The Haints

 

Photo courtesy of Charles Deluvio

 

When she returned she told them, “You have something in this place.”

    

The Haints

Here is a southern, spooky story.

B.’s grandfather was a tenant farmer that lived in the deep backwoods of Arkansas. She would sometimes visit him with her siblings and he would mention that the “haints” were bothering him.

Later, her grandfather became ill and came to live with her family and again he complained of the haints bothering him at night.

B. became aware of the haints, because they were fascinated with the stairs in her house. Sometimes when the family went up the stairs for the night, she would turn the lights off at the top of the stairs and something would turn them back on with the switch at the bottom of the stairs. The family also noticed that sometimes objects were moved out of place.

B. began to notice weird sensations, the feeling that she was not alone and that someone was watching her. Her grandfather passed away in that house and eventually her family moved to a duplex.

The duplex was a smaller home and B. ended up sleeping on the living room couch; she was about thirteen. One night she awoke and saw the specter of the grim reaper, only instead of a scythe in his hands he had a baseball bat; he was coming right for her.

B. remembers screaming and screaming. Her father ran into the room and when she told him what she had seen, he downplayed it as a bad dream. The bad feelings of someone near or watching continued and often she would sleep with the covers over her head.

When B. married, she and her husband moved to a Dallas apartment, but something moved with them. The presence was still there and B. hated to be alone in the apartment day or night. A friend needed a place to stay and spent the night on their couch. The next day the friend was gone. When she returned she told them, “You have something in this place.” Her friend found another place to stay.

B. endured living in the apartment, but would never sleep facing the door. When B. and her husband began a family they moved to a different home. She still felt the presence. One day when her daughter was about nine she asked, “Who was that man in the hallway last night?” Her daughter described him as about six feet tall and wearing an old-fashioned, western-style, felt hat. B. tried to reassure her daughter that she must have dreamed it or imagined it, but her daughter insisted, “Mom, he looked at me for a long time.”

Shortly after this B. became a Christian and a friend advised her to open her Bible, walk into every room in the house and say the Lord’s prayer.  B. wasted no time in completing that task. That was the end of the presence and the haints.