tales from the farmhouse....

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preyer

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gawd knows what thread i mentioned this in already, but something that's always amused me is practically every person i've ever met who had lived in a farmhouse has a ghost story. i wonder why that is. indeed, the last person i talked to rather recently mentioned she used to live in a farmhouse, so i asked her to tell me about her ghosts. she was surprised i knew about her ghosts (i didn't) and asked, 'what makes you think it was haunted?' '*all* farmhouses are haunted,' i said. i think she was slightly taken aback by that.

of course i don't believe all farmhouses are haunted, but enough people (without making assumptions here or trying to be sexist, but they've been mostly women, but not exclusively) say the same thing as to make me ask that of anyone who's lived in one. i don't know, is the fact these people are segregated from other people condusive to making them think things that aren't true? are farmhouses just a beacon for the undead? is it just a bizarre coincidence that virtually everyone i've talked to about it have a story to tell? (it actually took me almost a year of pestering one girl to tell me her story, it so disturbed her so. she sorta encouraged me to draw it out of her, though, so it's not like i was a jerk for bringing up bad memories for her just for my own entertainment. it was pretty lame anyway, don't know why she was upset about the experience.)

i tell ya, though, come up with a ghost in a farmhouse story and there's a built-in audience for that. :)
 

MacAllister

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preyer--I grew up in a farmhouse. It never seemed particularly haunted. It DID seem old. It was a bit drafty, had a number of characteristic creaks and groans whenever the weather changed, and the pipes knocked a bit and so on. :)

Maybe there's just something about the combination of isolation and a probably-aging house that puts peep's imagination into overdrive...
 

Kevin Yarbrough

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Wonder why trailers are not haunted?

Kevin--trailer trash horror writer who use to live in a haunted house but it wasn't a farmhouse-- Yarbrough
 

Spookster

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Well, the only haunted house (due to other supernatural forces) I lived in was far from a farmhouse. Both my sisters live(d) in farmhouses and they haven't said a word to me about any of them being haunted. Creaky, yes, but not haunted. And, believe me, if my younger sister even thought for a second her house was in any way haunted, she'd move in five seconds flat. (Childhood trauma and all.)

I do believe in paranormal activity, though not necessarily ghosts. Maybe farmhouses seem to have higher activity because of age? Or maybe location has something to do with it.
 

jdkiggins

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preyer,

I grew up in a farmhouse on a 46-acre farm. Still live here. The only thing haunting about the place is me.
smile.gif


Joanne
 

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This is uncanny...I put together all the ghost stories my grandfather told me as a child just so I wouldn't forget them and labled the floder "Tales from the farmhouse".


I think there are two main reasons farmhouses tend to be haunted.

1. They are typically old buildings that make plenty of old house noises to incite the imagination, that coupled with the isolation and a person's mind can run wild.

and 2. They are older homes and traditionally, it's the older homes that are haunted. Particularly for farmhouses, babies were born in those homes, people died in those homes, farming accidents were treated in those homes...the walls have witnessed a lot of emmotion.
 

BlueTexas

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hapsburg said:
I think there are two main reasons farmhouses tend to be haunted.

1. They are typically old buildings that make plenty of old house noises to incite the imagination, that coupled with the isolation and a person's mind can run wild.

and 2. They are older homes and traditionally, it's the older homes that are haunted. Particularly for farmhouses, babies were born in those homes, people died in those homes, farming accidents were treated in those homes...the walls have witnessed a lot of emmotion.

Aside from rural or farm homes having more deaths and emotional events in them, the farmhouses are on farms. The life of a farmer is tied to the life of his land. Coming from a farm family, I know the only thing a farmer really wants is the farm next door, and farmers often develop emotional ties to the land, house or no.

So my thinking on this is that the land is haunted, house on it or no. Houses only last a few hundred years at most around here...the land is as old as the grass is green. Someone who died in that spot three thousand years ago could very well still be haunting it for all we know.

Ghosts are a hobby of mine...
 

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The life of a farmer is tied to the life of his land.

There's actually well-established precedent for this belief, stretching back about as long as people have subsisted off of land...
 

jdkiggins

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Preyer,

Sometimes, I tend to joke too much, sorry.

On the more serious side, I really do live on the 46-acre farm where I grew up. My house is within the 46-acres just through the woods from my mom's house which my dad purchased in the early 40's. The basement walls of the house are made of stone and it had only a kitchen, living room, and bedroom above the basement, no bathroom, only an outhouse. This outhouse was spooky even in daylight; it leaned a little and the door had one of those quarter moon shaped holes. According to the deed, the original part of the house was built in 1889. So at least part of the house is about 116-years-old. My dad was a carpenter and built a second story with two bedrooms and an addition on the first floor.

We do know there were Indians on the land at one time. There is a large collection of arrowheads and various other implements found on the property over the years that we donated to the museum in Pittsburgh. There are a few areas that always freaked me out when I was young.

I do believe that farmhouses, or for that matter, any house can be haunted. I also believe that even without a house the land can be haunted.

I don't know that the house is haunted, but there have been many strange things that have happened on this property. And still happen.

My WIP and the excerpt I entered in the Idol audition actually came from a childhood memory of something that did scare the heck out of my brother, two neighbors and me when we were children. Just this evening, my 81-year-old mom called me because she saw a light on the hill; the hill I wrote about in my WIP. Of course, I went and checked it out; there was nothing there, except that same barren spot and a mist above it. Funny thing is my mom never knew about this little adventure we had as kids and nothing unusual has happened on the property for years.

Now after making light of me being the haunting of this place, and starting to work on a WIP that’s been collecting dust for years, I’m being to wonder if simply writing about it has unearthed it again. :eek:

There is a place in Sewickley, PA that has had many stories written about it. I don't think the legend of that place will ever die. It's the house on Pinkhouse Road. Junior High and High School kids these days still try to get into the place to see if it's haunted. I don't know if it is, but the story about it is printed every year around Halloween. :)

Anyway, yes, I believe :scared: LOL Imagination can run away with us sometimes, but is it really imagination?

Joanne
 
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