Nada & Nettie's Ghost Journal

I have tried to be as accurate as possible with the dates of these encounters. Since journal entries were rarely recorded at the time of the earlier encounters, dates may be slightly off. Within certain timeframe's, the order of events may not be accurate, but they are as close as possible from recollections gathered from family and or friends who were there at the time. I’ve kept a hand written journal and have copied the encounters from there to here, contacting family and friends to verify the info collected and made corrections here according to their corroboration.

All accounts are true, having faith in the testimonies of those who shared their experiences. Those whose accounts are shared here are either family, friend or directly connected to either. Some encounters are dreams that either felt significant or somehow filtered into real life. I believe that spirits can affect the subconscious mind and that can be directly reflected in one’s dreams. Because of this belief, I felt it significant to include certain dreams with these accounts.

As Nettie and I got older, we began to test the experiences we had. For instance, if we heard a sound or saw a shadow, we tried to recreate it so that we could be sure it wasn’t caused by anything ordinary. I have done my best to explain these recreations. I just want to say now that I feel differently than I used to about “scary” experiences. When I was young, I was more scared of being scared that I realized. Now I am anxious for encounters. I want to see, hear and feel the paranormal and it would take a lot for me to hide my eyes or run away now. I am so grateful for all of my experiences, and that I grew up with all of this as a foundation for my life. There certainly is much more to life that the mundane day to day grind.

Some encounters are now being reviewed by family members for accuracy. Once I get them back I'll post them here. We welcome contact from you on the subject of the supernatural. If you've had an odd, unexplained experience and would like to share it, drop us an email. If we get enough requests to post experiences on our site we'll add a section exclusively for that. ~Nada & Nettie

Location: Beverly Hill St, Houston TX
Date: Dec. 11, 2002
Encounter: Bed rocking
Testifier: Annette (Journal entry)
In the early morning hours I was in a half sleep state, but aware of my room. I felt like there was something putting pressure, pushing on each side of the mattress, making my body rock back and forth slowly. And then I felt pressure on various parts of my body, I felt a chill rush all over my limbs - a tingling sensation. Strange.

Location: Dellwood Ave, Jax FL
Date: Throughout our time at Dellwood (1995 – 2002)
Encounter: Phantom voices immitating family
Testifiers: Khanada & Annette

Every time dad came over to see us he would call “Yoo hoo!” as he approached the back door. The whole time we lived there, there would be times when we’d hear the screen door open and dad calling loudly from the back, we’d rush to let him in and find no one there. One morning I had just gotten out of the shower and heard Nettie make a kissy noise right up close on the other side of the door. (It has been a good morning greeting for us for years.) I responded but there was no response back. I asked Annette about it later but she had not even left her room after dressing for work while I was in the bathroom and she had not made the “Kissy” noise at all that morning.

2000

Location: Dellwood Ave, Jax FL
Date: October 24, 2000
Encounter: Loud bang during Angel
Testifiers: Khanada & Annette
Annette and I were watching Angel one evening and there was an extremely loud crash from the dining room directly behind us. There was no door separating the dining and living rooms. Instead there was an open archway so the two rooms felt like one large one The sound was big enough to have been a small piece of furniture falling, but when we went in to look the room over, absolutely nothing was out of place.

Date: August 9, 2000
Encounter: Hallway light goes off by itself
Testifiers: Khanada & Annette
We were watching Crossing Over on TV and Nettie noticed that the hall light was off and we always had it on after dark. Neither of us had turned it off , it had been on all evening and thought at first that maybe the bulb had burned out, but we found it came on again when we flicked the switch.

Date: June 25, 2000
Encounter: Throwing doll clothes
Testifier: Khanada
Annette and I were in the doll room on the floor when I felt something light hit my shoulder. I looked down and noticed piece of doll clothing lying next to me that wasn’t there before. I thought Annette had thrown it at me, but she hadn’t.

1998

Location: Dellwood Ave, Jax FL
Date: February 18, 1998
Encounter: Significant dream followed by a spooky experience
Testifier: Khanada
I was dreaming that I was in a pitch-black room with my friend Ruth. We were talking and I think we were waiting for someone to turn the lights on. Then I felt these hands hitting lightly against my head and arms. It was very irritating. I reached out flailing as I tried to grab the person. It was so dark that it was like my eyes were closed. I felt the person’s arms flailing in front of me trying to avoid being caught. Then I finally got a hold of one of the arms with my right hand. My thoughts before I actually grabbed onto the arm was that I was struggling with a ghost, so I was a little surprised to catch something solid. The arm was small like a child’s with very fine, soft hair. I held on tight, digging my fingernails into the soft flesh as it struggled to free itself. Through clenched teeth I growled, “Who are you?” The silence that followed was deliberate and defiant. It refused to answer me.
I refused to let go, but the sound of something crashing in my house woke me as I was just about to see who “she” was. I laid there, slowly waking up. I felt spooked and I was so exhausted that I didn’t want to get up and go investigate the loud crashing noise I’d heard. I remembered the dream, and could almost picture the spirit standing in my doorway. I still felt angry about it. Just as I started to fall back to sleep, there was a louder and longer crashing noise in the house. Both Annette and I got up. I thought for a sec that Annette had been fighting a bug, but that wasn’t the case. It seemed at first as we looked the house over, that nothing was amiss. Then I found that a shelf in the doll room had fallen. We put it back and tested the sound to see if it matched what we’d heard and it was definitely the same sound. Simply because of the nature of the dream and the order of events, we felt this was a spiritual disturbance.

1996

Location: Dellwood Ave, Jax FL
Annette and I shared the Dellwood house for seven years. I bought it in 1995 then Annette moved in several months later. It was built in the 40’s and was very quaint and charming. It was our first place together and a dream come true for us.
Date: May 9, 1996
Encounter: Sound of closet door closing
Testifiers: Khanada and Annette
Annette and I had just returned from shopping. It was early afternoon and we were in our doll room. We were going about our business when we heard the distinctive sound of the closet door in the hallway close. That door was hardly ever opened. It always remained closed and was closed tightly as it had been for days when we first arrived home. We check the sound by opening and closing that closet door, and it matched perfectly. All of the other doors in the hall were wide open, and the sounds they made when they were closed didn’t match that particular door.

Date: Early May, 1996
Encounter: Sobbing Woman
Testifier: Annette
At around 9 am one morning as Annette was waking up she heard a woman sobbing. We were used to hearing the neighbors outside at all hours, and this sound was very different. It was definitely coming from inside the house. It wasn’t me and just to be sure, she looked outside and there was no one around to have made the noise.

Date: April 26, 1996
Encounters: Creaky bed and little girl
Testifiers: Khanada, Annette & Mom
Early in the wee hours of the morning I heard what sounded like someone tossing and turning in a very creaky bed. Along with this I heard what sounded like a bottle full of pills being turned, the capsules or gel caps rattling back and forth inside the bottle. The sound of bed creaking and rustling of covers then the sound of the pill bottle right after. It woke me because it was so constant, yet not exactly the same sounds over and over. I got up because it sounded like it was coming from Annette’s room. I thought she’d be awake, but her light wasn’t on. It sounded like it was coming from right inside Annette's door so I opened her door and said her name. Annette was fast asleep. She woke peacefully and in confusion. Later she said that she thought she might also have hears the same rattling pill bottle, but it seemed distant to her. She hadn't heard the bed creaking, and the sound I heard was a different kind of sound than her bed has ever made.
Mom called that day from Utah and told us she had had some strange experiences recently. She said she felt someone or something run their hand down her back. And early the same morning of our experience, she was woken from a sound sleep by the voice of a little girl right in her ear that said, “Mama.” The voice didn’t sound like either Annette or myself.

Date: Mid-late April, 1996
Encounter: Ghost in Annette’s room
Testifier: Curt
Our good friend Curt was over for a visit. We’d been talking in the living room, then Curt used our bathroom. When he returned to the living room he stopped suddenly in surprise when he saw us and said, “Whoa! You’re both in here?” Then he told us that when he left the bathroom he heard the sound of a book closing loudly in Annette’s room. He glanced over and saw a figure in white leaning over Annette’s bed. He thought it was one of us, but found us together in the living room and neither of us were wearing white. The three of us went to Annette’s room and found that she’d left one of her scrapbooks on her bed. We opened it about halfway and let it drop closed and Curt said that was exactly the sound he’d heard.

1994-1995

Location: Caledonia St, Utah
Our entire family moved into this huge 8500 square foot home in 1991, right before Halloween. A man had built the house to accommodate his huge family of maybe 8 kids. But after it was built, he ran out of money and couldn’t afford to live there. Two oriental families moved in and one of the elderly members of the two families died in a bedroom upstairs. Then we moved in. The neighbors referred to the house as “Dracula’s House” and we were referred to as “The Addams Family.” We had friends tell us that it was known to be haunted. We were always treated nicely, but underneath it was obvious that everyone thought of us as the weirdoes of the neighborhood. We didn’t mind this at all.

Date: Feb. 14, 1995
Encounter: Ghostly noises (reactions to our conversation)
Testifiers: Khanada, Annette & Mom
The three of us were sitting in the living room recalling ghostly experiences from the past when we heard a strange scratching and rattling noise coming from the direction of the front foyer. Annette and I immediately got up to go find the source of the noise, testing various objects in the vicinity to try and match what we’d heard. We finally found that someone or something had lifted the toilet brush in the bathroom under the stairs right inside the foyer then dropped it again. Each of us performed the action while the others returned to the living room to listen and agree that it matched what we’d heard exactly.
Journal entry on this same day: Just now, once again as I attempt to record all of these experiences, a strange thing just happened. Annette was sleeping on the big couch and I was here writing the previous accounts, when there was a loud double banging in the hallway upstairs. Mom and I heard it all too clearly and Annette woke having not registered it because of being asleep. I went upstairs to see if anything had fallen and to search for the origin of the noise. The closest duplication I could come up with was taking a broom handle and hitting it against the top of a doorway molding and sliding it down to also bang against the top of the door. It came very close to the sound we’d heard. Nothing had fallen or was out of place.
Another installment for today: only moments ago at 5:35 pm, mom was in the kitchen and caught a glimpse of a man standing in the doorway to the dining room, looking into the kitchen. She felt it was granddaddy (her dad). She said he was wearing a white shirt and pants.

Date: Late 1994 or Early 1995
Encounter: Stinky man spirit
Testifier: Khanada & Annette
Dad and Chris had moved back to Florida and we’d moved my bedroom upstairs and put the giant dollhouse in Chris’ old room. Annette and I were hanging out in there when I caught a whiff of stinky, sweaty man smell. I pointed it out to Annette and she smelled it too. Then as suddenly as it was there it seemed to leave, but we found it again and it seemed to move around the room. We followed it all around the room, low to the floor and then up at standing level towards the bathroom door, then out the bedroom door and partway down the hall toward the stairs that lead to the foyer.
* Chris described how he often felt very negative emotions and depressed feeling come over him in that room. He said they came out of nowhere and would overcome him. He wasn’t surprised to hear our account of the stinky male spirit.

Date: 1994
Encounter: Witness proclaims a demonic presence
Testifier: Mom, Annette & Khanada
We were having a huge garage sale. A woman from the neighborhood came in and despite not knowing anything about our experiences at Caledonia, she proclaimed that there was a demon in our house. She then left in a hurry. We got a kick out of that!

Date: Early 1994
Encounter: Flashlight catches a shadow
Testifier: Annette
At around midnight the power went out. Mom, dad and Annette went downstairs. Mom and dad went to check the power box. Annette stayed in the family room and ran her flashlight beam across the walls and caught a glimpse of a figure up high over the organ. It was obvious the figure had to have been between her and the wall for the beam to catch it that way. There was nothing between her and the organ to cast any kind of shadow.

1993

Location: Caledonia St, Utah
Date: 1993
Encounter: Frightening approach
Testifier: Mom (Recorded in first person)
Often in the living room in the late evening, while alone, I had the most chilling experience. I was sitting, facing the fireplace and I heard someone rush up behind me the stop within about one foot from the back of my chair. It felt ominous and evil to me. I was struck with such fear that I thought my heart would stop. It pounded so hard and fast in my chest. I was too frightened to look behind me for fear of what I’d see. Within several minutes it would leave. It took me time to come down off my shock.
Severel times, Annette also felt this feeling as if someone came rushing up behind her, but no one was there.

Date: 1993
Encounter: Sounds in dining room
Testifier: Mom
One evening I’d spent hours in the dining room working on a personal project. Mom said she always heard faint sounds in that room, but after I’d been working there she said that night while she was watching TV in the living room, she heard much more movement and sounds than usual from the dining room.

History of Bridget: a ghostly presence I encountered a few of times
Testifier: Khanada
For a short time one of our friends, Tonya, stayed with us in an upstairs bedroom. Tonya’s best friend was Bridget, who had recently died in a car accident. Tonya kept her obituary on the wall in her room. Bridget once hung out at the same nightclubs we were going to and knew some of the same people we did.

Location: B.J.’s Nightclub, Utah
Date: 1993
Encounter: Bridget, the vanishing clubber
Testifier: Khanada
We, Annette and I, were at B.J.’s dancing and hanging with friends. I was dancing on a small stage to the right of the door that to the outside smoking area. I tended to watch people entering and exiting from there as I danced. I watched as Jeremiah, a good friend of ours, walked toward the door to go smoke with a very perky, petite blonde girl I’d never seen before at his side. I thought nothing of it until she literally vanished before my very eyes as he reached the door and went outside! I rushed to Annette at the other end of the room to tell her what I saw. I also asked Jeremiah if he’d had a girl matching that description with him at that time and when he said no, I told him what I’d seen. Obviously he was spooked.

Location: Khanada’s car and Friend’s house
Not long after the above encounter Annette and I were in the car with our friends Sam and Mark (I’ll avoid using last names since we can’t get a hold of them to get their permission to use their identities). We were sharing various experiences and I told them about what happened at B.J.’s. Mark freaked out and insisted I drive to his house. He wanted to show me something. When we got there he ran inside and brought out an 8x10 photo of his fiance, Bridget, who had recently died in a car accident. She’d been on acid at the time and had died in his arms. The girl in the photo was definitely the same type as the girl who had vanished at the club. He told me she used to constantly go to B.J.’s and he was sure it was her I’d seen.

Location: Caledonia St
Date: 1993
Encounter: Bridget “kicking the cans”
Testifier: Khanada & Chris
I moved my room down into the basement of our huge house. At first my walls were painted grey, to go along with the gothic thing we were doing at the time. Eventually I found it oppressive, so decided to repaint the walls a very light rose color. We had been painting all morning and were running low on paint so mom and I left to get more. Chris had been helping us and had left before we started running low on paint. He didn’t know we were gone. He headed back downstairs and at the head of the stairs into my basement room he heard a girl sigh loudly in exasperation and then he heard what sounded like someone had kicked the empty paint cans. He described it as a pitiful sigh, very sad, depressed. He thought it was me, though it hadn’t sounded like me. Then he opened my door and entered the room and it was too quiet. He walked around the rather large area and no one was there. Then we got home just as he was headed back up the stairs looking as if he’d seen a ghost. He told us what happened. We tested it. We closed the door then I sighed and kicked the cans as Chris had described while he headed down the stairs. He said it had sounded like a different girl, but otherwise was just as he’d heard it before.
*I have always believed it was Bridget who was upset by us repainting my room. I believe she liked it dark and gloomy, both because she was into the goth scene before her death, and because she was depressed. There were times down in that room when I would feel a sense of oppression, depression and heaviness. My life wasn’t bad. I had nothing to feel so down about. I began to attribute these negative feelings to Bridget. I expressed in prayer that I didn’t mind her staying, but that I didn’t want her affecting me negatively if she did. If those feelings bothered me after that, I was able to separate them from myself and eventually they went away entirely. I don’t know if she left, or if she simply stopped radiating sadness into me.

Date: Early 1993
Encounter: Shadow in family room
Testifier: Khanada, Annette & Chris
The three of us were in the family room hanging out when we saw a tall dark shadow move across the wall between the swinging door and the back stairs. We immediately tried to recreate the shadow by holding a pillow over our heads (the shadow was that tall) and walking the same path. The further away from the wall we walked, the more very faint multiple shadows were cast by the light from the glass doors behind us. We had to walk up against the wall to even get close to the solid darkness of the shadow we’d all seen.

Date: Feb, 1993
Encounter: Old man at glass door
Testifier: Khanada
Dad had just gone into the hospital for angioplasty surgery. I was in the family room and Fifi was barking at the glass doors as if someone was there, but no one was. I walked into the kitchen saying to her, “There’s nobody there.” But in my mind’s eye I visualized an old man standing just outside the doors, so close that his nose might have been touching the glass, looking in at us. He wore an untucked plaid flannel shirt and baggy jeans that hung on him he was so thin. He had thin grey hair. Later when mom and Chris returned I told them about my impression and they told me that I had described exactly the grandfather of our neighbors behind us. He had recently died. I had never seen him before, but they had seen him raking in the back yard of their home. We figured I hadn’t seen him because my rooms both upstairs and in the basement didn’t have windows that faced the back of the house, but theirs did.

Date: 1993
Encounter: Dark figure through vanity mirror
Testifier: Mom
Mom was sitting at her vanity in her bedroom when she saw a tall dark figure through her mirror pass behind her. He took about 7 steps across the room and out the room into the hallway.

Date: 1993
Encounter: Fifi lifted and turned over by a spirit
Testifier: Dad
Dad was in the office at home on Caledonia sitting at his desk. Our dog Fifi, our adroable little golden Chihuahua, was there sitting at his feet, she stood up and started acting strange. She was still standing when dad watched her rise up off the floor. Her feet completely left the floor, then she turned over in mid air upside down and “landed” softly back down on her back. She squirmed, scrambled to her feet and freaked out as if a stranger had been holding her. He said she “floated.” There was no way she could have jumped and moved like that. (one of us saw dad right after it happened and his face was washed out in fear)

1990-1992

Location: Caledonia St, Utah
Our entire family moved into this huge 8500 square foot home in 1991, right before Halloween. A man had built the house to accommodate his huge family of maybe 8 kids. But after it was built, he ran out of money and couldn’t afford to live there. Two oriental families moved in and one of the elderly members of the two families died in a bedroom upstairs. Then we moved in. The neighbors referred to the house as “Dracula’s House” and we were referred to as “The Addams Family.” We had friends tell us that it was known to be haunted. We were always treated nicely, but underneath it was obvious that everyone thought of us as the weirdoes of the neighborhood. We didn’t mind this at all.

Date: 1992
Encounter: Grabbed
Testifier: Khanada
Annette and I both decided to take a nap one afternoon at the same time. I dreamed a disturbing bizarre dream and was slowly brought back to consciousness by the distinct feeling of someone getting into the bed behind me. The whole bed tilted, but I found I couldn’t move or open my eyes. Then I felt a man’s hands slip around me and grab a hold of me. I was angry and fought to move and finish waking up. Then the “guy” moved away and I felt the bed move again as if he’d gotten up and I could move. I got up, still freaking out just as Annette came down and told me she’d had a disturbing and menacing dream at the same time.

Date: Happened the whole time we lived there
Encounter: Spirits messing with Fifi
Testifier: The whole family
Our poor little Chihuahua, Fifi, was constantly pestered by whatever spirits were at the Caledonia house. She’d run around playing with us then suddenly react as if someone or something had pinched or messed with her. She’d stare at “nothing” and bark or watch intently as if she saw something we didn’t. She’d even run from “nothing” at times and get very upset.

Location: Ramona Blvd. Jax FL
Date: October, 1991
Encounter: Noises upstairs before the move
Testifiers: Marlene/Khanada, Annette, Chris
We were packing to move out to Utah and the three of us were sitting in the living room. We could hear what sounded like dresser drawers opening and closing in mom’s room upstairs, as well as creaking as if someone was moving around up there, but no one was upstairs at the time.

Date: Mid. 1991
Encounter: Mom wasn’t upstairs
Testifier: Khanada
I answered the phone in the hallway downstairs. It was for mom. Due to the sounds I heard upstairs, footsteps and other banging around, I though she was upstairs. No one else was in the house. I called up the stairs to her to take the phone, but she came in the back door and I realized I’d been hearing ghostly sounds, again.

Date: Early 1991
Encounter: Intercom ghost
Testifier: Khanada
My room was in the attic and the house was so large that we used intercoms to communicate. In the wee hours of the morning I woke and was lying in bed when suddenly I heard a voice like mom calling me from my intercom. It kept calling my name, “Khanaaadaaa… Khanaadaaaaa…” . It sounded like mom, but the tone was “too sweet.” Mom would never use that sickeningly sweet tone when calling me, and she wouldn’t have called me in the middle of the night, either. I wouldn’t get up and go respond because I knew I was being tricked. Then about the third time the voice said, “You don’t have to be afraid.” in that same gooey sweet tone. It called several times after, but I still refused to go answer it. I eventually fell asleep again.
The next morning I asked mom if she called me that night and of course she said no. The intercom in my parent’s room was on dad’s side of the bed, so if she had called, she would have either had to reach over dad, or get up and walk around to it. Of course I never believed it was mom.

Date: 1990 or 1991
Encounter: Boy on bike
Testifier: Khanada
Mom was driving me to the junior college to my seminary class. It was late afternoon, but still light for at least an hour. She took a wrong turn and had to make a u-turn around a median to go back in the direction of the school. I was gazing absently at the dashboard, then I glanced up at the median ahead of us and saw a boy, about 10 years old, on a bike. He was wearing a baseball cap, a jacket and his bike had colored spokes. I looked back down very quickly and felt worried about the boy crossing the road. An instant later I looked up again and no one was there. I immediately said to mom, “Where’d the boy on the bike go?” She replied, “What boy?” I then told her what I’d seen.
The next morning she told me that she’d called the cops and described what I’d seen. She was surprised that they took her very seriously. They even sent patrol cars during after school activities just in case I’d had a premonition. Nothing happened over the following three days so they quit, but they asked their resident psychic and he led them to a file several years old. In it was an account of a young boy who died on that corner while trying to cross the street on his bike. He’d been wearing a baseball cap, a jacket and his bike has colored covers over its spokes. The boy had been mildly retarded and the psychic said he wasn’t traumatized by his death.

Date: 1990 or 1991
Encounter: Astral encounter with dark spirit
Testifier: Khanada
During this time I was having lots of astral travel experiences. I would reach a certain level of sleep then “wake up” to realize I could leave my body and travel as I pleased. On this night I “woke” and immediately got up and left my attic bedroom. I went down three flights of stairs but stopped before taking the fourth. There standing at the bottom of the last flight of stairs was a pitch-black spirit. It was male, tall, and three dimensional but so black I couldn’t make out any features but its silhouette. The being looked like he was in modern clothing, with the shape of a baseball cap on his head. I immediately knew this thing wanted to get into my body upstairs, so I turned and in the blink of an eye I was back in my bed and instantly awake.

Date: 1990
Encounter: Dream of significance
Testifier: Khanada
During this time I was having many dreams where I felt I was astral projecting. In one dream I had met a woman who told me that the spirit doing most of the mischief around the house at that time was an old man named Allen. I also dreamed that I spoke with the old man, but couldn’t remember what was said.

1986-1989

Location: John’s Cemetery, Middleburg FL (located at the end of a long road far away from civilization)
Date: 1989
Encounter: Ghostly banging on tape left on a grave
Testifiers: Chris, Annette & Mike
Chris, his friend Mike and Annette went to John’s cemetery out in the boondocks of Middleburg. John’s cemetery is very old and unkept and well known for occult activity. They left a cassette recorder on a grave and left the area and headed back to Mike’s house several blocks away. After using up one side of a 120 minute tape they returned and retrieved the recorder. Once they returned to Mike’s house they played it back and were really freaked out when they heard sporadic, dull thumping that went on for several minutes at about the center of the tape. The thumping was very hard at times. Some time later when they played it back again, the thumping was gone and all you could hear was crickets and other normal outside noises.

Location: Ramona Blvd. Jax, FL
After our grandfather passed away and our grandmother became very ill, we moved back into the family home on the corner of Lamboll and Ramona Blvd. We lived there from 1987 – October, 1991 (and when we were babies years earlier).

Date: 1987
Encounter: All of the piano keys slammed down
Testifier: Khanada
I was sleeping in the bedroom facing the top of the staircase and there was an upright piano just inside the living room door at the bottom of the stairs. I can’t remember if it was night or morning, but I heard all of the piano keys go down at once making a loud jarring noise. No one else heard the noise. An interesting note about that piano, which was with us all our lives growing up, in the very center of the front panel above the keys, the wood grain made the perfect demonic face. This always stood out to us as kids.

Location: Harvard St., Middleburg FL
We lived at the Harvard street address from 1977 to 1988. This is another home where someone had previously died in the house, and a large concentration of spiritual experiences happened there. Several years after we’d moved out of Harvard, Chris discovered that our neighborhood was built directly in the center of an old highway that led to the a fort where many fights with American Indians took place during the original settlements. We had a couple of neighbors who claimed to have some strange occurrences in their homes as well. Middleburg was a very small town and we were constantly hearing rumors about a dark cult, strange practices and large black dogs that were somehow connected to them that would roam the dirt roads.

Date: 1987
Encounter: Ghostly footsteps in the hall
Testifier: Chris and Mike
Chris and his good friend Mike were in the living room at around midnight. Dad was at work and Mike had fallen asleep in the chair as they watched TV. Mike woke and as he and Chris sat there they heard someone walking up and down the hall. This was a common occurrence. Mike was gripping his chair in terror and asked Chris how he could he handle it. Chris said it was so common he was used to it. Then Chris said, “Now you know what it feels like to be one of the Taylor’s.”

Date: 1986
Encounter: Chris bumps into something in the hall
Testifier: Chris
Chris had stayed up late watching TV and was walking tiredly back to his bedroom. The hall was very dark so he could hardly see. Halfway down the hall to his room, Chris bumped into something. He felt it hit his stomach and his knees and sensed that the entity moved back slightly as if it were as surprised as he was. Chris said, “Dad?” out loud, then switched the light on (the light switch was in the middle of the hall). No one was there and he found dad was fast asleep.

1984-1985

Location: Harvard Street, Middleburg FL
We lived at the Harvard street address from 1977 to 1988. This is another home where someone had previously died in the house, and a large concentration of spiritual experiences happened there. Several years after we’d moved out of Harvard, Chris discovered that our neighborhood was built directly in the center of an old highway that led to the a fort where many fights with American Indians took place during the original settlements. We had a couple of neighbors who claimed to have some strange occurrences in their homes as well. Middleburg was a very small town and we were constantly hearing rumors about a dark cult, strange practices and large black dogs that were somehow connected to them that would roam the dirt roads.

Some history
In late 1984 mom left dad and about a year later Annette and I went to live with her in Jax. Dad and Chris were living together and sometimes Annette would stay with them for a visit. Summer of 1986 I lived alone in Orlando for about 3 months while I worked at Disney. After that I moved in with mom again.

Date: Late 1985
Encounter: Hearing the TV but no one was there, again
Testifier: Annette & Chris
At about 2:00 am, Annette heard the TV on in the living room. She thought Chris was still up and decided to go join him. But when she went into the living room she found all the lights were off and Chris wasn’t there. Just as she entered the room it was “too quiet” all the lights where off and the TV instantly shut off by its self. She watched as the old tube style television picture finished shrinking to a pinpoint of light in the center of a black TV screen. She returned to bed. Chris also experienced this several times.

Location: Kim's Home, Middleburg FL
Kim was a good friend of mine throughout high school. She had a strong belief in the paranormal and had some interesting experiences that I can’t recall now. This one was shared by both of us together.
Date: 1985
Encounter: Guardian angel at Kim’s
Testifier: Marlene/ Khanada
I was visiting my good friend Kim Davis, sleeping over at her house. Kim had been in Atlanta, GA for some time and had just gotten back home. She’d gained a real belief in the spiritual while she was up there and we were talking about it as we laid down to go to sleep. She was describing her guardian angel to me, and then she started describing mine as well. I realized I could see the silhouette of a man in old-fashioned clothing, standing in the window. I didn’t mention this to Kim, but asked her where my guardian angel was at that moment. She said, “He’s standing in front of the window.” I was freaked out, turned my back and said goodnight.

Date: 1984
Encounter: Bitsy’s spirit
Testifier: Annette
Bitsy, our dog, was a tiny black Chihuahua we’d picked up as a stray at Murray Hill on a visit to see grandmommy. She’d always had health problems. We only had her for about a year before she passed away. On the morning of her death, I was the first one up getting ready for school. I found her lying in the hallway upside down in her dog bed. She had been sleeping in Annette’s room in a makeshift cardboard box made into a bed. Her normal dog bed was propped up against the closet door in the living room just outside the hallway. When I found her she had left Annette’s room and drug her dog bed from the living room into the hall in the exact location of that triangle that opened into the kitchen and living room where we tended to see spirits. We always thought that she’d wanted to be out of Annette’s room to die, so as not to upset her. Bitsy always had an amazing compassion for us both during emotional times and when we weren’t feeling well. Before Annette woke up, I got mom and dad up and showed them what I found. Mom wrapped Bitsy up and Dad buried her in the back yard.
When Annette woke she saw Bitsy pranced by her bedroom door with her tail curled up, apparently very happy. Bitsy never curled her tail up because she was always so ill. Annette was thrilled to see her so happy. Mom drove Annette and Chris to school and broke the news to them then. Annette was so upset at losing Bitsy that she had to leave school early that day.

Date: Sometime in 1984 or 1985
Encounter: Shadows behind me
Testifier: Khanada
I was at home by myself sitting in the living room watching TV and talking to my friend Ron on the phone. Our living room was long and narrow, so the chairs sat toward the middle of the room with the TV on one end and the piano at the back end. My back was facing most of the room. I remember I was watching some kind of awards show with Mr. T on it. The room was dimly lit. There was only the light from the TV and a dim lamp on the piano at the other end of the room behind me. I was seeing constant shadows like people walking back and forth behind me, passing between the light behind me and cast on the wall in front of me. I told Ron about it and he asked if I wanted him to come over and keep me company. Ron was always vocal about how uncomfortable he was with our house. I told him I wasn’t feeling threatened in any way and that he didn’t have to come.
* Ron always expressed his apprehension of our home. He was scared of it and if he came in he couldn’t leave fast enough. He felt uncomfortable there. But he didn’t understand why. After I told him about some of our experiences and about the man who had died there, he said he felt less bothered.

Date: 1984
Encounter: Dark spirit at the foot of mom’s bed
Testifier: Mom
Mom woke as dad prepared to head off to work. She listened, as he got dressed then left the room, closing the door behind him. But something was wrong. Usually when he closed the door, it made a distinct clicking sound, but this time it didn’t and for some reason it bothered mom. Then in that instant mom found she couldn’t move. She saw a dark figure at the foot of her bed. It rested one of its feet on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed and kicked it, making the bed shake. Mom was terrified. The figure seemed angry with mom. It spoke to her in a hissing, angry voice that almost seemed backwards or it was like a language mom couldn’t understand. Mom felt as if she were being told off. Mom could hear dad moving around up front getting ready to go, but couldn’t move or call out. Then, the instant dad left and mom heard him close the front door, the dark spirit vanished and mom could move again.

Date: 1984
Encounter: Mystery Dog disappears from photograph
Testifier: Chris & Joe
It was dusk, but not dark yet. Chris and his friend Joe were in Chris’ room looking out the window at what looked like a huge dog sitting in the front yard between the magnolia tree and the huge tree beside it. The dog was very tall, with a lean build like a great dane and the thick fur of a chow. The head was large and “puffy.” It was totally black and menacing. Chris took a picture of the dog through the screen of his window. After the photo was developed the dark dog figure showed up in that very spot, but you couldn’t make out the features. Chris showed the photo to Annette and I then eventually stuck it in a photo album and put it on his shelf. Some years later he pulled it out to see it again, but the dog was gone. It was only a photo of the front yard.

1982-1983

Location: Harvard Street, Middleburg FL
Date: 1983
Encounter: That wasn’t mom sitting down in the living room
Testifier: Annette
Annette was in the kitchen and thought she noticed mom come into the living room and sit down in a chair. But a few moments later mom came up from the back in one of her bright moo moos. The figure Annette saw was in white. No one was in the living room.

Date: 1983
Encounter: Ghostly feet/Shoulders
Testifier: Marlene/Khanada & Chris
I was sitting in the living room watching The Dukes of Hazard, but I wasn’t paying much attention to the show. Instead I was staring blankly at the floor where the living room, kitchen and hallway met up. Suddenly I saw the feet of a man in a long robe and sandals (very Christ-like) walk from the hall into the kitchen. It happened so fast that I couldn’t look up to see more of the spirit.
Chris also saw the feet in exactly the same description many times. He remembers a strong impression telling him, “don’t look up.”
At around this same time I was sitting in the living room again and gazing at the same area when I saw the head and shoulders of a woman in white, pass in the same direction. She was shimmering, not necessarily transparent and seemed to glow with her own inner light. Her head was draped in white and I couldn’t see her face. The closest comparison to what she reminded me of is Princess Leia in the first Star Wars film. Her head was draped in the same way.

Date: 1983
Encounter: Heavy footsteps and kitchen shenanigans
Testifier: Mom
In the middle of the night mom was awake as she frequently was due to being ill. She heard heavy footsteps and thought maybe Chris was up and about. She got up and went to the kitchen but found no one was there. All of the kitchen cabinet doors were open as well as the fridge door, and the rocker was just coming to a stop as if someone had been in it. She closed the fridge door and went back to bed.

Date: 1983
Encounter: Phone ringing in LR but nowhere else.
Testifier: Marlene/Khanada
At around the same time as the encounter above, I was sleeping in the same room (den converted into my bedroom). I woke at sometime around 2:00 am. I was hearing the phone in the living room ringing. I reached down to the phone on the floor beside my bed to check that it was plugged in, and it was. It should have been ringing, too, but it wasn’t. The phone in the living room rang and rang but no one else in the house seemed to hear it or answer it. I refused to get up and answer it and finally fell back to sleep. The next day, the phones, including the one by my bed, all rang normally.

Date: 1983
Encounter: Pounding on outer walls
Testifier: Marlene/Khanada
When I was 14 or 15 years old I was staying in the den that had been converted into a bedroom. I would often wake early on Saturday mornings, like around 6:00 am, to the sound of pounding on the outer walls of our doublewide trailer. The pounding would start at the far corner outside my parents room and move around the trailer, past my brother Chris’s room (his windows rattled when it hit them), my sister Annette’s room, the living, dining room and kitchen, getting louder as it got closer to my room. It would pass my room, causing the small pictures hanging on the wall to knock against the wall as it passed. Then it would go around again. It always made me think of American Indians*. It sounded like someone was flying around the trailer midway up the wall, pounding the outer walls with their fists. I thought for the longest time that I was the only one that heard it, but I mentioned it to my brother years later and he admitted he’d heard it too and he thought he’d been the only witness. Recently mom said she’d heard it also.
*Some years later Chris looked at the history of the area where the trailer sat and found that it was at the very center of a roadway that led to a fort in Middleburg where lots of Native American’s died battling early American settlers.

Date: 1982 or 1983
Encounter: Khanada’s radio comes on by itself
Testifier: Mom
Mom was in the kitchen preparing a meal while all of us kids were at school and dad was at work. Suddenly the radio in my bedroom came on by itself and the music blared loudly and scared her. She rushed to shut it off and found the volume was turned up all the way.

Date: 1982
Encounter: Seeing Aunt Emma’s spirit
Testifier: Khanada
We were all getting ready to go to Aunt Emma’s funeral that morning. She has passed away a few days before and had been planning on coming for a visit. I was looking at myself in the full-length mirror at the end of the hall, just outside my parent’s room when behind me at the other end of the hall I saw through the mirror an older woman. She was of slight build with short curly mostly grey hair. I immediately told mom what I saw and she recognized my description as Aunt Emma.

1980-1981

Location: Harvard Street, Middleburg FL
Date: 1981
Encounter: Face to face with a ghost
Testifier: Annette
Annette and I were playing cards on the living room couch. The layout of the living room, dining room and kitchen was such that you could walk through each room in a circle. The hallway shot off from the living room and kitchen and the area where they met seemed to be a hot spot for activity. It formed a triangle, which I always thought might have something to do with that. The couch was placed at the partition, backed up to the kitchen. Annette was facing in the direction of the hallway. She noticed a woman in white enter the kitchen and instantly thinking it way mom, she peeked around into the kitchen area to say hi. But instead of seeing mom, she came face to face with a spirit. She didn’t get a good look at it because it pulled away in the blink of an eye. She was just reacting to it when mom actually did walk from the hallway into the kitchen, wearing a bright, flowery night gown. There were often times when we would be in one room, see a figure pass into another room and find out it wasn’t any of us, but some kind of spirit.

Date: 1981 and on
Encounter: Hear the TV but no one’s there
Testifier: Annette
On Saturday mornings Chris and I would get up early, turn on the TV and wait for the business talk shows to go off and the cartoons to come on. Several times over the years Annette would be in her room, right next to the living room, and hear the television (the men’s voices from the business shows). She’d then get up and go to the living room expecting to find Chris and I waiting for cartoons. But she’d find everything too quiet, TV off and no one there.

Date: Early 80’s
Encounter: Noises in the kitchen
Testifier: Marlene/Khanada
My bedroom was located in the den, and I was already set up in there before any walls were put up for me. The head of my bed was backed up next to the kitchen counter. Often during this time at night I would hear movement in the kitchen, creaking like cabinet doors opening and closing, a sound like the rocking chair moving and shuffling around when everyone had gone to bed and there was no one in there. At the time I was too scared to peek around my headboard and look at what was happening. Mom would tell us that some mornings when she’d get up before anyone else, she’d find some of the cabinets open and once saw the rocking chair come to a stop before her eyes with no one in it.

Date: 1980
Encounter: Pill bottle clicking
Testifier: Mom
About 6 months after we moved into the Harvard address my mother began to experience phenomenon in my parent’s bedroom. Every morning at around 6:15 (I distinctly remember, for YEARS the time being 2:15 am) she would wake to the sound of clicking echoing throughout the room. It happened every morning at exactly the same time. She would also hear the sink, towel rack, and shower as if someone was preparing for work early in the morning. We learned that a man who lived in the house prior to us had died in that room of a heart attack, trying to get the childproof cap off his medicine bottle. After awhile the sound went away and never came back. Mom used to say that he was “checking out the new owners of his house” and when he was done he went away.*We tested the sound of an actual childproof bottle with mom and the sound matched exactly.

1950's-1970's

Location: Ramona Blvd, Jax FL
The house in Murray Hill Heights was built in 1933. The man who built it referred to it as his dream home. But our family was the only ones who ever lived in it until we moved out in 1991. I believe strongly that when a death occurs in a house, it thins the veil between the physical and spirit world. Our great grandmother Bowen died in the Murray Hill house, and I believe that is the reason why so many spiritual encounters happened there. Builder was tragically killed in a car/train crash, he was decapitated.

Date: Early 70’s
Encounter: Black spirit in the blue room
Testifier: Mom
When Chris and I were babies, mom and dad were staying in what we later referred to as the “blue room.” Dad was asleep but mom wasn’t. She saw a black spirit come out of the closet, cross the room and walk through the front window. She saw this kind of thing happen on several occasions.

Date: 1970’s
Encounter: Black figure walks through wall
Testifier: Mom
One night mom was standing at the foot of the stairs when she noticed a dark figure walk across the living room and through the wall into the breakfast nook or dining room.

Date: Sometime in 1969
Encounter: Doors slamming by themselves at Murray Hill
Testifier: Mom
Very early in the morning everyone was asleep except for mom. She couldn’t sleep because there were lots of noises around the house that she felt were spiritual. She’d gone down to the living room and was reading scripture when suddenly she heard 3 door slams coming from upstairs. She instantly thought I was up and had done it. She threw the book down and rushed upstairs only to find everything quiet and exactly as she left it.

Date: 1968
Encounter: Guardian Angel?
Testifier: Mom
When I was an infant we were in the kitchen (dining room?) and I was in my high chair. Mom saw a man in 18th century clothing (breeches, stockings, etc.) standing over me. She wondered if he was my guardian angel.
** See 1985; “Guardian Angel at Kim’s

Date: Around 1967
Encounter: Trash bags shaking
Testifiers: Mom, Grandmommy, Grandaddy
I (Khanada) was a baby and we were living with my grandparents in the Murray Hill house. Each night before trash day, large trash bags were kept in the hall, waiting to be put out early the next morning. Every night they were there, at around 9:00 pm, the bags would “get noisy.” It was as if someone was shaking, kicking, or hitting them. It became very irritating, especially to mom.

Date: various times
Encounter: Seat prints on the bed
Testifier: Grandmommy and Mom
This seemed to happen often over the years and mostly at Murray Hill. Grandmommy or mom would feel the bed go down on one side or even come in from elsewhere to find a seat print on one side of the bed, as if someone had been sitting there, but they were either alone or otherwise knew no one else had been around to do it.

Date: 1961
Encounter: Granddaddy possessed
Testifiers: Grandmommy, Uncle Oliver
Mom had gone to Utah against granddaddy’s will. He didn’t want her to leave grandmommy alone because he was out of town most of the time on trips to Miami. Mom had sent him a letter telling him she’d left and he’d rushed home to Jax. in a rage over it. He burst into the house, ranting, raving and pacing the floor. He frightened grandmommy because he wasn’t acting anything like himself. She called Uncle Oliver, who came over immediately. He tried to calm granddaddy, but had a very hard time. He finally got him to sit in his favorite recliner. Uncle Oliver wanted to give him a blessing, but granddaddy wouldn’t let him put his hands on his head. So, Oliver knelt beside him and placed his hands on granddaddy’s arm and prayed. He asked the dark spirits to leave granddaddy and almost instantly granddaddy went limp in his chair. He was suddenly so relaxed that he almost slipped out of his seat. At that instant grandmommy felt a cold rush of air pass by her in the direction of the front door. Afterwards granddaddy was fine. But later they found the parakeet that had its cage next to the front door was dead. It had been a young, healty parakeet and there was no explanation for why it died.

Date: 1950’s
Encounter: Angel of death
Testifier: Uncle Oliver
Uncle Oliver and other family were in the hospital visiting a terminal patient who was either family or a close family friend. It was obvious the patient was on the verge of death and when Uncle Oliver moved through the doorway of their room, a very tall, dark, ominous spirit passed him, grazing his arm as he passed. Oliver’s arm erupted in great pain right afterwards. The condition worsened and his arm lost all its color as if it had died. He was only able to restore it through prayer.
*Uncle Oliver was always very sensitive to spirits and paranormal activity. He had many experiences and a very strong spirit. He smoked because he believed it dulled his psychic abilities, which made his life easier.

Location: (Evergreen) Cemetery, Jax FL
Most of our family is buried in Evergreen Cemetery
Date: Mid. 1950’s
Encounter: Spirit warning at the gate
Testifier: Uncle Oliver
Uncle Oliver related this story to mom and grandmommy. He arrived at Evergreen Cemetery at dusk to visit a relative. But when he put his hand on the gate to enter he heard a distinct voice say, “Don’t go in, if you do you won’t come out alive.” There was no one nearby so he knew it was a spirit voice. Uncle Oliver had a weak heart, so he believed the spirit’s warning and left the cemetery immediately.

Date: Either right before mom was born or while she was a baby
Encounter: Mischievous spirit voices
Testifier: Grandmommy
Our grandfather was constantly gone of long trips to Miami and sometimes he’d come home without letting grandmommy know he was coming. There were many times when our grandmother would hear granddaddy yelling for her to let him in the back door very early in the morning. She would rush down, throw the door open and find no one there. Granddaddy would still be down in Miami.

Our good friend Hawke had a chilling experience he has graciously allowed us to link to. Click here to read what happened to him and his family.

*EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon - typically recorded on an electronic voice recorder and amplified as minimally as possible through audio software. I use Amadeus and try to do as little tampering as possible.