Author Archives: audreymj

Protective Ghost

Age: 49

So we bought the house from my old boss, Kelly, actually, who I worked with at Leo Burnett, and she had told me this story about the house before we bought it. She just basically said the house was kind of haunted, but not in a bad way, and she explained a couple of different situations. One was that in the middle bedroom, in Alistair’s bedroom, when she had her twin boys when they were babies, and they were crying in the middle of the night, it was like 2 AM or something, and she went to put her son Seamus back in the crib, and when she set him in the crib, the crib moved away from the wall by like half a foot. And she picked him up out of the crib, and then she eventually put him back in the crib, and it did it again.

It sounds terrifying, but she wasn’t scared. She had this feeling that it was her grandmother, and that her grandmother was comforting her in this time of need, where she was so exhausted with the babies, because her grandmother also had twins, and she could just, like, feel her presence, and she said it was very comforting.

So that’s kind of the context before we moved into the house. And the other thing about the house is that it was built in, like, the early 1900s, like 1912 or something like that. And, during the Great Depression, it was actually a boarding house, meaning the second floor of the house, there were individual bedrooms that were rented out, and they actually walled off, um, the stairs so that you couldn’t go into the living room on the main floor. That is why they put in a second entrance to the house as well on the side, so you could go in to the side, and you would basically enter on the landing of the stairs and just go straight upstairs. So anyway, um, it was a boarding house during the Great Depression. All of the bedrooms had a little mirror on the inside of the closet. And so it was just a little weird. It had some quirks, and they all had locks on the doors as well.

Okay, so when we first moved into the house. Alistair was sleeping in that middle bedroom, and Dad was out of town. I can’t remember where Dad was, and I was in the basement because we didn’t have a TV on the main floor back then. I was watching something on TV, and I had the baby monitor on, and all of a sudden, there was this, like, this really weird noise coming out of the baby monitor. It was this sort of metallic, just this super weird noise and it didn’t stop. The noise was just this ongoing buzzing, kind of. So I immediately went upstairs to check on Alistair, and when I was opening the door, first of all, the door felt like it was, like, stuck or something, and then it did open. And, um… What I saw was that the light was on full blast. He had this little, like, I don’t know if you remember, but it was, like, a bright green little lamp from IKEA. It has, like, an on-off switch on the cord, and it shines this really weird and bright green color. So it was shining bright green out from underneath the door. Oh, I forgot to mention that. I could see the light was shining bright green out from underneath the door before I opened it, which was totally freaky. 

And the light, I did not leave it on, and there’s no way it was turned on. And he was a baby. It was not… he couldn’t have reached it. There was… it was very strange. And I was, like, totally freaked out. So I immediately unplugged the light, and the craziest thing was that the plug was, like, burning hot, right on the wall where the crib was. I instantly felt like it was a sign.

So my immediate thought was thinking about Kelly and what she had said about her grandma, and I think this person or whoever, um, whatever the spirit was, was, like, trying to warn me, uh, because the electricity… it was all cloth wiring, which can burn a house down. And that was, like, the first time I really became aware of the wiring in that house and how dangerous it could be, and it always freaked me out the entire time we lived there. But anyway, that was my takeaway, was that this ghost was, like, protecting me, and protecting my baby, just like it had sort of done for Kelly in that same room.

And there’s some other weird stuff, too, in that house. Like, for instance, when you were little. You were, like, 18 months old and you said something so weird. I know what it was, because I posted about it on Facebook at the time, and it comes up in my Facebook memories and I still laugh about it. Out of nowhere you said, “Mom, there’s ghosts in here.” And that was in your little bedroom way in the back. And I totally believed you, and you’re a very, very sensitive person. You always have been, and I believe you do have, like, that kind of a gift. But also, you did watch a lot of Scooby Doo with Alistair at the time, so who knows, but I believed you. (laughs) But…yeah, it totally freaked me out that you said that in your teeny tiny voice. Like, what? You were too young to understand the concept of ghosts, I thought, but I just kind of knew you were serious. You and your brother are both this way with your giftedness, in IQ and other things, so, yeah, I believed you, and I still do. You totally have that gift, and many autistics, like, feel things others do not. There’s all this research now about autism and telepathy, and, like, parallel universes they travel to and stuff. It’s so cool, so who knows, but I believe it all.

But anyway, there was nothing scary in that house except for in the basement. Don’t you think? It had a little bit of a weird vibe in the laundry room, especially. But upstairs, I just always felt that we had like a friendly ghost that was looking out for us, or that’s what I told myself. But it definitely felt like there was a presence in that house. Ok, that’s it.

When is this story told? To whom? Where does it take place?

Vanessa told this story to me, Audrey, on April 24, 2025. The story takes place in the house I grew up in from ages 0 to 12 in Oak Park, IL. The house was built in 1912, and it was used as a boarding house during the Great Depression, with the rooms on the 2nd floor rented out to various individuals. 

What does the teller think of the story?

She enjoys telling the story. She gets very animated and excited retelling the story. You can tell it really made an impact on her, and it was a significant event that occurred, which is why the memory has stuck with her all these years. She believes in ghosts and thinks she can sense various energies. Our current house is a large old house built in 1905. Whether the house is haunted comes up in conversation all the time. She can sense and feel things about houses, especially, but she is not a person who likes or gravitates toward anything scary at all. I think she suppresses a lot of the things she can sense to protect herself. But this story is clearly a good/funny memory about a house that she loved. 

My thoughts – what do I think of the story?

The story is entertaining and totally believable, especially for me, because I have my own stories from that house. So basically she thinks the ghost turned the light on so that she would unplug the light and notice the burning hot cord and learn about the sketchy cloth wiring. The way that she associates the ghost with protection is an interesting theme with her that I have noticed comes up in other situations. For instance, she also talks about a bird, a cardinal, that visits a tree outside the window in our family room every day. She thinks the bird is her grandmother, just looking out for her. It brings her comfort. I think it’s sweet. She is a positive person, and she is looking for the positive almost always, even in her own ghost story. I think she believes spirits hang around to look after and protect their people. She isn’t religious, but in this way she is spiritual. 

Boston Tour Ghost

Age: 49

In the spring of the year 2000, I was on tour with my band Del Rey, alongside our friends’ band, Planes Mistaken for Stars, all up and down the east coast for a few weeks. And on this tour, we had a show one night at this place called the Middle East in Boston. We do the usual, we both play our sets, great show, hang out afterwards. The night gets, you know, a little bit later, and it’s time to head out and find a place to crash. We usually all get hotel rooms together, or, you know, crash in somebody’s house on couches and sleeping bags or wherever we can. This particular night, me and one of the guys from the other band, Jamie, uh, were also friends with another guy who was an old roommate of ours back in Chicago, who now lived in Boston and wanted he and I to come stay at his house and like hang and catch up or whatever in a non-punk rock show venue. So after the show, Jamie and I get in the car with our old friend, his name’s Jody, and go to stay at the apartment that he’s now living in in a neighborhood in Boston. As we get to his apartment, this is late at night. Uh, it’s a really old neighborhood in Boston, and the apartment buildings that are on the street all look very, very old, probably like they were originally built in sometime in the late 1700s. So we go up to this, uh, upstairs apartment in this old building, and we’re getting ready to just hang and chat a little bit before we crash. We’re all kind of hanging out in his room, listening to music, talking, smoking cigarettes. And he tells us about all the weird things that have been happening in his apartment. He’s telling us about a picture in the hallway that consistently falls off the wall and onto the floor, in the middle of the night. He’s telling us how this happens on a regular basis. It’s every other night this happens and only at night. And how every time he puts it back on there, he checks the nail, he checks the picture, it’s not too heavy, it’s sturdy, it’s solid. There’s nothing about this picture that should be falling off the wall. Yet it continues to happen. He goes on to explain that other weird things have been happening in this apartment. Things are left in one place but then found randomly in another spot that he knows he didn’t move them to. Things go missing. He hears weird noises, he hears weird voices. Uh, daytime, nighttime, uh, doors open and shut. He kind of continues just telling us about, you know, this list of weird sort of odd happenings in this apartment that he notices are just really regular and starting to creep him out. About two to three minutes after he finishes telling us about these things that are going on in the apartment, something happens. So, we’re sitting in his room, where he’s telling us these stories about the things happening in his apartment. We’re listening to music on a stereo. The door is completely shut, and it shut all the way to where it’s latched inside the strike plate inside of the doorway, whatever you call it. So, it’s caught, so you can’t just push the door open. So, as we’re sitting there, a couple minutes after he finishes telling us this, the doorknob turns, unlatches, opens the door slowly as we all watch it. The three of us each saw that doorknob turn, unlatch and open inward. About the exact same time as that’s happening, the stereo receiver dial, the volume dial, turns itself down all the way to off, which we all also saw in unison. So, these two events happened right before our eyes, and right after he had just finished explaining, all of the weird, creepy, ghostly things that have been happening in this apartment. So we flipped like every light on, run out into the main living room area, kind of just look at each other in shock and disbelief, and awe, and, you know, made sure we all we saw what we saw there, right? So, after a little while, we had to kind of calm down, sort of try to laugh it off or whatever. We had to get some sleep because we had to get up and get off to the next city the next morning. But that’s one, uh that I’ll never forget and it’s uh, I guess a story that all three of us will remember for the rest of our lives.

Context: When is this story told? To whom? Where does it take place? 

The story is told on Tuesday, April 28, 2026 to me by Michael. The story actually takes place in Boston, Massachusetts in the spring of 2000.

Their thoughts: What does the teller think of the story?

Michael mentions that this story still sticks with him to this day and I think he likes re-telling the story because it seems to have really had an impact on him. He also mentions that he has had conversations with the same people who had this experience with him multiple times over the years. As someone who has previously said has a good number of ghostly or creepy stories, he chose this particular one based on his feeling that it was one of the more memorable as well as creepy experiences in his life. 

Your thoughts: what do you think of the story?

I think this story is interesting because it seems to be related to this old late 1700s apartment building in Boston, and hints at something ghostly that could possibly have been happening for over 200 years in this place. I also like that there were three people all experiencing the same odd events simultaneously. I think that might make it more compelling, and even creepier. I also found it interesting that the two ghostly experiences that happened, the door opening and the stereo volume being turned down, both happened after his friend just finished telling them about all the other haunted and ghostly types of things happening in the apartment.