Written By and Copyrighted to Lydia Stone AKA Twisty.
You know that one house in every neighbourhood people say is cursed, or haunted? Well, I lived in that house. I’ve heard people say it would be fun to live in a haunted place. It is actually anything but.
Imagine being woken up every night by the one thing you fear the most, or spending your days wondering what was going to happen next. Watching your family fall apart bit by bit, as they are picked at by something that is only targeting you, all because you happened to have bought that house.
I blame Hollywood and the idiot thrill-seekers that post videos of themselves online, entering haunted buildings at night, for the idea that being haunted is a blast. For a night sure, for nine years, not so much.
My family moved into the barn conversion when I was eight. It was stunning, however, even from the word go we were plagued by something.
It had been my parents who had bought the barn and converted it into our ‘family home’. The one we would never have to move from again. And much to mine and my sisters dismay, no matter what seemed to happen, my parents stuck stubbornly to this notion for years.
From day one of the build, my parents had no luck at all, something would go wrong almost daily. I think at one point one of the builders even died on site, causing it to be shut down for a couple of months until it was ruled a suicide.
My first memory of the house was the day we moved in, it looked so shiny and new. With a massive open living-room which had glass doors all along one side, opening out onto our back garden, beyond that nothing but fields. On the left-hand side of the room a huge oak staircase led up to the second-floor landing, which wrapped around the living-room like one big balcony. Next to the foot of the stairs was the door to the hall that led to mum and dad’s offices, the library and the ‘nook’ that was mine and Emily’s play room.
On the right-hand side of the living-room there was an open entry to the huge kitchen, which led into the wash room which housed the washer and drier, ironing board, and some clothes racks.
Everything was a simple mix of modern with just hints of historic character. Naturally though, at the time I thought it was just big, shiny and all mine.
Upstairs was much the same in décor, with mine and Emily’s rooms above the kitchen, along-side a shared bathroom that sat between them. Both rooms had been designed with us in mind, so they were unique to our personalities.
And above the offices, library and ‘nook’ was my parents room, their on-suite, a large spare bedroom and guest toilet.
To begin with everything was quiet enough. There were noises at night and things like that, but my parents put that down to the house settling.
It didn’t really being until the first January we were in the house, when Emily found a new friend. Now, considering we lived about half a mile out from anyone, and this friend only appeared to her, it should have been a red flag. However, Emily was five at the time, and so, my parents and I just thought she had created an imaginary girl named Lorelai.
The weeks following this I started to have the first night-terrors. They were of a woman with almost porcelain like skin, long black hair and tattered clothes being dragged through an old barn. Hordes of men and women surrounding her as they chanted for her to die.
I would be stood next to her as they surrounded us, leering and chanting. Then I too would be dragged up to the Hay-loft along-side the woman, where nooses would be put around our necks and we were pushed from the overhang. The last thing I would hear was her sobbing and their calls for our dead bodies to swing. Until I would wake up falling and unable to breath.
This went on for years, even as I grew, I never grew out of that night-terror. There were times when I would be found on the balcony overlooking the living-room, times when if someone so much as breathed on me I would fall into hysterical screaming and could not be calmed down until I woke up.
My parents, understandably worried, took me to an entire army of doctors. None of whom could figure out what had caused this.
Emily told us one day when she was about ten she knew, Lorelai had explained it to her. When questioned further on it, Emily just smiled and said, “She’s showing him what happened.”
Even my parents had experienced something, the Police had been called out a few times as either one, or both my parents had seen someone in the house. Things vanished then reappeared much later in some strange places, which was either blamed on me and Emily or on lack of sleep.
Over time the couple who had fallen madly in love when my dad had reviewed my mum’s book for his magazine, started to bicker and fight.
My mum who was a Crime Thriller Author, was starting to suspect something was off and believed us when we told her about the strange things we saw and heard. Not to mention Emily was now turning twelve and still had Lorelai drifting around her.
Whereas my dad for all his strengths, saw the world as black and white, everything had logic behind it. And as such, he had started accusing my mum of falling prey to her own imagination.
My dad was relegated to the guest room shortly after that. And as the hostility in the house grew, so did the occurrences.
There were more ‘break-ins’ which sent us all mad as they became an almost daily ritual. In the middle of the night our home alarm would sound, signalling the beginning of our nightly torture. It would then abruptly cut off, only to be replaced by the sound of knocking, three times, over and over, on every wall in the house for the rest of the night until dawn broke.
Amongst all this I was still having the night-terrors, which had become more vivid, and on one night just before my seventeenth birthday, I awoke to the sound of screaming.
It was my own voice and everyone had rushed to my side, my mum looked as ashen as a ghost. It took me a moment to realise I couldn’t move my legs that were just hanging off the side of the bed, pale and lifeless.
I was rushed to hospital where they could find no cause for why my legs would not work. They did however, find large hand shaped bruises all over both myself and Emily.
My parents were questioned as to how we acquired them and neither claimed to know. Which I still think was true. We were talked to by a child psychologist who, after days of interviewing, it was determined that our dad had been abusing us, and our mum had been trying to protect us.
The psychologist had come to this conclusion as she deemed my inability to walk a demonstration of complete submission, she basically thought that I had subconsciously done this in order to appear weaker in my dad’s eyes, and therefore not a threat.
And they had found diary upon diary belonging to Emily, talking about Lorelai. A black haired, fair skinned woman who was trying to help her, trying to save her from the dangerous man. It just so happened that my mum was dark haired with fair skin.
This along with the bruises, the countless calls to Police because of a ‘break-in’ which had never happened, which local Police now suspected was my mum’s way of calling for help, and my dad’s way of covering up. Neither was true, but it was easier to believe than the truth.
Even now, I understand why the outside world suspected my dad. Although, I tell anyone that will listen he never laid a finger on us. Not that anyone has ever believed me.
So, my dad was arrested, and my mum, me and Emily moved in with our aunt on our mum’s side. Soon suspicion was compounded as the longer I stayed away from the house, the better I got. Slowly the night-terrors vanished and within six months I could walk on crutches.
Emily meanwhile had not seen Lorelai since we moved, and would beg our mum to go back to the house with her so she could visit her.
Although my mum could never explain the nightly wake up alarms, or the pounding on the walls. Over time she began to believe that maybe our dad had been the monster she had seen us so scared of in that house.
My dad spent several years in prison, becoming bitter and angry, convinced that my mum had set him up. By the time he got out I was twenty-two and Emily was nineteen.
Both of us knew he was innocent, but we seemed very much alone in that regard.
The last time I saw my dad he was on the news, he had taken the new occupants of the barn house hostage and was surrounded by armed Police. He was always innocent of what he did to us, but I cannot claim his innocence for what he did to that family.