I never believed other people’s ghost stories, until I experienced my own in 1986. I am a 31-year-old man who usually thinks rationally, but I still get the chills when I think of what happened to me and my two friends, Alan and James, that cold winter night.

My friend James invited Alan and me over one night to spend the night with him and his mother. They lived in a large white duplex on the corner of Lee Avenue and Chestnut Street, across the street from Oddfellows Cemetery. Ironically, my great grandfather is buried in that cemetery. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a duplex is a house split down the middle and rented out to separate renters. James and his mother lived in the right half of the duplex and his room was in the attic.

Anyway, since James’s mom was working the midnight shift, it was just the three of us in the house alone. We were up in James’s room playing Nintendo late that night when, all of the sudden, we heard children running and laughing on what sounded like the first flight of stairs, leading to the second floor of the house. Plain as day, we all heard it, and immediately thought the renter next door had company. The more we listened the more it dawned on us that it was three in the morning, and no small kids would be up at that time of night, especially kids that young.

So what did we do? We walked down the two flights of stairs and out into the front yard to see if the old man was home. James thought his neighbor had gone to visit family that week. To our surprise, there was not one single light on in that side of the house. So, we reluctantly walked back into the house and up to his room and commenced playing Nintendo, again. Not two minutes later, it starts up again, but closer this time. Like it was right outside the attic door on the second floor of the house. What we saw still brings tears to my eyes today.

The staircase from the second floor to James’s room was dark and the light from the hallway would shine under the door at the bottom of the staircase. We saw shadows moving underneath the door of the attic. Really scared of what we were seeing, we decided after about five minutes of debating to charge the attic door, thinking it was someone trying to scare us.

As we started down the old, rickety attic stairs you could hear the sound of what we believed to be children running from us towards the stairs to the first floor. The house had all hardwood floors, so the sound is very distinct. We got to the door, slung it open and followed the noise to the first floor. When we got to the first floor, it stopped. We then heard an awful scream, like a woman in pain.

Well, that is all it took. We were petrified. After that, it is all kind of blurry. I do remember getting dressed and leaving for home that night at three in the morning, and never going back. My friend James said he never heard anything else that night, but did say other things happened to him at other times. Needless to say, he and his mom moved a month later.

The thing that really solidifies my story is, about a year later, I was introduced to “Coffin Hollow” and “The Tell-Tale Lilac Bush” books in high school. I read a story, if memory serves me correctly, called “The Haunted House.” This story is about a white mansion on the hill across from a cemetery in Clarksburg, where a woman with two small kids lived. One night, she takes in a weary traveler. The next morning, the traveler finds the two kids murdered by their mother.

To this day when I drive by that house I get cold chills, and have never, ever noticed anyone living there since. So don’t always think if your reading a ghost story, that it is nonsense, it just might have some fact to it.

I’ve been best friends with this guy since the fifth grade. His parents own a house in a sub-division just outside of Winfield, but live in Point Pleasant. Anyway, we get together with a group of friends every so often at the house just to get away from parents, spouses, whoever, and just have fun. Kind of like a guys night out, but we stay in and watch movies, link some x-boxes together and kill each other in video games, or whatever. We’ve been doing this for almost twenty years, off and on.

On Thursday, Oct 23rd of 2003, a friend of ours was in from New Orleans and we were at the house playing Halo. There were four of us in the house. Two were down the hall in the den and I and another guy was in the living room. All the lights in the house were off except the light in the den and the light in the kitchen, which partially illuminated the living room. We had been playing for a couple of hours, when I started seeing movement out of the corner of my eye. It kind of looked like someone in gray clothing was walking by the doorway to the living-room, heading for the kitchen. I thought one of the guys down the hall was going to get some pizza but no one ever arrived in the kitchen.

It kept happening and every time I turned to look, there was nothing there. I kept taking my glasses off and rubbing my eyes, and cleaning my glasses, even though what I was seeing wasn’t through the lenses, since it was always out of the corner of my eye. It started getting mad because it kept distracting me from the game, but I never said anything.

A little while later, we took a break and the guy whose parents own the house came down the hall with a confused look on his face and said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I keep seeing things move out of the corner of my eye.” He then proceeded to tell us that it was always in that hallway, and it looked like someone, a BIG someone, in a grey sweatshirt walking around. And that he had been seeing it all day, even before anyone else was there. At first he thought it was our friend from New Orleans, who is over six and a half feet tall and weighs over three hundred pounds, but he didn’t show up until after my friend started seeing this thing in the house. Since I didn’t want to taint his description, I asked him to describe it before I said anything about seeing the same thing. He described the exact same thing I had been seeing, in the same places, and even in some of the same times.

The best way to describe what I saw is like this. You know when you squint real hard, so your eyes are barely open, how everything has that blurred, hazy look to it? Imagine seeing someone like that, dressed all in gray, and walking past a darkened doorway, but your eyes are wide open. It was really freaky, especially with my friend seeing the same thing, but it wasn’t really frightening. I had always wondered how I would react if I was ever faced with something possibly paranormal. Would I freeze, run in fear, or what? I guess what I would do is sit there and joke about it being a ghost for a few minutes and go back to playing Halo, because that’s what we did. But like I said, we’ve been meeting at the house for about twenty years and this is first time anyone has seen anything out of the ordinary there. And we haven’t seen anything of it again since we talked about it that night. Also, the other two guys in the house, one of which was sitting between me and the doorway when I kept seeing it, didn’t see anything at all.

I also have an update for this story. I work at an old house museum, which is also supposed to be haunted… but that’s another story, and was talking to the son of one of our volunteers a couple of weekends ago and the conversation came around to ghosts. His father used to have my position at the museum before moving on to bigger and better things, so he knew about the ghost stories from the museum. I made the comment that I had been working at the museum for over a year I hadn’t heard or seen anything supernatural or really unexplainable. So I told about the one story I had experienced… the HALO story. Well, unbeknown to me, he was a member of M.A.J.D.A. and had a little experience with investigations. So when I was describing to him what I saw, using the “squinty eyed” analogy, he interrupted me and asked, “Did it kinda look like a big mass of smoke, like someone had a cigarette and was moving it around?” I was stunned. He just described perfectly what I had seen. He said, “Yeah, that’s ectoplasm.” I had to go give a tour to a group of visitors, so we didn’t get to discuss it any further then that. But it did lend some credence to the experience.

In the summer of 2002, I was in the bathroom with the dog, brushing my teeth when I saw something run past the door. This black shadow looked like a person dressed in black with a black mask on. It ran past the door, but it was hard to tell because it went by so fast. At first, I thought it was my mom going by playing a joke on me, but when I went upstairs, she was sleeping. Not to mention, I would have heard her go upstairs because the bathroom is right under the stairs. Of course, she didn’t believe me, but the thing that makes me believe it was a ghost is that the hair on my dog’s back bristled as if he had sensed something a couple of seconds before this all happened.

This was my childhood home, I was raised here since I was a small child although I have not lived in the house for the past 5 years, I’m married now and live In Virginia Beach. Every morning at 5 am on the dot, You can HEAR my great-great grandmother starting a fire in the wood stove and putting the kettle on for coffee. I and almost all of my family members and house guests have seen apparitions of a little girl, a soldier, great-great-grandmother, 3 men my grandfather used to call “The Roache Brothers” whose graves are down in the woods about 2 acres down from the house. We have also seen a woman walking in the orchard in early morning wearing Victorian period clothing typical of a “classy” lady of the times. There are several native American spirits on the property, in the woods, and near the springs.

Some of the ghosts like to play tricks, manifest themselves, or even move objects. There are (estimated by myself) to be 50+ spirits, ghosts, and shadow ghosts at the property, and you might consider a few of them to be “poltergeists”.

The little girl, for example, likes to take things and hide them, just to watch you go mad looking for it, then puts it back in the place you first had it, often times you can feel or see her shortly after this happens. The soldier that is often seen in the upstairs corridor often shows himself (for some reason only from the waist up) and stares with a menacing grin… this particular spirit always scared me growing up, I had to walk down that corridor to get to my bedroom every night. Among other happenings are basic “haunts”, doors opening (yes you can actually SEE the door knobs turning!), cabinets and drawers in the kitchen are found all open yet no one was in the kitchen. We would close them, leave the room and comeback a few hours later and they would all be open. The pets of the house all seem bothered by the dining room, basement, upstairs corridor, the master bedroom upstairs, and the kitchen. The dogs totally refused to go upstairs under ANY circumstances, the cats hissed at things, even the deer outside that would normally be tempted to eat the fruit in the orchard were leery of the trees.

My grandfather passed away in June of 2003. Since his death, my aunts have had control over his estate. Recently the Will came out of probate and we were allowed to go pick one item from the house to take to remind us of grandpa. I asked for his wedding ring and of course, was refused it, as a result, I think my grandfather is there too now because my aunt kept tripping over some “unseen” item after telling me I could not have the ring. I do not have anything of my grandfather’s now, only a few photographs and memories, I was denied any item because of my “outlandish request” for the wedding ring which I felt I should have because I was his favorite granddaughter. I felt a warm presence at the house undoubtedly it’s my recently passed grandfather.

Anyone wishing to visit the Manor, There is presently no one living in the house, And I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t be able to walk around the outside of it and in the woods. If there happens to be a family member there, just tell them what was posted and they might allow you to view the place. It is located on Halls Ridge Road, right before Johnson’s Chapel Church. You will see the Manor from the road.

Back in the 50s, my parents moved from Harts to 14 Mountain on Rt. 10. We moved in a house that was set right beside the old Curve Inn Tavern.

We hadn’t lived there very long until we started hearing noises on the stairs. It sounded like someone walking up and down the stairs. Mother was getting really aggravated and scared. She told my dad that every morning about the same time she could hear this.

One morning dad’s ride to the mines didn’t show up. He had to stay home that day. Mom was washing clothes in the kitchen and my brother and I were watching television. She had dad in the kitchen telling him that she was glad he was there that she wanted him to hear the sounds that she heard every morning at the same time. He said ok. He got him a cup of coffee and a cigarette and went in to the living room to wait on the noise. Sure enough it started. The footsteps started at the top and went to the bottom step. It turned and went back up. She said, now do you believe me? I am not crazy. The boys hear it every morning like clockwork. We agreed.

Mom went on back to the kitchen to finish her wash. Dad sat there looking over the steps. Smoked another cigarette and sent me to the back room to get him a claw hammer. He started to take down the wall by the stairs. Sure enough he shined his flashlight back inside the hole and told me to go get my mother. He took her up to the stairs and showed her what he had discovered. She went wild. She said she wouldn’t spend another night in that house and for him to find another place to live that day.

They took what they had found and burned it in the fire barrel. We never spent another night in the house. Mom stayed with our grandmother until dad found us a place to live back at Harts. What they found was a mummified sheet, covered with dried blood. It was tied at the head and the feet with rope. The body had been moved sometime after it had been put in the sheet. Dad never said a word about it. There is a culvert on the left side of the curve, it goes underneath the road. Years later a man’s body was found in that culvert. Some of the older residents probably remember it being found.

We moved out of that house, and it burned down back in the 80’s. No one that has ever lived there after us mentioned hearing anything strange.

It was Halloween night and Jonathan, his brother and I decided to go up to Witchy Hollow to see if we could see the ghost.

We went to the end of the road and turned around and on the way back out we found a place to park. After we parked we turned off all the lights. We sat there a few minutes and Jonathan told us that there were headlights coming from behind us. We never heard the car or heard it throw any gravel since we were on a gravel road. The car stopped a little in front of us. The interior lights were on and there was only a shadow for a driver. The car pulled out and you still didn’t hear the car run. It went over a hill and lit up all the trees and then it got dark and then we saw the headlights coming toward us again. By this time we had got ready to leave and the car stopped beside us again.

When we were leaving we looked to see if there was a place to turn a car around and the nearest place was a half mile away, plus the road was very narrow.

If what we saw that night wasn’t a ghost there are a few unanswered questions like why didn’t we hear the car run, why didn’t we hear it throw gravel when the car was moving, and why was there nothing inside the car but a shadow?