The Hidden Stone Below the Floorboards

Witness: Angela B.
Location: Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Date of Encounter: Late 1990s

I’ve had many encounters in my life, but one place I lived as a teenager was different in that it actually scared me. My parents found a house to rent in a beautiful location right off the Appalachian Trail for an extremely good price. Half of the house was fairly new and the other half was very old — put together with wooden pegs instead of nails.

The first odd thing we noticed was that one area of the lawn which was enclosed by a stone wall was constantly sticky and covered in flies. Then we started to hear balls bouncing and what sounded like children running up and down the hallway. Every night the front door would open and close, followed by the door into the kitchen and around the corner to the side door going out. My dog refused to go into the “old” part of the house and would urinate if we forced her. Things continued to escalate to the point where canned goods would fly off of shelves. My brother’s closet door would slam open and shut rapidly, and we’d be woken up by faceless children. My father refused to believe anything was going on and always had some rational explanation. That is until he was asked by the landlord to replace the floor in the living room. When he opened the hatch to access the crawlspace a fireball of electricity shot out at him, which he ignored. But when we went down the ladder we found a small dirt room about four feet high. In it was a stone slab approximately six feet long with a groove carved around the edge and forming a sort of stone spout at one end. The next day we came home to find four of our birds with their necks snapped in their cage and a mirror flew off the wall at my brother. My parents packed what would fit in the car and we moved to a campground until we found another place to live. Whatever was in that house I don’t believe was a ghost, but something evil and dangerous.