The Benjamin F. House (Vermont)

My husband and I have a joke about virtually every new place we go to - Hope it isn’t haunted! And we laugh it off.

Well, it seems that our jokes have caught up to us.

We are no strangers to strange unexplained, paranormal style activity. Indeed, one of our favorite date nights is exploring creepy places in New England and beyond. My husband grew up in a haunted house and I saw my first ghost at 10.

But I digress.

It was a warm September when we moved into the Benjamin F. House in southern VT. Moving from one town over, we had driven by this house many a time. It often sat empty, its bay windows rippling in the dappled sunshine or cringing in winter’s stark glare. It always had a certain something I can't quite describe, perhaps a spectral defense against the outside world.

We were moving from a less than ideal situation and honestly, probably would have taken it no matter what had happened in the house, barring a grizzly ax murder, perhaps.

The house was built in 1831 by Benjamin F. Jr, who appears to have been a man in good standing in the town. He owned a shoe store and was the postmaster for the town in 1843, to my understanding. He had a few kids with his wife, Phoebe, and their names appear frequently in historical records. They had a daughter who married a man who would become a civil war lieutenant and a recipient of the medal of honor. Interestingly, the daughter and husband did not retire in the area, but instead, as far north as one can go in Vermont - Derby - a town on the Canadian border.

The house has since gone through many renovations and the removal of porches and windows and new paint and whatnot, but you can still see the (now painted) exposed beams in the living room and hardwoods peeping out in one of the closets. The floor under the carpets dips and dives and squeals just like the surrounding green mountain and we suspect the old cellar hatch is in the front hallway.

We were thrilled to move in for so many reasons, and were excited to later learn that the house was so historic and that there even existed a photo of it from the 1880s at the historical society.

I started moving stuff over with the kids on a day my husband was at work. We were executing the grim and sweaty job of ferrying our belongings from a minivan and into the house with narrow hallways and awkwardly shaped rooms. I dutifully ignored what felt like the very walls of the place eyeballing us, though the kids were oblivious in their excitement.

Within moments of getting that final load in the house and collapsing on the bed to ease my aching back, I realized that the place was, in fact, haunted.

The roomy upstairs bathroom was directly across the hallway landing from our bedroom. It had slanted ceilings, a deep closet and window open, the late summer breeze wafting through.

I heard a slight creak and looked over to see the bathroom door - which hadn’t moved an inch all day- slowly drift to a close.

My heart leapt slightly. There it is, I thought.

In the interest of making sure there was no OTHER explanation, I investigated all the doors and windows, testing different combinations of them open and shut and found no consistencies or smoking guns. In the 1.5 years we've lived here, I’ve come to accept that the door does what it wants. Sometimes it will stay open for days, weeks only to suddenly drift over with no logical rhyme or reason. For example, today (as I write this) is one of the windiest days we’ve had this year. The bathroom window is cracked for air flow and the door hasn't budged.

In those early months, we immediately found the bathroom to be particularly active. I’ve gotten up to pee in the middle of the night more than one time to find the window blind in the bathroom, previously down, suddenly up.

We’ve felt cold spots in there and a general creepiness that we can’t quite describe otherwise. My daughter and myself have both described a feeling of being rushed while sitting on the toilet. Here and there, I will see what I think is the shadow of a person coming up the stairs, right outside the bathroom door.

The kitchen has also been the location of activity, with what seems to be a particular focus on me. We’ve set the crockpot, only to come back to it hours later and find it on a different setting. I had an experience with kitchen blinds recently; it swung out somewhat violently while I was doing the dishes. We have a wind chime hanging above the kitchen sink and it has tinkled at me more than once, when no breeze or human action could have disturbed it.

Sometimes when I am cooking or cleaning, listening to something on my phone, it will randomly pause for no reason that I can see. It seems to only happen when I am not listening on my ear buds. The freezer door also closes on no one else except for me, which I find infuriating.

I’ve gotten to the point where I will literally tell them to “Fuck Off!” or “I’m so not in the mood for this today!”

One curious phenomenon in this house is the overwhelming amount of glass breakage we have experienced since moving in. It’s not necessarily breaking on its own (although there was that one time the coffee pot carafe exploded one morning as it sat innocently on the coffee maker’s warming plate - completely off and cool, by the way), but more of multiple and unusual occurrences of things made of glass breaking. There was that time the bottom of a bag holding mason jars fell out and they broke all over the entryway carpet. Or the many times glasses of water have been knocked over, or the glass in a picture frame broke in a freak accident. Or the time the vase full of pebbles fell from the deep bathroom window sill with no provocation (I’m looking at you, bathroom ghost!).

It could just be us, floundering in this weird ass environment, or it could be because this house is haunted AF.

My husband and I have both felt like we’ve been pushed - one time each. Him, while he was organizing the kids’ closet, me while walking down the stairs on my way out the door to work.

We were not amused.

I am always willing to admit that I may be wrong or I might have made something out of nothing or whatever other reason besides “its was a ghostly entity”. But this house is off its rocker.

One night, in the very early months, just as winter was embracing us in her icy folds, I was waiting for husband to come home from work. I was probably watching something creepy in bed like Man’s Search for Sasquatch or Creepiest Haunted Houses in America or some such, when I heard the closet door click. It seemed as if someone had turned the handle all the way so that the latch bolt went all the way inside the door, and then released the handle so that it would pop back out quickly and make a single click sound.

Be cool, I told myself, as I let my eyes move slowly to the door handle, the whole room still and quiet. I felt almost like I was being taunted.

OMG, went the text to my husband. The closet door handle just moved on its own!

I waited for something else to happen but that night continued without incident.

Recently, my husband reported to me that he heard our noisy bedroom floorboard creak during the night and looked up expecting one of the kids to be there. He looked around but alas, not a child appeared. Everyone was snug in their beds. Except for him, of course.

It was late into our first winter here when a medium came to our house. She was a friend who posted her services for free for any takers. I jumped. We were curious and hoping we weren’t crazy. What did we have to lose? I told her we were having activity but wasn’t specific. I didn’t tell her any specifics about rooms.

She arrived on dark evening, when the days are way too short and our resident cold spots had nothing on the drafts of Vermont winter. She walked through the house alone for a while, before she finally rejoined me in the living room.

She took a breath and said, “Your bathroom…” She trailed off for a moment, looking for the words.

“I know.” I said, nodding, excited and relieved at the same time. I certainly felt less crazy.

She went on to tell me about the female energy she felt in the bathroom and in the kitchen. An older woman. She liked the chair in the bedroom, but hated my cooking.

“Tough shit.” I snorted. Maybe that could explain the harassment in the kitchen.

“She thought that was funny.” My friend said, and we all seemed to share a laugh.

Long story short, she reported that she felt nothing in the kids’ rooms, and everything else was centered around the stairwell and upstairs bathroom and landing. She said she felt a great deal of shame energy from the woman upstairs. I explained how I felt a very strong urge to bake and homeschool and be quite “domestic” since moving in. My friend said she could feel that, too.

In the end, she said she would try to communicate with the woman, and let her know all was well to move on.

I will say that I did notice the heavy creepiness of the bathroom decreased drastically after her visit. Though, I still occasionally expect there to be a jump scare every time I close the bathroom mirror.

We still have the random weirdness, like the kitchen blind moving suddenly without provocation or something going missing only to be found later. At this point, nothing surprises me and dare I say that we aren’t afraid any more. It’s simply how it is.

Our house is haunted.

At no point have I felt that my kids were in danger. They have had virtually no experience or ghostly encounters, short of the toilet thing with our daughter and generally sleep soundly through the night. Our older son has had a few things go on which I think can be attributed to the cat grabbing his foot though he swears the cat didn’t do it.

We work towards maintaining a balance of open mindedness and frank, intelligent discussion without resorting to paranoia or hyped up fear. Questioning the world around us and considering all facets, while trying to grasp the concepts of good and evil. A balance it is, truly.

The funny thing about real haunted houses is that they aren’t Hollywood. They are small things that happen over a time that you may very well have missed if you weren’t open or paying attention or as into it as my husband and myself.

Real hauntings are pockets of life’s experience. The energy of a wife shamed for being a woman perhaps, or expected to cook well for her family and passing those judgements on. Maybe an abuse that was so heavy that it is stuck in this house, much like trauma gets lodged in our own bodies.

I still have moments when my heart races for a moment or goosebumps tickle my skin and for a second, I get startled or scared.

Then, I take a breath, shake it off and remind myself that all is well. And I tell those ghosts,

“Not today.”