The Spooky Door - pt 6 of personal paranormal experiences

When it comes to my paranormal experiences, doors tend to play a role. Here’s another one involving - you guessed it - a door.

The Spooky Door

by Dana Davis

It was just before Halloween and my parents had taken my brother, sister and me to visit a family we'd been friends with for several years. They had just bought some land—I believe my dad said it was forty acres—in a rural area and moved an older home onto the property. Their oldest daughter was my age and their son somewhere between my younger brother and sister so we looked forward to this visit.

It had grown dark and Dad was outside with my friend's father, unbeknownst to us kids. We heard rapping at one of the windows and a spooky, ghostly sound. Woooooooo. You know, the eerie kind of sounds ghosts make. Like they have nothing better to do than stand outside windows and moan. You'd think that bright light they're supposed to go into would be a distraction. Anyway, since I was a wise old teenager of fifteen or so at the time, I caught on pretty quick that my dad was the culprit. But the younger kids began screaming and running through the house to find the moms.

Once the women realized what was going on, they promptly chastised the husbands for frightening the children. The men just laughed, of course. We were given snacks and told to stay in another room, with me and my friend in charge of the younger kids.

Whenever my parents had company or were with their adult friends, my mom had a saying that went something like this—“If somebody's not bleeding or passed out, don't bother me.”

Isolation in a separate room away from the adults prompted a flurry of ghost stories and reminiscences of strange incidents from all of us, including bogus tales of a woman who’d died upstairs and walked around her nightgown. White, of course. In case you didn’t know, lady ghosts love to wear white. Okay, I have no idea if that’s true. But I do know that the upstairs had been added after the house was moved to this property so there couldn’t be a lady in white, but that didn’t deter us from telling the story. We got spooked at every sound then would laugh hysterically afterwards. Kind of like when we took my younger sister on her first snipe hunt. But that's another story.

Once it grew late, about midnight, we were told to get ready for bed. The other kids took off and my little sister and I were the only ones in the room. I was helping her pick up books or something. After a couple of minutes, I headed for the door. Someone had left it open about a hand's width and when I reached for the knob, the door closed.

I looked back at my sister and, with a racing heart, said, “Did you see that?”

She nodded, eyes wide.

I turned back, and reached for the knob again. This time, the door opened and the knob pushed right against my palm. No one was on the other side. Now, when things like this happened, I tend to grow curious and try to recreate it or explain it. That didn’t stop the goose pimples from crawling up my spine, though. I carefully let go of the knob and turned to my sister, who had backed herself against the far wall, eyes as wide as saucers and face as white as the paint behind her. She reminded me of a deer caught in headlights, which they had plenty of in this rural area.

I tried not to spook her but I was darn curious by this time. “I'm going to try again.”

She shook her head, no, and I thought she might start to cry. She did that a lot at that age.

“It's all right,” I said. I turned back and reached for the door and, low and behold, it closed again. At this point, my sister was ready to do that cartoon running in place where the feet are mere blurs and then take off like a pistol. So, I smiled and said, "Probably the wind." Though I didn't believe a word of that since no windows or doors were open to the outside. It was chilly outside. “I'll do it one more time.”

I didn't wait for a response from her and turned back to the door. When I reached out, it remained exactly where it was. No movement whatsoever. Absolutely nothing. I quickly opened it to check if someone was on the other side but everyone was at the other end of the house, getting ready for bed. With adrenaline pumping in my ears from both fright and the exhilarated thought that there just might be a ghost in the house, I motioned my sister out. She ran straight to my mother and proceeded to tell her everything.

Of course, the adults were skeptical, even when I corroborated my sister's story. Nothing unusual happened the remainder of our stay, and we left the following day for our own house in the burbs. We talked about that incident on the drive home, which freaked out my younger brother a bit. But then he was the one who stood on a chair if he saw a spider. I don’t think he still does that.

We lost contact with that family a few years later, but to this day, whenever I ask my sister if she remembers that spooky door, she tells me that she does. Then we share a knowing smile that it just might have been a ghost after all.