I'd like to start out this week's Hometown Haunt with a moment of silence due to all the unrest in America right now. As I shared on my Facebook page yesterday, hatred is a virus too. For unity we must wipe clean the hatred in our hearts and work toward a real change of understanding, love, and listening. May we each understand this, find it, and cherish it. <3

This week's Hometown Haunt comes from Unknown. This story gave me chills and though I emailed for a name or pen name, I did not receive one. Thank you Unknown for the chills. This is a good one! 
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The house was built in the late 1800’s. If you went into the basement, you would see the beams that the house rested on were tree trunks with shreds of bark remaining. Dark, foreboding, it hunched on the hill like a black widow, waiting for its next victims….
We moved into that house when I was 14 years old. We had no place to go; our house had just been destroyed in a house fire. There was very little that could be salvaged; a few clothes and some furniture. Everything reeked of smoke and burned insulation. My older brother was in the hospital for smoke inhalation and pneumonia, as he had been sleeping upstairs where the fire broke out in the walls. We had no choice… it was here or our car…
From the first, the house gave us an uneasy feeling, as if we weren’t welcome; in fact, barely tolerated. There were times you would SWEAR someone spoke, but in whispers that you couldn’t make out, or your name would be called, and the only person at home was you. Knocks in the walls and on the doors… nobody else is there.  Footsteps, as if someone in boots was walking up and back, in the carpeted hallway; no one visible, that is.
Music playing in parts of the house that had no electricity; it was a strange house, with two upstairs that didn’t connect. One to be used by the family, the other (apparently intended for the servants). There was never any electricity in the 2nd upstairs, and yet music would play and at night, if you were outside, you could see lights on in the far northeast room…. No power, remember?
Palm prints in the dust of the landing on the 1st upstairs. So what, you ask? Well… they were placed as if the person that had their hands there was hanging from the landing suspended over the stair well… about 15 feet in the air… the creepiest part? They were clear as day, in an area of the house that had been closed up for over 15 years. My father had moved into town about a year prior and hadn’t been back since he moved. By this point both areas were being used for storage; no one had been up there in years.
I have so many tales I could tell. But the one you need to hear, that will stay with you always, is…. If you saw the ghost, then something catastrophic was going to happen. If you saw the ghost, then a terrible tragedy would occur… a fire, a bad accident, death. If you saw the ghost…


**GASPS*** Chills!! Loved this weeks Hometown Haunt. Thanks again Unknown. Love the creepy good feels. 

If you’d like to submit your Hometown Haunts email me at brandy@brandynacole.com. 

Hometown Haunt!
I’m a week late on the hometown haunt, but I hadn’t expected to be in and out of the hospital/doctor offices with my husband. For that, my apologies. Hopefully, this spine-chilling haunt will make up for it all. I know I'm ready for a good story. How about you?

This weeks Hometown Haunt comes from a nightshift RA who swears she’s not crazy.

Story 2: Do you have a sixth sense?

“Hello from Texas. My story starts with a few drinks followed by bad decisions (don’t they all). I was out with friends at one of the many lively bars in New Orleans when one of my friends began insisting we take one of the midnight cemetery tours. I am not one for being spooked but seeing as how I had liquid courage and was heading back to the safety of my home the next day, I threw caution to the wind and agreed.
The tour was as you would expect. Creepy, with a tour guide who made you believe what he spoke. I took some pictures, had some laughs, got a few chills, but returned home safe and sound the next day. My first night back at work things were going along as usual, that is until the alarms began alerting us of a patient in distress. Let me add, I’m an RA at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Houston. Covid, you can kiss my ass.

The patient, who had been in an accident earlier that evening, ultimately succumbed to her injuries. A little while after doctors declared her passing, I was clearing out her room and felt someone watching me. I turned around, looking to the nurse’s station but no one was there. I shrugged it off, claiming my emotions were high due to the circumstances. It was then, when I turned back around, that I noticed the shadow in the corner of the room. The silhouette of the girl was standing there looking at me. Every inch of my body wanted to run or scream or most likely both, but I didn’t. I just stood there, frozen. She vanished within seconds and I couldn’t be sure if what I had seen was real or was made by my raw emotions. Half an hour later, her mother comes by to collect her belongs and again I get a chill. I look to the corner and there is the silhouette again. I also notice a glint on the floor. Turns out, it was the girl’s necklace that her grandmother had given her. A family heirloom that had carelessly fell from her pile of belongings. The minute I gave it to her mother, warmth filled my body again.

I’ve never experienced anything like that again, and I’ve clocked a lot of hours since then. One of the friend’s I had went to New Orleans with says she believes that it’s because my spirit was opened to possibilities due to our tour the night before returning home. Well, she said it with fancier terms, but you get the point. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I think of that moment often.

It’s taught me to stay open to possibilities because we are all grasping at life, whose to say what lies beyond in death.
Stephanie”
 
First of all, thank you Stephanie and to all the nurses, doctors, janitors, and all those serving on the front lines of the medical field. We appreciate you all so much!
Now, as far as your encounter, I totally agree with your friend. We can all get wrapped up in our busy schedule that we ignore those chills and tingles we get, alerting us to something being off. I know I do. Not only relaxing but opening yourself to the tour could have relaxed you just enough to feel and notice what you normally might not. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
Chills and hugs, Brandy!

If you’d like to submit your Hometown Haunts email me at brandy@brandynacole.com. 

Ghost stories, oh how I love them. The history behind the setting. The story behind the spirits reason to stick around. It’s all fascinating and one of my favorite past times is listening to what people have experienced. When readers send me emails and messages about their experiences it makes my heart do a happy dance. You know what makes me even excited, getting to share these stories. So after collecting several stories and putting into action a hopeful dream I’ve had for a while, here we are, Brandy’s Hometown Haunts.

I’m excited to share these stories and eager to receive more. If you’ve got a Hometown Haunt you’d like to share, email me here: brandy@brandynacole.com.


Story 1: How long can you haunt?

Hello from Nevada. My Hometown Haunt is about the time I visited my in-laws for two weeks and was sure I wouldn’t survive. My in-laws live in East Georgia where the sun shines a lot and the southern traditions are thick, as is their history. The house my in-laws live in is an older house, but not a Victorian like I’m sure you were expecting this story to state. Isn’t that the classic setting?

Our second night staying there I was walking up the stairs when something pulled on my shirt from behind. At first, I thought I may have snagged my shirt on something but there was nothing that could have done it. The third night, things started to get weird. I kid you not when I say the attic door opened and shut on its own one night when I made that middle of the night trip to the bathroom. While nothing life threatening happened, every night something would scare me to the point I was sure I would not survive the visit.

Safe back at my home in Nevada, where the doors stayed shut and nothing pulled on my shirt for funsies, I started researching my in-law’s neighborhood. Turns out that while it wasn’t the original home that once stood there, their house was built on the land where a safe house had been located on the Underground Railroad route. Twelve slaves had died in the attic of the home while waiting out soldiers who were in search of them. Some of these slaves had no recorded name.

It’s a sad story but I now understand why they are sticking around. They lived in fear with no one knowing who they were. They just want to be heard, even if it does scare the shit out of us.

Travel tip, if you’re afraid of visitors you can’t see, be sure to research the place before jumping on a plane. It’ll save you a lot of restless nights.
Brenda


Author note: Thanks for sharing Brenda. I can understand. They deserve to be seen. And oh my word, the whole door opening in the middle of the night while holding a bladder of pee, um, recipe for disaster. Hope you made to the restroom just fine! ;)