The Ghost of Chestnut Lane

I believe in ghosts. It's always made sense to me that they exist. I've always known that there's more to us than meat. Why they hang around, I can't pretend to know. Several theories include: They don't realize they're dead, They left something undone, They're just echoes of what they used to be, and many others.

I don't pretend to know all about ghosts and their reasoning or lack thereof. All I can do is tell you what I experienced.

The first time I experienced a ghost was when I was very young. Five or six. We lived in a house in Ledyard, CT. It was a 3/4 bedroom Cape Cod style house. Very comfortable for a family of four. There was a wood burning stove in the finished basement which served as my brother and I's play area and family room. I had the yellow bedroom at the end of the hall next to my parent's room. My brother, being older, got the larger bedroom further from supervision.

My brother walked in his sleep in that house. Once almost tried to "fly" down the front stairs to the door. I don't recall that happening anywhere else we lived but that may just be that he grew out of it. I'm rambling. Back to the simple story....

It was late and I woke up in my bed and stumbled out of my room to go to the bathroom which was down the hall. I did what I needed to do and washed my hands. When I turned to head back to bed, I saw a man. He was pale and had angry eyes. He wore a white shirt and black pants and black boots. He was walking toward me and was between me and my parent's room. I heard his footsteps coming toward me and retreated into the doorway to let him pass. With each step he took he sunk a little further down in the floor and by the time he was past me was sinking down and out of sight through the floor.

I ran to my parent's room and clambered into bed with them waking them up."There was a man in the hall! He went through the floor! Who was he? What does he want?" My parents soothed me and told me there was no man. I had just been dreaming. It was just a nightmare. Climb in between us and go back to sleep.

I made no protest. Nobody could hurt me when I was with my parents. With them I was safe. But the memory would keep coming back to me of those angry eyes that wanted me gone.

The next year we moved to Illinois but rented the house out rather than selling it. We knew we'd be stationed back in CT in a few years. When we moved back we bought a new house in Mystic, since our tenant's lease wasn't up for another year and we could keep the house as a rental property.

We had renters come and go as they moved from one job to another. One family who stayed there asked my parents about the ghost. They were having problems with things being moved and the feeling of being watched. They asked my parents permission to do a native american ceremony to drive out the spirit. My parents, who had never seen anything there, gave their permission. We never heard more about it from them.

Years passed and my parents rented the house out to my best friend Jen's family. The house was full of kids and teenagers and animals. Jen and a few of her siblings heard footsteps when they were alone in the house. Small things were moved when no one was watching. They made jokes about the haunted house and eventually moved away to a new home.

At this point my parents had divorced and my father, having gotten the Ledyard house in the divorce settlement, moved back in. I had grown up and was sharing an apartment with a friend. My friend married and moved to Rhode Island. I decided to move back home with my dad until I saved up enough to move out of state.

With just us living in the house, I heard noises more often. Footsteps upstairs when I was alone in the downstairs bedroom. My father had things moved around. Alone upstairs I'd hear the sounds of two distinct voices arguing with each other. A man and a woman. Others heard it too.

"Who were you just talking to?" "Nobody. I was getting a glass of water." " You weren't just downstairs talking to someone?" "Not me. Must be the ghosts." "It sounded like people fighting."

I moved to Florida and dad sold the house and moved to Tennesee. I don't know if anyone else has heard the whispered fights or the heavy clomp of boots when no boots were around since we left that house. I do wonder about it from time to time.  What was there in that house? An echo of a past life lived? A spirit trapped?