ghosttraveller: ottawa, IL area ghosts

A friend of mine told me a pretty disturbing story after she read the ghost article about my site in the local paper last Halloween. She said when she was in grade school, she was friends with twins whose older teenage brother had died in a car accident a few years before. One night they had a sleepover, like girls that age like to do, and Wendy was laying in bed. When she heard a noise she looked up and saw a distinct vision of the dead brother sitting in the chair across the room. She said she closed her eyes in disbelief, convinced it would be gone when she opened them. When she looked, through a crack in the quilt she had over her head, he was still sitting in the chair, plain as day, looking at her.

This part really gave me the creeps: he crossed his leg, and kicked over a glass of soda she had sat on the floor by the chair before she went to bed. She emphasized that she saw his face, knew the older brother before he died, and that this was in fact him sitting there. She stuck her head under the covers and concentrated on going to sleep.

In the morning she woke, remembering terrified, what she saw. She had convinced herself she had dreamed it until she saw the spilt glass of soda by the chair across the room. When she told her friends what she saw, they told her mother who was not surprised in the least. "I see him all the time", she said.

Chalk this up as my favorite story so far... it adds such a different element to a ghost story when you know the person, know they are level headed and know they don't make things up or embellish the truth.

"I live in the oldest house built in Grand Ridge Township. I say that as the house was built before Grand Ridge was a town. There are 2 parts to the house, The original part, which can be seen from Rt.23 going South and was built in 1857 and the "new" addition, which was built in the 1920's. I have lived in this house since 1974 and everyone in my family has experienced some strange things. The house was 1st a farm house for the Boyd family, and then in the 1860's they donated land to the east of the house for a Church. The house was then used as the manse or house for the minister and his family of the Presbyterian Church. The Church was moved in 1901 to downtown Grand Ridge and the lot is now a Bus Garage. I have also belong to the church since we move to Grand Ridge in 1974. The Church is also haunted. In fact to this day I am scared to be there by myself for any length of time. The strangest thing about the church is basement and the minister office. The minister office is to the west of pulpit of the sanctuary of the church. Many many times you can hear someone typing in that office with an old manual typewriter. In the early to mid 80's the typewriter sound would happen almost every Sunday during church and everyone heard it. We had everything inspected to explain the noise from the heating system to windows to mice. Nothing. The typewriting sound has gone away somewhat with the current minister, but you can still hear it from time to time. The basement of the church is where the Sunday School rooms are, the meeting area and Kitchens are, when you are upstairs, you can hear people, mostly men, talking in basement, like a meeting is going on, you go downstairs to see who's there and it stops. My Mother plays the organ for the church and many times in my youth I remember hearing those voices, also you always have a feeling of being watched. Sometimes my Mom would get too scared to stay long in the church alone and leave. There is also the classic footsteps in the church, you hear them when you are in the basement and you run upstairs thinking someone wander in, or your upstairs and you hear footsteps in the choir loft, which is walled off. You also hear doors open and close. I always found it strange that a church should be haunted.

As for my house. So many things have happen over the years, I could write a book. With the house you could hear men talking in the basement, like the church. Round objects roll the wrong way on the floors (old houses have slanted floors) Things disappear and reappear in strange places sometimes the next day, sometimes years latter. Footsteps hear on the floor above, or going up and down the stairs. I had the TV go on and off on me when alone and scared me so bad I went next door to see if the guy there and his buddies were playing tricks with me, (you know, take a universal remote and stand in the bushes and used it on the tv, I have done it to my sisters) Well, he came over with his buddies and said it wasn't him when it the TV came on full blast, I was checking the windows to see if someone was outside when he and his buddies run screaming from house telling to come with them. The best part of this house is the sightings. After the church move in 1901 a family by the last name of Wollenhop bought the house and lived there for almost 70 years. When we moved in the last of the Wollenhops was in a nursing home. The sightings according to my Mother started about a year after me moved in. One night she was watching reading and us kids were in bed, when she was thinking about watering her plants that were on a metal stand in the east window of the old part of house, she looked up from her book and saw and an old woman standing on tip toe watering the top plants in that stand and then she just vanished. Mom thought she must have been dreaming and went to the plants to see if they were dry. They were freshly watered! A few nights later she was talking to a friend of hers about it and was asked to describe the woman, my Mother did and her friend, said " That is my Aunt Alta!" The person who was in the nursing home when we 1st moved in. She had died shortly after we moved in. My Mother does not believe in ghosts, but that was start for her. After that when we hear thing, or things would disappear we would blame "Aunt Alta". Most of the activity of the house happens in the part built in the 1920's. that would include the Kitchen, 1 bedroom and the upstairs and downstairs bathroom and the stairs leading upstairs. All of my life at night you could hear someone in the kitchen clanging the dishes, like they were putting then away. Sometimes you would a pot drop to the floor and rush in only to find everything as you left it. We have had many dogs over the years, and none would go into the kitchen at night to their food bowl if no one else was in there with them. We also always have had cats, and they always are staring at things you cant see. The bedroom above the Kitchen has had it fair share of strange things. When I was 8, I was woken up by the feeling of something jumping on and off the bed. I yelled at the dog to knock it off and was then asked by my Dad what I was yelling about and I said the dog kept jumping on and off my bed, Dad said it must be a dream as the dog was laying next to him on the floor. When I was 16 I was awaken in the early morning by the sound of someone calling out my name, when I finally said "What!" it said "I love you", I told my parents about that then they said I was dreaming. When I was 18 I was awaken out of dead sleep, as I was looking around the room I saw a young Woman with short blonde hair and white dress looking into my mirror across from my bed. I said "Karen what are doing?" Thinking it was my younger sister. The woman turned around and looked at me, I then noticed she was in her 20's and dressed in the style of the 30's, dress still white, and then I noticed I could see through her and at the myself in the mirror. I was so scared I couldn't scream, I for some reason looked at the clock, 3:06 am and threw the covers over my head shaking like a leaf. I threw the covers off, looked at the clock, 3:09 am and she was still there, looking at me. I managed to get "who are you, what do you want" out but then threw the covers over my head, finally she was gone by 3:12 am. I was then able to scream and wake up the whole house. I told them what I saw and was told again it was dream. When I was 20, I was again awaken by my cat growling, I thought he was fighting with the other cat and tried to kick him off the bed, his claws were stuck in the bed and his ears were back and his hair standing up, so I grabbed a pillow to throw in the direction that cat was looking in thinking I would hit the other cat and chase it out of the room, when I saw this black figure, no face, or hands, it was in a hooded cloak, and I could tell it was male and staring at me, I scream "What do you want" and threw the covers over my head until the cat stopped growling. A few nights later the same thing happen again with the cat and I grabbed the pillow to throw it at the other cat and I saw another figure standing in the same spot, It was male and doing some strange kind of dance while looking at me. I was about to scream when I hear from my doorway, "What the hell is that!?!" My sister was standing there seeing it too. It finally went away. I was awaken a 3rd time with the same situation and found a woman standing there. I got up out of bed and slept on the couch downstairs for about a week after that. Those 3 figures I saw a 20 were standing in the same spot the woman I saw at 18 was standing. I can't explain why these things only happen on that spot in that bedroom. My Mom also mentioned for a time after my youngest sister was born, she would hear a baby crying in that room, as that was where she kept the baby, and she go in to check and the baby was sleeping. She said that happened off and on for about a year. I could go on, but with almost 30 years of time in this house, our family, who except me, are non believers, could fill a book with all we have all seen, heard and felt."
special thanks to kelly

I recently discovered a story from the year 1885: The Rooneys were enjoying their Christmas Eve by partaking of some whiskey with their hired hand at their home in Seneca, Illinois. Mrs Rooney, a portly woman, sat up late that night drinking with her husband, celebrating the Christmas holiday. They probably planned to visit their grown son, who lived nearby, the following day.

The hired man had retired early that night. Early on Christmas morning he descended the staircase, hung over and searching for some water to quench his raging cotton-mouth. Much to his chagrin, his turning stomach couldn't ignore the fetid odor that permeated the small rural home. Indeed, anyone who has been around burnt human flesh knows that it is maybe the worst smell that one can encounter. To the farm workers' horror, Mr. Rooney lay on the floor, dead from what would later be noted as smoke inhalation. Just feet away was a hole burnt clean through the floorboards.

Frantic, the hired man rode to the Rooney's son's home, fetched him, and the two men returned to further investigate this very un-Christmas-y sight. After entering the house, the poor orphaned son barely had time to absorb the sight of his dead father on the floor before he stuck his lantern down the charred hole in the floor, grasping for some explanation, and found a withered sooty skull, a few neck bones, and a pile of fine black ash. Mom.

Cases of spontaneous human combustion have fascinated people for years, almost as long as they have perplexed scientists. They are characterized by the unexplained cremation of a person, usually an obese woman. The odd part, the part that sets it apart from other accidental deaths in a fire, is that the person burns at a very, very high temperature--enough to reduce the body to a finer carbonaceous substance than even a crematorium can achieve, and that objects just mere inches away from the victim remain unscathed. A case in Bolingbrook, Illinois in 1979 involved a woman who burned in this manner, and her entire lower leg, as well as a newspaper 3 feet away, remained unburned.

Individually devised explanations, both scientifically based and supernaturally based have been included on these sites:

This story particularly freaked me out, since I know the author well enough to know he's a pretty level-headed person. At least I don't think he's been hiding in the closet, washing down his antipsychotics with a Wild Turkey chaser... Anyhow, this story is very creepy. It appeared in "The Ottawa (IL) Daily Times" on October 29th '99.

"Late night vision leaves a haunting memory

by Brian Zeilman

The house was not much to look at, an old single-story, two- bedroom home with a basement, located on the south side of Ottawa.
My wife and I moved into the house in the mid 1980's when we were married. Our landlord, then in her late 70's, said she was a little girl when her father purchased the home and that it, at that time, was already quite an old home. She would also, from time to time, provide us with a little history of the home while it was in her family - things like, how her father walked into the home one day from working out in the yard and died of a heart attack in the hall leading to the two bedrooms and bath - or how her son, who lived in the home after moving out of the house where she was now residing, met a violent death in a motorcycle accident involving a semi-tractor trailer.
None of these tidbits of information helped the already uneasy feelings that for some unknown reason existed about the house.
There were little things about the house that we could never explain. Why do drop ceiling panels repeatedly jump inches from their frames on a calm day? The old ceiling above them was still intact, eliminating a possible air exchange. Or, why was there a feeling of somebody watching you from an old dirt floor room at the bottom of the basement steps. This one, immediately upon our moving into the house, resulted in the door to this particular basement room being nailed shut. It was never opened again for the remainder of our stay.
As strange as these things may have been, nothing would prepare us for what would eventually lead to our decision to move.
Our landlord, who lived next door and visited quite often, was eventually placed in a local nursing facility. This was when the fun started. It was as if something in the house was upset that she was gone and apparently would not be returning.
One morning as I was getting ready for work, I noticed that my wife was very nervous and obviously upset. After much prodding, she finally advised me of the reason for her nervous state.
As we slept during the night, she explained, she awoke and noticed a shadow of a person moving back and forth near the foot of the bed as if to be pacing. As she moved her arm to her side to in order to brace herself so she could sit up and ask me what I was doing, her hand landed on my arm and she realized that I was still next to her, sleeping.
She explained that the more her eyes slowly focused on the figure, she realized that it was cloaked and appeared as what one might picture the grim reaper to look like. No hands or face were visible. She said she laid there frozen, unable to speak or move. The only voluntary movement she could muster was the closing of her eyelids. Then she laid awake, praying for morning to arrive.
Nothing in my arsenal of explanations could convince her that this had not happened, or that she had been dreaming or seeing things. As I left for work that morning, she asked that I close the bedroom door and lock its deadbolt as she had no plans to enter the room while I was gone.
Before much more is said, I guess I should explain that by the time these incidents started to occur, we were also parents, twice over. And as with any mother of near newborn infants, when they start to cry in the middle of the night, mom's out of bed to see what's wrong.
One night, only a week or two after the initial appearance of the grim reaper look-alike, I woke to the sound of our children screaming at the top of their tiny lungs. The odd thing about this was, my wife never moved an inch to go see what was wrong. Since she had just laid there, apparently unresponsive, I assumed the obvious -- one or both of our children must've just eaten but just doesn't want to sleep, and mom's not about to get out of bed again to play with them at this hour. (Hey, it sounded logical at the time.) Eventually they quieted and went to sleep. Mom never moved an inch.
The next morning I asked my wife why she didn't move when the children cried. That was when she told me she couldn't move. She went on to explain that the dark shadow of a figure had returned.
She said that she again woke in the middle of the night as nature was calling her to the bathroom. When she began to roll towards the side of the bed, she looked towards the hallway and saw the cloaked figure eerily floating into our room. It then moved right up to her side of the bed and cradled its cloaked arms, rocking them from side to side as if to be rocking a small child to sleep. Still no face or hands. She said she then watched as it turned away from her and floated out of our bedroom door, across the hall and into the bedroom where the children were sleeping. As this thing disappeared into the shadows of their room, our children, both at the same time, began to scream. Again, there was no convincing my wife that she did not see what she said she saw.
Prior to leaving for work that morning, my wife reminded me that she planned to do laundry and that if I left any soiled clothing in the bedroom that it simply would not get done. There was no reason good enough for her to enter that bedroom. After picking up the blue jeans from the day before, I closed the bedroom door and locked its deadbolt.
Upon returning home from work, I found my wife folding clean laundry. Anything that would normally be placed in the drawers or closets in our bedroom was piled in stacks on the living room couch. Now preparing to leave for another part-time job, I immediately began to sift through
the piles looking for an old pair of blue jeans that I normally wore to this job. Being unable to find them, I asked my wife if she had cleaned them or if they were still in the process. She explained that all the jeans had been washed, dried and folded and that they should be in a stack in the living room. I then again checked the stack of clean jeans, and then the washer, and finally the drier. Nothing. Finally I asked her if she had put any clothes away in the bedroom. After a quick look that could kill, she assured me that nothing could make her enter that room when no one else is around.
As a last resort, I then went to the bedroom door, unlocked the deadbolt**, entered the room in order to retrieve another pair of jeans that I often wore to this job. As I pulled open the top dresser drawer, you can imagine my surprise when I found sitting on the very top of everything in that drawer, my missing blue jeans: clean, folded, but still slightly damp form the washer. For my wife, surprise wasn't quite the word.
For us, the blue jean incident was the straw that broke the camel's back. Although we sometimes considered it a strange kind of peace offering, or assurance from the cloaked figure that he wasn't there to hurt anyone, no convincing was needed to start us looking for a new home.
For the remainder of our time there, the cloaked figure was never seen again. Since then we've known others who have lived in the house but none have reported anything out of the ordinary. I guess we'll never know exactly who the cloaked figure was or what he wanted, but we'll always wonder-- is he forever stuck in that house, or could he follow a certain family or person to another home where he may someday appear again."

** when the author verbally told me this story, he said the keys to the deadbolt were with him in his pocket at work all day

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