Smyrna House

by Patricia
(Pikeville, TN, USA)

Back in the fall of 1980, my stepfather passed away and left me the house I was born in and grew up in, located in a little village in Upstate New York, called Smyrna. At the time, we lived about 30 miles away and couldn’t decide if we wanted to give up the house we were in and move into it or not. During the winter of ’80 and ’81, we would go and spend weekends in the house and noticed nothing unusual. This house is one of the oldest houses in the village, dating back to around 1850. It was once used as a rooming house for migrant workers that came to the area to pick hops. There were 2 bedrooms upstairs, one being a normal sized room, the other being a very long room, with an attic off the long room.

In the spring of 1981, we decided to move into the house, as it was closer to all our family and old friends. At the time, my two sons were 9 and 11 years old and made new friends and settled in quickly. The boys shared a room in our old house and wanted to have their own rooms, so the younger one wanted the small bedroom and the older one wanted the long room. We had a small bedroom downstairs. It should be noted that my biological father died in the bathroom of the house when I was about 11 years old, but we thought nothing of it at the time. I didn’t have any photos of him at that time and was very sorry about that, and the fact that my kids never got to meet him.

Shortly after we moved in, my younger son started telling me someone was in his room and he could hear them talking, but couldn’t understand what they were saying. I didn’t really pay much attention to what he was telling me, as children have good imaginations. One day I was upstairs cleaning the two bedrooms. There was no one else in the house that day, when I suddenly could hear a group of people talking very quietly, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. They seemed to be saying the same thing over and over. This was in the middle of winter, with all the windows closed, no TV on, no radio on, etc. The voices were coming from one side of his room where the closet was located. It sounded like one woman and at least two men talking down low. I immediately went back downstairs.

In this room was where the kids had their Atari hooked up to a TV and they would take their friends up there to play games. Over the course of a few years, several of their friends had heard the voices and refused to stay up there alone if my kids came downstairs to get snacks or even answer the door for other friends.

One day they came home from school and my younger son asked me who the man was up in his room looking out the window at him. I told him no one was there with me and no one is upstairs. They both insisted that a man was looking out the upstairs bedroom window when they were heading to the front door. We all went upstairs to look and, of course, found no one there. This started happening at least once or twice a week after that. My younger son moved into the bedroom with his older brother and refused to sleep in his room after that.

It wasn’t until about three years later when my aunt was moving that she found a box of old photos taken in the 50’s and 60’s. She gave me a few old pictures of my father that she thought I would like. I took them home and showed them to my kids and my younger son jumped up and started yelling at me that this was the man who’s been looking out the window at him. The man was even wearing the same clothes that he had on in one of the pictures. My older son totally agreed with his brother. I then explained to them if this was true, then they had no reason to fear him as he was their true grandfather and he was a very gentle, loving person and would never hurt them. After that, we all relaxed a little bit. We still heard the voices on and off, and they were still saying the same thing over and over, but we never did find out what they were saying. The kids all still used the buddy system to play the video games in that room, but things kind of quieted down. For a while….

During the time I lived in the house, we had acquired a miniature dachshund, named Dickie. He seemed to be very receptive to what was happening in the house. The other two dogs would look up as if they heard something, but since we lived in town there was always a reasonable explanation, such as traffic going by, etc.

In one corner of the living room we had a rocker-recliner. One day I was in the dining room and noticed Dickie was in the living room looking up at the chair wagging his tail as if someone was there and he was happy to see them. I immediately walked in the living room and saw the chair was rocking by itself. I called the dog and he completely ignored me and sat happily staring up at whoever was in the chair with his tail wagging. Once the rocking stopped, the dog walked away as if nothing happened.

I seemed to always see someone out of the corner of my eye, but when I would look, no one was there. This happened to all of us whenever we were in the house alone. We would always get the feeling of being watched. One day I was upstairs washing the windows in my older son’s room (the long room). Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone lying on his bed. The person was on his back, he was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt (a t-shirt?) and I could see his arm. I turned quickly to look and the person was gone. I vowed the next time I would turn to look slowly, but it never happened again.

My kids had made friends with some new people in town and we eventually met the parents of their new friends. The father told us he was interested in the paranormal and he liked to go around at night and take infrared photos of houses. He had a photo of our house and claimed it was haunted and wanted to use a Ouija board to see who was there. I told him I didn’t think that was a very good idea. So, the following weekend he did it at his own house with my teenage kids in attendance. According to what they found out, we had several spirits in our house, one being my father, a woman, and several men. He warned us that one of the men was very evil and to be careful.

When my older son was 18, he moved in with a girlfriend. My younger son would no longer sleep upstairs in that house and always slept downstairs on the couch after that.

After a few years, my husband and I divorced and I eventually remarried. My new husband did not believe in the supernatural and had never had any sort of encounter in his life. We lived in the house by ourselves with another dachshund named Jake. Everything was fine until we both started having the same dream. It always happened when you were alone in the house taking a nap in the living room. While you were sleeping you just knew there was someone in the room with you, he was standing across the room by the door that led upstairs and he was smiling. He was NOT my father. He was a much younger man with dark curly hair. He would stand there smiling at you, then, in an instant, he would be standing right beside you and you would immediately wake up shaking. The dog would be extremely nervous and shaking, too. The dog would run over and sniff around the door to the upstairs. After that started, my husband would not stay alone in the house if I wasn’t home.

We moved out shortly after that and lived in one of our apartments we owned across the street. The people that we rented the house to say they never had anything happen while they were there. Evidently, some people are receptive and others aren’t.

Quite a few years later, we sold everything and moved to a warmer state. There was an old acquaintance of ours who eventually bought the house. We’d never mentioned anything to him about it, because we didn’t really know him well enough to divulge that sort of information to him. We went back home for a visit one summer and ran into him. He asked us if anything strange ever happened in the house while we were there and we asked him what he was talking about. He started telling us about the voices upstairs and other noises. He also said “I know I’ll never fall asleep watching TV in the living room again, either.” He, also, ended up moving out to quieter quarters. The new owner is now in the process of remodeling and turning the house into a 2 family apartment building. I wish him luck keeping tenants.