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Western Carolina Haunting

I'm finally getting around to sharing my ghost story after several friends insisting that I share on Reddit. Here it goes...

I moved from Orlando, FL to Western North Carolina with my parents back in 2002, specifically a small town named Swannanoa (just east of Asheville). We rented a 3 bedroom split level house that had a massive backyard with a very old barn in the back. The house was situated on a large slopping hill (or mini mountain as I used to call it). I lived in this house for almost 2 years with my parents and 3 year old brother (I was 20/21 at the time). From the day we moved in my Mom and I had a weird feeling about the energy of the house (which we didn't say to each other for many months after). It was difficult to explain the sensation I had in the house and can best explain it as never feeling alone in the house, as if you could "feel" someone in any give room with you, kinda like how if someone enters a room that you are in and you just sense their presence without having to actually see them in the room.

The first paranormal occurrence I remember was when my mom was in the kitchen cooking, we had a large island in the middle of the kitchen which my mom had just brewed and placed a large pitcher of tea on. I recall seeing the pitcher of tea sitting on the middle of the island as I walked back to my room, a few minutes later I heard it glide across the island counter and smash on the ground. It startled the hell out of me, especially my mom. I ran in to the kitchen and she told me that as she heard the pitcher slide on the counter she turned just in time to watch it glide off the edge of the island counter and "fly" 6 or 7 feet across the kitchen and smash against the wall. While I was listening to my mom make sense of it all, my step-father also walked upstairs, he is the worlds biggest skeptic, he laughed and said to my mom, "you must have hit against the island and sent that thing flying", then he walked back downstairs. Both my mom and I have had separate paranormal experiences previously in our life, but even with those past experiences we are still both rational thinkers and tried to make sense of the situation before automatically ruling a ghost/spirit made that pitcher fly across the room (even though we couldn't come up with a logical reason).

A few weeks after the pitcher incident, I was sitting at the computer desk which was near a large window at the corner of the living room. I had a friend visiting from FL who was playing video games in my room (which was the the first room down the hallway on the right side). While I was on the computer I glanced over at the window which was to my left, as I looked over I noticed a couple of the blinds near the top start to move, but thought nothing of it. A short time later, starting at the top of the blinds, each single blind started moving from top to bottom, as if someone took their finger and went one-by-one slowly down the blinds all the way to the last one at the bottom...I sat there perplexed watching this and then got up and ran to tell my friend. He laughed at me and said it was my mind playing tricks on me. I looked for any possible reason that could have made the blinds do that. I turned the AC on/off to see if that triggered it for some reason (AC vent was about 4 feet away from the blinds) but it didn't do anything at all. The very next night, our roles were reversed. My friend was burning a cd on the computer while I was on the phone in my room, I heard him yell my name and run into my room and he said "I believe you!!!". The very same thing happened to him! I asked both of my parents if they noticed anything like that with the blinds, but neither one of them had.

Small odd things would continue to occur almost daily, like doors that were locked mysteriously opening, like the door in our kitchen which led to our porch that wrapped around half of the house (kitchen was near the back of the house, porch wrapped from back left corner of the house where kitchen was at all the way to middle of the front of house where the front door areas was at). My parents were sticklers for locking doors, almost like they had OCD, they would check & double check to make sure doors were always locked (they've always been like that). The kitchen door had a very strong deadbolt and standard knob lock, we seldom ever used that door so we would keep it locked 99.9% of the time, but that wouldn't stop it from occasionally being found open, often times you could feel that chill mountain breeze enter the house and look into the kitchen to find the door cracked or fully open. One night as I got home late from work I parked my car on the side driveway (we had a driveway that veered to the right of the house in an incline just long enough for one vehicle). From that spot you could easily see the barn sitting high up on the slope behind my house. At that time I hadn't had a chance to explore the barn, mostly because the grass was very high in the back yard and our landlord said he only mowed that area a few times a year. The barn was 2 floors, the first floor was made out of bricks and the 2nd floor and roof were made out of wood. On that night, I parked my car got out and looked up at the barn, I noticed what appeared to look like a lantern shinning out of the large window on the 2nd story of the barn, it then started moving out of view to the right and a split second later it went across the opening to the left side, as if someone was pacing back & forth, but it was too dark to see anyone. One night my little brother also noticed the light after looking out of my parents bedroom window (which faced the backyard/barn) and told my parents about it. I overheard him and rushed in their to tell my parents about it. The next day my stepdad pulled out our lawnmower and mowed a path to the barn, as we walked in their we noticed how dilapidated the barn was. It had some old rusted tools and a broken wooden ladder that led to the 2nd floor. The 2nd floor was completely impossible to get to, the wood up their was mostly all rotted away with only a few boards remaining, if anyone step foot up there they would fall right through. My step dad told me that my brother and I must have seen someone flashing a light up there from somewhere else because it would be impossible for anyone to get up there. I saw the barn light shine almost a dozen times while living there, my brother saw it, my girlfriend saw it and some of my friends also witnessed it one night...it was no flashlight.