Something was wrong with the house.
Angie Kelly of New Cumberland, Pa., and her family moved into the large Foursquare that sat over a large series of caves in the 1990s.
“There was a hole in the backyard that led down to the caves,” Kelly said.
“We kept a board over the opening so kids and dogs wouldn’t fall in.”
But the Kelly family had more to worry about than cave openings.
“Being in the basement doing laundry, I never felt like I was completely alone,” Kelly said. “It was a strange feeling, like someone was watching me.”
Whatever was watching Kelly may have been watching her toddler, too.
“My son, Ryan, was also exhibiting very strange behavior,” Kelly said.
Ryan began slamming himself against the safety rails on his bed and tried to throw himself through the house’s large front window.
“At one point (he) attempted to throw himself down the stairs,” she said. “This was a frightening thought.”
Then things started happening in Ryan’s room.
“A horrible odor filled my son’s room, and just his room,” Kelly said.
“Before too long, his room was overrun with flies. They were all over the windows, ala ‘Amityville Horror.’”
Kelly couldn’t get rid of the smell or the flies.
“They seemed to have no desire to leave his room,” she said. “The odor seemed to emanate from his closet and I had to remove his clothes so they wouldn’t stink.”
Finally, Kelly turned to religion.
“We never did figure out what the smell and the flies were all about, but after hanging a cross in his room, the smell left and the flies disappeared,” Kelly said.
The Kellys finally moved away from whatever lurked in that house.
“The house also got hit by lightning while I was living there,” Kelly said. “It was a very weird year that I lived there, just one strange thing after another. It was kind of a relief to move out. The entire experience in that house was very bizarre.”
But whatever was in the house may have followed them.
“In the mid-1990s, I lived in a rented duplex,” she said. “It was probably built in the 1920s. On various occasions, I would see a dark man that came down my stairway, take a left turn and head for my kitchen.”
That’s all the dark man, a walking shadow, would do; walk down the stairs and take a left turn.