Haunting Memories from a Colonial House in Rural Colombia

The following story is a memoir that was shared with me by Gabby and it has remained one of my favorite stories in the show ever since it was published in twenty twenty two. And as we relive this experience, we'll also learn about old and sometimes eerie customs that can still haunt us today. My name is Edwin, and here is Gabby's true scary story. When I was about ten years old, my family and I lived in a colonial house are in my paternal grandmother. My family moved to the country, away from the bc life of the capital city and found refuge and the quiet and beautiful midlands. My stories take place in the late nineties in a small town called Chadala, in the heart of Columbia's rural areas, and most of these experiences took place in one particular house. These house was I would say, about two hundred hundred, two hundred and fifty years old and had seen absolutely everything the outbreak of Cholera, independence war, from Spanish colonization, civil war, and several ownerships throughout its life. The architecture showed the Spanish colonial influence of the eighteen hundreds, i'd say, and it featured a wonderful square courtyard in the middle, lined with papers in all draining systems. Around this courtyard there were open corridors with high ceilings and white clay walls, and I remember they were beautifully decorated with perfumed bogabilia. The floors were unevenly covered in terry quarter tiles, and I clearly remember how fresh they failed on my feet during hot, long days. I love the simplicity of it, the white contrast of the walls against the age look of the roof tiles, and in between crevices sometimes you could hear the gentle murmur of pigeons building nests for their chicks. The kitchen was spaces enough, and the dining table was placed in front of an old wood fired stove that was no longer used. The rooms were fresh and grand, with decorative window frames and all the heavy doors. If you picture the house are square, you'll find the kitchen in the upper right corner, a dark and sometimes moldy visitors room in the up left corner. The entrance was at the bottom left corner, exposing a wide entry corridor with beautiful green and peach tiles, and in the bottom right corner gosh I'm getting lost now. You could access an old, generous storage room, which might have been I don't know, used to smoke food. Maybe The walls were weathered with ash and black coal. My parents' room, mine and my leader brothers were distributed to the sides of these big square There were many glass windows in the house, only ornamental, big wooden window frames that opened directly onto the streets, and to shut them down you had to draw the wooden chatters lock them with a little stick. Across the main door was an ancient brown red double door with a tiny wooden chatter to check who was on the other side when unexpected visits arrived. The wood was so cracked that if you stood close to it, you could actually see people walking outside. The house. I remember had both an eerie and an empty feeling that could yearn for better times, but also a welcoming and playful aura that sort of invited you to explore and wander. It was really strange to feel both attracted and slightly unease in the house at the same time. We moved in, and I don't remember how long it took, but experiencing the manifacets of these houses didn't take that long. Mum has always been slightly more connected to spiritual beings than Dad, and I think I inherited her trades. When things, let's say again, to occur, she often pretended strange sounds that came from I don't know different parts of the house. They were because of creaking ceilings or cats chasing pigeons on the roof, but I think we both knew the house was in a way speaking. One day, Mum was cooking in the kitchen while my brother and I were coloring drawing books on the dining table. It is customary in these towns to leave your front door unlocked in case visitors came by, and they always announced themselves by saying something like buenos dias or when a Saturdays, good morning or good afternoon. And we heard my cousin Javier announcing himself as he walked in the house. But we also have overheard him saying, hi, uncle, how's your day. I walked out of a kitchen and she jokingly said, who are you trying to scare Haveert and he was surprised and said nobody. I just said hello to my uncle, but he just walked past me and didn't say hi. Is he okay, Mum had called chills running through her body. I guarantee you that because that's exactly how I felt. Dad had left the day before for a business trip, and in the house it was on my mum, my little brother, and myself. Haveavier quickly explained that a man had just walked out of a storage room across the courtyard and into the visitors room, and Mum was paralyzed. Haveaviert quickly rushed to the room to make sure a thieve wasn't hiding in there, but as he entered the room, he discovered that there was no one there. Haveavier came out of the room and said, I literally saw a man walking out of the storage room wearing black farming clothes, and he rushed to check the door where that man had come from, and he realized that the door was locked, locked from the outside and no one had touched it. His Haddenly was really unwell and had to sit down to take it all in. Mum was really worried at the time we realized there was something living with us in that house. My cousin was shocked to have seen a ghost in playing daylight. So vividly he recalls seeing my dad, and it mimicked his appearance very very accurately. But he also said that this ghost wasn't particularly welcoming or happy to see him. There. Before that incident with a man wearing those black farming clothes, I had a pretty terrifying experience. On a weekend we stayed at my parents' farm. It wasn't too far from these The farm was right in the middle of the Andes Mountains. It was gorgeous on the highest peak in a small valley. That's what the house was. The weather was beautiful, but very unpredictable, and often my parents dealt with electric storms and really wild windy weather. The house of the farm had to undergo regular repairs for that reason. One night, I was in my room just about to fall asleep. I loved seeing the stars are the moon from my window and always lay the cans open. I think at the stage of my life, fearing monsters or ghosts it wasn't entirely a thing for me just yet until that night. Rain began to patter gently on the roof, and soon it was raining really heavily. I think within twenty minutes lightning was striking nearby. But I was enchanted by the flashing white light through the window. In one of those bright flashes, a figure, big figure of a man, just appeared in front of my window. He appeared to be wearing black clothes, and he just stared right at me instantly. His eyes shone in a kind of a bright white color, and he seemed huge, with unusually broad shoulders. But for some strange reason, I don't know, the danger and almost violence of it all didn't actually register in my head, and I got up, drew the curtains closed, and I went back to sleep. I slept well, I guess, with no dreams or nightmas. But when I woke up, I felt strange, lighter, and when I got out of bed, I felt a rush of absolute horror running down my spine. As I moved my sheets and my blankets, I discovered that they were covered in mud and grass. And when I saw my feet, they were dirty. My hair had twigs and wet patches, and I just knew in that moment I had gone out in my sleep. After the storm, I couldn't remember anything, and I kept trying to find something in my memory that would give me the slightless clue to find out what happened. I was really really worried that that man wanted to take me with him. I was scared of getting in trouble too, and almost didn't tell my mother about it, but she found me hiding in my room trying to clean the sheets desperately with a soapy bucket of water. I told her I thought it had slept walked the previous night in the rain, and I cried, but I didn't tell her about the men I saw. She was really worried, and from then on she locked the doors at night and hid the keys to stop me from going out. It didn't happen again. So back to that story. When my cousin saw that man wearing those black clothes, I decided to tell my mum about the man I saw at the farm, and she was desperate to reach out to someone. There was actually a white witch in town and also a local spiritual group, and they offered to help us to understand if there was a spirit or a didn't and I guess they were trying to get it out of the house, but before they could try to get rid of him, he came back. This time it happened in this colonial house. So I described earlier. The pattern was repeating itself, and it was again another rainy night. There were no glass windows, so the men couldn't actually watch me from the outside. My bed was right next to the door, and the door itself, oh gosh, it was so old. The lock had somehow rusted away, so I used one of those heavy metal blocks to hold the door shut. It was really udimental. The storm and lightning started, and surprisingly I was just falling asleep amongst the noise and gradually closed my eyes. I felt heavy and warm under my colors, but suddenly I started to feel a gentle breeze and tiny raindrops splashes falling on my forehead. And when I opened my eyes, ah, that man was right there, almost above me. I could see his arms stretched out holding the door half open, and his head was sort of looking down at me. His eyes shone again in the darkness, just like the last time, and I was just perplexed. Astonishingly, I did not feel anything. I felt numb, I had no fear. I remember getting slightly annoyed actually, and being disrupted from my sleeve, and I was kind of angry at the time. I reached the door close to shut angrily and oh, I just kind of just shoved that metal blog where it was just to hold the door shut. I went back to sleep, and I was just like, goddamn it, what was that? But I just fell asleep straight away. The next morning, when I woke up, I remember the whole thing, and that's when my fear really crept up. I checked my feet quickly and my covers again, but this time it looked like a stayed in bed because they were perfectly clean. But I screamed, and I I told mom about it. I get goosebumps every time I go back to these stories. She held me in her arms and she told me that she was going to look into it, and she understood that I was scared, and she assured me that things were going to get better. They didn't. That evening, a group of really friendly people came home. I think it would have been that spiritual group I mentioned before, and Mum told me they were going to try and talk to their spirit. It wasn't good for Key for young kids to be around spiritual sessions. And when I left to visit a friend next door, they were getting ready, sitting in a circle, light lit up with candles. It was quite interesting. Sort of like what you see in the movies. But it was such a surreal experience as well, to be witnessing that world and gradually losing that sort of childhood innocence. Afterwards, when I came back, Mum told me the spirit was going to stay away from us, but he wasn't going anywhere. They couldn't get rid of him. His connection to the house was so strong they could only keep him obey from me, from us, she said, she couldn't explain it. Perhaps she was just trying to protect me from some gruesome story to give me a sense of calm. Later, oh gosh, we discovered why the house also felled joyful and friendly. My brother was growing up and starting to play with soccer bowls and larger sort of plastic toys. M was encouraging my brother to leave his toys in a tiny toy room we called it, and he was supposed to leave everything there after he played them, just to keep being sturdy and organized. A few occasions, though, when she got up to get us ready for school, she began to find toys left in unexpected places. There were some left in the kitchen, other times there were near the entrance or amongst the pop plants in the courtyard. She asked us a few times if we had waken up and played at night, but my brother and I confirmed we didn't, and we usually slept really well throughout the night. He was too little still and often slept through about the night without making any noise waking up or even going to the loof, so it was really unusual for toys to be found everywhere. As time went by at night or even at dusk, you could hear my brother's toys being played with randomly, usually in dark corners of the house where the light from lambs or house light boards couldn't reach. His sucker ball will just bound on its own, and sometimes if it was quiet enough, you could hear rushed a little feet tapping away on the corridors to record a tile. It was a freaky The egg usually felt heavy when it happened, and you couldn't help but feel as if someone was trapped in time. He was scary and sad at the same time. Is the time arrived and my maternal grandmother visited us from the city. Easter in Colombia is particularly religious, and a whole week is dedicated to prayer gratitude to God and acknowledgment of Jesus' sacrifices and love. It's called the Semana Santa or hollywek. Mum was not particularly religious about it, but when grandmother visitors, we made the effort to please her by going to church, fasting or land and eating fish on me. Yeah, there's a lot to it in Semana Santa. Mum was hopeful that Samana Santa was going to give the house a bit of peace and quiet, but he was actually the opposite. My grandmother decided to coke a big feast for us, and she sent Mom to the local bakery to get a nice dessert. We my brother and I behaved well that day, so we were allowed to eat something sweet before dinner, and so we decided to go with her. We all left and took a bit longer than expected. We ran into a neighbor her mom talked for talked to for ages, and when we went back, we actually found Grandma sitting by the front door looking really worried. Mom asked what happened and Grandma said the kids. So she then went on to tell my mom that after we had left, she began hearing kids run around the courtyard and laughing loudly. She heard my brother's soccer ball bouncing hard against the floor, and she even heard his big plastic drug being pushed around. He used to feel it with pebbles and rocks, and she could hear the bouncing pelts on its stray while the plastic wheels moved around the courtyard. She felt happy because she thought he was duds, and then suddenly she realized it was really dark outside him and she thought my brother and I decided to stay in the house and play while mum went out. So she yelled from the kitchen kids turned the light on. He might creep in the yard, but the kids did not listen, so she repeated what she said, and she was walking towards the courtyard to turn the light on for us, only to find the bourdyard dark and empty, while giggling voices still filled the air. She quickly turned the light on, and when she did, the voices disappeared, echoing in the distance while the toys gradually stopped moving. The truck slowly stopped in front of her, and she saw that soccer ball lightly bouncing until it went to a stop. She fell shocked, but it was really sad that such spirits were trapped in the house. She said a prayer, but started to gradually feel the horror of it, so she decided to wait for us by the door facing people walk by. Yeah, dinner was a little sober after that, I would say. A couple of months later, other things began to happen. So modern computers and other systems were being brought to town, and while we lived in a beautiful and sometimes relaxing location, we often felt isolated from technology. There was no internet in the house or even a landline. So my mom, wanting to learn more about technology, she enrolled herself in a night course at the local library, and sometimes I got to come with her and played games in other computers. One night, my mom put my little brother to sleep. He was still little and like I said, slept literally like a baby all throughout the night. She put him to bed, and after he was sleep we went together to the library for her class. When we were on our way home, my mom's friend was walking by and was headed towards the main park. He looked confused when he and he came to us, He said, you two are so cheeky. I could hear you behind the door. You know. Mom was like what. She was so confused, and she said, what do you mean? He then looked even more. He looked more confused and hesitantly said, well, I just I just came back to came by to visit, and when I knocked on the door, you came all the way to the door. He was pointing a Mum, But you just stayed quiet behind it, almost like looking at me through the cracks. Mom's face dropped and she said, I I'm so sorry, but we were not home. We just got here. So we rushed back to the house, and after quickly checking to see if my brother was okay and confirming he was still soundly asleep, Mum invited her friendly in for a cabin. He then explained in detail what happened. When he knocked on the door. He could hear someone coming towards the entrance, dragging their feet on the tiles, almost like dragging old slippers that sound, and he heard someone getting closer and closer to the door, but instead of being greeted by someone, he just overheard a faint female voice mumbling prayers. He said, these female voys stayed for a couple of seconds in front of the door, and he could feel her watching him through the cracks. She then slowly retreated back to where she came from, dragging her feet like an old lady that sound just going away. The mum usually asked people what they felt when they encountered things at our house, and he said he didn't feel particularly threatened, but rather watched. And she said, well, at least she can look after the house while we're out and about. I think jokes became my way of coping with their paranormal activity in this house. Her friend was quite intrigued, actually, and he dragged some old residents in town to inquire about the house and to see if they knew who owned it in the past, just to make sense of who these old lady was. He found that an old couple had died in the house when the collar of virus broke in town, and since their passing stories were told around town amongst all people, that our house was haunted, the people didn't tell us about it. Our second Easter was just around the corner, and Mum was worried about how the spirit's living in the house would behave Dad was for most of my childhood away for work, and we dealt with the house and the spirits pretty much all by ourselves. Things unfortunately never improved for us. On another occasion, Mum was doing some grocery shopping and she was taking longer than usual since I'd became a very active hour around the house and the hours that followed, I'd like to have the TV on, you know, having that chatter on the background. He'd always fill the house and it was loud enough to musk away any strange sound. My brother was starting to pick up on the weird vibes of the house and he also preferred the lights and the TV on. We felt comforted in each other's presence, but chose not to talk about the house. I like being with him, and I was actually afraid he'd see something and get really scared. It was around seven pm and we were playing near Mum's room, which was closest to the entrance, and suddenly every light in the house was turned off and it all went dead quiet. Oh gosh. I checked quickly if it was our house or the entire street. The street lights went off to which we could usually see or at least their glow from the courtyard, and I was relieved at least to know that it was a power outage, but the darkness immediately I opened the door for things to get really weird. It didn't take long for noises to appear. I tried to grab a light from the kitchen. I was scared. I had to go across the courtyard in the darknit Before I reached the entrance of the kitchen, I could hear the chairs of our dining table being dragged across the floor, and it was violently. I just froze. I also began to hear the metal empty sounds of pots and leads being moved. I started to wolf back to my brother, and things got louder and louder. I remember just panicking. My brother started crying, so I grabbed his hand and rushed to the door. I sat him on the footpath outside his outside with his favorite toy. We all just sat in that food bath goodness me and we waited outside and watched people lighting up candles by the doors. The sounds of cars and bicycles passing by was just so reassuring. It was the only normal thing. I left the door open because I didn't want to lock myself out, but the eerie thing was that those sounds, those metal sounds, continue to come from the kitchen, and it was just as if someone was just frantically cooking in the darkness. Mum arrived and she knew something had happened for us to see it outside, and minutes later the lights came back and the noises simply disappeared. So around the Easter time things got more physical. The week before our second Easter, my mom had a friend staying over. She was part of that spiritual group I told you at the beginning, and she was interested in connecting with the spirits, so it was like a perfect work feel for her. In our home, Mum had decided to lock the visitors room, that moldy one where the man with the all black clothes disappeared into, and so she decided to offer her friend her own bedroom while Mom slept in my with me. The next morning, Mum's friend was unusually quiet, and she shared over breakfast that in the middle of the night, someone had actually come into the room. She felt as she was living someone's stream, but going in and out of reality. She said. The person got in the room and ready themselves to go to bed, hearing the sounds of clothes being removed and folded away. She knew it was a mom because she felt a heavy, almost male presence. She felt how the person gently lied on the other side of the bed with her. It was the weight of an adult, and the presence was definitely a male one. And then she could move. She froze. Fear actually paralyzed her, and she just stayed there, wide away, without making any move or noise. She felt movement on the mattress, and then sometime later she felt the presence get up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the door opening on its home and shut it again. She thought the male presence in the house was in a way warning her and showing that it was his house, his room. He's dead. So she never stayed at our place ever again. The next and final story is the most vivid one in my memory because I remember clearly my mother's fear through her trembling hands where she clenched mine with force. This is exactly at easter, bloody easters. I'm so sorry, but it was just so intense, and Mom decided to take up praying. She heard a neighbor saying that when she prayed at home, the spirits would calm down, so decided to try that. Now I understand her. The situation at home was becoming unbearable, quite literally. Mum's room and mine were connected by a door, and she got that door removed so both rooms would just be intenally connected all the time. My brother sat it slipping in my bed while I slept with Mum in hers. My room had that remember that dodgy wooden, creaky door that wouldn't close well if she had it changed by then, and she got a closing system installed just after that incident with the staring man. Her bedroom door led to the main corridor near the entrance. It was a beautiful great wooden door double door that opened in both directions. To lock these doors, there was a little silver latch to connect both doors together, and even when it was locked, you could gently push or pull the doors without the latch coming off. It had its own bittle shudder that you could open sometimes to display or air the room without having to open the doors entirely, and during hot nights you could just leave the shadow open to let the fresh airy. But that particular night Mum closed all doors and all shatters before bed, and we were getting you ready to sleep. As we hopped in bed, Mum said we were going to say a prayer, and I could feel she was not herself. She was really, really nervous. She was making me so nervous. I think she must have seen something in the kitchen or in the courtyard, so she brought that fear in the room. It felt so heavy. It was really quiet, and Mum was whispering gentle prayers. And then the room fell oddly still, and there weren't sounds coming from the street. It was just so quiet. Something didn't feel right at all. As she prayed, we started hearing giggles and childish voices outside the room in the corridor. They were loud and clear like never before. Those children playing with my brother's toys they were there now. They were just making noise and laughing and chanting. I turned anxiously to Mom, who then grabbed my hands and asked me to continue praying, and I did, But somehow the voices were getting louder and louder. We heard them singing songs and playing with their hands like my brother and I often did, and tan and just kept growing, And then we began to hear the old lady praying too, and you could hear her bloody slippers as well. It was just too much loud outside, but Mum kept on and it wor wasn't working. I just wanted her to stop. And suddenly when we heard when we thought everything was outside, we heard adult heavy steps running from the courtyard towards the corridor and into a door, and a loud, creaking male voice screamed, stop praying, stop praying. It was stup Man again. He then violently kicked the doors with such force that they moved forwards him backwards, and the only thing keeping them together was that small silver latch. God bless that piece of silver. Things. The voices of those children playing outside just stay simply scuttered around and became really faint screams, disappearing in the halls. It was the most terrifying experience of my entire life. Every other thing had come together to lure outside the door attracted to what prayers? Who knows. My only thought was just thank God for the strength of that little door latch. We would have seen these angry men staring and heaving at us. Mum eventually stopped rank and he gradually walked away towards the courtyard and potentially into the locked visitors room, a moldy, scary group. I had a nightmas about it. Sometimes I could feel Mom's absolute horror. Quietly, she hugged me and told me everything was going to be fine. She turned the light on to check on my brother, but surprisingly the noise didn't reach him, or perhaps he never heard it. Mum called a friend to come and stay with us, and they both stayed up all night just talking. After that awful incident, Mum went on to find out what happened in our house and if children had lived there, and she felt really saddened by the idea of children's spirits trapped in the house with such violent and negative energy like that means. So she found that a while ago, a while back, sorry, two children lived in that same house, a long time ago, and sadly they have both died. In the house, there used to be a well in the middle of the courtyard, and one terrible day they both fell in and drowned. After that, the well was sealed forever. These is according to my grandmother's story. When Mum found out, she checked the round garden bed in the middle of a courtyard and so exactly where the well had been. It's interesting because she tried to grow veggies and plants in it, but nothing really grew, and that could perhaps explain why anything she tried to grow in it just never succeeded. It was just a sad patch of wheats and dirt. She asked the friends in the spiritual group to come back and help them so their playful spirits would move on stop leaving trapped in that monotonous reality. Soon after that, we just left the house for good, Thank God for that. Mum told that that she was sick of a house and couldn't live there another day, so we're packed up and left. Some people said the house may have had a spell, a negative force or aguaca. Aguaca is often described as a burial of gold or precious jewels protected by the spirits of the dead. It's an interesting one. It's it's guaca where sort of a native indigenous practice in the area, and I presume it was kept for quite some time to still be practiced. Aguaca is identified by an increased paranormal activity around a particular area, and often people rating terms look for them to find their treasures, but they not only found jewels and gold, but also the negative energy and the curses attached to them. There are stories about people going crazy and sadly ending their lives to escape the horrors of being haunted by these attached negative spirits. Another theory was that inside the house some of the walls may have been used as burials. It's like sandwich people pretty much inside a war. So in most regional towns of Columbia, there is a construction technique for walls that involved mixing mud, cattle manure, and clay stuck to layers of dry sugar cane, and these process was repeated, layering the mix and dry cane until the wall was about thirty or forty centimeters in thickness. It was and it's still amazing for insulation to keep places cool in the summer and warm in winter, but people began to bury within their walls bones, hairlooms, and other remains of their loved ones. They hid in their walls protective spells with the intention to keep thieves and ill intentioned people away. This way, the spirits of the day would then protect the house from anyone, causing fear and sometimes physical harm to those strange to the house or the owners. Later, after my paternal grandmother passed away, the house was abandoned. The family decided to sell the property and it was sold to a construction company wishing to build a hotel. Perhaps in that I can't remember, but what we know is that the project was never completed. Twenty years later, I returned to that down with my husband and we went to see what remained of that all property, but unfortunately it was an abandoned construction site. My auntie, she moved there some years after my grandmother passed to remember her mother, and she told us that during construction the work is found both aguaca with old gold coins buried in the ground beneath the kitchen, and also human remains in burials on some of the wars. So the theories were correct, and these finally explained two years of misery and fear. It was just like solving the final piece of a puzzle. So apparently the gold coins were so valuable that it was estimated to be around five million American dollars. Suspiciously, though, after the treasure was found, the construction was completely halted and it was said that the company had gone bankrupt. I don't know who knows what happened to those people I would have hated to inherit such I don't know, haunted piece of gold, coins and things. This was really scary and unknown, and it gave me a different outlook on life in the afterlife. I think these experiences opened a door to an intricate sort of energy connection strong enough to give you joy sometimes make you completely paralyzed with horror. This story was originally published in twenty twenty two, and it has since been remastered for clarity. If you have a story that you want to share, visit tru scarystory dot com and click on the button that says I have a story. Ad Free versions of the show are available to our supporters who joined Scary Plus with links to everything in the description of this episode. Also in the description, you'll find links to how to get in touch with us and join our community. If you're following the show, I will talk to you next week. Thank you very much listening. Keep it scary everyone too soon.