You guys I was on another forem and this woman comes on and types this problem she has! It's really out there!! But interesting!!! Warning it is really long but totally worth it.
This is my story. I'm trying to find some help. I couldn't figure the best place to post so will just throw it out there. I was a lifelong student of metaphysics, with a strong, living faith. I believed that "evil" existed only in the hearts of men (people) and nothing evil or harmful could affect me because I was surrounded by light. Nine months ago I moved into this house. At 50, and after some very traumatic events, I was trying to start a new life. I needed PEACE, quiet, and an escape from the hardness of our modern "culture." This house is in a tiny New England village, a real Norman Rockwell painting - postage stamp sized village green with the white bandstand (yes, it is indeed covered in bunting in the summer), country store, library. The houses are really lovely genuine old Colonials. The inhabitants are taciturn, wealthy old New Englanders. The nearest town is 10 miles away. There's not even a gas pump or ATM. The village is sort of a living diorama of the historical society. A great place for me to regroup and work on my book - I thought. I had planned so carefully for two years - buying a good "New England" car - a '94 Jeep Cherokee Laredo in perfect shape. Paid cash so I wouldn't have a note and risk losing the car, as I knew $$$ would be very tight. I stocked up on food, canned goods, non-perishables, even household things - evrything from TP to dish soap - knowing that I could have periods of being snowed in.
I got a "deal" on the house - I'm kind of poor right now, but have a lot of skills - gardening, paint/paper, etc.The house was in a terrible state, due to reasons explained below, so I made a deal with the owner/landlord to help him clean it up and fix it up for a lower rent and no deposit - allowing my daughter and me to live in a house and area that I wouldn't otherwise be able to afford.
The house, built in 1738, is a large, imposing Colonial. To me it looks like a funeral home. It has been in the same family for 150 years, but they were real, plain old New England farmers. Inside there are many beautiful architechtural details - mantles, elaborate moldings, etc., but you could tell that they were very plain people. The last of the residents were two sisters who were born in the house and never married. (Who could make this stuff up, huh?). One of them did leave and go to Boston and had some sort of carreer, but the other, who never left the house, developed dementia at a young age (about in her 40's), so her sister came home to care for her, but, after being home for some time, she died. The sister who never left was left here alone, wandering around the house with dementia, for the next 50 years. Being old New Englanders, they never threw anything away so their belongings just piled up throughout the three stories and 15 rooms. The place got filthy and overrun with rats.As she got too old for the stairs she just left everything upstairs and lived on the main floor.
The only living responsible relative is her nephew, my landlord, who lives in Texas. I guess the authorities got involved and made him put her in a home, where she now is, alive but not communicative.
Enter>>>> ME. Bill, my landlord, cleared all the stuff from the ground floor, threw away all the food (some had been in the pantry for DECADES!), put a furnace in, windows, new siding, etc, so it looks good on the outside, because the town was giving him hell. The house had not been cleaned in, oh, about FIFTY YEARS - so was...well...UGH!!!! There were closets and nooks and crannies that had been closed for decades.It was very creepy. When I'd open some ghastly closet or something to start cleaning, I felt as if I were on "Fear Factor"! I would find their things just where the last person had put them down - newspapers from 1903 lining shelves, recipes cut out of magazines from the 1930's, a voter instruction card from 1892.... I spent months scrubbing, sanding, painting, peeling off hanging wallpaper, patching plaster, etc.. Just to make it livable for us. Bill put a hatch at the top of the stairs so they are locked off, but when he comes up he lets me look around. There's still mattresses up there stuffed with hay! Everything is just in heaps and piles, things still in place where the last person put them down. All overrun with rodents,droppings, mold, dust, cobwebs - it's like a movie set.
I moved in with great excitement - I was starting my new life!The world was my oyster! I would get to work on my book; go back to school; make new friends, join clubs, go to the theatre...
One evening, after I had the living room all done and looking so nice, my daughter and I were sitting on the couch having dinner on the coffee table. The windows were wide open to the late summer breezes, and I was feeling a glow of contentment enjoying the results of all my labor. To my right was the center hall, to my left a window with a window seat. As we were eating a man walked right past the window. I was a bit startled, as he was strangely dressed,but my first thought was that it was a neighbor or other villager who didn't know we'd moved in and was investigating why there were lights on in the house. From the direction he was walking would lead to the back door, which is the main entrance that is used. So I was waiting for the next logical occurance - to hear a knock on the back door. None came. I was kind of looking back and forth from right to left - window to hall, hall back to window - trying to see if it could have been some type of reflection from the hall, I don't know, trying to make sense of something illogical...when...my daughter then says to me: "Oh, did you just see the guy who walks past the windows"!!!!!!!! I almost fell off the couch! She said he walked by her bedroom windows too. If I was sitting in bed, facing the window, I would also see "him." Always going the same direction- clockwise around the house. He looked to me to be wearing a white shirt with "puffy" sleeves, and just walking very purposefully around the house. One night we had a friend over. I didn't discuss the walker because I didn't want to scare any guests or have anyone think I was "off." Our friend was sitting facing one of the windows. As we were talking and laughing, at one point I saw her knit her brows and frown, look around, and she sort of mumbled something to herself. Later on I asked her if my daughetr had told her about our mystery walker. She exclaimed: "OH! THAT'S who that was walking past the window! The guy who looks like the guy on the Sam Adams beer bottles." Now I was freaked out because that IS what he looks like. Later on that summer there were some plays on the town green put on by the historical society. Their costumes looked like the garb on our walker. Out in the back field is a stone that is carved: "The first home of XXXXX's first minister, the Reverend Aaron Whitney. 1738 - 1779" I did some research at the historical society and learned that the Rev. Whitney was a Tory who was the first minister here, of the Unitarian Church. This was his house and land. He preached here for 40 years, then the patriots barred him from his church up on the Common. he continued to preach in the living room of the house. THEN the Patriots seized this house and lands from him! I don't know where he went, but he is buried in the cemetary up on the common.When my daughter was out and I was alone in the house one day, I just said out loud: "I don't know if you are Aaron Whitney, but, whoever you are you are scaring us. I didn't harm you, and my daughter and I need a home and I'm trying to clean this mess up. So, please do not show yourself to us anymore. "That seems to have worked as we haven't seen him since then.
At the same time we had a terrible time with spiders. I mean HUGE hairy awful spiders. They were very aggressive, where most spiders are shy of people and scurry away, these suckers face you and rear up on their hind legs with their front legs up in the air, and they will come toward you. UGH! I froze one and showed it to the exterminator and he said he'd never seen anything like it. Great.
THEN - the MAGGOTS. Had I had any money to leave - I would have FLED.
Okay - the so-called kitchen area is just a huge open space, like a barn or garage. High ceilings, some beams, and the original wood floors - except they are gross and disgusting because the old lady didn't clean for 50 years. I used a wire brush, boiling water, Krud kutter and bleach and went over the floors a square foot at a time. Took me weeks. They didn't look any better but I knew that they were as clean as they could get and we wouldn't catch the plague or something. One morning my daughter was getting ready for school so we are back and forth through the kitchen area - get cereal, go to the bathroom which is through the kitchen, turn coffee on, let the dog out, feed the cats, yada yada yada.... no problem... next time I went into the kitchen, about 5 minutes later, I notice a big white-ish circle over by the cellar door. About a foot across. I walk over to see what the hell it could be and it was a huge perfect circle, mound of hundreds of squirming MAGGOTS! Well! There was MUCH SCREAMING from ME! There were many maggots who had squirmed away and were working their way across the kitchen floor. I swept them up in a dust pan and flushed them. All day I kept finding them about the kitchen. Over the next two weeks the circle of maggots kept forming in the same spot, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, and I was eternally picking up maggots from the floor and sqishing them in paper towel. I tried pouring bleach on them but nothing seems to kill them except squishing them. On one expedition I counted up to 200 that I picked up before I gave up counting. As I was hypervigilant at this point I tried everything to figure this out, getting up through the night and checking, putting a bright light on the area, spraying with all kinds of different things - cleaners, bleach, bug killers,etc... No - you could go into the kitchen and not have ONE maggot ANYWHERE, leave for 3 ,4,5 minutes, go back - and there they would be - HUNDREDS of them in the circle in the same spot. These were also seen by a visitor. I poured tablesalt on them, trying to kill the bastards. It didn't kill them, but once I swept them up and flushed that lot, they didn't come back.
The cellar is the original from the 1700's - big, huge old stones. However, intead of a square room that matches the footprint of the house, the center is blocked off solid with the big stones. I'd say the size of an average room, and this part is directly under the kitchen. The original well is under there. If you go over to that side of the cellar, some people become disoriented - you sway. It feels like the floor is tilting. I don't go there.
Black "things" follow me around - about the size of a cat, looks like a ball of very black soot/smoke. Guests have also seen them following me. I do have cats but I can see the cats curled up sleeping on a piece of furniture right in front of me in the daylight at the same time the (oops) "things" are following me.
Then - the cars..... My PERFECT, beautiful Jeep Cherokee - my FREEDOM, my connection to the outside world - wouldn't start one day in November. I had it towed to a garage in the nearest town. They said it need a computer. Fine. They ended up having it for FOUR MONTHS, putting in FOUR different computers, then assorted other parts - couldn't get it to keep running. I couldn't get into town during this brutal winter - couldn't get food, bank, doctor, pharmacy.... During this time, my beautiful daughter just flipped out one night and was hospitalized for two months, so I was alone here. Living on my stored emergency supplies of pasta and canned fruit. Finally they said the car was fixed and they had driven it all over, etc. I got it home and it wouldn't run. I took it to another place. They fixed it some more - I got it home - it wouldn't run. They fixed something else - I got it home and the engine blew. A friend loaned me a car that they don't need. Nice, '94, rebuilt engine, properly maintained. they have had it since it was new, use it all the time - no problems. The first day I had it here - I go out to GO SOMEWHERE and it's DEAD! AAA comes out, gets it started. I go into town and buy a new battery at Walmart - just to be on the safe side. I get it home - next day - DEAD. AAA comes out again, starts it, I get up the road - it dies on the side of the road. I call them again. They can't figure out what is wrong so I coast it down the hill back to the house. What I was TRYING to do was drive around for the day AND TRY TO FIND ANOTHER HOUSE TO MOVE TO. Just like my Jeep - no one can find anything wrong. Before I moved in ,there was a tenant here for one year - the only other "outsider" to live in the house. She fled for some reason, (I'm trying to reach her to talk to her), BUT - her car also died here. She had to have it towed out when she moved. My landlord has an old pick up here that would be handy to have around. He's tried everything (he's an engineer for Lockheed so pretty good with things..) but can't keep it running. ALL the cars will start and run a bit then die. Oh - there's one more. My husband who I'm separated from, but on good terms, comes up now and then. He just bought a new used car - beautiful car in perfect shape. A guy he works with, who is one of those genius mechanic types, found the car for him and went through it - perfect. So, my husband comes up to get me out of here because I'm so stranded and cut off, and he's really the only person I have who can get me out of here. After his first trip up, about a month ago, his car died on the side of the road on the way home. So, no one could figure out the problem, but the result is that he can't get up here and get me out.
That's just a plain recitation of the facts. My health is going down the tubes and I'm becoming aphasiac. I am in terrible physical pain - I hurt everywhere - like the muscle and joint aches you get with the flu. I am also very scared and becoming hopeless.I just want to get out of here, find another house, and MOVE.
OMG. Long story but wow....you gotta read it
OMG. Long story but wow....you gotta read it
**Nothing is set in stone**
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waterglyph
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willow_witch
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You know what I'd do!! I'D TAKE IT BY FORCE!! I'D FIGHT AND BANNISH AND ATTACK!!!!! lol. Victory would be mine!! no stupid ghost man or maggots would scare me.. ok maybe it would at first but then I'd get busy!! The house would be begging me to let IT go. mwwaaaaaaaahaaaaa. lol Ok I am crazy I know. but still I'd teach that house a thing or 2. I mean I lived in a crapped up house but there wernt stupid crap like maggots.. more like dark shadowy figures that push me down the stairs. lol
**Nothing is set in stone**