A True Ghost Story

By Michael Sear

Back in 2002 my family moved from Olathe, Kansas, to Kansas City, Kansas. We moved into a 74-year-old, 2-story house   more...on Northrup Avenue in an historic part of town called Strawberry Hill. At the time my family consisted of me, Michael, my wife Dana, and my then 12-year-old son Daniel.
Near as we could tell the first 6 months passed uneventfully. Then we began to hear strange sounds. The first obvious disturbance happened late on Saturday afternoon in June 2002. Dana and I were sitting in the living room when we heard someone jumping on our bed in the master bedroom directly above our heads. The jumping was such that it shook the ceiling. The noise then seemed to jump off of the bed onto the floor and ran down the upstairs hallway. I said Daniel knew better than that and that I would have to scold him. Besides, he might break the bed. Dana reminded me that Daniel was in Olathe visiting his grandparents. That’s when we shuttered at the thought that there was someone else in the house. A few tense moments passed as I started up the stairs to investigate. I found no one. I figured it must have been raccoons or something in the attic, but an investigation provided no evidence of any. We soon forgot about the incident.
A couple of days later we heard a tremendous THUMP on the outside of the house that shook the very foundation. It was as if a large boulder had hit it. I went out to check and found nothing; no boulder, no people, no damage – strange. I was the most scared because I was in the downstairs bathroom at the time taking care of my business - as it were.
A few days later Dana and I were again sitting in the dinning room. All of a sudden the basement door, about 10 feet away, opened on it’s own. We sat there looking at it when just as suddenly it slammed shut. Now we were starting to wonder why these things were happening.
Well, these same things continued to happen every few days or so and it got to where we expected them. We noticed the thumps on the side of the house only happened when one of us was in the downstairs bathroom and the jumping on the bed upstairs when we were all downstairs. The basement door was often found open in the morning.
One night, at about 2 am, I heard what sounded like someone rummaging through our collection of VHS movies in a hall closet. I assumed it was Daniel. When it didn’t stop and I couldn’t get back to sleep I went out to ask him to be quieter and found the closet door closed and no one to be found. I sat in a chair and closed my eyes when the noise started up again.
One night while I was at work in the middle of the night Dana said she heard someone walk up the stairs and down the upstairs hallway and stop outside of her bedroom door. She was sure someone was in the house, but after a few minutes thinking she was dead, she got enough nerve up to check – she found nothing. Again, Daniel was out of town visiting his grandparents.
Well, for about the next year we heard a host of noises we couldn’t explain. I even set up a recording device that ran over night a few times in which could be heard faint voices and foot steps. We couldn’t make out what the voices were saying but they sounded Native American. A little research revealed that the entire area of Strawberry Hill was once inhabited by the Heron Indian Tribe and there was a Heron burial ground just a couple of blocks away. We just thought it was a regular graveyard. We also discovered that a Heron Indian Chief had once owned a house a couple of blocks away.
Then one day, almost as quickly as the noises started, we noticed they ended. While all of us remain skeptical we can’t explain what went on.
We moved about a year later and haven’t experienced anything further.

Michael
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