It’s 28 degrees outside, we have about six inches of snow still on the ground and everything is frosted over. It’s time to go to Arizona – at least for some ghost stories. I hope you’ll join me!
These stories came from a great website, Tucson.com and their article entitled “28 Creepy Ghost Stories from Southern Arizona.”
Haunted House
By Angela Besemer
We moved to Tucson in 1988 and bought an old single-wide trailer that had an addition built on to it. The master bedroom was at the end of a long hallway. Quite often at night, when our children were asleep in their beds, my husband and I would hear someone running up and down the hallway. But we never saw anyone there.
Other nights I’d see a large man standing over me on my side of the bed. He wore a red flannel shirt and he’d just stand there staring at me. My husband never saw him and would pass it off as dreaming.
All of us would jokingly refer to “our ghost” from time to time, but we never felt threatened or afraid.
One year we asked a friend to take care of our house and feed our cats while we were on a two-week vacation.
We were horrified upon our return to find cat poop, cat food, and salt strewn all over the house. We immediately called our friend. Sandy said she would explain everything but refused to come to our house.
The first day she took care of our cats she felt very uncomfortable, unwelcome and the hairs stood up on her neck. The next day, she came over with a friend, whom she did not tell what she had experienced the day before because she thought she was just being a little silly.
When they got to the house, her friend stopped dead at the door and refused to go in. Sandy went in and had all the same fears again. Later, Sandy’s friend said there was an “evil presence” in the house that did not want them there, and that she knew of someone who would know what to do.
That person advised they spread salt around the inside perimeters of the house, light sage sticks and tell the “spirits” to move on. They did everything they were told, but still felt too creeped out to continue going into the house. They simply tossed food to the cats.
About a year later, we decided to sell the house. Our real estate agent was repeatedly told that the potential buyers “just didn’t feel comfortable” with the house. One lady came over with her infant and her mother-in-law, and the infant started screaming as soon as they walked into the house. When they walked out again, the baby stopped crying. At that point, the mother-in-law took the child, went straight to the car, and yelled to her daughter-in-law that it was time to go.
That was the final straw for me! I went back into the house and yelled that we were moving regardless of what “he” wanted. That was our decision and if “he” wanted to go with us that was fine, but he had to quit interfering with the house sale!
Two days later we had a cash offer on the house, and moved out two weeks later.
I’ve heard that spirits can attach themselves to tangible objects; I think that’s what must have happened with a stuffed rabbit that had belonged to my daughter. I ran across it when I was packing. For some reason it seemed different to me and I felt we no longer needed to keep it. I decided to give it to a friend who had a new infant granddaughter living with her.
About six months later I asked about the stuffed rabbit and if her granddaughter liked it. She told me that it was the weirdest thing, but every time she’d put the rabbit near her grandbaby, the child would start screaming and crying. She said she threw it away.
I’ve never heard back from that particular spirit.
Ghostly Encounter
By Lynda Sorenson
My ghost story took place right here in Tucson, about 20 years ago. One Halloween weekend I moved into an older house down by the wash at River and Craycroft. Because of misunderstandings with the previous tenant the electricity wasn’t going to be turned on until the following Monday morning. So, I would spend my days unpacking, and in the evenings, I’d start a big fire in the fireplace and cook, then sit by the light of the fire to read.
At the time I was reading “World’s End” by T.C. Boyle – a ghost story set in the Hudson Valley, where I come from and where my family has lived for generations. I remember those dark evening hours spent reading by the fire as giving me such a feeling of home and peace.
I lived in that house for several months without incident, and the following summer I went back east for three weeks to spend time with my family. There was a young woman who worked with me that I felt would be a responsible house-sitter and would take care of my cat while I was gone. She lived at home with a large family and I thought she would enjoy being on her own for a few weeks.
Once a week I would give her a call to check how things were going. The first week when I talked to her she told me that she thought my house was haunted. I brushed the idea off. I had been living in that house for nine months without anything odd happening; surely, I would know if my own house was haunted. And she wasn’t used to being alone, perhaps the normal house noises were what was frightening her. She didn’t say anything more about it, but any time after that first week when I tried to reach her by phone, there was no answer.
When I returned to work after my vacation I kept getting odd looks from my co-workers and comments about how they heard that my house was haunted. I really didn’t take any of it seriously and told them so.
But a week after I returned, I woke up one night from a sound sleep to find someone sitting on the end of my bed, telling me to get up and let my cat in the house. The foot of my bed was toward the window, and I could see this person clearly outlined against the light coming in, with my cat behind him on the outside sill.
I kind of sleepily argued with him that the cat was just fine outside where he was, until I realized that the normally quite-calm cat was actually howling at the window. So, I finally said, “Oh, all right!” to the man sitting on the end of the bed, threw back the covers, got up and went to let the cat in. It was as I started back down the hall to bed that I had an “Oh, my God!” moment and realized that I had just been having a conversation without speaking aloud with someone who really ought not to have been there. And of course, when I got back to the bedroom, he was gone.
The next day when I got into work, the first thing I did was go to the girl and apologize to her. I told her what happened and said, “I believe you now!” That was when she told me about incidents of things moving in the house, the feeling she had of being watched while she tried to sleep, artwork falling off the walls during the night, speakers disconnecting themselves and falling as she walked through the room. It seemed that after the first week she was so disturbed by what was happening that she could no longer sleep in the house, and would go by each day to feed the cat and check the house. She refused to go into any further detail, but it was plain to me finally that she had been frightened out of her wits.
A few days later, on the advice of another co-worker, I went to see a psychic. It was my first visit to a psychic and I was rather skeptical, but I figured something had to be done and talking to her would be as good a place to start as any. She immediately described my house – where it was located, its construction, how many rooms it had and where they were in relation to each other. She told me that there was indeed someone in my house and proceeded to describe for me the young man who I had seen. She laughed and said, “Oh, he and your house-sitter really didn’t get along. They went at it hammer and tongs, those two. He didn’t like her busy young energy in his house, and he did everything he could to drive her out.”
The story she told me was of a young man of about seventeen years who had the intellect of someone nine years old. This made sense to me in the context of his concern for my cat. He had lived on the spot where my house is now in some sort of tent structure in the mid-1800s, with a family that was not his own. She thought that in some way they were associated with Fort Lowell, which was kitty-corner across the wash from the house. He died suddenly – she thought the cause was probably an infectious disease – and the family that he was living with left immediately without holding any sort of funeral service for him. Consequently, he didn’t understand that he was no longer alive.
The psychic then told me what I needed to do in order to get him to move on, and I went home that afternoon thinking about the fact that I was living in a haunted house during monsoon season. I had been an avid fan of old horror flicks as a kid, and I knew that if he showed himself to me during a thunderstorm when the electricity was out, I would probably faint! When I got home I sat down in the living room and started talking to him. I spoke the way one would to a nine-year-old and told him that I had been to see someone who would help me to help him, that I now realized that he was there and everything was going to be all right. But please, don’t show yourself to me again!
A few days later he was out of the house for good, and I never saw him again. But during that time, during the night I would wake up and hear a sound coming from my living room. The door on the face of my antique mantle clock was opening and shutting, opening and shutting. Click, click. Click, click. Click, click.
I hope these stories didn’t chill you too much! Just think warm, and not too scary, thoughts.
Happy Friday!!!
Like what you read? Find more stories by Terri Reid here.