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[Name Withheld Upon Request], Newark, Illinois, 1989
When I was 11, we lived in an old farmhouse just south of Newark, Illinois.
The house was very old and it was empty for a very long time before we moved
in. The encounters started when it was being remodeled. Some of the
occurrences were quite random and others were a regular occurrence.
We had an old clock radio that we would listen to while we worked. One night
the radio cut out and there was a whistling sound that seemed to come from
all around at us at once. It wasn't a power outage because all the other
lights remained on and the clock which had been blinking 12:00 showed a
steady 3:17. This all lasted for about 30 seconds.
We had a dog that we kept on the property that at any time we brought him in
the house he would immediately run upstairs and bark down the hallway
nonstop. There was a room at the end of the hall and we figured he was
seeing his reflection in the bedroom window so we kept the door shut but he
still carried on. We had to resort to keeping the door at the bottom of the
stairs closed.
I also regularly encountered a teenage boy. I don't really know how to
explain it. It was like I was always catching a glimpse of him out of the
corner of my eye and he was always stepping around the corner and out of my
site. But what I saw was consistent. He looked like he stepped out of the
70's. He was wearing a green football jersey -- the cottons ones with the
stretchy stripes on the sleeve which where yellow/white/yellow. The last
number on the jersey was either a 3, 8, or maybe a 9. He was also wearing
blue jeans with those old blue Nike's (like the ones Forrest Gump gets in
the movie).
There's another one that happened all the time. We had a window air
conditioning unit in the living room and the shade did not come all the way
down so there would be about a 6-inch bar of sunlight that would shine
through. This bar would disappear and reappear from one end to the other as
if someone was walking in front of the window. It would happen several times
in row and then quit. It wasn't someone outside. We would all be in the
house. The house was also out in the boonies, our nearest neighbor was a
mile away. It wasn't the dogs either as neither one was tall enough to block
the window.
There were other random happenings: cupboards opening, doors shutting, and
strange distant sounds. We only lived there about 5 months or so. My mom
still swears there was nothing wrong with the house. It wasn't until I was
grown and out on my own that my dad told me that he saw some of the things
like the disappearing sun light. He also admitted that the clock radio thing
really creaped him out but he acted nonchalant when it happened because he
didn't want me to freak out. He also told me that on several occasions when
he was home alone he would have this overwhelming feeling of dread that
would drive him out of the house.
