La Maison Aux Esprits Et Aux Murmures: L'histoire Vraie D'une Maison Hantée

by Annie Wilder

Cet ouvrage est le récit des relations de la famille Wilder avec le fantôme de l'ancien propriétaire de la maison, un vieil homme appelé Léon. Couvrant une décennie d'activités fantomatiques et d'événements surnaturels (des murmures de radiateurs en passant par les visites et l'apparition de toutes sortes d'esprits et d'entités), cette histoire peu commune est le véritable récit des expériences de la vie de l'auteure dans sa maison hantée.

Genres: Paranormal, Nonfiction, Ghosts, Ghost Stories, Horror, Supernatural, Memoir

184 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

Annie Wilder is writer and proud mother of grown children who admit to seeing some strange things in their childhood home. Wilders first book House of Spirits and Whispers is a true account of her experiences living with ghosts for more than a decade. She regularly hosts haunted tea parties in her spirit-filled Victorian house nestled in a sleepy Mississippi River town in Minnesota. Her haunted house has been featured in several television and print news stories, investigated by teams of ghost hunters, and visited by a number of prominent psychics including Linda Drake and Echo Bodine.

Her new book, Spirits Out of Time, is an enchanting memoir spanning five generations of true family stories of spirits and strange experiences.

"

Reviews

[Heidi Wiechert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Annie Wilder is a very sensitive person. Almost from the moment she moves into her house, strange things start to happen. More than just creaking doors, Annie experiences full blown apparitions, strange noises in her furnace pipes, and has out-of-body encounters with turn of the century woman in period clothing. Far from being freaked out by it all, though she is at times, Annie learns how to live with the spirits and takes pride in her haunted house.

From a young age, Annie accepted her other worldly perceptions saying: ".. a strong intuitive ability runs in my family. My mom can see and hear spirits, and both her mother and mother's mother, who were Irish, was psychic, too." pg 3. It seems to me that if you grow up with these sorts of things happening around you, it isn't too hard to carry them on into your adult life.

Not that things go entirely smoothly. When Annie realizes that something completely out of the ordinary is going on in her new digs, she freaks out a little bit.: "I needed to regain some sense of perspective and power. A weird dichotomy was developing in my relationship with my house. I loved my house in the daytime but felt terrified and powerless in it at night." pg 27

Ghosts are a large part of her experience, but not the whole enchilada. "The house seemed super conducive to astral activity; besides seeing and hearing spirits, I started seeing lights." pg 53. Lest you think that Annie is having a break with reality, some of her relatives stay in the house and see the same thing when she's not even there. I wonder if she's ever considered running a bed and breakfast.

She also has a scientifically-minded boyfriend who has strange things happen to him too: "It also meant a lot to me that Rex, with his objective, left-brain way of perceiving the world, was seeing and hearing some of the same extraordinary things that I was, and couldn't explain them with regular science. He brought up the bumblebee as an example of something that defies the known laws of physics. Because of the size and mass of their bodies compared to the size of their wings, bumblebees should not be able to fly. But they do." pgs 99-100. I didn't know that.

Recommended for people who are interested in paranormal experiences, ghosts, and other unexplained phenomena, Annie Wilder introduces you to her house of spirits and whispers and it never gets too out of hand or scary. Some further recommended reading: True Tales of Ghostly Encounters or Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah.

[Eleanor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well I picked up this book thinking it would focus more on historical facts and some data the homeowner had discovered. Yeah.... not so much data and more hippty dippty New Age malarky. Her writing is very good, but not one of the sparse stories in this book connect together cohesively or even seem very plausible. It's a good read if your into energy's and chakra's but not so much if you like interesting facts and history.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This would have made a much better book if it had been sold as fiction. The stories of the hauntings were just too pat & concise to be believable, and there was very little historical information to add any support. So purchasing the book as a "true story" just left me feeling a bit ripped off.

Technically the author's writing was fairly good, but she did have a serious habit of sounding way too cheesy way too often.

[Eden Silverfox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Annie and her children moved into a 100-year-old home. The house was special, and Annie knew it had to be hers.

This book details her life living in a beautiful but very haunted home. 

Annie had some spooky experiences, but the hauntings seemed to be more positive than negative. It's a refreshing change from paranormal books about negative and demonic hauntings. Interesting read.

[Éliane Boulanger-Racine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Se laisde bien lire

[Laren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am always interested in "regular people" having an experience which they are unable to explain. Unfortunately, this isn't one of those stories. It started out as though it would be, but at one point, the author introduces the idea that she regularly has out of body experiences while asleep. In other words, this is not an objective person telling this story. Much of the alleged haunting is told through feelings, not facts, and most of the experiences she claims to have lack any witnesses or visitors who experience the same things. She does introduce a scientist boyfriend who ratifies some of her experiences, but you don't ever get a good feel for him as to find this wholly credible. She also continues to introduce other third parties who supposedly support her experiences in less tangible ways. But when several of those friends actually have a "fairy party" at one point (an event that was not explained to the reader), it only serves to prove that, overall, the author is someone actively seeking these experiences, and therefore she found them. On the positive side, she doesn't come across as overly new-agey or kooky in her writing for the most part, which is the only reason I found this book bearable enough to finish.

[Jaksen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fairly well-written but a little too 'pat' in my opinion. (And I've had my own supernatural experiences.) What I mean is, any time the author can't explain something she puts it down to the supernatural. (Okay, she tries to explain things sometimes, but often jumps too quickly to the supernatural or paranormal explanation.) And one thing she repeats quite a lot is having supernatural or out-of-body experiences while waking from sleep. Most likely what she is experiencing is sleep paralysis. Some people experience this on a regular basis; I've had it happen to me maybe 5-6 times. Not that I don't believed or trust her writing - I do believe she's had a lot of strange things happen to her and I absolutely love the fact that she enjoys living in a 'haunted' house. Overall, she feels living in this house is more enjoyable and enriching than not.
Interesting book. I read it with a bit of hesitant skepticism, but kept an open mind.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't remember where I heard about this book, but I decided if it was free to check-out at the library, I was game. The story moved along at a good and relatively interesting clip in the beginning, even if the writing was a bit amateurish. I enjoyed the suspense of the 'find' in the basement dirt room and the images of her cat, Theo, standing on his hind legs gave me the shivers, but once she hit the astral travel, the out-of-body experience, etc. she completely lost me. I was on that road to dis-interest when she admitted to calling the physic hotline because then I had the niggling feeling that this woman desperately wanted to believe something paranormal was happening. I actually didn't quite finish this book because it became, for lack of a better word, a little kooky. As it went on and more and more things happened in all realms of the paranormal I became more and more of a skeptic. I wouldn't say it's an awful book, just an 'ehhh' book.

[Laura (booksnob) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this story of a haunted house in Minnesota. Since I grew up in a haunted house, it brought back lots of memories for me of strange happenings and frightfully entertaining experiences. I am glad my current house is not haunted but recognize that I am surrounded by spirit guides and loved ones who have past on. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about the "other side". It was a fun read for this time of year.

[Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad- The author is a little new age-y for my tastes but it was an interesting story and the writing was decent.

[Stephanie A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Came across this at a garage sale and was intrigued by the semi-local setting. Part of me feels like the stories would have been better suited as material for a novel, but I'm still glad she released it this way because fitted around the New Age-y stuff about reiki and chakras and all that, this book is full of really fascinating and sometimes genuinely chilling stories. I started off thinking I would just page/skim through it but quickly realized, nope, need full context here.

The house's real history is interesting enough, and I loved the little glimpses of the neighborhood she described around it as well as the house's lovely architecture, but the various ghosts she sees make for an interesting cast of characters. Particularly Leon the Protector. Gotta say, you do not often hear about a house being haunted by the person you bought it from (or, well, his daughter, but the point being: dude was alive until a year beforehand).

Anyway, long story short, it made me very glad I don't actually live in one of the grand and beautiful old houses I love touring at estate sales and often daydream about being wealthy or knowledgeable enough about DIY home repair to buy, because if I'd been reading this book in one of those houses I would never get a good night's sleep again. But in the context of her writing, as the spirits seem mostly benevolent, it felt very much like the TV show "Ghosts." Especially after she had a couple of mediums come to the house and relay full-on chatty conversations they had with the spirit residents. 😆

Because I was curious about what the house looked like, I googled for a bit and found a Good Housekeeping article she wrote in 2017 that provides a little more clarification -- including that "apparently, Leon was aware of the house's hauntings while he was alive too. Annie has learned over the years that he kept religious medals and symbols all over his bedroom to protect himself from the spirits. And when he heard sounds he didn't like, he'd pound on the walls — which is the same sound Leon now uses from the other side to announce his presence."

I was also curious about the Hartnett sisters, since the article includes a photo of all 3, something Wilder hadn't been able to find at the time of the book's original publication. "Did they die tragically young or what?" Which is when I found a second article clarifying "I found obituaries for all three Hartnett sisters, and two of them had lived to be old women who had died only a decade or so before I bought my house. [...] It brought up an interesting question—why was I seeing their spirits as young women and not as they looked at the middle or end of their lives? [...] That's when I started to wonder if some of their everyday happy energy remained in the house, and their spirits looked like young women because when they lived here, they were young women."

My curious rabbit trail finally led me to learn there is a brand-new (2023) edition of this book (possibly e-book only?) with "a new preface, bonus material and photographs," (!), but alas, I am stuck with the original. Can't even really preview it on Amazon because all the sample space is taken up with the floor plans and the "cast of characters" and it cuts off one page into the preface, where I read just far enough to see that she moved out of the house in 2019, after 25 years, because the "changes to the residential character of [their] neighborhood" were too much or something, and BAM! Limit reached. (And now I'm super curious to know how you even find a buyer for a house with that much notoriety, assuming it went to a new owner and wasn't torn down, unless one of her kids or other family members took it over.)

$10 is more than I usually spend on books, but...honestly, I'm kind of tempted.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very entertaining, kind of spooky read especially nice right before Halloween. I've always loved ghost stories, both true and fictional, and have been long intrigued with the ideas of haunted places—houses, restaurants, cementaries, inns, schools, historical cites, you name it. I've been on a couple "ghost walks"/haunted tours, so I'm continued to be interested in this subject. I really liked this book, which is about a single mother who moves into a very haunted house with her two teenage kids, and has all kinds of various ghost experiences, from hearing noises, banging and whispers, to seeing spirits in her house.

I understand that the author feels herself to be psychic, and intuitive, and even admits to taking classes in Reiki—all of which can be interesting and truthful, but also perhaps suspect. I'm skeptical, which is probably funny to admit after being interested in ghosts (though I think I'm a bit skeptical about that subject too). I'm not doubting any of this (except maybe the Reiki), but I did find it hard to believe the author's many astral project travels/out-of-body experiences (OBE). I couldn't help but wonder how much of these—and perhaps even her ghostly encounters—were overly vivid dreams. All of that said, I still enjoyed the book and really found nothing off-putting about the author or any of her experiences. I think the truth is, for me, that I want to keep an open mind (even for Reiki, lol), and to quote the X-Files, "I want to believe." This is a fun book to read, and I also liked the quotes which preceded each chapter and kind of set the mood for each chapter.

[Marissa Ibarra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me agrada el concepto de una casa embrujada en la que los fantasmas no son precisamente aterradores, sino más bien son... interesantes.
Éste no es un libro de sustos, es una casa enorme y llena de secretos, en la que Annie se ha mudado junto con sus hijos y sus gatos. Pronto se manifiestan las diferentes entidades de la casa, desde los que se muestran protectores hasta los que llegan a agitarlo todo. Es un libro en el que se habla de las energías de los fantasmas, los ruidos, las presencias, los golpes. Tesoros enterrados y sótanos tenebrosos en dónde nadie quiere estar.
El libro no es nada aburrido, es una forma diferente en que uno podría manejar la situación de tener una casa invadida por espíritus. Y si, tiene momentos en los que se te pone la piel chinita.

[Dianna (SavingsInSeconds blog) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author of this book is clearly very open-minded. She went into the house feeling aware of energy and such, which comes across in her story. The details and descriptions seemed to automatically attribute noises and happenings to ghosts. It was somewhat interesting, but too focused on the family's life and history rather than the house. This book reminded me of At Grave's End by Elaine Mercado.

[Sarah - All The Book Blog Names Are Taken]

I had to stop after reading about astral projection and out of body experiences. It also bothered me that she kept referring to Leon as “the old man“. I’m much more interested in the history of the house, evidence that would support claims; I highly doubt I’m going to get that based on the direction this is going.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have actually read this book before, just after it came out. It has been niggling in the back of my mind since then. I was thrilled to find a copy of it (I had forgotten the name of the book, darn it), and read it again. This is the kind of book that makes me want to fine a "gently haunted" house to move into!

[Ariadna González · Rating 2 out of 5]

Al principio me llamó mucho la atención y escogí este libro pensando que se centraría en el desarrollo de historias de fantasmas y demás eventos paranormales. Sin embargo, una vez te adentras más en la historia, se siente como si esta diera vueltas en círculos y nada en concreto acabase de ocurrir. Podía haberse convertido en algo más.

[Nikki Little · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book! Heard about it on one of my podcasts and the author was on it talking about this book! Its not a scary read but just reading all her experiences, it is definitely interesting! Maybe one day we can visit or see this house and hopefully she writes another book.

[R. J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like tales of real haunted houses well enough, but this one was a little too new age for me. There was just to much astral projection, spirit guides, chakras, and "geometric lights and energy shows" for me.

[Cammie Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a well-written book that was very interesting & a fast read.

I liked that this was a different kind of "haunted house" book in that the house wasn't necessarily filled with evil spirits.

[Jolie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simply delightful read! Recommended for true ghost story fans.

[Kristina Peters · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was very well written but if you are looking to be scared this is not the book to read.

[Ondrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slightly boring. I found myself skimming to the ghost parts which weren't as satisfying as I'd hoped.

[Marcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting house I would love to visit the neighborhood one day seems peaceful. Love the characters and plot.

[Karen White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent read of someone's experience with ghost

[Joe Sundermeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chilling in the way only a true story can be. And having lived in a similar 100 year old house in the Midwest for a few years, very familiar.

[Ursula Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read! The authors experience with the paranormal is noteworthy. Chilling yet captivating.

[Venessa Johnstone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting.. and nice to read a book like this not full of horror

[Christina]

DNF

I tried. I swear I tried. But it is sooooo freaking meandering, I'm giving up. Just tell me the story! Stop wandering back around and around.

[CAROL FARRAR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!!!

Couldn't put it down. It was well written and kept your attention. I would highly recommend this book. I am going to look into others that she has written as well.