Renovation Adventures
By Martin Suiter
This couple bought the big house on the main drag in Waynetown next to the fire department. It is a big honkin' house with a wrap around brick porch, neat attic windows and such. Lots of character and they are really excited about fixing it up. There's lots of the original hardwood floors intact and original woodwork. I guess at one time this was a home for veterans that a private individual owned and ran. A funeral director lived in the home at one time also, but the guys at work can't remember an actual funeral parlor being in the home.
The current owners have hired a group of independent contractors to do the refurbishing work throughout the house before they move in. There are the usual carpenters and electricians, etc. Some of these guys do this work on the side I guess, so they aren't there during the normal working day. They come after their shifts are over. SO, they are there at night.
I wonder why the spooky stuff seems to happen at night. Hmmmm...
Anyway, this one man was doing work in the kitchen. It was at night and he was doing his thing. You know the door stop things you use to jam under the door to keep it open? Well, they had one there for the door, or a hunk of wood as a makeshift one, whatever. Well, the guy was working and the door swung open slowly. He thought, "Hmmm" and went about his business. The door then swung shut on its own. The guy stuck the jam under it to keep it closed.
A bit later, he heard something. The jam was slid out and the door was open. He went and stood by the door, shifting his weight around, thinking the floor had an issue, possibly rotting wood which was causing the door to swing. But, when he hopped around, the door stayed closed. He continued working and the door did it again which is when he decided he'd had enough and began packing up his tools. Shining his flashlight over to the door, he watched as the door swung open again. He locked his toolbox and got the hell out of dodge.
He told the owners that he would continue working on the house, but never by himself and never at night. He could feel a presence there and knew it was haunted. He was a Christian, he said, and knew the spirit couldn't hurt him, but it did give him the creeps. After that, he always shut the water valve off before leaving the house because he was of the mind that the spirit was a trickster and could imagine a big wet mess and water damage.
One of the other contractors went inside to work on the house. He heard something upstairs and assumed one of the other guys was up there working. He started up the stairs and felt pretty creepy. When he reached the top of the stairs, a bedroom door was swinging slowly open and shut. As he watched, it went faster and faster until it was flying. He left at that point.
The owners are doing a lot of painting and stuff themselves. They take before and after pictures with their digital camera as they work. Upon viewing these photos, they realized that the spirit was in them. In one shot, he was peeking between the rungs of a ladder. They could see him on the camera, but his image wouldn't print.
The wife named the spirit "Mac" and has started to have some serious second thoughts about moving in. When she goes into the house, she tells him, "Mac, I'm just here to work on the house and make things look nice. I don't want to bother you, so please don't bother me." I haven't heard how this strategy is working out for her, but when I hear more, I will let you know.
There is bound to be more. I guess the owners before lived in the house less than a year. These guys got it for quite a steal, so they can afford to do a lot of work on the place to improve it. They'd heard that the place was haunted, but just blew it off. Now, they tend to take things seriously.
From what I've heard, there are a lot of houses in Waynetown that are haunted and, from what I've read, there are locations that tend to have a lot of "haunting" or a concentration of active spirits. Sometimes, if a lot of families in the area tend to be communicates or mediums with spirits, or have those types of tendencies, there is also a lot of activity.
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