001 - The House on Cemetery Street

​​The thing about living in a haunted house is you don't realize it at first. As weeks and months go by, you start noticing strange things. Much like a horror movie. The paranormal activity will start out small. And then gets bigger and more noticeable the longer you live in that house. I lived in a haunted house for a couple of years. The fact that the house was located on Cemetery Street probably should have been my first clue.

I'm Tom Stewart and this is My Paranormal Story.

It was around 2004. I was moving out of my apartment and looking for a cheaper place to live and a friend of mine was renting a house with some roommates in Providence and one of the rooms opened up. I’ve been to the House many times to visit. And splitting the rent four ways seemed like a good idea. So, I moved into the house on Cemetery Street.

Now I know it probably sounds made-up for this story. I mean, I might as well have chosen Elm Street or Freddy Krueger Lane, but this house really was located on Cemetery St. And yes, it was directly across the street from a cemetery. North Burial ground Cemetery in Providence, RI. It wasn't an especially old house, but it wasn't very new either. It was sandwiched in between a bunch of other houses as many neighborhoods in Providence are. There was a single family of hippies living in a single-story home to the right and on the left was a triple-decker house that at times felt like it had six or seven families living in it. I suppose living across the street from a cemetery can seem a bit spooky for some people, but I've never been afraid of cemeteries. Sure, they're creepy at night and fun to walk through on Halloween with your friends when you're a kid, but I've always felt there was nothing to fear. I mean, when it comes to ghosts and spirits, don't they usually haunt things they're familiar with, like a house or a person? Why would a spirit want to hang around their dead body in a boring cemetery? Seems like a waste of a good haunting to me.

There were four of us living in the House on Cemetery Street. James, Daniel, Jenny and myself. Actually 5 if you count Jenny's cat, Potter. Six if you want to count the old guy in the black hat. More on him coming up. James had been living in the house for quite a few years now. It had two levels, plus a basement. James had the small bedroom on the main floor near the kitchen, though at one time or another he'd stayed in all of the bedrooms. Daniel and I, we each had our own bedrooms upstairs. His was a little bigger than mine. And Jenny turned a section of the basement into her bedroom. Now, like I said, I've been to the house many times before as a visitor, and I'd heard previous roommates talking about the house being haunted. They would tell stories of doors opening or seeing shadows in the night. But their stories never crossed my mind when I decided to move in. I guess because James and Daniel had always laughed them off because they were girls telling stories. Now my bedroom was at the top of the stairs. It was rather small. But it was big enough to fit my bed, a TV, a computer desk, and a few other small pieces of furniture. At one time Jenny had been staying in this bedroom until she decided to move to the basement, which seems like an odd choice at first, but you'll understand why later. Now, Jenny's cat Potter still thought it was his bedroom, so he would be in there quite often and I didn't mind. I love animals. Now there are some people who believe animals can sense when their are spirits around us. Maybe it's just an animal instinct, or perhaps it's something biological with their hearing or their sense of sight or smell. But quite often people will say that their pets are looking at something in their home. They can sense it. And I think Potter was definitely seeing something in the house on Cemetery Street.

I was sitting at my computer desk one night and Potter was lying on my bed sound asleep. Suddenly I noticed him lift his head up and start looking through the doorway. There was no one home but us. The house was quiet, but he looked startled by something. He kept staring out into the hallway as if he saw something His head was cocked back a bit and his ears were facing forward. He didn't look scared, he was definitely curious. Now I was looking into the hallway too, expecting to see someone there, but it was dark and empty. As he continued to look through the doorway, he started turning his head. As if he was following something with his eyes. It was as if someone or something had just come up the stairs and walked past my bedroom door. He continued to follow it with his eyes. Bending his head. To the side as if he was watching it go around the corner and out of sight. He sat there motionless for a few more minutes, just staring. Perhaps waiting to see if it would come back. Eventually though, he put his head back down and after a few minutes. closed his eyes again.

It was probably a few weeks later that I started really noticing strange things in the house. Nothing too scary at first, but things that definitely made me scratch my head. I'm kind of OCD about certain things. I have a habit of always closing doors behind me and always pushing drawers closed when I'm done with them. I've always been this way. So I always know when someone has been in my room or in my stuff. And on a few occasions after getting a towel from my closet or some clothes from my Bureau, I would come back from taking a shower and notice the closet door in my bedroom was wide open. And sometimes the drawers in my Bureau would be pulled out too. Even the drawers, I hadn't even gone into. It was pretty weird. But I kind of just dismissed it as my roommates pranking me. Or maybe I was just being forgetful for a change.

One day I came home from work and I was the only one home. I went upstairs to my bedroom and noticed something was out of place. This time it wasn't a closet door or a drawer. It was the baseballs on the top of my bureau. I kept two autographed baseballs in plastic protective boxes. One was signed by Mo Vaughn and the other by Roger Clemens from when they both played for the Boston Red Sox. I had them proudly displayed on my bureau towards the back where the wall meets the bureau. But on this particular day, as I went into my bedroom, I noticed both baseballs had been moved to the very front edge of the bureau. Now they didn't roll. Like I said, they were in plastic boxes. Someone would have had to have moved them. Another prank? I asked my roommates if any of them had been in my room, but they all denied being in there.

Some people say spirits have the ability to manipulate electricity. You always hear stories of lights flickering or TVs being turned on and off. And one morning, I remember waking up in bed and realizing I was late for work. For some reason my alarm clock didn't go off. And the backup alarm I had set on my cell phone didn't go off either. What are the chances? As I quickly got up and got dressed, I thought to myself. Why didn't any of my roommates wake me up? They know I have to get to work. I looked out the window and all their cars were still in the driveway. I went out into the hallway and Daniel was still asleep in his room and late for work too. James was still asleep and in the basement Jenny was in her bedroom still fast asleep. None of our alarms went off that morning. We were all late for work rushing around trying to get dressed and get out of the house. But what happen? Did the power go out during the night and mess up all of our alarm clocks? That would make sense except none of our clocks were blinking anywhere in the house. Plus I had set my cell phone alarm as a backup and it still had plenty of battery life.

As weeks became months living in the house on Cemetery Streeet, stranger and stranger things began to happen. One night late on a Saturday, I was sitting in the dark in my bedroom playing video games at my computer desk and just to the right of my desk I had a full length mirror. It's one of those adjustable oval floor mirrors that stands on two legs. As I was sitting at my desk clicking away at the mouse and keyboard out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly noticed the mirror was moving. It was as if someone was adjusting the mirror. Lifting it up. Something or someone was physically pushing this mirror up until it was almost perfectly horizontal. It was literally moving right in front of my eyes and just a couple feet away. When it finally came to a stop, I just sat there staring at it. I tried to think rationally at first, maybe the bolts are loose and gravity made it move. So I reached over and tried to readjust the mirror a bit just to see if it was loose. But it wasn't. It was still pretty tight. In fact, I had to get up and loosen the bolts on each side just to put the mirror back in place. It made no sense. And now I was scared. I was scared to look into the mirror. Like in the horror movies, I thought for sure I'd see something staring back at me. So I slowly took a step back and just sort of half looked. But nothing was there. Just my own reflection in the dark.

Sometimes people visiting the house would see things too. My girlfriend at the time would sleep over the house now and then, and on several occasions she would wake up in the middle of the night and see what looked like a man standing in the corner. The same corner as the mirror. She described him as sort of a black mass that was shaped like a man. And I didn't want to scare her, so I hadn't told her about the whole mirror thing. I just said that it was probably a shadow from the mirror, you know. A trick from the lights coming through the window or something. It made no sense but I think she bought it. We both would have crazy nightmares sleeping in that bedroom too. Just real horrific dreams like I've never had before or since. And they seemed so real. Some of these dreams would be about friends or family getting into tragic accidents or dying right in front of me and nothing I could do about it. I would literally wake up crying some nights. In some of the other dreams it would be me in the tragic accident dying. And on more than one occasion I woke up lying on my back with my arms folded on my chest like I was lying in a coffin.

But then one night. The old man in the hat showed himself to me. It was the middle of the night. I was fast asleep When I felt something sit on the edge of the bed. It woke me up a little but I just figured it was Potter. But then I felt whatever it was climb on top of my chest. It felt like someone was sitting on top of me. I opened up my eyes and I saw an old man in black, staring down at me. He was kind of a blur, but I could make out his wrinkly face and an old black top hat. He was just sitting on me swinging his fists as if he was trying to strike me. I could feel the weight of him pressing me into the mattress. Luckily, his punches weren't hurting me. I jumped out of bed quickly and turned on the lights and no one was there. No old man, no Potter the cat, no one. The next day I told Jenny about it. Like I said, she had stayed in that bedroom for a few months before me before moving into the basement. And as soon as I started to tell her what happened, she said, oh that's the old guy. He's a asshole. She went on to tell me that on many a nights she would wake up from a dead sleep to someone pushing her or tugging on her, pulling her hair. She'd open her eyes and the old man would be right up in her face staring at her just inches away. She had no idea who he was or why he was there. But we both agreed. He didn't want anyone in that bedroom. A few days later, I decided to tell James about what happened. He got very serious and told me a story about when he used to stay in that bedroom. It was several years ago. He had been out drinking with some friends, came home and just went upstairs to his room and passed out in bed. But about an hour later, he woke up to the feeling of someone sitting on top of him. And when he opened his eyes, he saw that same old guy in the black hat trying to hit him too. At the time he blamed it on the alcohol. But after hearing my story, he looked actually scared. He had never told that story to anyone before. Somehow I continued living there with my 3 roommates and Potter. And people suggested I use things like Sage or Dragon's Breath to try and keep the old man at Bay and most nights it worked. But on the nights it didn't, I'd wake up from more terrifying dreams. And I kept seeing the old man's shadow in the corner. Eventually I decided it was time to move. But a week or so before I moved out, James had a friend visiting the house. His name was Brett. He had moved to California a few years ago, but was in town, visiting family and friends, and he stopped by to say hi. And sure enough, he used to be a roommate living at that house at one time too. James introduced him to me and said, "oh Tom is staying in your old room." Brent reached out to shake my hand looked me in the eyes and said, "Have you seen the old guy yet?"

My paranormal story is written, produced and narrated by me, Tom Stewart. If you liked this story and you want to hear more, press subscribe. This episode was based on real life events experienced by me. Some of the names of those involved have been changed. Music in this episode was courtesy of Kevin MacLeod, including the tracks Quinn song. A new man. This House. Dark walk. Return of Lazarus. Special winds. And others can all be found at incompetech.com. If you'd like to comment on this episode or have a paranormal story of your own that you'd like to share, you can e-mail me at [email protected] or you can connect with me on social media. Just search for my paranormal story on Facebook or Instagram. My name is Tom Stewart. Thank you for listening to My Paranormal Story.