Anyone
looking for true ghost stories can usually find a host of tales
with striking similarities. These are the tales of departed spirits and voices
calling out from the great unknown. However, often overlooked are the creepy
stories about objects—not people—that are just as haunted. Here are three
stories featuring three rather ordinary objects that may cause you to look
slightly askance at that old family heirloom sitting in your basement.
The Chair Of Death
Of
course, you're thinking an electric chair, right?
Haunted house stories seldom focus on a single article
of furniture. What if we told you that this was just an ordinary wooden chair
you'd find in any antique store?
The
story, like The Anguished Man tale below, is something right out of the pages
of folklore. Thomas Busby, a convicted murderer, was sentenced to hang in 1702.
He'd strangled a man to death for sitting in his favorite chair in his favorite
pub. As he walked past the pub on his way to the gallows, he pronounced a
curse: Whoever sits in his chair henceforth will die. Nonsensical ramblings
from a deranged killer?Perhaps.
However,
it wasn't long before people began to notice that soldiers who'd stopped to
dine in that pub, and who sat in that chair, were found never to return from
battle. A bricklayer fell into a hole on the jobsite after sitting in it. A
roof collapsed under the roofer who worked on it – after he had sat in the
chair on his lunch break. The pub's cleaning lady even stumbled on it while
tidying up, crashing to the floor and dying soon after of a brain tumor.
Annabelle, The
Demon Doll
Few
chilling stories of poltergeists pack the same punch of terror as this one. In
the early 1970s, a woman shopping in a thrift store purchased a Raggedy Ann
doll for her college-aged daughter. It wasn't long before the strangeness
began. Scraps of foreign paper with childish handwriting were found scattered
about. The doll was seen to move on its own, and even seen to stand on its own
legs. After a psychic alleged that the doll was possessed by the spirit of a
young girl who'd died in their house, the daughter and her roommate contacted a
renowned psychic duo, who indeed confirmed that the doll was not possessed by
the spirit of a little girl: It was possessed by a demon. Today, Annabelle is
enclosed under glass with a warning never to open it.
The Anguished Man
Painting
This
one sounds like something fresh out of the pages of an old pulp magazine tale
featuring unexplained phenomenon stories: A found painting, grotesque,
purported to have been painted with the artist's own blood!
Such
was the story told to Sean Robinson by his grandmother, who kept the picture
hidden in her attic for twenty-five years before passing it on to him. His
grandmother told him that she heard anguished cries whenever the painting was
displayed.
Of
course, Sean wasn't buying any of it. That is, until he got hold of the
painting and heard the voices for themselves.
To
look at this painting is to understand how anyone would think it was haunted.
It is truly a horrific work.
The
next time you look at something very old and worn, something, say, in a Civil
War museum, remember the life that touched it once, long ago, that was snuffed
out so horribly. Who knows, as you look around your house what history is held
in such ordinary objects, waiting to be unleashed at the touch.
Today's
ghost hunters are fast arriving at this very point.
Simon Murik
Author of True
Ghost Stories and Hauntings: Chilling Stories of Poltergeists,
Unexplained Phenomenon, and Haunted Houses
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