Sometimes you don't have to go far to find a haunted house. It can be a building you've passed hundreds of times -- on your ride to work, while going to church, as you head toward a nearby shopping center or make a trip to the mall.

In this case, the haunted residence is an old semi-detached home that was built about 100 years ago. It still stands, on University Avenue inthe city limits of Newark, Delaware, but is quite a bit different than it looked a century ago. The paint is peeling, its functional shutters are gone and its side and rear yards have been torn out to make way for the sleek and colorful cars of its transient 21st century college-age renters . . .

Within its creeking frame, this old house knows it can't hold out forever. It will suffer from ill fortune and be gone one day as sure as a lucky gambler's winning streak disappears faster than it materialized.

But thanks to a recent resident, we at least have captured the paranormal events that occurred in the 'University Ghost House' . . .

Kurt had mentioned something quite a few times during our interview, so I'll state it at the beginning of his story: Kurt is 'not a wimp.'

At 6' 4" and 290 pounds, it wasn't the kind of thing he had to mention, and I told him so. Nevertheless, he stressed, that he wanted to be sure I, and the readers, knew hat there weren't many things that could scare him . . .

The mood changed dramatically when we switched the focus of our conversation to ghosts.

'Let me tell you this up front,' Kurt said. 'There were five guys in this house, all huge football players, no wimps. And we all were very skeptical about ghosts. In other words, we were unbelievers, totally.

He and his teammates had lived in the three-story home for one year, during the mid-1990's. They had heard talk, he said, about strange things happening inother houses in the area, but they didn't pay much attention.

'After all,' he said, 'every house on the block was creepy. They all looked haunted. They needed painting, they had dirt basement floors with stone walls. The floors creaked and the wind blew through the cracks in the windows.'

Of course, from the first few days they moved in, strange things started to happen. 'But,' Kurt admited, 'we didn't put everything together until much later.'


. . . The student sleeping in the first-floor apartment had a problem with his clock. No matter what time he set the alarm for, it would go off at 4:07 in the morning. Each time it occurred, he would reset the alarm, and it would still activate at 4:07 a.m.

'We all thought the clock was broken,' Kurt said, 'so he threw it out, got a new one. And when he plugged it in the same thing happened. It also went off at 4:07.'

. . . Kurt told his best friend that living there was beginning to bother him.

'I told him,' Kurt said, 'I was almost afraid to walk alone from the first floor to my attic room.'

His friend replied, 'I don't know hoow you can live in the attic. It's bad enough on the second floor.'

Kurt said he admitted, "It's spooky here. But we have to live here, have to say. It's no big deal.'

. . . Kurt's first encounter was in the form of an apparition that appeared at the foot of his bed.

'It was a tall, shadowlike figure,' he recalled. 'I woke up and lifted my head. At first I thought I was dreaming. Then, immediately, I was so scared. Even if I wanted to scream I couldn't. I was utterly breathless. It had on a black cloak, with a hood. I could just about make out its mouth and nose. After a few seconds, that seemed like a lot longer, I began blinking my eyes trying to clear them, moving my head. Then, with what was a tremendous effort, I was able to move my hand, and I smaked myself in the face, to see if I was really awake.

'I'm like really, really scared. I flipped on the light, but there was no one there. The heat was on high, but I noticed it was frigidly cold in my room. I could see my breath. I left the light on, got up and walked downstairs and slept on the couch on the first floor. The next morning, I told the guy in the second floor room . . . what happened. He believed me, because by now he was scared to death to live in that house."

Kurt told he others a few days later. Two laughed and the other, the clock guy, was
quiet and didn't say anything.

. . . 'For meit was especially scary,' Kurt said. 'I was all alone in the attic. There were three guys on the second floor and one in a room off the kitchen. But I was up there all alone -- out of sight, out of mind. There also was this small door, set way in the back of my walk-in closet, that I could never get open. My father tried to help me open it when I moved in. He even used a crowbar, but it was painted shut, so we gave up. We put a small refrigerator in the main closet, in front of the sealed door. We just gave up on the back portion, but about this time I started to wonder what might be in there.'

Just before leaving for a two-week Christmas vacation, Kurt said he pulled his refrigerator out into the room and opened its door to air it out. He gathered his bags of laundry and clothes and began to head out his bedroom door.

'Suddenly, I heard a creaking sound,' he said. 'I turned and my first thought was that the refrigerator door was moving. But it was fine. Then, it sounded like a 500-pound church door was swinging open on rusty hinges. I was freaked. I dropped my bags and ran to the first floor. I was in a panic. I grabbed one of the guys and pulled him back upstairs and told him to sit with me a few minutes on the steps outside my room.

'When there wasn'[t any sound, we went into my room and looked into the back of the closet. There was light coming from the small, sealed up door in the back corner. All the paint was cracked and chips were on the floor, like somene had pried it open.'

The rest of this story can be found in Ghosts by Ed Okonowicz (Myst and Lace Publishers, 2001). Used with permission.