Bless This House…

As a child, I spent almost every weekend at my grandparents’ haunted house in St. Augustine, Fl. My sister and I explored throughout the property as if it was an adventure movie! Playing hide and seek there was especially thrilling because you never quite felt alone in the nooks and crannies of that house. If you’d like to know the reason my grandparents’ house is so haunted, you can read the story here.

Earlier during this particular week, my sister and I had watched a scary movie (we LOVE scary movies) that showed a woman walking through the haunted house with a cross and holy water, blessing every room. I got the brilliant idea that I was going to “bless” my Nanny’s house! I didn’t realize what any of that really meant. I was just copying what I’d seen in a movie.

My first step was to get my little sister on board. She’s two years younger than me, I was probably 12 at the time. After a little persuading, but not much, we were getting our supplies together! I had a little cross necklace so we decided to use that. Since we didn’t have any holy water, we skipped that step all together.

We started on the main floor of the house. Each time we entered a room, I would wave the little cross around, attempting to copy what they had done in the movie. We are not catholic so I was unfamiliar with the motion or what it meant. As I moved the cross, I would say a little prayer off the top of my head about blessing the house and everyone in it. My sister would stand cautiously behind me, watching. We both knew full well that this house really was haunted and had no idea what to expect. I honestly thought I was doing a nice thing for my Nanny.

I can’t speak for my sister but I could feel a change as we continued to each room. It almost felt like we were being watched and the atmosphere felt heavier than normal. The house was very quiet because there was no tv on and my grandparents were both outside, Nanny was in the garden and grandpa was in the garage, probably attempting to fix old furniture. The silence was noticeable. I don’t even recall hearing birds chirping, which was a normal sound to hear since my Nanny loved the animals and birds. She kept bird feeders and bird baths in her yard always. We carried on with our blessing onto the second floor with little response, other than the quiet, heavy feeling.

It wasn’t until we reached the third floor, very reluctantly I might add, that things began to happen. That’s the floor the little boy was starved to death on. None of us grandkids really liked to play up there, at least not for very long. We would go up to explore or dare each other to do things but that was about it. Two of my older cousins once tied me to a chair up there and left me there for a while, but that’s a whole other story…

As my sister and I entered the first room on the third floor and I began my cross routine, we heard a door very loudly slam on the second floor. Normally, this might not be a paranormal experience since the house is very drafty. However, we had not heard a single door slam that day thus far. It startled us for sure but we carried on.

Next came the room my Nanny has always suspected the boy perished in. Just as I began to move the cross and speak, we heard yet another door slam on the second floor…..and then another!

We immediately ran down to the second floor to see if there were windows open or if maybe one of our grandparents were inside. There was nothing obvious out of place and no windows open in the rooms we looked in.

While we were checking windows on the second floor, a door slammed on the third floor, which was highly unusual since we closed the door behind us! My grandpa was very particular about keeping the third floor doors closed because the house is drafty. The door shouldn’t have been able to slam closed because we had already closed it!

At that point, we bailed on the entire endeavor! We both screamed and started shouting “Nanny! There’s a ghost in the house!”, running all the way! We got from the second floor to the yard in record time and chose to play OUTSIDE for a while that day! Nanny, of course, was used to us telling her there was a ghost. She would always tell us that the spooks (she always called them “spooks” when we were little) in her house were nice and wouldn’t hurt anyone.

It’s true that no one has ever been injured in the house from a paranormal event but I never trusted the energy in that house anyway. People who can do terrible things in life might also do terrible things in death, by my logic.

I can’t remember if we stayed the night there that weekend but I do remember us playing outside for an hour or two, until we mustered the nerve to go back inside. Good thing it was a pretty Florida day that day!

Thank you for your interest in my true ghost stories! I have many! Explore my blog to read more. If, by chance, you are from my home town and know the house I’m speaking of, I ask that you not reveal the location or names of my family in the comments below. My family still lives there and it is a private residence.

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