Haunting in La Porte, Texas

My father has moved from the house that he spent more than 10 years living in, but since there are new
residents, I won't disclose its actual address. From what I understand, it was built in the 1920's as a single
story house. Additions including a front "sun room" and a second story were added later.

When we first moved in, right away my sister and I felt very ill at ease in the new house. My father is a
firm disbeliever in the supernatural, and said we were just not used to it yet. That was true, but it didn't
account for the odd things that started to happen, and continued to happen for the next two years or so.

Let me tell you about the layout of the house. When you walk into the front door, on your left is the
"new" sunroom, and on your right is the kitchen and dining area. Straight in front of you is a doorway
opening into the livingroom, which is flanked by the master bedroom, the spare bedroom, and then the
stairs to the second floor. The stairs are narrow, and more vertical than most. As you walk up the stairs,
you are practically wiped out by the oppressive heat that begins midway up the stairs, and fills the entire
second story. Unusually enough, it is the pressure on the stairs that is the most difficult to bear. That
pressure is not felt on the second story at all.

At the top of the stairs directly in front of you is a bathroom. To your left is a bedroom, and to your
right is a bedroom. The bedrooms are both connected through a shared closet that travels over the
stairs. It is in the bedroom on the right that was loved and hated right away. This was our brother's
room. As soon as you walk in the door, you see another door on the far wall. This door was tiny, only
about 4 and a half feet high. When you open the tiny door, you step down three creaky stairs into an
alcove that has a street facing window in it.

Just to the left of the little staircase was a latched cabinet door, Inside was an entrance to the crawl
space between the two floors. The craw space was big, at least 2.5 feet thick. Easily enough room for a
person to fit through. We never went into the crawl space. We never even dared each other to.

We spent a lot of time in this little alcove. It was our playroom, and our clubhouse. It had a musty smell
in it, but it was usually much cooler than the rest of the second story. In fact every now and then, a
corner of the room would be ice cold.

Going to sleep at night was hard enough, considering how hot it was, even in the winter. We would close
our bedroom door at night, because we didn't feel comfortable leaving it open to the dark staircase. Many
times, one or both of us would hear footsteps on the stairs, and thinking it was our brother or our parents,
we would get up to answer our door, and nobody would be there. At night we always made sure to tuck in
our feet. Something icy would touch them if we didn't. A draft?

It was a little after the first year, that we first noticed the face in the little alcove window from outside.
Since cars rarely pass, we would play games in the street. My brother is the one who actually noticed the
white oval "face" in the lower left hand window pane. I was the oldest, so it was up to me to investigate.
Everyone huddled behind me, and we went into the little room. There was nothing that we could see in
the window. We certainly didn't see a face or (face-like shape even) in the window or screen. We
shrugged it off, but almost everytime we went outside to play, there it was.

I happened to be alone one day outside, when there was the "face" apparently watching my brother and a
friend of his in the yard across the street. I didn't think much of it, because like I said, it was often there
and had become quite normal. I went inside, got a drink from the refrigerator, picked up a new magazine
off of the table and took it into the livingroom. I surfed the tv for a minute, and then heard noise from
upstairs. When anyone was in the alcove, the tiniest footsteps sounded like a herd of elephants. Deciding
it was probably my sister, I went upstairs to see if she wanted to watch tv with me. I went up into my
brothers room, and hesitated before I opened the door. I suddenly had chills, and felt very afraid. I
opened the door slowly, and nobody was there, but just as if somebody had been in front of me, footsteps
went down the three stairs. I slammed the door shut and ran downstairs.

After telling my story, my sister and brother became quite hysterical. My father of course not only didn't
believe us, he laughed at the idea of it all. Any mention of "ghosts" would get us a very unpleasant eye
roll. My step-mother came in one day and said that the ghost was of a little boy who had died in the
house. We asked her how she knew (because she wasn't above just trying to scare us), and she said that
a neighbor had just told her. One that had lived nearby for many years. She said that the boy had died of
complications due to asthma in the first floor spare bedroom. He had died at around 8 years of age, and
had always been sickly and unable to play outside with his brothers. Whether or not this was true, we
didn't know, but to our young minds it fit perfectly. We had our ghost!

We would hang around in the first floor spare bedroom, but we were never able to pick up the slightest
case of heebie jeebies. The "ghost" was not in that room. One night, around 2 in the morning, my sister
and I were going downstairs to the kitchen to raid the fridge. My sister went first around the corner from
the livingroom to the kitchen, and turned on the light. I had fallen behind to make sure that our parents
were asleep. As I made the left turn from the livingroom, I saw something out of the corner of my eye in
the sunroom. It was so fast, that I'm not sure entirely what it was. It was something sitting on the floor
against the front wall near the windows between two large plants of my fathers. It seemed to be a
grayish blue color, and had its knees drawn up aginst its chest, with its arms wrapped around them. I
didn't see it long enough to say that it was a person, or even that it resembled a person. I don't recall
seeing clothes, only this grayish-blue color. I did feel like it was watching me. I had only seen it for a
moment, and when I reached the "safety" of the kitchen a mere half second later, I looked back and
nothing was there.

Various things happened over the next year. Often we would hear our parents yell for us, only to find
that they were not even home, or had been sleeping. One night when my sister was sleeping (I was not
there) she was awakened to hear me calling for her from downstairs. Forgetting that I wasn't even there,
she got up and opened the bedroom door and looked down. She said she wasn't sure what it was, but in
her sleepy state she thought I was walking down the stairs with my back to her. She asked me what I
wanted, but when i reached the first floor, I walked away. She thought I was just acting weird, and
went back to bed. It wasn't until the next day that she realized that she had seen something unusual.

Though we still felt nervous in the sunroom and on the stairs, nothing on such a grand scale happened
there again. Most of the activity came from the "little room." Cold and hot spots were common in this
room. The little door to the crawl space would often rattle when nobody was in the room. When we'd
investigate, of course nothing was there. I've already said that we never went inside the crawl space,
and that's true. I don't recall even suggesting it. It looked very scary, and felt even more so. It seemed
very "dark" and threatening, and we didn't often open the door, not even to hide things. We felt safer
when the door was shut and locked. [Yes, there was a lock on the door. That seemed strange.] The
knockings and footsteps from the room became more frequent, and was keeping us out of the room. We
chose to ignore these "tantrums" and started playing in the room again. We had guests over one night,
and as a group of 6 we spent the entire night in there playing video games. Though at first we still
noticed the cold spots, they eventually became less noticeable, and nothing else happened that night.

Not that same day, but pretty soon after that, all the activity ceased. Till the day my father moved
out of the house nearly 8 years later, nothing [that I know of] happened. I don't know if anything
spooky goes on now to the new residents or not, and my father still maintains that the supernatural
doesn't exist. I know different.

Addtional Note: This is a private residence. Tresspassers will be prosecuted.