Strange Events in Our Old House
Witness: Jennifer Steele
Location: Princeton, West Virginia
Date of Encounter: July 2000
We moved to a beautiful two-story older home that had been renovated in 1997. It was love at first sight the moment the realtor let us view the house. I was so excited about it, and couldn't wait to move into it. The home was built in 1905, but had been renovated and updated.
At first, really small incidents began to happen that didn't really alarm me or make me believe that anything was wrong, but as time went on, the things that happened started becoming more strange, and there were things I couldn't explain away. Early on, things would turn up missing, and later would be found in an unexpected place. I just thought I had forgotten where I put it, or perhaps my daughter was playing around with things. Then later on I would hear strange sounds when nobody was at home but me… yet it was an older home, and sometimes older homes do make little noises, so again, I wasn't really alarmed. Then things started happening that I have no rational explanation for. I guess the first of these incidents began in 1997 when I was pregnant with my son. It was late November and I was at home alone cleaning house. I was mopping the kitchen floor and when I bent over to wring out the mop, I felt a very frigid breeze that was so forceful it actually blew my hair. I thought the kitchen window must have been opened, but when I checked it, it was closed and locked. The windows were new, and there was no way any cold air came through a crack because there were none. Then I began seeing shadows and catching glimpses of something on my staircase. When I would turn my head to look, it would be gone. One day my grandfather clock started chiming even though it hadn't been wound in months. Also, as at chimed, the pendulum never moved at all.
Not long after this, I was at home alone over night and was very conscientious that I locked every window and door, because I was afraid of an intruder coming into my home. Yet, when I woke up the next morning, the back door was ajar with the deadbolt still in the locked position. I made absolutely sure I turned the doorknobs the night before to make sure they were secure, so this really spooked me a lot. A few months later, I went into the laundry room to wash clothes, and the faucet was turned on full blast, and I was the only one home at the time so nobody else could have done it. Pictures would be turned upside down for no reason and lights would turn on and off by themselves. I guess the most odd thing that happened was one night I was in the living room watching TV and my husband was in his den next to the living room on the computer. All of a sudden I heard a loud crash, and one of my porcelain dolls had fallen over in the foyer. I yelled upstairs to the kids that if my doll was broken, someone would be in trouble… I thought my son and daughter were upstairs fighting and they threw something down the steps that knocked my doll over. My husband then told me the kids were in the den with him and had been the whole time! I went to see what had caused the doll to tip over, and discovered that not one but three pictures that I had hanging on an upstairs wall had somehow managed to not only come off the wall by themselves, but had also managed to round a corner, and go down to the landing before falling through the spindles of the stairs and knocking the doll down! No windows were open, and all three pictures were very securely hung on the wall. Luckily, yet oddly, neither the pictures nor my doll was damaged or broken. We moved away from there in October 2002. I never felt as if whatever was there was malevolent, or wished to cause me harm. I never felt threatened, and was never really frightened. It was just strange, like something or someone was trying to reach out and get my attention or something. To date, I've never had anything strange or unexplained happen here at my new home, so I guess it didn't follow me!
