The Ghost of Mr. Elwin

Witness: Paula
Location: Elkland, Missouri
Date of Encounter: Late 1970s

I was approximately 3-4 years old when my family and I moved into this beautiful rock house outside of Elkland, Missouri. The house was old, but very well maintained. It had wood floors throughout. The laundry room was in the basement, my sister and I had a bunk bed on the main floor, and my step-sister had her own room upstairs. Many strange things occurred on a regular basis. First of all, late at night, when everyone was in bed, you would hear heavy footsteps walking up and down the hallway. My sister and I would wake up crying because our "ghost" was shaking our bunk bed. My mother would yell from her bedroom, "Mr. Elwin, leave the girls alone!" The bed would immediately stop moving.

Other times, when my mother was in the bathtub she would suddenly feel someone watching her. She would tell the ghost to get out and the feeling would disappear. Most often, our ghost, who we believed to be our landlady's deceased husband and therefore was named "Mr. Elwin," was more ornery than scary or dangerous. He would pull the phone off the hook, or twist the knob on the washing machine several times. But there were two particular circumstances that clearly made him very angry.

My stepsister was 16 at the time so she had her own room upstairs, away from the rest of the family. Apparently, Mr. Elwin didn't want her sleeping in what was his daughter's bedroom. He would often come into her room at night and yank the covers off of her and shake the bed to scare her off. The other circumstance that seemed to anger our ghost involved a small closet underneath the stairway. This door had been locked when we moved in and we weren't provided a key to access it. However, my parents and a number of visiting relatives had occasionally attempted to force the door open. Every time anyone messed around with that closet door a horrible, undeniable odor filled the house. It was such a bad odor that we would have to air the place out. Eventually, someone did get the door open and inside was a dark stain on the floor. Nothing else. Many relatives refused to come back to our house because our ghost would taunt them so much while they were there!