It Came Up the Basement Stairs (And Other Hauntings)

And then I hear. Someone running up the stairs like absolutely booking it. Some of the things our storyteller today has experienced over the years still haunt him. They aren't just memories. These are the true paranormal stories that have followed him across homes in time. My name is Edwin, and here is Michael's true scary story. I grew up in Michigan. I was in junior high. My uncle had just passed away at that point, and it was a pretty hard time for the whole family, and my aunt wanted to sell her house. This house was an old house. I mean this thing was built in the eighteen hundreds in like an older part of town where there were a lot of the historical buildings that were the more upper class houses in the area. And it was this old red brick house. It always had this weird vibe, but I never saw anything in there until after my uncle passed away. He would always say that he would hear children running in the house, laughing. My cousin would be not there. The neighbor kids would all be at school. Literally, there would be no reason for kids to be there. He would hear children playing. I never felt anything until me and my grandfather. This is during the summer. We were asked to refurbish the house. We were giving it new coat of paint on the outside, and we were just cleaning things up on the inside. The first day we set out to do the work, it was cleaning some random stuff. From the inside of the house that was still left over there. It was this really gray, overcast day. It was very dark. It wasn't rainy, but it looked like it was gonna rain, just very heavy, clouded day. My grandpa was doing something in the car, and I can't remember why. He wasn't gonna go in, but he asked me. To just run upstairs real quick and go grab my cousin's toy box. It was in his room upstairs. So you had to go in the house through the main hallway, through the living room, and there was a stair case at the far end of the living room that would take you upstairs, and then you had to go across another little area into his room. On like the other side of the house. I mean, you were pretty much doing a. Big you going up the stairs back towards the entrance of the house. It was not like a quick trip I was. I was going to be there for a second, calling it out because I think it was still full of stuff. I unlocked the door, and immediately I do not feel good. I do not feel safe. Part of that was probably just media and creeped out because A I'd heard the stories, and B it was a really gray, dark kind of day, so the house with no lights on did not look very inviting. I start going in the house, taking one step at a time. I'm nervous, but I'm fine. And I get through the living room and I get to the staircase and at the bottom of the stairs, my blood just runs cold. I hear people talking. It's very quiet. It's whispering. Two people like talking back and forth upstairs. And it wasn't the pipes. It wasn't something that got left on. I can tell you that right now. It was none of that. There were people having a conversation upstairs. And at that point I turned around, I booked it out, and I went to my grandfather and I'm like, hey, I'm not gonna explain this right now, but I am not going to be doing this by myself. I will go in there with you. I will help you do it. We could do it together. I can't do it by myself. You know, he was understanding. I mean, he was big into the paranormal, just like me. He kind of like understood why I was freaked out. I don't know if he knew that I'd actually heard stuff, but he went in there with We didn't hear anything. We both went in there, we got the toy box, came down, and that was that for the day. I do like being a little scared, but when something really gets under my skin, it makes me run. I remember the next day we came back and it was bright and sunny, so my brain was maybe playing tricks on me. Yesterday, I'm fine, I'll be fine. Today. I knew I was gonna have to go in the house again because my grandfather was gonna get up on the ladder to paint some of the upper sections of the windowsills and the decorative kind of window shutters on the outside of the house. He wanted to see if I could open one of the windows out the back of the house so that I. Could just pass him the paint through the window. He didn't want to be going up and down the ladder for obvious reasons, so I was like, yeah, I can see if I can get it open. It's the other direction from where my cousin's room would have been, so it was in the back of the house. I would have to, you know, go upstairs again. You know what, I'm gonna turn all the lights on behind me this time. And I made a very conscious effort that I was going to turn on all of the lights as I went. I started going through the house and I would flick on a light switch, keep going, flick on a light switch, keep going. Bottom of the stairs. I made sure I flipped on that light switch because that was the freakiest part for me, is going up those stairs. There were these really narrow stairs. It was not like a super tight fit like I could comfortably go up there, but there was no way anybody else was going up there with me. You could not pass each other on the staircase. It was a straight shot up to the upstairs and it was narrow. I started going up the. Stairs, no voices, Everything's fine, we are gonna be good. But I'm still going a little fast because I'm getting a little freaked. I get to this. Little kind of room off the back of the house. It was kind of like a closet, but they kind of used it for storage. I get there and I feel very at peace and very calm, and I don't know why. Some of my uncle's stuff was there, and I don't know if that just made me kind of feel okay. I try to open the window. The window does not open, like it was sealed shut a very, very long time ago. And I turned around. I just kind of started going back downstairs, and I'm feeling comfortable at this point because I'm like, okay, I got up here, I'm safe, nothing is going wrong. And then I get to the top of the. Stairs again and I am stop dead in my tracks because the light in the stairwell is off. The other lights are still on, but the light that I pointedly made sure to turn on. Is off. That just blew all sense of comfort away, you know. To try to rationalize this, maybe something happened, maybe the breaker got tripped, maybe the light just went out, I don't know. I go down to the bottom of the stairs. I at that point just freak out. The light switch is down. It is flipped down completely. Somebody had to have come into the house and flips that light switch down. And my grandfather was on a ladder outside the house, the entire time, nobody went in the house. Nobody was in the house, but that light switch was flipped down. I went out, and I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna stay outside the house all of today. I'm gonna pass the paint up. We're not going back in the creepy old house again. And I don't think I did. It wouldn't be too many years later before the next thing happened in. My old house. I don't think it was haunted, but something was definitely up with the basement, and I don't think there was like an entity. It was just a little freaky. And I don't know if it was because we had well water and there was like a well room. Water can create some paranormal happenings if if there's a running body of water. I did habitually go faster up the stares from the basement whenever I was hanging out down there. That's important to point out out because of what would later happen. When I was a kid, my great grandmother would come visit. She lived in Georgia for most of my childhood. I was probably like seven. We would just sit on the front porch at my grandparents house because she would come to stay with my grandparents. We would read the newspaper and she would do crossword puzzles. But I would always want to look at the comics. I always love the funny pages. That was my big thing for us to fit and look at the comics in the newspaper. Sometimes we would go across the street. It's this little convenience store, and you know, I would get a treat or something. But I would always try to make her run across the street. You're told you're not supposed to run across the street, but you do you want to, I think sometimes specifically because you're told you're not supposed to run across the street. So I would always try to convince her to like, come on, come on, Grandma, you gotta you gotta run, Come on, you gotta run. You gotta go faster because the cars are coming. She would always say that she can't, as you know, a cute little kid. I always thought, oh, that means she doesn't know how. So I always thought, like, oh, I gotta teach grandma how to run. In her later years, when I was like I must have been in early high school. She actually ended up moving to Michigan and staying in the same town as us, Me and my dad would actually go visit her a lot. Her apartment was was near the school district, so we would go visit with her. We always like to spending time with her. She ended up passing away, and it wasn't long after that that some of my family members started experiencing some things. I remember my grandparents and my parents saying that they would wake up in the morning and they would start smelling coffee before coffee had been made by anybody in the house. There shouldn't have been a coffee smell in the house, and yet there was. And that was very much my great grandma's thing. Is she would get up super early in the morning and brew herself a pot of coffee. That was our suspicion that she was still around. She was making herself known, she was looking after us. You know, we all kind of just like played with that thought for a while. You know, you'd wake up and be like, oh, hi, Grandma, you know you're here. We wanted to acknowledge that she was likely still around. Then I had my own experience with it. It kind of freaked me out, honestly, because I thought it was something very very different than what it was. I felt pretty safe in my house. You know, the basement might have freaked me out just a little bit, but I didn't think anything was actively haunting my house. I didn't feel like there was anything gonna, you know, jump out of me or whatever. I'm up late one night. I mean this had to have been like three in the morning. I was thirsty before I was going to go to bed. I was getting ready to just stop for the night, and I went out to the kitchen to grab myself a glass of water. The kitchen is where the door of the basement is. The door to the basement was right next to the door to the garage. Both of those doors were on the far end of the kitchen. To get to the kitchen, I had to go past my parents' room, past my fifty's room, through the living room, through the room, and then into the kitchen. It wasn't like a very big house, but there were enough places to get through that. It was interesting. I go into the kitchen, I get my water, and then I hear someone. Running up the stairs like absolutely booking it. Do do Do Do Do Do Do doo, heavy heavy running footsteps coming up the stairs at me. I slam my glass down on my counter, and I book it out of the kitchen. You know, I booked past my sister's room, past my parents' room. I go into my room, I slam the door. I lay myself flat on the ground behind my door, and I'm looking under the crack of the door, just thinking. Is somebody in my house? Did somebody get in to the basement, because I know there's like a little window that goes from the outside of the house and the basement. They could have gotten in there, and I'm freaking out. I just lay there for a while looking under the door, seeing if anybody's like gonna come walk into the house. Nobody ever does the basement door died. I didn't even hear it open, And I mean it could have opened when I was running, but I didn't hear that. I just heard somebody running up the stairs, and that'd be weird if they didn't open the door, but I didn't hear it. Nothing happened after that. Nobody came walking through the house and I opened my door. I pulled my head out. I just kind of like looked around for a while and. Nothing. I did. Eventually just fall asleep and you know, everything was fine. Nobody had broken into the house. I told my mom about this the next day. I told her the story. I walked her all the way through it, and she looks at me and says, I. Think that was Grandma. I heard you go to your room, like I heard you run down the hall and I woke up, you know, hearing you run down the hall. And at that moment when I was awake, I looked over to the dresser and. For a bit of backstory. My dad had this toy that he liked as a kid and would play with. It belonged to my grandma. It was a little ferris wheel type music box, but it was broken. But you know, the ferris wheel would still turn, but the music box just it wouldn't work. After she passed, he kept that toy, you know, to remember her by. My mom said, after I had run to the room, she heard the music start up and the ferris wheel started to turn just a little bit. I trust my mom, she would not make this up. That had to have been my great grandmother. I think she was there to tell me, hey, look I can run. You know, my body is not wearing out anymore. It was freaky for me in the moment, but like, I take some comfort in knowing that, you know, it was it was probably her. I honestly think she realized she scared me, and then that's why she did the thing with the little ferris wheel toy in my parents' room. I think she wanted to just be like, oops. Sorry. The next thing that happened to me happened to me and my dad. We were in the northern area of the Lower Peninsula in Michigan. As you go from the middle of the Lower Peninsula, it's a lot of farmland. The more north you go, it's a lot more wooded. There are a lot more forests. It was one weekend in the summer, so you know, it was really nice out. But we were going to a family reunion, so you know, we do that for the day, and my mom and my sister were in the backseat. We're coming home from that, and it's later at night. You know, it's dark out. It's probably like getting towards eleven o'clock when we finally decide to head out, so it was gonna be late by the time we got home. The place where we had gone, it was kind of in the middle of nowhere. I mean there were literally like a couple of three shop towns on the way there. It was on this final stretch as we were passing through those that this stuff happened. I think it had to have been around Elmira, because I remember we were like laughing at the name Elmira. I remember it was a forested road that we were driving down, and my sister and my mom were fast asleep. They were not seeing or hearing anything that would have happened. But me and my dad were talking in the front seat. Then this is how I know me and my dad saw the same thing, and neither one of us is just misremembering. We passed this big log on the side of the street. It was a big, old, hollowed out log, just sitting by the side of the street. We both kind of like thought that was weird, like individually to ourselves. I don't know why we noticed it, but it was like that big log, and that we passed under this intersection where there was just like an orange light hanging overhead. It was those two things in like quick succession. And then at one point, as I'm looking out the window, this old woman just comes out of the woods and she is head to toe in like these are not like normal modern clothes. I mean these are like period clothes. They're a little like ruffled. It was just real quick. She just comes out of the woods and she's not even looking at the car. She's like looking through the car, and she's just arms kind of out just a little bit, not like fully outstretched. She comes out of the woods towards the car and not like in front of it. Just as we passed towards the car, me and my dad, we just like kind of we look in the rear view. There's nobody there, but we both clearly saw it because we both looked at each other. We didn't talk about it in the moment, but we looked at each other and just kind of like nodded, like we're both freaked out. We're not gonna talk about it, but we are both very freaked right now. That didn't come up again for literally years until one day, like something sparked it up in my memory and I was like, wait a minute, I gotta see if Dad remembers that, because if he doesn't remember it, I'm gonna chalk it up to that being a dream. If he does remember it, then I know I have another legitimate paranormal story on my hands. I brought it up to my dad, like, hey, do you remember when we saw that creepy old lady come out of the woods. He kind of looks at me like, yeah, I remember that. My mom and my sister overhear this and they're like, excuse me, what. So they are just absolutely confused about what this was. We tell them like, yeah, you were in the car, you were in the backseat, you were fast asleep, and me and dad saw a ghost. Michigan can be a creepy place as it is. I've seen videos of like road ghosts before, but like, I didn't think I would ever see something like that. I started looking up is there any kind of ghost stories about, like anything in the area, and I have not been able to find anything about that. I mean, I sincerely hope that it was like a ghost and not some weird period dressed person who needed help on the road. But the fact that we turned around and she was nowhere to be seen, I mean, that's the freakiest part to me. I have no idea what that could have been, but I'm thinking road ghost. I'm just thinking, like it might be somebody who just haunts the area or that specific street for some reason or another. This is when I was in college, me and my spouse, we were dating at the time. We went to college seven hours apart. Every month, I would make a trip down because they went to college in southern Ohio, so I would make a trip to southern Ohio from mid Michigan. I did that, you know, one weekend every month, but I always always always made the point to do it near Halloween, because like, Halloween is our favorite day of the year. We got married the weekend after Halloween. It is one of our absolute favorite times. Their college would throw this massive, massive Halloween party, and they were like right outside of the Appalachian Mountains, so they were like all about the whole creepy culture and the creepy stuff that happens around there. But especially with this campus, because this is Ohio University, which is famously one of the like more haunted campuses kind of in the Midwest. There's an old asylum on the college grounds. It's called the Ridges. It's now university buildings, but they've repurposed some of them and others they've kind of just left to sit. But there are multiple cemeteries on site. The creepiest part of all this is that, as far as I know, I know efforts are probably still ongoing, but they don't know who is all buried at some of those cemeteries because some of the patients there would only have like a number to identify them on their grave. That's freaking on its own. But one year and they still blame me for this. I went down to visit them and we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do, and I'm like, let's go for a walk. I had been basically badgering them that I really really wanted to go to the Ridges. I wanted to take a walk around the Ridges because I'd been there before, just for a little bit and nothing freaky kind of happened. It just admired some of the architecture because it's a really cool looking place. It's definitely different when you go there at night, which is what ended up happening, because we decided to walk from their dorm to the Ridges, and it's a little bit of a waves of a walk off one part of the campus to the part that has the ridges. The way the Ridges is set up is that it's all kind of on top of this hill. I mean, this is all a fair hilly area anyway, but there's this big hill and everything kind of just sits up top of that. So there's this road that it kind of curves up to the top of it, and you would walk along that road and that's how you kind of get up or drive up. Since we didn't drive there, we just walked up that road and got there, and it was it was getting dark when we got there. While we were walking around, it got dark dark, and thankfully they had lamps up so you could still walk around in the area, but it was getting eerie out. There are vultures that would like make their nest on top of the buildings, so you just have these creepy birds hanging over you the entire time. It's just a creepy, creepy place. It completely changes overnight. So we were walking around up there, it's it's dark out. There are a number of bills things that are all closed off because there's black mold or there's asbestos in them and they just haven't been renovated. And you know, there's all the buildings that the university obviously doesn't use. I distinctly remember we were walking and we passed one of those buildings and we just both kind of look at it and we're like, okay, I don't feel good about that window. There's something looking at us from that window. And this building is boarded up, nailed up. Somebody could have been in there, but I don't think so. I just got this very eerie feeling from this one specific building. And it was this little brick building. It looked like an old house, so it might have been like a I don't know. It looked nicer than what a groundskeeper's house would be, probably an administration. We keep walking and we kind of lose a little bit of track of where we are. We're walking around and my partner is like, huh, I think we should go this way. And as I turn to my right, I see a cemetery just stretching out before me, a bunch of graves. It's those little numbered graves, the creepy graves, and it is it is nighttime out. I'm like, okay, honey, yeah, we're going that way. Don't turn the other way. Don't look that way. You're not gonna like what's that way? So we turn, we go, and we're we're kind of ushering ourselves out At that point, we both individually, we don't talk about this until afterwards. We individually start feeling a lot of pressure, like there is somebody pushing us out of there, like you need to leave right now or bad things will happen to you type of pressure. And it's like people watching us, and it's multiple sets of eyes and they are just bearing down on us, and we both feel very uncomfortable. We get to the slope, We get to the exit slope to get back to campus. As we're heading down. What the slope is is that it was it was a road that sloped down. It would kind of curve to the left and then curve back to the right out to the main road. The slope it. Was all clear of trees and there were a line of trees up on the top of it, but there was a little break in the trees where there was just nothing. It was just a clear spot. I think they were planning some new stuff in there, but it was a clear spot between the trees. Both of us are just very scared looking at that spot because I felt something just staring at us, specifically from that spot between the trees. I don't know what it was. I don't know what it could have been. I did not want to find out because I knew it was something that was telling us to get out of this area, do not come back. This was something that was going to follow us and harm us if we stayed any longer. We were walking as fast as we could, trying not to freak each other out. But when we got done and got out, we talked about it and we were like, that is the scariest thing that we've ever felt, and we did not go back. I kind of wanted to go back. I kind of wanted to explore more. I kind of wanted to see more, but it would not have been in my best interest to do that. I don't think. I did not want to risk that. My spouse did not want to risk that. My spouse has told me, never ever, ever again, when we do anything together, we avoid haunted locations. They have made me promise to not go seeking paranormal experiences anymore, not to go to any place that is known to be haunted, because they are convinced something will follow me and they do not want me bringing that home. If you wanted to share these stories with your friends, but they don't know how to listen to a podcast on here. We're adding all of our episodes to YouTube on our channel called Scary Story Podcast. A link to it in the description of this episode. If you want to listen without ads, please try out Scary Plus. It's free for fourteen days and then four ninety nine a month in cancel whenever. It also supports our shows. A huge thank you to Michael for sharing his experiences with us. Editing and sound design was by Sarah Vorhez Wendel from VW Sound. Additional production by me Edwin Kovarubias and our Scary fmteam. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone to as soon