Ottawa Spirits

My grandparents live in an old coal camp house in Ottawa, which is just a stones-throw from Blair Mountain. In fact, the railroad behind their house was used to transport miners up to the battlefield site way back when. The house has some history to it, all of it I’m not aware of but I did find out some things thanks to some experiences I had as a kid.

The earliest I can remember anything was from when I was about 4, maybe 5, years old. I can remember hearing footsteps and low talking. Then it evolved into things moving around while I was asleep, to my sheets being yanked off and having my name whispered in my ear randomly in the same room. It never happened anywhere else. I don’t remember any other experiences past when I was 11 or 12.

Years later, I asked my grandma about it. She told me a story about how my grandfather’s aunt owned the house and some men had boarded there for a while. All three men who had lived there died in the same room, the room I slept in as a kid. They weren’t murdered or died tragically that any of us know of, but they were just old men who got sick and their bodies gave in. She told me that she couldn’t think of anything that happened to her and neither can my grandpa. Maybe it was just my childhood imagination, but I still think it happened. I have had experiences in my adult life, like after my friend committed suicide and started visiting me in dreams and in apparitions (he also appeared to my brother-in-law one night, unlocking their bedroom door, peeking around and closing it to be locked again like it hadn’t been touched). My family has always been very spiritual and supposedly fine-tuned to things the naked-eye cannot see, and I also believe that. I have seen and heard too much to not believe in something after death.