In my town, a lot of the houses are old, so I’ve actually lived in many “active” places but the house my husband and I bought 2 years ago is VERY haunted. And maybe not all by nice things...

The house is 120 years old but it was flipped, so it also is like it’s brand new. It’s really kind of odd how the old and the new have come together here. When we moved in, I felt such a lovely energy in this house. The flipper had told us he’d used this house to teach his son the business of restoring a house and they’d spent nine months bonding over it. So I felt it was their energy I picked up on. He also told us that when he acquired it at auction it had been badly vandalized as it had been empty 6 years. It had still been furnished. There was even still rotten food in the long dormant fridge. As though the previous owners had just got up and walked away one day.

For a long time, the only thing that would happen was that one of us in the family would suddenly catch a whiff of cigarette smoke. It would always be when the family member was feeling upset or anxious at something, and the cigarette smell would come with a deep sense of peace, sort of like someone was hugging or comforting us. That actually still happens. Normally only one person in the room will smell the smoke at a time.

About six months after we moved in, a car ran into our house. It hit the wall where my husband and I were sleeping. FYI, being woken up by a car hitting right outside your bed SUCKS. The car penetrated the siding, broke the studs, cracked the drywall and the baseboard...

And then stopped.

A couple months later, I was sitting in the rear of an SUV with the hatch up, watching a baseball game when a pop fly came flying right to me. I saw that torpedo coming right for my face and due to the confinement of being in the vehicle, I had no way to get out of the way. My husband jerked the hatch down to shield my face. The windshield exploded in on me when it hit, but that is MOST DEFINITELY better than the ball to the face. I am absolutely certain I wouldn’t have lived through it. No doubt.

Couple months later, my brakes gave out while driving with my daughter. We ran a red light in a busy metropolitan area and somehow, some way, four lanes worth of traffic saw what was happening and stopped. I regained control of the car unharmed. The brakes just came back.

‘Nother couple months, we rescued a dog from the pound who subsequently viciously attacked my daughter and I in our hallway. It tried to rip my throat out, then turned to charge my daughter. Somehow, I managed to fight the dog off and get it out of the house without my daughter or myself being hurt.

After THAT, I woke up one morning, feeling totally normal, then suddenly I felt really sick. It was that horrible feeling when you know you’re going to toss your cookies. I ran to the bathroom. Except, I didn’t get sick. I got down on the floor, thinking it would happen. But then I passed out.

I woke up, tried to sit up, could not, and passed out again THREE TIMES.

I frequently catch glimpses of moving shadows. My dog sometimes lays on me and growls up into the air. Things fall off the walls at night in my daughter’s room. Lost things get returned. All trees die in our yard. I frequently wake up with blinding headaches.

Not long after the passing out incident, I mentioned the cigarette smell phenomenon on Facebook. A lady messaged me telling my she had grown up with best friends who lived there and the house has a dark history... if I wanted to hear it.

In the 90s, a man named Norman; a very kind man and a chain smoker died in my daughter’s room of a brain aneurysm. Years later, his wife also died of an overdose of pain pills... In the bathroom where I passed out... We later went on to do more digging and met Norman’s brother who said there was also a fire in the house before his family owned it that killed a little boy. The brother said the last family had left because it was too active for them. The daughter of that family saw a shape of a man in her parents’ bed (Norman’s room) and thought it was her dad napping; but found her dad downstairs watching tv.

I do believe there is something bad here that has hurt former occupants. But, I also think those same occupants stick around and look out for us. How many times does a car hit hard enough to bust the siding and studs but not get the rest of the way thru? How often does every single person in a busy intersection manage to drive so defensively that an accident is avoided when brakes fail? What are the statistics on death by baseball and are near misses even more unusual?

And might Norman’s wife Janet just have wanted me to know what happened to her? Maybe I felt as she felt but got to live on...

Norman’s brother said he loved this house. He lived here happily for decades. He says he was a wonderful person. He showed me pictures and he by golly did have one of those faces that you can tell is just kind. I already knew by how comforted we feel when we smell his smoke. I’d love to know more about them, and especially the little boy who died. But one thing is for sure, the brother said Norman would love that we take good care of his home and what a loving family we are, so we won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

I’m laying by “the wall” as I type. Norman’s got me.