The House of My Youth

Part 11 - So What's My Read on the Manifestations?

Okay, as promised, here are the reasons I (mostly) do not believe the things I have written about regarding The Old House were ghost induced.

First. I don't believe that when people die they stick around. Either they go to live with God, or they are locked away to await final judgment. Do I believe in demons? Yes. But I don't think that's what was going on at The Old House either. I think all of the manifestations can be directed into a couple of groupings. Let us examine each kind of manifestation (as opposed to each instance).

Voices

That nearly everyone who came to The Old House heard voices from people who were not (apparently) there is without debate. So who was talking? Where were they? Why couldn't we see them? Why was it so difficult to make out what they were saying?

I am convinced it has to do with how things work. Our knowledge of science should back me up on this, I believe.

The Old House was built before 1900. At some point in time, someone brilliant decided to insulate the walls with small pieces of something which appeared to contain metal. When we lived in it, The Old House was over eighty years old. Having never been properly heated and cooled, the wood had gone quite dry.

Now it is a fact that those of us who heard voices, heard them in only one of two rooms. The big room downstairs, or the big room upstairs, right above it. This meant the southeast corner. What I believe was happening was The Old House had become some type of radio receiver, with the construction allowing for a faint broadcast of what it was picking up. We heard voiced because it was picking up talk radio. (Talk about scary! Just think - Rush Limbaugh - and you'll know why we were terrified. Well, Rush wasn't around then, but you get the idea.)

Walls Banging - no footprints in the snow

Not many outside our family experienced this one. I think one of my uncles was there once, and maybe my grandma once or twice. But usually it was just the immediate family. Again, I think our knowledge of science will support me on this.

As indicated above, The Old House was, indeed, old. The wood was dry. The construction codes back in the 1800s were not the same as now. Different materials. For one thing, no sheetrock.

That the main wall to experience this banging should also have been visibly bowed is significant, I think. I have read that old dry wood will, of its own accord (and I believe this is what was going on at The Old House)(actually due to air pressures) begin to vibrate. The Old House was collapsing, as was evidenced by the bowing of the wall. What we were hearing was significant shifts and tremors in the wall. Someone more knowledgeable about such things can explain it better, but I am convinced this was a natural phenomenon.

Sharing the Bed

This one's harder (and the reason I wrote "mostly" at the post's beginning).

It could have been hallucinations. The argument against that is that these incidents took place in three different rooms with four different people. So what other explanations do I have?

Not an entirely satisfactory one, I'm afraid. The best I come up with is imagination. I have something like this take place today when I'm in bed. I will get the sensation that someone is rubbing my lower legs, or putting pressure on them. No one is. Not even the cat. Today I believe it is related to poor circulation caused by my diabetes. But I'm wondering, since only young people, school age, experienced it, if it wasn't related somehow to growing. Just a guess here. I didn't find anything about it on-line.

Sightings- Visual Manifestations

These are also difficult to explain because not only did many people see the phantoms, but we all saw the same thing. The most logical explanation is: magnetic fields.

There are several websites which talk about this phenomena. Here is one.

I actually watched a short documentary about this last summer or fall. A group of "ghost hunters" had gone to Edinburgh, Scotland. There is a castle there which is acclaimed as being the "most haunted in the world". Every week many castle visitors, and staff, experience eerie events in the lower places.

What the did was get several volunteers and put them into separate rooms. Some of the rooms were notorious for producing manifestations and some had few or none. The subjects were not told which room they were in. Cameras, sound equipment, and other electronic monitoring devices were set up. Then the experiment began.

The one young woman, who was in one of the notorious rooms, heard voices and felt something touching her. Neither the audio nor video equipment picked up anything. But the woman was becoming quite terrified. What the other electronic equipment did pick up was magnetic fields.

Later in the show, they filmed a doctor/scientist who was experimenting with low-level magnetic fields on human beings. What he had discovered was that these same manifestations could be induced. People would hear things. They felt themselves being touched. It was quite panicky for them.

Low-level magnetic fields exist naturally in the world. If they do in fact cause these kinds of hallucinations, then that may very well explain The Old House. It would also explain why the manifestations ceased when The Old House burned and we rebuilt 100 yards to the north.

Animals

Our dogs often reacted to The Old House itself. Especially when they were inside and near the steps going down to the basement. Both my Mother and Helvie told me about being down there and suddenly having a sense of fear which made them want to run out. But they barely made it, having to climb on their hands and knees up the steps.

The basement was so poorly constructed the ground itself could be seen. My guess is that some poisonous gas was seeping into it and that at times it got intense. The basement smelled so musty and bad anyway that we wouldn't have notice any other kind of smell. The dogs' reaction would suggest the gas was not odorless.

So there you have it. My explanations of why The Old House was NOT haunted. Like I said at the top: I'm mostly convinced.

Here, just because I have it, is a photo of The Old House's last moments. It didn't scan well. The paper is over thirty years old and quite yellow.

The room I was using at the time was in the upper right corner. It was already gone when the picture was taken. There is a 250-gallon tank of fuel oil next to the house which was spouting fire. Everyone was terrified it was going to explode, but it didn't. The house looks cruddy for two reasons: 1) I was tearing off the old siding and painting the wood; 2) It was cruddy.

I used to use the part to the left as a backstop to throw rubber baseballs against. I quit when I threw one through the wall. Then I shifted around the corner to the left. The boat got pulled away and saved from a meltdown. Not so with my things. I had ran them out of the house and set them in the yard. Even at thirty yards away the heat from the fire evaporated them. All I saved was an acoustic guitar and the clothes I was wearing. No shoes.

The caption below the picture talks about damages being estimated at $5,000. They left off the "1" ($15,000). Mother was furious. Not only did the picture make it look like we were Ma and Pa Kettle, but then the caption confirms it.

The window on the far right was stained glass. The next window, by the tank, was at the foot of the steps. Then it was the two dining room windows. The last window, left-middle, was the kitchen window.

The tall chimney in the center didn't fall. My Daddy and two neighbors went the next day with a giant crowbar and took it down before it fell on someone.

Heck of a day. Not much of a birthday present for Helvie. I remember walking up to her and her screaming hysterically, "It's our house! Where are we going to live?" I put my arm around her and said, "It's okay. It doesn't matter." She didn't like that answer.