moved into my townhouse in November 2002. I bought this house because of the location; it's in my hometown and near where I grew up. It was built in 1981. As a child I rode the dirt bike trails on the land where my house is. Before that, in the 1960's, the land was a sand pit owned by a large company. Before that it was a small part of a big farm owned by a wealthy farming family.
The first year here I lived alone. I had a strange feeling about the house in the first few months. I remember waking up to strange sounds late at night. Houses make sounds, noise... Not a big deal.
In April 2003 I decided to get two kittens. At the time I worked the overnight shift, I would get home about 6am. Many mornings I would come home and the kittens would be wedged, hiding between the stove and the fridge. I ended up stuffing the hole with a paper towel roll. I didn't think much of it.
Months later, when the kittens had become cats, I came home and walked into the loudest cat howl I have ever heard. I found one of my cats on the kitchen floor, every hair on her body standing up, next to her was her own feces. My first thought was that the cats were fighting. Then I noticed the other cat nearby just curiously looking on. For the next few weeks if I couldn't find the cat that had howled I would find her in the basement in a tight cubby hole right above my water heater. It was impossible to get her out, she was terrified of something. Note- When a thunderstorm strikes, this cat is less than an inch away from the ground, dashing at full speed until she finds her safe spot.
In January 2004 I came home to a flooded basement. The weather had been well below zero for weeks, and then began to thaw. As a result a water pipe leading outside had burst. A neighbor had called the city while I wasn't home and saved the day. Water was shooting out of a basement window when the city worker arrived and shut off my water line. -This is a common thing in Minnesota, it happens. I had made sure that that pipe was turned off earlier that fall. The city wouldn't turn my water back on until they inspected. After the inspection they told me the link to that pipe was barely turned enough for water to get through it.
In August 2004 my 19 year old nephew moved in. By that time I was working the day shift, my nephew was working overnights. His girlfriend moved in during June of 2006. Nothing really strange happened while they lived here, nothing that stands out in memory. They moved out in February 2008.
In April 2008 I was awoken in the middle of the night, around 4 am, by one of my cats. I was laying with my face on the edge of the bed. She was at the edge of the bed meowing constantly. I smelled a strong sent of gas. One of the burners on my stove had been turned on without being ignited. Amazed at this little feat my cat had just done, I thought maybe she was the one who had turned it on accidentally and wanted to make sure she fixed her mistake. This cat may have just saved my life.
In the middle of the night, July 2008, the smoke alarm right outside my bedroom door woke me up. The first thing I did was look at my alarm clock and it was 3:00 am on the nose. Startled I jumped out of bed and went right to the smoke alarm hitting the test button. The high pitched alarm stopped. I searched the house and found nothing. Afterward I couldn't sleep. I kept watching the cat that woke me up in April. My bedroom is on the third level. I had left the door wide open because I was concerned about the smoke alarm; if something was wrong I wanted to know it. The doorway leads into a hallway that ends at a staircase going down to the second level. This cat wouldn't stop looking out the door. I tried petting her, picking her up and moving her but, she had her eyes stuck on that doorway, looking down at the second level. I eventually fell back asleep.
That morning I went to work and told my smoke alarm story, how strange it was that it went off right at 3 am on the nose. One of my co-workers told me that 3 am is the most spiritual hour of the night, that he had read that somewhere. The gas thing in April came up because I had told that story too... Middle of the night around 3 am... That evening I searched "3 am ghost" on google and was shocked at what I found.
So now, here I sit in my bedroom, not looking forward to 3 am. I feel shivers and had goose bumps when I started writing this. Am I just a little freaked out? Yes! And my cats? They're not helping because as I finish this up they're sitting on my bed looking out the doorway, both of them!
