Jersey’s untold ghost stories: Part One

This is part one of a five part series leading up to Halloween weekend. Each day we offer a true story as told to us by a NJ101.5 listener of things they cannot explain. They are in no way paid for their stories and they swear to be telling the truth.

John is in his 30's and still can't shake what he saw a decade ago in his parents' home. Located in Piscataway, it's a seemingly average home like any other on the block. Growing up there, John and his brother felt things they couldn't explain. There's a set of stairs in the home John and his brother never walked on but instead always ran. Always ran due to some sense of unease. It wasn't until John was an adult that his parents finally shared some of their own experiences, no doubt wanting him to not be afraid of his family home as a little boy.

10 years ago, with his mother and an aunt visiting downstairs, John was alone on the upper level of the house. As he made his way down the hall he passed the open door to his parents' bedroom and stopped dead in his tracks. There on the bed, sitting on a corner of it, was an old woman. It was no one he knew. She wasn't translucent. She didn't vanish the moment he looked at her head on. He stopped and stared at her for several seconds, then ran down the stairs to ask his mother who the hell was sitting in her bedroom.

His mother just smiled, shook her head, and told him no one. There was no one upstairs other than him. When trying to show her, of course he discovered she was right. There was nothing. But John says he knows what he saw. He wasn't in bed, wasn't half asleep, wasn't dreaming. He didn't see something from the corner of his eye that he mistook for something else then was gone the moment he looked directly. He saw an old woman sitting on the bed.

Over time his parents began sharing things with him that they wouldn't tell him when he was young. Such as how his mother would often be on her computer and suddenly felt a finger tapping her on the shoulder. This happens often, and there's never anyone else in the room. Or how his father would be lying in bed and suddenly feel fingers tickling his feet. Again, multiple occurrences with no explanation. Once his father had just walked by a closed closet door on his way back from the bathroom only to hear the knob turn and the door swing open as soon as he had gotten to the next room. He turned back and sure enough, the door stood wide open. John's father even told him about the time on the anniversary of his own father's death of a silhouette looming in the bedroom. Adding to all the strangeness is the fact that John's dog, a normally fearless Shih Tzu, has a big problem with the house. This dog is fine anywhere else. In John's home, in anyone else's home for that matter, anywhere at all. Will explore any house, seek out any room. But when taken to John's family home in Piscataway things change. Upstairs the dog seems fine. Try taking the dog downstairs though and the dog has a fit. It will panic and fight, writhe and twist, trying desperately to avoid the lower level of the house. An absolute primal panic sets in.

Eventually John's parents called in a member of the clergy to bless the house. It made no difference. To this day strange things still happen. They tried researching to see if someone had died in the home. It turned up nothing. Yet the odd events continue. Over the years John's parents have come to accept it and don't feel any evil intent. It just feels to them that something is wanting to make itself known. Whatever is going on, it has been making itself known for a very long time.