planning on one more story on Halloween, so think of this as a bit of a haunting warm-up.

Do you have any stories in your home that make you question if you're really alone? Please share, we'd love to hear.

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