We lived in the house my wife was largely raised in, we inherited it. The house, in Mt. Oliver, Pennsylvania, an Independent Town within Pittsburgh City Limits, was built in 1901.
In the Mt. Oliver house, my wife, as a child (they bought the house when my wife was 5 years old), remembers seeing things a few times through 8 years old or so, and sensed things until she moved out at 17+ years, yes, we had a child young, yes, we’ve been together 44 years now, one major hiccup about 15 years ago, which we overcame in a few months.
But young, she claimed to have seen a ghostly figure, a little boy, dressed in late 1800s clothing, sitting at a table, playing. Mostly, though, she heard noises, the closet door rattling, and she said she’d kick the door and tell him to knock it off, and he did. She said there were other kinds of noises, and periodically she’d feel like someone sat down on the edge of the bed.
They did, informally, adopt a stray cat, he had the peculiar habit of climbing the downspout to the porch roof, and sat out side the bedroom, meowing, to be let in, which they would. And it was a shared bedroom, with 2 sisters and a brother, my wife is the oldest.
Much older, many many years later, after we’d inherited the home, my wife, in the livingroom, would be holding the youngest grandson, maybe 18 months old, and he’d look at the steps to the upstairs, point, and say “scared me”. He did this on 3 or more, separate, occasions, as if something on the steps was scaring him. He used the term imprecisely though, we don’t know if he was afraid, startled, or fascinated.
My part in all of this is the stairs. My wife, myself, and our faithful and fearless dog; 95 lbs, 1/2 Lab, 1/2 Pit Bull, that loved to defend the property; were upstairs. The dog was on the floor, near the door, and he’d listen for my youngest son to arrive home, come up the stairs, he’d knock on the door, then open it, and the dog would go with him into his room. One night I hear someone coming up the stairs, fast, like they’re taking 2 steps at a time, and the dog looks up, without me saying anything, preparing to go to my son’s room. But my wife doesn’t hear anything.
The problem is, no one was there. I’m not talking light sounds that were like footsteps, I’m talking heavy, substantial ones. My wife didn’t hear, but my dog did, and the dog was getting ready to get up because of it. I was so unnerved I armed myself, with diligent attention to it being a practical joking son, and I cleared the entire house, one room at a time, but I found nothing out of place.
There is a possible explanation, an “Early Arrival Apparition”.
This removes the need for the building to be haunted, yet it begs the question, can a person, and dog, both perceive the early arrival apparition, simultaneously?
I can’t even find much on Early Arrival Apparitions anymore, I’ve read on the Paranormal, believe me, much of it is boring, routine. But TV and YouTube has sensationalized it, every show produces results, but I doubt most results are real, and these shows have displaced the more routine bread and butter stuff of Parapsychology.
From a real paranormal investigation, a home, purportedly haunted, went without tenants. A paranormal investigator decided to stay in the house. This was decades before YouTube, decades before advanced electronics. He slept in the house, heard the ghostly noise, went into the attic, crawled to the eave area, and found a children’s whistle jammed there that wind was blowing through, removed it, and the “haunting” stopped.
Another case, a researcher, in a Lab that was purportedly haunted, discovered a defective bearing on a ventilation fan was generating very low frequency noise, and the noise was causing people to have the creeps, and to have negative feelings about their workplace that they misinterpreted as ghostly.
Some “Ghosts” May Be Sound Waves Just Below Human Hearing
The home I wrote about here, in Mt. Oliver, is saturated by over 30 Radio and Television transmission towers, and that’s from an online site about Transmitter Locations and Transmission Patterns. In fact, I couldn’t use my police radio/scanner without intermodulation interference (stations over powering frequencies that they are not actually on) until I moved the outdoor antenna to the rear of the house, apparently slightly attenuating the offending frequencies, or using thumb sized antennas on the radios inside the home, also attenuating the signals.
Here’s are the Transmitting Antennas, over 30 within 10 miles, most much closer than 10.
Ghosts, whether sound or radio induced, or good old fashioned paranormal, established well before electricity or fans existed, do unnerve. Looking for links this afternoon, I came across a YouTube video of a news segment of a couple selling their home, it’s listed as “Slightly Haunted”.
Would you buy such a home…….
Meanderings 