Mine is a story I can't tell, it's a real twist. It would take a while to start over. It's so strange, but it's true. It's not a lie or a made up story. All the facts are provable. I grew up in North Terre Haute. As a adolescent man I would go to a local store that served school lunches. The store was called Stapletons. It was behind a gas station and across from a local tavern called Jiggs. The venerable man who owned the store was a scary looking guy with a challenging face and flat-cut hair. He had a raspy voice and a no-frills personality. I always thought of him as harmless, but there was something about him that always stirred my gut. He and his wife lived down the street from my house and the gas station we always rode our bikes to. It was one of the most pretty houses in the area. I remember pulling up in front of the house just to stare in awe at what was there. I never saw anyone in or around the house. Only lights at night, dimly lit.
When I was a teenager in high school. Thanksgiving morning of 1978 or '79, if I'm not mistaken, I saw Mr. Stapleton die. My father and I were driving to the IGA for my mother and we were among the first to arrive at the scene of a terrible car accident. A guy I went to school with and later worked with for a few years had a Buick Wildcat with a dual exhaust. He would put the car in low gear and hit it just to hear the exhaust roar. I had driven in that car a few times. That morning, Mr. Stapleton was visiting his brother's business and was pulling out onto Highway 41 at the same time the car was turning in the other direction. My schoolmate passed the car on the wrong side and hit Mr. Stapleton's car. Witnesses said he put the car in low gear and hit it when he hit Mr. Stapleton, killing him.
Years passed and I watched the house fall into disrepair and eventually forgot about it. I got married and shortly after my second child was born I bought a house near my parents and renovated it. We were all ecstatic and content until one day I was driving past the Stapleton house and saw that they were getting ready to sell the estate.
On the day of the sale I went with my youngest daughter to buy a rocking chair that was for sale. After viewing the house I went inside to look around, I was amazed that the house was well built in the 60's. I had a few strange premonitions but ignored them, like a short-lived ailing feeling. I really got into the house and the possibilities it had. With only a 20% down payment I bought the house. I was in shock, as was my wife. I had no idea how much this house would change our lives.
I started the day tearing down the venerable house and creating a novel one. I completely gutted most of the house and upgraded the house. It was substantial and pretty. Little did I know that the strange happenings in the house would haunt me and stay with me to this day. It started when I stripped the basement and moved out of the attached two car garage. I worked overdue and sometimes I would be home alone, wake up and work. I had a deal with the bank and my love for the house kept me going. One night my father and I were working in the basement, I cut a huge hole in the floor in the living room to put a staircase to the novel family room in the basement. We heard someone open the back door and walk through the floor about where we were but above us. I yelled out here, no answer. I went up the ladder and saw no one. We were disoriented and laughed it off. The next few nights were filled with strange happenings, I would encounter moving cool spots and I could follow them as I went in and out of rooms. It was probably just drafts from the substantial venerable house. These stains will give you the creeps.
One balmy summer night I was working and my dog Sam, a German Shepherd, was acting very nervous. He was jumping up and down, barking and growling at something. I didn't pay much attention to it until I heard a noisy bang coming from the master bedroom. I investigated and discovered that the bathroom door had slammed shut. Sam was barking at the door. Old, drafty house!
There were logical explanations for these events, I didn't think about it, I'm a very logical, open-minded person. Later I realized that there was an hidden force nearby. I never believed in it, but now I'm very sensitive to ghosts and strange events, I learned over time not to listen with my ears, but with my inner feeling, first impression. While working on the house, I heard strange sounds and unexplained stupidity. The door of the master bathroom slammed from time to time and at one point it jammed. I took the door off, cut the uneven part at the bottom and hung it again. This went on for some time. I finished the house, moved in with my family and began to enjoy the house, its fireplaces and open space. Then we all experienced strange things.
I woke up to my wife yelling at me about the novel kitchen cabinets I had installed. It seemed like someone had opened all the doors at night. This happened several times over the next few months, I took it as a joke, not wanting to scare my wife and kids. I had put every penny I had into this house, I couldn't get out. It became such a joke that we would hear someone coming in the back door when we were downstairs and walking through the upstairs. Every time it was the same: not a soul in sight. It was all so real. One night my two daughters were asleep and I woke up to creaking sounds in the hallway. Then I heard someone walking down the hallway and grabbing my youngest daughter's doorknob and turning it a few times. I yelled at my oldest, who is disabled, to go back to bed. She often walked around at night in total darkness. She had no ability to fear the gloomy. I got up to investigate. My oldest was sleeping peacefully and my youngest had a tiny dog that was barking at the time. I checked on her and she told me to stop making the dog bark. I stood in the hallway freezing and thinking it was true. The next morning she told me that turning the doorknob and making the dog bark was not fun. I laughed and pretended it was my fault.
Not long after that Sam was living in the garage right below our bedroom. She was barking so aggressively I had to get up and tell her off. Then I discovered that every time she barked the basement window was wide open. Both my wife and I experienced this. The dog would bark over and over again and the window would be open. I bent the latch on the window so it wouldn't open. That was fine for a few weeks until one night Sam barked and the next morning the window was open. That really got our attention.
Soon after that many unexplained things happened. Glasses were flying out of the kitchen cabinets in the middle of the night, doors and bathroom doors were slamming, I took them down and cut them five times, once leaving a gap of an inch to prevent them from sticking. It was unbelievable, the doors were straight and plumb. One evening we were in the family room downstairs and we heard someone coming in through the back door and glass breaking, I jumped out and ran upstairs to find a vase, on the mantelpiece, smashed on the floor. The door was locked. I was furious, I screamed, We are a family and we live here now, we are good people, leave us alone.
It was tranquil for a while and nothing much happened until a cool January night. We had been out in the country all day playing quad bikes and got home early evening. I backed the truck into the driveway and opened the garage to let Sam out. She greeted me and told me to scratch her head, she was so ecstatic to see me. She wouldn't leave my side, she was acting strange. I felt that feeling again but ignored it. I left Sam at the entrance to the garage and told her to do her duty. I got in the truck, looked in the mirror and saw Sam just fold up and fall on her face. She was dead. I picked her up and took her inside, lit a fire in the family room fireplace and my wife, kids and I held Sam and cried. When I went to put the quads away the basement window was open. Sam was scratching and chewing something, the marks on the wall from her efforts painted the picture as clear as it could be. The feeling froze my blood. I will never forget it.
In the weeks after Sam died, everything calmed down. No feelings, no unexplained sounds, everything was going well until one evening in March. It's something I will never get over as long as I live. My wife and I were arguing, our marriage was ending and we were trying to get back on track by going to mass on Saturday nights. We were all standing by the door in the family room getting ready to leave. There was a laundry room between the family room and the garage. I started to open the door to the laundry room and my family was right behind me but something was pushing the door from behind. I struggled back and forth until it slammed me shut. I got livid and forced the door open. No body or anything got in the way. My wife and kids witnessed it. That was really the final straw for me. At that point I was so scared and livid. The house had torn us apart. It had changed me and us forever. Shortly after I moved out, during the divorce, my youngest daughter moved into the basement family room with her girlfriend. She stated that the clocks would not tell the time and the TV would turn on by itself. I saw this too. She and her girlfriend saw the lamp fly across the room and hit the wall above the bed. They moved upstairs that night.
Many strange things happened while I lived there, I tried to explain them and convince myself that it was nothing. I was wrong!
The whole experience did something to me that will stay with me forever. Every now and then I dream about my experiences. I left something unfinished there. I just can't put my finger on what. I stop every time I get close to it. It haunts me to this day. It made me confess. Maybe someone can give me some insight.
The house was sold shortly after our divorce. It sold in three days. I wonder if the novel residents have any strange happenings? There is so much to tell that I wish I could write it down. But I am afraid that no one will believe me and laugh at us for what we feel is a ghost.
The house is located in North Terre haute Indiana, 3365 Crystal Ave. I want to go back and talk to the novel residents, but I'm afraid I might open a chapter that I won't be able to finish since I don't live there anymore. I can say that I really did see shapes of someone or something sometimes, or maybe just shadows out of the corner of my eye. Still, I felt the presence of a spirit.
-Dale Murphy
