Woman's Mocking Laugh

Witness: Bridget Brown
Location: York, Pennsylvania
Date of Encounter: 1970s

I will never forget my experience, it has affected the way I view spirits permanently. A lot of my friends can tell ghost stories about seeing their dead grandmother, hearing footsteps, or poltergeist antics, but I know that what I encountered was pure evil.

I can still remember to this day the horror I felt when I encountered this evil specter. It was in the 70s, I was about 10 years old. We had recently moved to a nice suburban split-level home. It was early evening, and while the rest of my family watched TV in the lower level family room, I worked on a homework assignment in the living room. I was cutting pictures out of a magazine for some type of collage. I had to go to the bathroom, and with scissors still in hand I started to climb the steps up the dark hallway to the second level. When I reached my father's den, I fumbled for the light switch being new in the house I was unfamiliar with the location of it. But, not fearing the dark, just innocently thinking about my homework, I walked through the dark den to the bathroom door and opened it.

What I faced made my blood curdle. Right in front of my face, but without being able to see a thing, a woman let out a hideous low evil laugh, mocking and insidious. Almost like the witch on the Wizard of Oz, but lower and even more sinister. I froze for what seemed like an eternity, my face pale, my body unable to move. Finally, I ran down to the family room where my family was gathered and when my brother saw my ashen face and tears he asked what was wrong. I said I could not tell them because it was too scary. He scoffed, but after a while I told my father what I had heard. He insisted it was probably just a squeaking door, but I pleaded with him to check the entire house before I would have to go back up to my bedroom on the third floor. He checked everywhere, but no evidence of any strange sounds was found.

I never went into that bathroom at night again, not even when I was fully grown and in my twenties, when my parents eventually moved. I would run up the stairs past that landing every time, and would always get a chill up my spine. Nothing else ever happened in the house, but I can still hear that distinct laugh to this day, I know what I heard and will never forget.