Ghost stories of textas written by Joanne Christensen published by om Pine Publishing, Possessed
Possessions. So you think your house is haunted, don't be so sure.
Some people who have lived with a ghost eventually discover that the entity was not
attached to the house, but to something within it. People who loved to
furnish their homes with unique and charming bargains from antique stores and secondhand shops may
think twice about their buying habits after reading these two tales of possessed possessions and
Texas. In nineteen seventy four, a woman named Glenn E. Newton wrote
to Fate magazine about a strange event that had taken place in her family's farm
home near Cleveland, Texas. According to Newton, it all started in nineteen
sixty nine. After her children had grown and moved away. She had decided
to turn her son's bedroom into a guest bedroom and went shopping for a suitable
double bed. Newton found one at a used furniture store in Cleveland. She
purchased the bed and took it home and set it up in the newly designated
guest room. Not long afterward, she experienced the first of many strange happenings.
Newton explained that she had been home alone one evening, sitting in a
chair opposite of the door that opened into the guest room. A noise caught
her attention, and she looked up at the time to see the door to
the room open. Newton was ready to dismiss that as the work of a
draft, until she heard the sound of footsteps coming out of the guest room
toward the place where she was sitting. Newton jumped up and ran out of
the green front porch. There she stood, where she had a clear view
of the living room in which she had been sitting. These steps crossed the
room and stopped beside my chair. Newton wrote, The room was well whit,
but I could see no one there. After a pause, the footsteps
went back to the guest room door, and the door closed. For fear
of being ridiculed, I mentioned this strange occurrence to no one. After a
few months later, the Newton's daughter, Edith, brought her new husband out
to spend a weekend at her parents farm. The young couple slept in the
guest bedroom. Following their first night there, Edith took her mother aside and
mentioned that her husband had expressed concern about having his parents in all walking around
in the guest room in the middle of the night. I assured her neither
one of us had been in there, Newton wrote. Edith passed her mother's
assurance on to her husband. On the second night of the newlywed's visit,
the footsteps returned. This time, Edith's husband leaped out of the bed and
followed the sound, which traveled through the house and ended up at the dining
room table. After this incident, recalled Newton, the walking was heard by
everyone who spent the night in our home. The door to the guest room
also continued to open and close frequently on its own. After three years,
the Newtons lived with the eerie footsteps and were at a loss to explain why
they had begun. They had given up searching for an explanation or solution.
When Glenn Newton decided to make some further changes in the room, She found
a bed that she preferred to the one she had purchased three years earlier in
the second hand store. The new bed was set up in the guest room
and the old one was put out in the yard until the Newtons could decide
where they wanted to store it. That problem was immediately solved when Edith's brother
in law, Clyde, dropped by and offered to buy it. He took
the bed home that very day and set it up in his own guest bedroom.
A month later or so, Edith dropped by to visit her mother.
Casually, she asked if either of her parents had heard the ghost walking around
recently. Glenn Newton had to stop and think for a moment. The phantom
footsteps had become so much a part of their lives that she and her husband
barely bothered to take note of them any more. After a careful consideration,
though Newton realized with some surprise that it had been actually been several weeks since
the walking spirit had been around. Edith felt that she knew why he sold
the ghost to Clyde, she said. Edith went on to explain that her
brother in law and his wife had begun to hear the same strange footsteps that
had for three years wandered through the Newton's home. In addition, the door
to the room where Clyde had set up the bed was not open and closing,
seemingly of its own violation. As the time went on, it became
apparent that the ghost really was connected to the old bed. The Newtons never
heard the foot steps again in their home, but Edith's brother and sister law
continued to be tormented by the mysterious sounds. In all likelihood, the unlucky
people were eventually informed about the source of their new found specter, but they
were still in the dark at the time. Glint Newton wrote her letter,
she was letting Edith choose the right time to disclose the information, noting that
her daughter was worried that they would always fill I knew the bed was haunted
when I sold it to them. That's understandable. Dealing diplomatically with in laws
can be a delicate business, perhaps even more so where matters of the supernatural
are concerned. In the summer of nineteen seventy three, a large shipment of
antiques made its way from Britain to America. One of countless items on board
was a small, darkly finished wooden table with three gently carved legs and a
delicate, curved floral design. By the time the table arrived at a Peer
one store in Dallas, the piece was slightly damaged. Store manager wold,
and Maxie wasn't concerned. He repaired the table with a little glue and sold
it to a Southern Methodist University student for twenty nine dollars. Maxie was certain
that the student would enjoy his new purchase. Within weeks, he would discover
that he had been wrong. The young man made a mysterious phone call to
the store one day. He said he wished to return the floral carved table.
When asked why, the student quickly hung up. Some time after that
incident, he called back and again asked that this story reconsider it's no return
policy in his special case. This time, the student stayed on the line
long enough to offer an explanation. He claimed that the table was haunted.
He said it turned the lights and water on and off in his house.
He would wake up in the morning and all religious articles save those that were
blessed, would be turned over wild and Maxi explained in an article in the
November fourth, nineteen seventy three Dallas Morning News. Maxi made an exception for
the student and refunded his money for the table. Then, curious about the
claims that the customer had made, he took the antique piece home soon,
strange things were beginning to happen in Maxie's house as well. One night,
my wife was reading about one a m by herself. Maxie told Michael of
the Morning News she felt definite pressure on her arm three or four times.
That was more than enough to convince the Maxis that they did not want the
little table in their home. Back to the store, it went, along
with the resident spirit and its growing reputation. The story of the haunted table
was beginning to get around, and before long people were coming to the store
expressingly to see the peace and ask questions about it. Minnie would run their
hands lightly over its carved surface, trying to feel hot spots of the spiritual
activity within it. According to the News, one elderly customer came into the
store, put a plastic box on the table, then quickly picked it up,
slammed a lid on it, announced now I've got your ghost, and
walked out of the store. Perhaps even more accinctric was the man who offered
to pay the store five hundred dollars if they allowed him to borrow the table
for just one night. There were those who had serious professional interest in the
table as well. Various stallus mediums and spiritualists conducted seances or readings about it.
Several suggested that the soul of a small child was contained within it.
One psychic and automatic writer, Sadie mc collum, agreed with those findings,
but said that there was another, darker spirit that was predominant. Mc collum
knew because a disturbing vision of the being a sixteenth century Parisian man, had
appeared to her in her home. She described the entity as a hideous thing,
saying he had huge holes for his eyes and long, stringy hair.
The creature begged McCollum to help him escape from his strange, small prison.
Macomb arranged to visit the store and perform an exorcism. When the day came,
Stadie McCollum sat before the table with their frame New York parapsychologists and author
Hans Holzer. They had been discussing the case and agreed that the ghosts had
been held captive ever since the Parisian man's death some four hundred years earlier.
It was time they felt to free the tortured soul, and they began a
ceremony with an automatic writing session. The collum sat entranced with a sheet of
white paper before her, and a pen placed loosely in her fingers. The
sensitive's hand began to move slowly at first, then gaining speed, and words
were scrabbled across the page. The transcript was printed in the Dallas Morning News.
I will leave now forever. This is William Vlanstock of Parasia. I
thank you. You are a brave soul. My nature is profoundly evil,
and I have for many years exercised the practice of evil. Take the word
of God as the ultimate for all, and handsforth, make no idol sayings
for which I am responsible. Remember you have freed me. You can and
will progress with your most found wishes. I should be gone from this table
within three and a half hours from this moment. Kindness regards, dear Lady
Ado. Sadie McCollum stopped writing and put both hands upon the table. It's
moving inside, she told reporter Michael there's a sort of heartbeat here. McCollum
then proceeded to speak directly to Vloodstock, directing him to take leave of the
table. Burst forth to God in peace. Then with one loud final command
to the spirit, come out now. And it was over when Sadie mc
collum had finished her work. She assured Wolden Maxey that the spirits of both
floodstock and the small child had been successfully exercised. Maxie was pleased. He
polished the table, put it back in the showing room, and offered it
for sal once more. This time, however, the newly Clinn's table carried
a price tag of one thousand, five hundred dollars. It is probably fair,
after all, that's the kind of specialized refurbishing that a person just can't
do at home.