Ask Trish: What should I do about my haunted house?

I just linked to your blog from BlogHer and drifted to reading the series of posts about your haunted house. I am mesmerized. I rarely talk about my own experiences because…well, because I sound like a nut. I never believed in paranormal things so I get how weird I sound talking about it. I’m reaching out to you because we’re living in a haunted house that I actually love (other than the haunted part) and I have no idea what to do anymore. I guess it feels good to connect to someone who gets it.

My youngest daughter is absolutely terrified of this thing and it won’t leave her alone. She won’t sleep in her own bedroom at all anymore and I don’t know how to help her. All the family members have experienced this thing and at least 3 of us have described it. We’ve asked it to leave. My husband has demanded it leave us alone. We started talking seriously about getting sage to smudge the house and for the last month we’ve been smelling pot in our home and cannot identify where it’s coming from. I feel like we’re being taunted. I have searched kids’ rooms, talked with neighbors, and crawled around many nights on my hands and knees sniffing carpets and vents. The smell just wafts through the house and we can’t figure it out. I think it is the ‘thing’.

I was in love with the house when we purchased it. It was built in 1970. We hear that the previous owner’s wife would not stay at home alone and when she received an inheritance she got the heck out of Dodge. It was nice for us because she wanted out of here so bad that she told her husband to meet our offer, which was as much as we could offer. The first few nights in the home, my husband said he felt like something was watching us. Well, we had just moved from a much smaller home. We weren’t used to the space, I suggested.

The first night we slept in the house, we were awakened by a massive thud. We had 30+ trees in the yard and we were sure one had crashed into the house. We never found a reason for the noise. I was going to college and working full time, raising kids, and we had just purchased a home and moved so as you can imagine, I was a little crazy. One night, standing at the dining room table, I saw a small blond child run through the hallway and straight through a closed door. I dropped out of college that week. I decided I was losing my mind and something had to go before I was in the mental hospital.

Over the next year, we had lots of weirdness. TVs turned on and off by themselves, laundry in the dryer would come out chained in knots, strange items appeared out of nowhere in our home, things disappeared. We dismissed much of it because we do have several kids in the house, but we knew some things just couldn’t be explained. I returned home from a business conference once when my husband said “Let me tell you a story.” He had been doing laundry in the basement when he saw our middle child (blond hair, petite) run by him and disappear under a table. As he left the basement he yelled to our daughter “Come on. Let’s go upstairs.” No answer. He yelled louder. She finally answered him from upstairs. This continued over the next several days — a small blond child ‘playing’ in the basement when he was downstairs, always just out of the corner of his eye.

Many months later, my oldest daughter, a young teenager, said “Mom, do you believe in ghosts?” I asked why she would ask, trying to appear calm and unruffled. She said “There is a little blond boy who plays in our basement and he looks just like [the middle child, referenced above].” I told her we’ve seen him too, we don’t know what it is, and it doesn’t seem to mean any harm. She was fine with that. Then a week or so later she said a dark figure was chasing her up the stairs. We’ve seen that one too — my husband and I both describe it as a tall, dark shadow. It just seems to lurk around the house and has never interacted with anyone but my oldest daughter — but twice, I have awakened to see it standing by my bed and I lose my shit when it happens. I have crawled across my husband to escape it and I am not a little lady.

We have had contractors quit working on our home with no explanation. We had one contractor who refused to work alone in the house because when he used a nail gun, something ‘thumped’ back at him, though not always in equal thumps. During a period of extensive renovations, we lived in a rental house. While we were there we purchased new TVs — a big screen for the family room, and several small TVs for the bedrooms. They worked fine at the rental house, but as soon as we moved home they went berserk. They turn on and off all by themselves at all hours of the night. We have one bedroom on the main floor of the house that used to be inhabited by my next to youngest. When she was a toddler she would say she saw statues in her room at night. Now the youngest has that bedroom and she is terrified to sleep there. She says ghosts talk to her and they tell her if she doesn’t do what they say they will kill her.

My oldest daughter now has a bedroom where the old unfinished attic space was. When we were rebuilding, we raised the roof and created an additional bedroom so all the kids would have their own room. (Can you hear the angels singing?) She isn’t afraid, but hears and sees things in her room all the time. Her electronics turn on and off in the night, the doors open and close by themselves, odd smells waft through. We’re not surprised. We always had more ‘activity’ in the house after getting things in or out of the attic. We still do. We have a small attic space now, accessible from her room, and when we dig out holiday decorations, the activity increases.

We have tried claiming our space, praying, telling them to leave, to leave our kids alone, etc. It always helps, for a short time. If you have more to share about helping your child cope with ghosts, or making them go away, please let me know. I am desperate. I don’t want to leave because we truly have our blood, sweat, and tears in this house, but this place is making us crazy.

Readers: Check back tomorrow for my reply! This question was a post in itself and I have a lot to say about it.