Spirit Chronicles: The Old Haunted Mansion

When I was 16 years old a group of friends and I decided we would go and check out an old mansion that no one lived in since the early 1900’s. This old mansion at one time was on the main wagon trail and was an overnight stop for people traveling on the wagon trails. Being built back in the wild cowboy days it was a motel, drinking spot and gambling joint for the travelers. With this type of activity came violence and death. Several people were reportedly killed or died in this location and on the property. Growing up we had always been told these stories and that if you went in there you could hear people talking, shadows moving in the dark and foot steps in rooms you were not in. My friends and I decided to go and check it out to see if any of these stories were true and being teenage boys we were pretty reckless and stupid.

We waited until it got good and dark and about 10:00pm on a Saturday night we went to the old mansion. It was back off the road with a decently long driveway down on a holler and isolated. It was a creepy feeling walking in and we felt like something was watching us the whole time. Of course, most of the group of seven guys thought it was imagination and laughed it off. We arrived at the house and debated back and forth as to who was going to go up on the porch in complete dark with no lights and open the door. This went on for awhile and even the skeptics that laughed it off were suddenly paranoid about going into the house. I thought I saw a shadow in the window closest to the front door but did not say anything to them. Then another guy said he saw something moving inside the window so about half of them took off running back down the driveway scared to death.

The paranoia had gotten the best of them and they decided they were done with this ghost hunting mission. Four of the seven decided they were leaving and going to go do other things so the remaining four of us decided we would go inside the old house and check out the property. We walked around back and within 50-75 feet of the house were several small head stones of people that had been buried there through out the years. That creeped two of the guys out so they decided they had enough and went back to the truck to wait until myself and another guy finished our ghost hunting mission. The two remaining were myself and the guy that thought he saw something move also. We decided to sit on the back porch and just be quiet and see what happened. It was really quiet back in the woods behind the old mansion with the exception of typical noises you will hear in North Carolina in the fall season (crickets, bugs, animals moving, the wind).

Then after a few minutes of sitting and talking about leaving because it seemed to be nothing going on we heard what sounded like men singing way off in the woods. I knew the family that owned the land in the woods behind the old mansion and there were no houses or people that lived back in there. It was just thick woods, some farmland and a creek bottom. We listened and heard what sounded like singing going on but this time it was closer to us like whatever it was had moved closer to us. This spooked us but with the natural curiosity we both had about the paranormal we moved deeper into the woods to investigate it. We didn’t have a flash light so we stumbled back into the woods about 100 yards of so and the closer we got the farther the singing moved away.

That is when we heard what sounded like a growl from something and it was startling to both of us. We were deep in the thick woods without a flashlight so we got scared from that growl. It was a similar sound to other noises I had heard during other times in my life. There were no bear in that part of North Carolina and growing up deer hunting I know what a deer grunt sounds like. I also knew what a bobcat and screech owl sound like and this was neither of them. So we decided to get back to the safety of the yard and what little bit of moonlight was shining through into the yard from the breaks in the tree tops since the leaves were starting to fall off the tall oaks, poplars and other local trees. As we got back into the yard we heard the growl again and it sounded like it was within a 10-15 feet of us but we could not see anything. So we decided to get out of there and go back around the front.

With both of us very curious about ghosts and the paranormal we decided to go on into the house and check it out. I pushed the door open and as it opened it made that scary squeaky sound like you hear in horror movies. The old house was in bad shape and messy as people had been going in and out of there on occasion to check it out. As we walked from the living room area into the old kitchen we thought we heard foot steps up stairs. The first thought was it was probably a couple of our buddies up there trying to mess with us. So we thought lets fool them back and started up the steps. As we made our way to the top of the steps to check things out something made a loud bang down in the kitchen. It sounded like a cabinet door had been slammed shut or something dropped on the floor. We took a quick peek into two rooms and could not find anyone or anything and it was really dark without a flashlight.

As we worked back down the steps we began to hear the steps again upstairs in the hallway we had just left. Then we both had a really sick feeling in our stomach that something bad was there with us and did not want us to be in the old mansion. So we decided it was time to end the ghost adventure and go home. As we left the house and closed the door the noises stopped and we walked off the porch. Then once again we heard a loud guttural growl from nearby beside the old house. So we started running for our lives and just ran all the way back to the truck. We were screaming for them to start the truck and go and we jumped in the back and took off. As we were leaving the driveway I looked over and saw what I thought was a tall skinny shadowy figure standing just to the side of the driveway about where we heard the last growl. We never went back to the old mansion for more ghost adventures and to this day still remember that guttural growl and the feeling of being watched in the old haunted mansion.

The old mansion was eventually bought and reworked by a family. They sold it shortly after to another family and from what I understand it has been bought and sold several times and now lies in ruins again. The old mansion is home to something bad that growls and scares people off. No one can live there anymore as it is the home to ghosts, residual hauntings and a growling shadow figure in the woods.