Readers Stories Haunting In Middletown. It was about 1973 and my family and I were looking for a quiet place in the country. We had some friends in Middletown, California, just north of St Helena mountain and south of Clear Lake. They told us about a two story four bedroom house that would be up for rent soon, and we went to have a look. It was winter when we drove up to the house and very cold. When we were invited inside we saw a high ceilinged Victorian living room, dining room and kitchen. The upstairs was curtained off, the tenants told us, to keep the heat from the gas heater from escaping upstairs. They told us some of the history of the house, and that it had been a church for about twenty years. We were happy with the house, although the location, right in the center of town, was not what we wanted. After we moved in the children began to complain that they were being crowded out of their beds in the upstairs bedroom. At first we thought it was their imagination, or a bad dream, but then my wife and I also had some strange experiences. One evening We had some friends over and one of them asked me if there was someone else in the house. I told him there wasn't, and he said he'd just seen someone go from the kitchen into the bedroom. The bedroom in question connected to another, then to the entrance hall where the stairs were. Then one of my other friends said he saw a dress shoe and the cuff of a pinstripe pantleg as someone went around the corner and up the stairs. I said, "It's probably a ghost. "Good Night"", and immediately there was a "THUMP THUMP" from upstairs. My wife awoke and came downstairs and told of a dream she'd just had in which she walked into the kitchen where I was working at the stove. But when I turned around, it was my body with an old man's face. He said, " I'm going to take over John's body." Well, we started asking questions around town, and the story emerged that two girls walking by the house when it was vacant, before the tenants that we met moved in, had heard breaking glass inside. They called the Sheriff, who only patrolled the town once a week unless called, and two deputies came out to have a look. There was no sign of damage or broken glass and one deputy went upstairs to check there. The other was in the kitchen when he was hit on the head with a frying pan. He turned a grabbed a well dressed man who looked about sixty, and the man disappeared. The deputies' arms collapsed on nothing but air where a solid body had been a moment before. He emptied his revolver into the walls but hit nothing. The people in town said they thought a banker had lived there many years before and the description fit what a banker of the 1930s or '40s would look like. pin striped pants, spats, and morning coat. Some months later, the people we had met moved in. They had some bad experiences, the woman being thrown bodily down the stairs by the ghost. Her arm was broken in the fall. That was when they closed off the upstairs and just lived downstairs until they moved out. I was experimenting with an Orgone blanket and would leave it draped over the door that led from the upstairs bedroom to the attic. We came to realize that the knocking sounds in the attic would stop when I took down the blanket. Apparently, the energy of the blanket acted as a barrier to the ghost's passage through the door and trapped him there. I tried to communicate with him, asking if we could help free him or if he had anything he wanted to tell us. Not only was this not fruitful, but it seemed to anger him, so I stopped. It was spring and we were cutting wood when I checked the old oak tree that grew by the house. It had a tyre swing that the children were using and I wanted to be sure it was safe. In more than one place, I was able to insert a thin steel rod deep into the center of the tree. We talked to friends, and decided that due to its closeness to the house, if it should fall in a storm it would do terrific damage. We decided to cut it down. With it stowed in the woodshed, we were ready for winter. I had built a woodstove with the help of a welder friend, so we'd be cozier than the winter before. Winter came, and one afternoon when the kids were in school, I had some friends visiting from the bay area. We smelled smoke, and thought it was just the woodstove, but I looked upstairs and it was full of smoke up there. My friends and I got everything we could out of the house and watched as the volunteer fire dept. tried to save it. It burned to the ground, and they said that it was an electrical fire that had started in the attic. Later I heard that ghosts are sometimes associated with oak trees, especially rotten ones. We think the spirit that lived there started the fire.
John
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