When I was thirteen years old and my brother was eleven, our family moved to a small town n North Carolina. We were able to rent a huge old house next door to a church.

From the very first day, strange things happened. We would hear someone calling us by name from elsewhere in the house and, upon investigating, would find that either nobody in the family had called us or that no one else was home.

It was not uncommon for any of us to be followed from room to room when we were alone in the house. "Something" whistled softly in our ear as if someone were hanging over our shoulder. We were awakened almost nightly by loud footsteps in the attic, and we would find the attic door wide open in the morning. Articles that we set down in one room would suddenly disappear, only to be found in the basement or on the back porch. Most of the things that happened could be explained away as forgetfulness or overactive imaginations, yet two specific incidents convinced my brother, my mother, and me that there truly was a ghost in our house.

The first incident occurred on Christmas Eve while our parents were attending a company party. My brother and I were left with the family dog for a couple of hours. We were sitting in the living room watching television when loud banging sounds came from the upstairs hallway. Then the stairway banister shook with such force that I was sure it would break into pieces at any moment. The dog barked and howled.

Dressed only in slippers and pajamas, we hesitated to run out into the snow. But, sure that our lives were in danger, we dived into the tiny bathroom beneath the stairway--it was the only room equipped with a door latch. We sat on the floor together with our backs pressed against the wall and our feet firmly planted against the door. We held the dog as she whined.

Within moments, heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs over our heads. They stopped at the bottom of the stairs. We heard no sounds other than our own breathing for many minutes. Suddenly we heard the front door open and felt cold air rush under the bathroom door. Just as suddenly, the front door slammed shut. There was silence for what seemed like hours, yet we were still afraid to leave our hiding place. We heard the front door open and close again, but we did not emerge until we heard our mother's voice call to us.

After we told our story, our dad checked the house but found no way for anyone to have entered in their absence.

The second incident occurred several months later. My brother and I arrived home from school to an empty house. There was music blasting so loud that we had to shout at each other to be heard. We followed the music upstairs to his bedroom. My brother's only radio was unplugged and in pieces in a box under his bed (he had taken it apart to see how it worked). Once we had built up the courage, we walked over to his bed and pulled the box out into view. The music stopped immediately! The two of us ran out of the house and sat on the curb until our parents came home from work.

As children will do, we adjusted to the everyday antics of our live-in ghost. We named him Oscar and began to tell our new friends at school about him. It was then that we found out that we lived in a well-known "haunted house" and that was why so few of our friends were permitted to come to our home. We were told the story of why people never lived in the house more than a short time.

Many years ago the church-owned house was a rectory inhabited by the minister and his family. He and his seventeen-year-old son did not get along and frequently fought. The boy would usually take refuge in the huge attic. One day in the midst of a heated argument, the minister chased his son from the attic. They both made it safely down the steep attic stairs, but the boy tripped and fell down the stairs leading to the first floor. When he hit the wall at the bottom, he broke his neck and died. The minister and his remaining family were driven out of the house soon afterward by a ghost. Supposedly, the house had been haunted since then.

We lived in that house for nine months, and then we returned to Michigan.