For most of my life I believed there were spirits, some good, some bad, but I never really believed that they were anything but angelic or demonic in nature (or supernatural, to be more precise). It’s not that I totally disbelieved that people who have passed could come back as ghosts, I just figured that wasn’t the case. I’d have to say that changed when I moved into a house that could be classified as “haunted.”
The year 2000 was coming to an end, and Carol and I had recently sold our townhome to get a bigger place. We did a tour of the house, and I was excited about the 3-car garage because my plan was to turn that into a studio. That was the main reason for moving in the first place. I don’t remember exactly when we were told, it might have been very early on in the visit, but we were informed that the previous owner died in the home. The realtor was a good friend of ours, so I’m sure he wasn’t trying to hide that fact, even if he was compelled by law to reveal that information. But he explained that the owner was an older gentleman who lived there alone, and was found by the next door neighbor. The determined cause was that he was mis-medicated, meaning he probably took the wrong combination of his medicines.
Now that may have scared off some of you, but it wasn’t a big deal to us. We were shown exactly where he was found (in the dining room) and we stood there for a moment of silence.
(We stood at the spot behind the pillar.
We had taken a number of pictures right after we purchased the place and before we moved in. Oddly enough, there are more pictures of the place before we moved in than of the 10 years we spent there.)
We moved in soon thereafter, and it took about a year to begin transforming the garage into a studio
and another eight months for it to be completed.
It wasn’t too long before things began to happen. All in all, there were a lot of things that happened. I won’t list them all. The entire list of things is available on request, including an incident that freaked out my older brother.
At this time, Carol had been going into work at 4am. Her job was about an hour away which meant she was getting up somewhere around 2. She would end up going to bed around 7, which was at least 5 hours before me. So she would go upstairs and by 8, the house was dark and quiet, except for the living room, where I would be kicking back, reading, watching TV or playing video games, or a combination of the three.
The first thing that happened wasn’t really a big deal, but it was certainly interesting. I was lying on the floor, playing a game, and my beautiful Pup was by my side.
(Now technically she was not supposed to be on the sofa, and Carol was not overly happy when she would.
I just couldn't say no to my Pup.)
Suddenly, she gets up and intently stares into the darkened dining room. Engrossed in my game (it was possibly Call of Duty or Madden), my eyes shift over to her, and then I slowly turn my head to look in the direction which she’s staring.
“What are you looking at, Pup?” I ask. (You may not know this, but my dog could speak. She would just prefer to remain silent in the presence of others. She was shy that way.)
Peering into that darkened room, I saw nothing, but Pup was in full alert mode. I used to enjoy watching her hunt lizards in the backyard. It was a full hunt, her gaze locked in, as she was slowly lift one paw to inch forward, and she now had the same look as she did during her hunts. After a minute of my eyes going back and forth between Pup and the living room, I get up and walk over there to do an inspection. The thing I had noted almost immediately was that where we were situated, we could see directly to the spot where the previous owner had been found, and that’s exactly where Pup was looking. So, despite the possibility that someone could have somehow got in and was now hiding in that area, I was pretty confident I would find nothing as I walked over to the area.
BUT THERE IT WAS!!!!!
Ok, I'm just kidding. As expected, I didn't see anything.
“What did you see?” I asked Pup as I walked back over to her. (She said nothing. Maybe she was scared.)
I got back on the floor and resumed my video game, but was fully aware that Pup was keeping a keen eye on that room.
Big deal, you say, so your dog may have seen something. That was just the beginning.
I don’t remember the timeline or the order for that matter, but I do remember what happened next. At times, Carol had a tendency to get up a few times during the night to go to the restroom. She had her own bathroom upstairs down the hall from our room. And more often than not, when I’d be downstairs, I could hear her footsteps walk down the hallway. One night, I figured she was having a bad night, because there were about five times I heard the sounds in the hallway. The next day when I saw her, I mentioned to her about the unusually high amount of times she got up the night before.
“I didn’t get up last night,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” I responded.
“I got up once,” she replied, “but that was after you had already come to bed.”
I know what I heard, and there had been no doubt in my mind that night that she was walking the hallway, so I was quite shocked to hear her say that. Something was walking the hallway that night, and apparently it wasn’t Carol.
I’m sure I had mentioned to Carol the incident with Pup and now this seemed to present the possibility that there was something in the house. The name of the previous owner was Buck, so we just playfully said it was him.
As time went by, we got pretty close to the neighbors, and we learned a bit about Buck. The one thing we learned was that he was a bit of a handyman and spent a lot of time in the garage, now my studio, and that’s where a number of things happened that definitely verified that something was going on.
The thing that definitely confirmed it for me was two things that happened in that studio. The first was an incident with a band that had come in to record. Making no mention of anything about Buck, I know that the band had no clue of what had been going on, but by the end of the day, they did. We had finished recording all the music, and it was now time to do the vocals. I had put the female singer in the larger room (drum room), and she was having a bit of trouble with her performance. She wasn’t doing badly, but she and the band knew she could do better. So I had this technique I used for singers from time to time. I had a very large flashlight, almost a spotlight, and so I took that into the room and set it up to shine on her and then exited and turned off the lights. Normally providing that atmosphere would produce better results. So she starts singing, and she is doing better.
“Cut it out,” she says as she stops singing. “Knock it off.”
I stop the music.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Who’s in here?” she asks.
We all look at each other.
“Ummmmm, just you in there,” I tell her.
“Someone just tugged on my shirt, twice,” she says.
“Say that again,” I say.
“Someone’s in here and they pulled on my shirt,” she replies.
I turn on the light to show her that she is indeed alone in that room. She knew no one was in there, but she kept looking behind her because she felt her shirt being pulled in the back.
“Wellllll, there MIGHT be some things that happen in here,” I tell her.
I proceed to tell the band about some of the things that we’ve been noticing. Some of the band members are a bit concerned. The singer didn’t have a problem. We talked about ghosts for a bit and then got back to work.
The second thing also happened in that room of the studio, which is funny because I spent a lot of time alone in that room playing drums and didn’t experience a thing in there. But my brother Gabe did. He and I were alone in the studio, talking whatever telepathic nonsense that we’ve been known to do. I was sitting in my usual chair at the board, and I was facing the piano which was to the right side of me, meaning my back was to the drum room.
(The sliding glass doors lead to the drum room, which used to be the part of the garage where Buck's workbench was.)
Gabe was on the other side of the piano, and our chat suddenly stopped when he looked past me and stared at the drum room. It felt like the experience I had with Pup, so my actions were quite similar in that my eyes started shifted towards the room as my head slowly turned to see what he was staring at.
“We are alone, right?” he asks.
“Of course,” I say.
“I just saw something in that room. It walked past the door,” he responds.
Now he knew of the experiences and by this time, we would joke about Buck, but this was a bit freaky, because it was the first time someone actually saw something. I know the shirt pulling could easily be considered more freaky, but I don’t know, it’s probably because the way he looked past me that felt weird.
“I guess it’s safe to say we’re alone in the physical sense,” I tell him as I continue to stare at that room.
The funny thing about the studio was that I spent many, many hours and days in there alone, quite often in total darkness except for the glow of the video monitors (that's how I kind of messed up my eyesight) and never experienced anything in there during those times.
There were a number of other incidents that included my brother having a weird experience in our guest room, strange things happening in my upstairs office at night, a friend of ours seeing things, Carol hearing strange music from the studio (stranger than usual) and one of our friends saying that he didn’t wish to spend any time alone in our house after he sat for our dog one day.
I could describe those for those who would want to hear, and in greater detail now that all the groundwork has been laid, but I’m going to wrap this up by sharing one thing. Whether you believe in angels or demons or ghosts, perhaps you believe in one or all three, I will say that I went into that house really only believing in two. I just didn’t believe that people’s spirits lingered, and was of the mindset that once a person passed, they moved on.
Now I have been told by some that it wasn’t a ghost, and that it was probably an evil spirit. And I’ve got one thing to say to you: BS! No, I’m just kidding. I won’t say that, but I will disagree with you for one reason only: there was a difference in the feeling or the “atmosphere” when it was Buck. What do I mean?
I’ll explain it this way. There were times where we felt something else in the house. In fact, there were a few times where it would wake us up at night. It was like this: all of sudden I was awake, and there was a deep sense of fear in the air. It being completely dark, I have no idea if Carol next to me is awake.
“Do you feel that?” I ask aloud.
“Yeah, I feel it,” she responds because it woke her up too.
“Ok,” I say, and we would both roll over and go back to sleep.
That happened a number of times, and you might wonder why we reacted that way. Our mentality was that it couldn’t hurt us, so we’re not going to lose any sleep over it.
It was a different feel, totally. That was purely demonic in nature, and we knew we had enough angels around us, so we were good. But that fear, that darkness, that presence was not there at the other times. At those times, was that the ghost of Buck? I certainly lean towards that conclusion, because I’m fairly certain that whatever it was, it wasn’t angelic or demonic.