the haunting of our little white house

It was right after we moved in, that items started to disappear.

The lights would flicker, and we could smell odd scents in the middle of the day, from seemingly nowhere. Doors would close on their own. Weird things were happening. And at first, we ignored it. All of it. 

But let me rewind to the beginning.

Because it’s spooky season, I’m going to share this story. There are things out there that no one ever talks about. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Sometimes things can be explained away. Sometimes, they can’t. Draw your own conclusions, but this is our experience. I’ll try to keep it succinct. There’s a lot to capture here in five years’ time. So if you like a good story, settle in with a hot cup of whatever you like, and read on. I promise it’s worth a spooky fall read.

An aerial photo taken of our home in 1983

Hogwarts, a History: Our home was built in 1976. It’s older than me but not ancient, by any means. It’s a small home on a big lot, and we’ve added on as time has passed. The romantic in me assumed we were purchasing from the original owners, since the inside had never been touched beyond a small painting job and some carpet. The original linoleum discovered underneath the floors felt like little patterned jewels of buried treasure.

This house has passed through quite a few owners – when I looked at the property records, it was 6, including us. So it has a history. I might also mention for the sake of full disclosure, that where we live in Franklin, Tennessee is famous from a historical standpoint and the Civil War. The locals attribute lots of strange activity to the limestone running just beneath the town’s surface, claiming its ‘paranormal’ properties. Our own neighborhood is a part of an old farm, the original farmhouse {built circa 1860} still stands just a street down from us, with an old well. We were told that the houses in our neighborhood were built of reclaimed brick salvaged from the Great Chicago Fire. It’s all very charming and very… interesting.

before – still in the midst of landscaping outside…

Our house, as a whole, definitely had a ‘vibe’ to it from the beginning. It was nothing that we didn’t assume could use some love. I know. Cue the couple from Amityville fleeing the house weeks later with ooze running down the walls. Before we began the renovation, when we brought our family to the house, the dogs refused to go upstairs. We joked throughout the renovation process that we just may find a body in the wall or a clown in the crawlspace. I’d honestly settle for cash, but alas, no luck.

At night, once we’d begun our rehab, it gave off an energy like the outside of a hollow skull. We would stay late for renovations or to let the kids swim with friends in the backyard, and I didn’t like being left alone to walk through the dark house and lock up. I chalked it all up to my usual high strung, wild imagination. It’s what I do. I shook it off. 

I was comforted by this rule {that I totally made up in my head} In all the unsolved mysteries/dateline/haunting shows I’ve seen, there’s this: If the house hasn’t been touched since circa 1976-ish, the chance of a haunting probably triples. There has to be a study somewhere that says updated /cared for spaces are a lower risk. Therefore, if I bring it to life again, I’m basically cleansing the house, right? I’m a designer, so fresh fixtures and new drywall are my sage and holy water. Be gone 1970’s paneling and basic witches. We were determined to make this our home and the creepy would leave when we moved in. The vibes would pass. 

Little did we know, this onslaught of renovations were stirring something up.

When we did move in, it was like Christmas morning. We were able to renovate the main and upper levels of the house, saving the basement, first addition and outside of the house for later. And EVENTUALLY, our primary addition– still a work in progress. It felt like an eternity with the entire one year process just to sell our old home. Then, to get our kiddos settled took even longer. Months later, we were just grateful to have some normalcy in our lives.

They were so little!

So we ignored it at first, when things started to disappear.

Missing items just seemed like disorganized moving craziness. It sounds insane, but it was always something we were about to need. Something that we’d previously discussed, that had importance. A painted sign for a Christmas shoot. Solar glasses for the eclipse when I know exactly where I placed them, just a few days before. A cute clock for the kids room, that I was sure was in the basement, that we never saw again. 

It was so bad, we were starting to get into small squabbles as to where things were placed, and why they were missing. Only to have them reappear, with zero explanation, in a place we had just looked.

Were we losing our minds?

It was a cold, rainy night, when Jamin took our oldest to basketball practice. He was in the fifth grade at the time, our daughter was in third and Malone, first. I was helping Emerson rinse the shampoo out of her hair from her bath, when Malone called me urgently from the main level. Downstairs, I found him sitting alone on the sofa where he’d been reading.

Now he was staring at the basement door.

“What is is, buddy?” I asked him, his little knuckles white from gripping the cushions, his face pale. He had never been skittish before, but I just assumed it was adjusting to the new house. 

“I heard a voice,” he muttered, wide-eyed and stock still, staring at the closed door which separated the finished level from the basement/garage area.  

“Oh I’m sure it was just the wind or something,” I tried to laugh it off. No big deal. But I found my own eyes drifting to whatever he was staring at. 

“NO,” he was adamant, still glaring at the door. “It came from the basement.” He slowly raised his hand to point at the door and beyond. “It was a whisper.”

This was very unlike him. He now had my full attention. 

“Did it say anything?” I slowly sat down beside him, wondering what on earth he actually heard. 

“It said, Ben.” 

He was so certain, I believed him. Call it mom-stinct. The freaky part is, that Malone’s first name is Benjamin, though we never call him that. Did something say his name? Did he think something said his name? 

I lost my mind for a hot minute, grabbed a baseball bat and turned on the light downstairs to do a quick check. I chickened out about halfway down the stairs, since it was a basement filled with old creepy items and more importantly, giant spiders. It was a death maze of boxes, at best. I told Jamin to hurry up, because there was a definite DAYMON in the crawlspace, and it was after us. He was home shortly thereafter, and after casually looking around {because I pretty much demanded it} we both told Malone there was nothing to worry about. He must have heard the wind or something. Malone argued with us, so we assured him we believed him, but there had to be a perfectly rational explanation. 

I mentioned it again once the kids were in bed. Jamin casually responded with, “I don’t know what it was. Maybe it’s that person who died here.”

“Excuse me?”

Cue the blinking white guy gif. I thought he was legit messing with me.

“You know. The owner who passed away here?” 

“WHAT.”

There are many times in our marriage I’ll never forget.
This was a moment where I was wondering if we should in fact, stay married.

Apparently, Jamin had this conversation with someone he’d met in the yard one day, who told him a previous owner {as there have been many} passed away here. And Jamin thought that in the craziness of the purchase, move, renovation, and second move, we’d discussed this. No big deal, it happens. I get it. I’d rather pass on, at my own home, too. I’d never thought of it until now but it makes sense. 

I JUST THOUGHT THIS IS SOMETHING THAT MIGHT HAVE COME UP BEFORE NOW. I’m sure in most old houses, people have passed on, AS HUMANS DO. This home could have multiple ‘passing on’ events, for all we know. I would just like to know about such things before, oh, I don’t know… something BECKONS FOR MY SON FROM THE GREAT BEYOND.

Weeks later, I woke in the middle of the night in our bedroom, to a bright glow coming from the main level. I immediately woke Jamin because nope. If we’re going to be sucked into the portals of Hell, he could go first. #murderbuffer

That’s when we discovered that the pendant lights over the kitchen island had been turned on in the middle of the night. And by we, I mean I peeked around the corner while Jamin took care of it because I’m a total chicken. They work on a normal light switch – recently updated because renovation – and are so bright they illuminate the entire main level. There’s no way we would have forgotten and left them on. They weren’t on when we went to bed. And the idea of our kids doing it, was a no go. We would have heard them because their rooms are right beside ours. It was a new house to them, so going downstairs in the middle of the night alone is not something they would do.

The lights were just inexplicably on.

Great, I thought. It’s a Beetlejuice sitch. Some previous owner is still here because they haven’t crossed over, and they’re MAD THAT WE REDID THEIR HOUSE. 

On certain days, I could walk through a space on our stairway and smell the fresh scent of tobacco. Which made zero sense, and the entire HVAC had been ripped our and replaced along with everything else. Stale smoke is different than fresh smoke. I even wondered if someone was living underneath our house. Recently, there was a thing with car thieves in our neighborhood, and a manhunt. They found one perp in a crawlspace of a home, so I wasn’t that far off. We looked. And by we, I mean I made Jamin look as punishment for not telling me about the crawlspace daymon.

That event was accompanied by more flickers of light throughout the house. Paired of course, with unexplained sounds. The smell of something burning {which regularly sends me into a panic looking for a fire, then wondering if I have a tumor of some sort until someone else acknowledges the smell}. Small feet running upstairs, when no one else is home, {our oldest was quite traumatized by that one- with knocks on the wall behind his head}. Music that would play from our home speakers system for no apparent reason. The TV was turned on and blaring when we came back home {yes, we’re sure we turned it off}. Things falling off bookshelves repeatedly. 

You know. Totally casual.

I’ve even seen it a few times, whatever it is. A shadow… It’s one of those moments where you wonder, out of the corner of your eye. When your eyesight adjusts to the dark. When you think you’re going totally crazy. And these are just a few things that have happened. 

As far as the disappearances go, Jamin frustratingly thought I was the one absentmindedly misplacing things. Until one night, it happened to him with our Go Pro. It had been sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, and now it had totally vanished into thin air. We needed it for a filming deadline, and I’ve honestly never been happier about it , because the last non-believer was confronted with his denial and I was vindicated. 

After searching for a while, I finally told him with great cavalier whilst wearing my best “I told ya so” face, that I read about such things. And I may or may not have Googled it. For what it’s worth, Google said to ask for said missing item to be returned. Yes, I did shamelessly look up the possibility of missing things and what that could mean. On a supernatural level.

A level headed gal can only take so much blame. For the record, I also searched early onset dementia. I’m nothing, if not thorough. {And paranoid}.

A rando website told me that “poltergeists steal things” to stir up an “emotional reaction”, which in turn stirs up energy. Which they feed on. A solution for disappearing items, is that you have to stay calm, and ask nicely for said item to be returned.

Sure sure.

In that moment, I rolled my eyes, shut my laptop and walked away. Remember, I’m rational. I’d forgotten about it, until that night, when I jokingly announced the results of said Google search after helping him look for an hour. A momentary loss of insanity and actually doing what my Google search results said, made more sense than searching more. I was over it.

But I didn’t say I wasn’t openminded. 

At our wit’s end, we did jokingly ask. What could it hurt? 

I carefully cleared my throat and into the empty room I said, “Um, may we please have our Go Pro back?” I think I added a “thank you” in there. And also “Please don’t let me wake up to have you hovering over me, mmmmkkkaaaaay ttthhhaaannnkksssss.”

We laughed and went to bed. Good times. I actually spoke to an imaginary murder clown. We were both officially losing our minds. 

It was the next morning when we opened a small kitchen drawer we’d thoroughly searched multiple times the night before, that we found it. Impossible to miss, it was sitting right on top of everything else. In plain sight. 

At this point, I was looking for a glitch in the matrix. We didn’t feel threatened, we were just kind of questioning our sanity. Did that actually happen? Did I just misplace that item? Is there a hidden cam where Ashton is about to announce that we’ve been Punk’d? More googling of possible brain issues. Fun times. 

Fast forward to multiple months later, when it was time to start our basement renovation. We were thrilled to begin. If you’ve been reading here for a while, then you know that was quite the process for us due to local codes. There was a lot of personal things and junk in the basement and while we cleaned up the big stuff, we found it easier to leave all the little things until it was time. Some old tools here and there. A few personal effects.

A few of these items were photos. 

One of those photos sat in a broken frame, and it was of a soldier.

I pulled it from the shattered glass, feeling bad about throwing it away, sad that it was left behind. For some reason, I decided to flip it over.

There, scrawled on the back of the photo in someone’s handwriting.

“Benjamin.”

I had to sit down. 

The occasional event occurs, every now and again. Sometimes we still question if it’s the trick of the eye. An electrical flaw. A simple, absent-minded moment. The kids occasionally get spooked, and we remind them everything’s fine. One event or another may be easily explained away. But all of them together, again and again, are things that kind of make you wonder. {Can you blame us?} Let’s break out some sage and holy water and a priest and an exorcism because I’m no longer feeling quite so casual about things dropping through the ceiling, covered in pink slime, a-la Poltergiest. 

After a few more months, our house activity seemed to slow down a little. It’s only occasionally now that we experience something bizarre. Something else just happened last week, and it seems to go through seasons of activity. I guess we can chalk it up to one of the hazards of loving a previously owned house. We always say it certainly makes for a good Halloween story. I think whatever it is, doesn’t seem mind us that much. This house has been through a lot of owners, so there are a lot of possibilities. But we do know we stirred something up with our renovation. Some kind of energy. 

So that, my friends, is the tale of the haunting of our little white house. 
{Or a glitch in the matrix, time continuum, murder clown in the crawl space, alternate universe reality issue, my sanity… whatever you wish to call it.}

Hope you enjoyed our little story. Be sure to check out the other good stories in the comments below, and have a spooky day!