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The Reverse Haunted House

From my undertanding a grave is allowed to remain untouched for a 100 years, this may be old legislation, or out of date. It's very interesting and worth an explore when I get 5 mins.
Let me know what you find. My grandad went in somewhere around that spot, around 1955.

ETA: Sorry this is so long. Am pre-coffee...

That said, the vicar is an ex-solicitor and very slippery. We asked him to see burial records as when a relative got married, they wanted a pretty church backdrop, so insisted on our old village church - and then realised they were having the future in-laws there and my mother was in an unmarked grave. (Dad had low wages and two kids to raise when our mum died). Now I know precisely where she is buried as she is the third one in from a certain wall and Dad took me there (we weren't allowed to go to the funeral) a week or so after she died. It was still a freshly dug grave and for many years it had a wooden marker with a number on it. Although we lived next to the churchyard, she was buried right the other side and over the brow of a hill so you couldn't see from our house.

I went there with my best friend, quite a lot and I consistently left flowers from our garden on it in a jam jar (very 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles) until I moved away from home, almost a decade later. ie: I knew where my mum was buried.

My brother was so heartbroken he couldn't even face going to the grave, so I'd go for both of us. I was a very loyal child!

Anyway it wasn't til years later as that part of the churchyard filled up, I realised she was buried out of date sequence. But then I knew it had snowed heavily the day they buried her, and maybe when the gravedigger came to dig the hole which in those days was the day before, the soil was too frozen at the point where she should have gone in, so he put her a bit further ahead - which left her out of sequence with the other 1971 burials. Following? It's hard to explain this.

Anyway, when relative wanted to get married there; people (not me) started getting concerned about the lack of a gravestone. So there was talk of buying one. I have 5 kids and no money so there was no way I could afford it, anyway. And to me, I knew where she was. Thing was, I was the only one left who knew where she was. I took them up and showed them but they were concerned that given her death date, she was out of sequence.

So relative made appt with snooty vicar to double check where mum was. He had no actual drawn plan, but inferred that given the date she died, she was defo buried in x spot. Now this alleged grave site was quite some distance down the line of 1971 gravestones. And I recall standing on the grave spot when it was still piled with bare earth and flowers from the funeral. I fecking well know where she is.

Vicar got quite aggressive when I told him so. He claimed "Well you wouldn't know this" but there was a lost medieval chapel and its wall ran under the part of the graveyard where I said mum was buried. So, he claimed, no-one was buried there. Thing was I remembered not only mum going in at that point, but later being surrounded by others. There are 3 unmarked graves in a row and she is one of them. But he said there are no burials there (despite having no drawn plan) because a medieval wall is there.

By some coincidence, I had a friend who was the local historian and he had shown me years before precisely where the medieval chapel had been - totally the other side of the hill (near my childhood house, in fact). I knew this vicar was lying.

I said it had been snowing the day they buried her, so presumably, very cold weather the day or so before. He looked at me like I was making it up, so I thought I'll show this bugger I have an accurate memory. I told him to check the burial record and confirm my memory that she was buried on a Thursday. He did and she was. (He didn't like that). I was only 10 but remember everything.

I found my childhood friend on FB and she confirmed the place we used to take flowers was indeed where I remembered. Someone else asked a step relative - my dad had pointed the grave out to her once, years before - she also remembered it to be where I did.

Not only would my dad not have a reason to lie about it, but he took me when the grave was freshly dug and mum's flowers still on it. I visited it constantly for nine years from the time it was newly dug to the time the wooden number marker had long rotted away and gone. How could I be wrong?

I remember the other graves going in later. And just the two next to her never got headstones. There is no medieval wall under there. People are buried there.

Thing is the vicar got inappropriately aggressive about it - as if he thought he was in a court room. I present as mild mannered and not the sort of person people get aggressive with, as a rule. There was no reason for him to go apeshit and over such a sensitive thing.

Upshot was, my mum didn't get a gravestone because the vicar was trying to get them to put it on a randomer's grave! No-one dared do it, probably, for fear of upsetting me further.

But yes, my grandma died 1939, so even she wouldn't be due for a good old christian grubbing up, yet. But you can see why, given the history, I don't want to approach this vicar and confront him with grubbing up my grandparents. They were also in an unmarked grave.

But yes, one good reason not to go in that picturesque churchyard once you're gone. Your tenancy is limited.
 
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In this day and age, why don't you set up cctv with audio and just let it run 24/7. It could give you peace of mind.
 
Alternatively, you could set up a motion detector camera and link it to an audio of someone saying "boo!"

It sounds like your vicar doesn't like to be contradicted. Some people are just like that. Can't admit they're human enough to make a mistake now and again.
 
Yes, the building where I heard the 'whistling ghost' in the empty cafe at night after public had gone home, is a totally bland, characterless, modern building stuck on what was just farmland before and, to my knowledge, not bang on the site of a long lost farmhouse or even barn or outbuilding. Just slapped down in an old field. Although the ghost, I wasn't told at the time I heard it but have since discovered, is thought to be a specific person who volunteered there and has only been dead a decade or so... Nothing 'old' is there. And quite how they think they know who it is, I dunno. But although creepy at night when we are the only ones in the building, it's not deeply 'atmospheric' as such. Not sure if I volunteered at such a place it's the precise place in my life I'd choose to revisit...

I definitely want to be young and slim again when I'm a ghost, too. What's the point of being an old ghost?

I’ve posted a few times on this forum about the house I used to live in.

When we first moved in, in 2005 we had activity on a weekly basis, so I did some research on the house and land the house sat on.

The houses (four of them were originally planned) were built in 1939 by the MOD as convalescent homes for old soldiers, but due to the outbreak of WW2 the project was halted, and the three and a half houses already built was boarded up and lay empty until the mid-1980’s, when they were sold off to a private developer who fixed them up and sold them on.

As far as I could find out, there have been no deaths in the house, and nobody died or were fatally injured in the building of them, also looking at maps prior to the houses being built, the land that the houses sat upon was just farmland, so why the house gave us so much trouble I really don’t know.

We were on friendly terms with the other three sets of neighbours, and although I didn’t really talk with them about what we were experiencing, they never mentioned that they were having any issues so I assume they never did.

A couple of months after we moved out, I bumped into the guy who bought the house off me, he asked me if I had ever experienced any strangeness whilst living in the house, and not wanting to lie I told him straight - he got quite angry with me, in fact at one point I thought he was going to punch me, but he eventually stormed off after calling me all the names under the sun lol.
 
I've been part of a paranormal investigation team that's invested places that have been about as haunted as an episode of The Wombles .. they look the part and with fun back stories but nothing weird at all has happened. I work in a Georgian building that's steeped with history and fits the 'movie' image of a haunted mansion .. it isn't haunted because absolutely nobody including current staff and the owner who was born in the building has ever experienced any hauntings, a bit of a disappointment for me to be honest because it would make a great next episode for our invests ...

I'm off to Blickling Hall on the 19th for the anniversary of when we might see that stage coach come up the driveway but because of a few decades of 'no shows' regarding this paranormal event, I'm not holding my breath.

All Saint's Church in Santon on the Surrey border, on the other hand, is genuinely haunted as f**k IMO ..
 
A couple of months after we moved out, I bumped into the guy who bought the house off me, he asked me if I had ever experienced any strangeness whilst living in the house, and not wanting to lie I told him straight - he got quite angry with me, in fact at one point I thought he was going to punch me, but he eventually stormed off after calling me all the names under the sun lol.

That's exactly the reason why people are required to say if their house is haunted if they want to sell it, in some countries/places.
 
That's exactly the reason why people are required to say if their house is haunted if they want to sell it, in some countries/places.

Evening vardoger.

I have heard that in some states of the US, it’s a legal requirement to tell potential buyers if your home is haunted.

Is that true?

Are there any American Fortean members out there who can confirm this?
 
Doesn't seem to be much point in that: what's haunted for some people probably won't be haunted for their successors.
 
... I have heard that in some states of the US, it’s a legal requirement to tell potential buyers if your home is haunted.
Is that true?
Are there any American Fortean members out there who can confirm this?

The applicable laws concern disclosures about the real estate being offered, and these laws vary considerably among the 50 states.

The most famous case involving disclosure of hauntedness in a property sale has been discussed in this thread:

A Legally Haunted House: Stambovsky Vs Ackley

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/a-legally-haunted-house-stambovsky-vs-ackley.63766/

There are many articles and blog posts on this subject, such as::

https://www.maxrealestateexposure.com/disclosing-haunted-homes-murder-suicide/
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/ghoul-disclosure-must-home-sellers-disclose-paranormal-activity
https://daily.jstor.org/do-we-have-to-tell-them-house-is-haunted/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/do-you-need-to-tell-a-buyer-your-house-is-haunted_b_8435418
 
I’ve posted a few times on this forum about the house I used to live in.

When we first moved in, in 2005 we had activity on a weekly basis, so I did some research on the house and land the house sat on.

The houses (four of them were originally planned) were built in 1939 by the MOD as convalescent homes for old soldiers, but due to the outbreak of WW2 the project was halted, and the three and a half houses already built was boarded up and lay empty until the mid-1980’s, when they were sold off to a private developer who fixed them up and sold them on.

As far as I could find out, there have been no deaths in the house, and nobody died or were fatally injured in the building of them, also looking at maps prior to the houses being built, the land that the houses sat upon was just farmland, so why the house gave us so much trouble I really don’t know.

We were on friendly terms with the other three sets of neighbours, and although I didn’t really talk with them about what we were experiencing, they never mentioned that they were having any issues so I assume they never did.

A couple of months after we moved out, I bumped into the guy who bought the house off me, he asked me if I had ever experienced any strangeness whilst living in the house, and not wanting to lie I told him straight - he got quite angry with me, in fact at one point I thought he was going to punch me, but he eventually stormed off after calling me all the names under the sun lol.
Must be very unusual for houses to have been built in 1939 and then stay unoccupied for the best part of 50 years. Were these on MOD land as such - if not I would have thought the Local Authority would have insisted on demolition?
 
Evening vardoger.

I have heard that in some states of the US, it’s a legal requirement to tell potential buyers if your home is haunted.

Is that true?

Are there any American Fortean members out there who can confirm this?
I know that (certainly in California), you even have to mention if anyone has DIED in the property within three years, so it wouldn't suprise me.
 
Must be very unusual for houses to have been built in 1939 and then stay unoccupied for the best part of 50 years. Were these on MOD land as such - if not I would have thought the Local Authority would have insisted on demolition?

You have hit the nail on the head there PeteS. I was told that the MOD still owned the land where the houses stood, but sold it off when they decided to sell the empty houses to a property developer.
In fact at the bottom of the back gardens of the four houses, is an Army Cadet and an Air Cadet centre, so the MOD still to this day own part of the land in that part of town.
 
Evening vardoger.
I have heard that in some states of the US, it’s a legal requirement to tell potential buyers if your home is haunted.
Is that true?
Are there any American Fortean members out there who can confirm this?
Oh, no, we are far too rational over here to believe in ghosts. It should be obvious from our political situation how rational we are.
 
To be serious (for once), if a house can be haunted just because someone has died in it, wouldn't that make just about every house built before WWII haunted? For the last zillion years most people have died at home, until we all got too technologically sophisticated and had to go to the hospital to die. Thank goodness we can again die in the comfort of our own homes--and with hospice care--like people were meant to.
 
To be serious (for once), if a house can be haunted just because someone has died in it, wouldn't that make just about every house built before WWII haunted? For the last zillion years most people have died at home, until we all got too technologically sophisticated and had to go to the hospital to die. Thank goodness we can again die in the comfort of our own homes--and with hospice care--like people were meant to.

Hello Ibis.

It’s an interesting point, but maybe it’s the circumstances in which people pass away that determines if their souls still linger in a certain property or place.

In saying that however, I lived in a converted flat in which a teenage boy hung himself in the 1940’s, and I saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing, and experienced nothing in the 3 years I lived there, but the house I mentioned in the previous posts, in which nobody passed away, we had a plethora of experiences, some of which I have posted on this forum.
 
Hello Ibis.

It’s an interesting point, but maybe it’s the circumstances in which people pass away that determines if their souls still linger in a certain property or place.

In saying that however, I lived in a converted flat in which a teenage boy hung himself in the 1940’s, and I saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing, and experienced nothing in the 3 years I lived there, but the house I mentioned in the previous posts, in which nobody passed away, we had a plethora of experiences, some of which I have posted on this forum.
I've also thought about this. I lived in a 17th Century cottage when younger (where many people must have died over 400 odd years of its existence) and never felt scared or spooked even when on my own there, yet with some new(er) buildings I straight away feel something 'ghostly' (for want of a better word.) Of course that is just MY perception- nothing 'scientific' about it of course.
 
I've also thought about this. I lived in a 17th Century cottage when younger (where many people must have died over 400 odd years of its existence) and never felt scared or spooked even when on my own there, yet with some new(er) buildings I straight away feel something 'ghostly' (for want of a better word.) Of course that is just MY perception- nothing 'scientific' about it of course.

Exactly Floyd. The house I live in at the moment was built in the 1530’s, I’ve been there for three years now and have experienced not a thing.

I did have some mildly odd things happen whilst living in a new build flat back in 2003, I was the flat’s ever first tenant, so maybe in that case, the land that the property sat upon had something to do with any strange occurrences...?
 
Exactly Floyd. The house I live in at the moment was built in the 1530’s, I’ve been there for three years now and have experienced not a thing.

I did have some mildly odd things happen whilst living in a new build flat back in 2003, I was the flat’s ever first tenant, so maybe in that case, the land that the property sat upon had something to do with any strange occurrences...?
Could be. Man, I would love to live in an house as old as yours. I was too young to appreciate the one I lived in, although it was a tiny place, so not much to invesigate anyway really. All I remember is no central heating- just a coal fire, single pain windows that froze up on the INSIDE, a leaking roof, and a larder that was far colder than any fridge. I don't know how I survived let alone how they did back in the 1600s.
 
Must be very unusual for houses to have been built in 1939 and then stay unoccupied for the best part of 50 years. Were these on MOD land as such - if not I would have thought the Local Authority would have insisted on demolition?

So, those houses that were left boarded up for 50 years never attracted squatters or vagrants or derelicts, or drug addicts or partyers looking for somewhere quiet to, ahem, 'party'?

Because 'somebody' might have died there...

The 'someone must have died in a house for it it be haunted'; I'm with Ibis. Just about every house built pre 1950 will have had someone die in it. Hell, my old house had my mum and my dad die in it, but no reports of follow up hauntings. The very old house I live in now - no haunting, although it's been standing here for at least 200 years, right next to the graveyard.
 
much like Floyd1 above, the house i grew up in (until the age of 10) also had a coal fire, single pane internal freezing windows etc, and to cap it all a loft hatch that used to detatch itself and move out of the way leaving a gaping hole into the roof space. this used to scare the hell out of myself and my sister (she was/is 1 yr older than me) and i was always blamed for doing this - which i strenuously denied - 'COS IT WASN'T ME!
I do believe nowadays however, that it was just the wind and a crappy roof that was doing it...?? (or was it??)... woooo
 
and to cap it all a loft hatch that used to detatch itself and move out of the way leaving a gaping hole into the roof space. this used to scare the hell out of myself and my sister (she was/is 1 yr older than me) and i was always blamed for doing this - which i strenuously denied - 'COS IT WASN'T ME!
I do believe nowadays however, that it was just the wind and a crappy roof that was doing it...?? (or was it??)... woooo

In my last house we had a loft hatch that'd lift a bit and rattle when it was windy. The current one did it too until we had proper double glazing put in. Or it was a ghost.
 
much like Floyd1 above, the house i grew up in (until the age of 10) also had a coal fire, single pane internal freezing windows etc, and to cap it all a loft hatch that used to detatch itself and move out of the way leaving a gaping hole into the roof space. this used to scare the hell out of myself and my sister (she was/is 1 yr older than me) and i was always blamed for doing this - which i strenuously denied - 'COS IT WASN'T ME!
I do believe nowadays however, that it was just the wind and a crappy roof that was doing it...?? (or was it??)... woooo
It's funny. I would never have thought of it again if you hadn't mentioned it, but now I've just remembered a loft hatch rattling. (In another house to the one I mentioned). It didn't lift off completely though and it was only the wind, but in your case...........?!
 
Exactly Floyd. The house I live in at the moment was built in the 1530’s, I’ve been there for three years now and have experienced not a thing.

I did have some mildly odd things happen whilst living in a new build flat back in 2003, I was the flat’s ever first tenant, so maybe in that case, the land that the property sat upon had something to do with any strange occurrences...?

Over here in the US we can always blame an "Indian burial ground" for the hauntings in new buildings. In Britain I suppose you have to blame barrow wights or something.

It is funny that phenomenon that is associated with antique and misplaced souls would manifest in new buildings, while antique buildings are so often calm. It would make me believe that experiencing creepy, haounted feelings are only due to modern building materials and electronic disturbances, if not for the fact that people have reported such experiences throughout history.
 
Basically, your tenure of a churchyard grave may be 100 years if you're lucky! Then you're quietly grubbed up and replaced.

My old man is buried in a sprawling cemetery in Streatham, south London and you only get 30 years in there before they dig you up and cremate what’s left. He went in, in 1985. It’s a double plot that my Mother is expected to join him in so we’ve already had to renew the lease once and at 86 mum is still ploughing on.
 
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In my last house we had a loft hatch that'd lift a bit and rattle when it was windy. The current one did it too until we had proper double glazing put in. Or it was a ghost.

When you put in double glazing you should get a receipt and a FENSA certificate, check your records and if you have neither, then yes, the ghost probably put it in.
 
German and Polish are VERY different languages.
Both of which I can speak fluently when under the influence. I recall many enjoyable drunken conversations, especially with Polish builders, can’t recall much of the detail though.
 
My belief (based on a not altogether thorough belief in ghosts) is that a person would have no reason to haunt the place where they were buried.

My dad used to say that the dead don’t haunt cemeteries, they haunt the places (or people) they knew in life so I have never had a fear of cemeteries as such, however I have been known to hurry down the alley and quickly past the one in town when stumbling home from a local hostelry
 
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