JMY

My wife Debi and I loved our first house. It was a townhouse in Buena Park, California. We bought it in July of 1976, just before the real estate boom took off preventing most working class people from being able to afford a home of their own...at least in Orange County. We paid $35,450.00 for it. It was a two bedroom, one and a half bath, two-story townhome in a brand new development.
When our daughter was born in 1979, we planned to have another child very soon, so, even though we loved our house, we needed to look for a larger house. We wanted to find a home which would be large enough that we'd never have to move again. We both had come from broken homes and thought it would be nice for our children to come home with their children, to the house they grew up in. We found that house in Corona, which is in Riverside County to the east of Orange County. Prices were lower at that time, and Corona was buying back 4 percentage points on the loan in order to populate what was then a small town.

The house was in a new development of single-family homes on a bluff overlooking what used to be Corona National Golf Course. The streets are wide and terraced. Much like everything else in southern California. We liked our model and were pleased when we got a call one day while waiting for the third phase to go on sale. The call was from the sales office representative who told us there had been a cancellation of the model we liked. The cancellation was in the second phase so it would save us $20,000.00. We drove out to Corona that minute, gave the rep a thousand dollars after he showed us where it was. He knew we had insisted on a flat lot, as opposed to a back or side yard built into a slope, which many lots were. There was a lot premium of $10,000.00 for flat lots and $20,000.00 on top of that if you were at the top of the slope at the edge of the tract overlooking the old golf course. We did not want to be overlooking the old field, and this house was not. It was perfect.
5 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 3-car garage, sitting on a quarter acre of flat land. The price after upgrading the air conditioning to the highest capacity compressor, was $134,000.00. It was just in the framing stage on the bottom floor at that time, so we had time to sell our house in Buena Park. We sold it for $90,000.00 which gave us over $50,000.00 to put down on our new home and enable us to bring the payments down to a level that wouldn't keep my ulcer in need of Cimitidine all the time.

The year was 1980, and we moved in on July 4th weekend. Although the house was rife with problems related to the actual assembly of the house such as plumbing problems, wrong fixtures, wrong windows, etc., we never experienced any strange occurrences for a few years. At least none that we thought were so strange that it couldn't be explained. The first thing we noticed was a warm spot in the wall of the closet in our master bedroom. Our room has two closets. One which faces the room proper, and the other which is in the dressing area. The closet which faces our room proper, has a shelf along the top like almost every closet ever built. Unlike other closets though, ours had a unique ability to keep blankets warm forever. Facing the closet, if you laid a blanket on the top right of the shelf, and pulled it down later, it was be warm. Very warm. We felt the wall there, and it was warm. However, the wall on the other side of it which was in the dressing area, was not warm. We had some good friends named Doug and Denise. Doug worked for the Bren Company, who had built our house. Doug held a fairly important position with the company and offered to get me the blueprints on it so we could see if maybe there was a set of wires out of place, or a hot water line running up that wall. He checked them over first, and said that it was one of the few walls in the house which was totally empty. No pipes, no wires except for wires to a switch which came from the floor up and stopped at the switch around three feet up. Other than that, it was hollow. We didn't give it too much thought and forgot about it.
I don't know how much later it was, but one night, I noticed that if I laid on my left side facing that closet, our bed would click. Not just click like something popping. A steady click as if it were produced by a metronome. If I turned to my right side, and faced the window it would stop. Turn around, click starts again. I tore the bed apart looking for a reason for it. I insulated springs, although I knew that springs might pop, they'd never click so perfectly in time like this did. Further, only when I laid facing that closet. No Explanation.

Also, we had a fancy french looking phone which we bought when we moved in to that house, which we kept on a hope chest which sat beneath the window. It was not the best quality and had the annoying defect of making a loud double-click sound whenever anyone used the other phone in the house downstairs. Actually, it made the noise when the receiver was lifted on the phone downstairs and when it was replaced on it's cradle. Therefore, you always knew when someone was using the phone downstairs because it would make this annoying double-click. Even more annoying, or more accurately, more frightening, was the fact that it would make this double-click like someone was lifting the receiver from downstairs every morning at 2:05 am. No matter what, without fail, it sounded like someone was downstairs using the phone at that time. We never did figure that out, like everything else in this house, but it was pretty spooky to listen to the double-click like someone had lifted the receiver, and then the same thing again like they put the receiver back on its cradle. We eventually got into the digital age and used that phone only as decoration. Our push button phone did not make any sounds when the other phone was in use. No Explanation

By 1985 things had been pretty tame around our house. The bed ceased to click on cue, the warm spot remained, but mostly everything was quiet on the strange happenings front. That was soon to change. Big time.
Our neighborhood is very quiet. It is in the suburbs, and at night, since the streets are terraced and our street is above others, you can hear people talking in normal tones almost 100 feet away. One summer night, we opened the window in our bedroom to let the breeze come in. I don't like sleeping with the air conditioner on, but use a fan instead. We didn't have the fan on this night and could hear crickets chirping their love letters to each other, and all of the other sounds one might hear on a typical summer night. All of a sudden, Debi and I heard what sounded like someone using a stick to strike a hollow log. Very steadily. About once every three seconds. Very loud. After listening to this for about five minutes, I decided to go downstairs in the backyard and see if I could ascertain where it was coming from and possibly talk the culprit out of his Ringo Starr act. The sliding door to the back yard is almost directly under our master bedroom window. When I opened it, I heard nothing. Quiet as a church house mouse as they say. I thought, "That figures. Just as I get down here, he stops doing it!". So I dragged myself back upstairs. As soon as I got to our doorway, I could hear the noise again. I said, "when did it start up again?" Debi said, "It never stopped." I said, "it had to have stopped, I didn't hear it downstairs.". She said, "Well, it never missed a beat." We thought that was strange because I can almost hear a person breathing in the bedroom from below our window, yet, I heard nothing and she said it continued. No Explanation.

About a week later, we heard a woman's voice screaming in agony while we laid in bed. This woman sounded like she was being tortured. She was wailing. "Oh please! Please stop it! It hurts so bad! Ohhhhhh". I waited for someone to call 9-1-1 since it was surely coming from the house below ours. Well actually, it sounded like it was coming from the house to the north of the one below ours, but surely, I thought, someone would call the police and stop this lady's anguish. This went on for about fifteen minutes and stopped as abruptly as it started. The next day, I asked my daughter if she heard it and did it keep her up. Her bedroom is down the hall from ours, but also on the second floor and she sleeps with her window open too. She said she didn't hear a thing. After interviewing my neighbors, neither did they. I felt like they were pulling my leg because this was a woman screaming at the top of her lungs in a quiet neighborhood at night when sounds carry well, and almost echo. No Explanation.

About a month after that, once again while Debi and I laid in bed, my daughter Jacy came into our room, which we always have kept the door open, and asked us to please stop sliding the closet doors back and forth. Now in our house, on the top floor, when someone slides a closet door, you hear it all over the house. It amplifies on the wooden floors. She said we were sliding the closet doors back and forth and banging them at the end. I told her she must have been dreaming. She said she had just turned the light off and hadn't even laid down yet. I said, "well, I don't know babe, just go to sleep." No Explanation

Another strange event that has happened probably ten times over the years, is something that I can only think would happen if time had somehow gotten out of kilter with our concept of time. It is always the same thing. I am walking up the stairs, when Jacy comes out of her room and asks, "What did you want daddy?" I say, "nothing. Why?". She'll say, "I don't know. You knocked on my door and said, ‘Jacy'." I will tell her, "Jacy, I am just now walking up the stairs going up to take a shower." She would just shake her head no doubt thinking I was playing tricks on her. No Explanationn.

If time was playing tricks on someone, it didn't have just Jacy as a target. One day when Jacy was in intermediate school, and would get a ride home with her best friend and her sister, Debi had probably the most blatant incident happen to her. Every single day without fail, Jacy would come home, open the front door which Debi would unlock about fifteen minutes ahead of time, and say, "Mom! I'm home!". She would close the door, and go immediately up to her room to put down her books, and usually get on the phone right away. This day, Debi heard Jacy say, her usual, after hearing the door open and close again and Jacy's usual pounding up the stairs. She came around through the dining room from the family room to ask Jacy something, and as she got to the bottom of the stairs, she could hear Jacy's friend's sister's car pulling up into the driveway...with Jacy getting out of the back of it! Now it was Debi's turn to think that Jacy was putting her on a hummer of some sort. Not so however. No Explanation

When we first got cable at our house it was 1984. The first cable boxes were called Oak Decoders. They were the most basic of devices. A metal box covered with a wood grain type covering, with one dial on the front. That was it. Twenty channels of basic cable and two or three premium channels, and manufactured by Oak Industries. Our original cable company sold out within a year and we got new cable boxes. Not much more sophisticated than the previous ones, but still current for the times. They had a small window on the front which was capable of displaying two numbers or two letters in small case. Odd looking for alpha characters, since the technology was not that advanced. One evening while I was sitting on the floor leaning my back against our couch, and watching the Poseidon Adventure, I looked up at the cable box which was displaying the letters, "HI". I did a double-take and turned the channel down one, which made it channel 22. It was okay. So I turned it back and went back to the movie. Within a minute, I looked up again and the same message in large case was glowing at me. I repeatedly tried to get the channel up again but couldn't. The next day, from work, I called the cable company and asked what was going on. The girl told me that she'd check it out. She came back and said a technician would speak to me. He told me that the circuitry of the boxes would not allow large case letters. I told him that it indeed did, and he should check his blueprints again. He said there was no need to because the issue had come up of having large case letters display in order to help the customers program this box more easily and the word came back that they would have to replace all the boards because this one was not capable. I said, "Okay, then maybe your computer is playing around at night.". He assured me that the computer could do whatever it wanted to, but the box did not have the physical capability of displaying those letters. I gave up arguing and let it go. A month later, while my wife, and daughter Jacy and I were watching TV, Debi said, "Look at the cable box!". Sure enough, it said, "HI". That was the last time we ever saw it and so, forgot about it chalking it up to the growing list of unexplainable happenings in our house. No Explanation

Sitting in the same position as I was the night I first saw the cable box incident, one night I was struck by the oddness of an extremely cold breeze. It was not winter, but spring time. All windows in the house were closed and everyone was asleep except me. I was watching a documentary about the old west, when this breeze came over me. I could feel it come from the kitchen area and go slowly toward the den to my right. No curtains moving, no napkin on the table moving, but a sharp chill across my whole body. No Explanation

One last incident while sitting in that same spot happened about two days later. This time I was not alone, but it was late. Debi was sitting on the couch, and I on the floor resting again on the cushions of the couch. I felt both of my ankles being grabbed by hands. Not just hands on my skin, but a firm grasp. In the split second when it first happened, my initial reaction was that a cat had laid down on my ankles. We have always had several cats, so something like that would not be unusual. But there I was staring at my ankles and nothing was on them. The skin around both ankles did not depress, but had a look like it was twisting. It didn't feel that way, but looked like it. My heart was pounding so hard, it actually was hurting my chest walls. I got a chill to the bone that I've never in my life felt before and never have since. This is not dark, not a dream, not by myself...just scary as all hell. It slowly released and I never have had that happen since.
I think that is the point where I started to think there was some energy left over from something. I began to think that maybe someone was killed on the spot where our house was built. It was a bluff with grass on it for sheep grazing for a lot of years before we bought it. The rocks under the surface indicate that maybe thousands of years ago this was a river bottom because a lot of the rocks are smooth river rocks. Over the years, we have heard loud footsteps walking across the floor upstairs when no one was home except Debi and I. We once were sitting in the family room talking in the middle of the day, when we heard what sounded like a dresser falling over upstairs. It sounded like it was coming from the room directly above us which eventually became our son Nicolas' room, but at the time was an empty nursery which held a crib and a dresser. We bounded upstairs to see why it had fallen, and nothing was out of place. Further, there were several cats sleeping on the floor in and around that room. Our cats would have scattered like wild fire if they had heard something like that. But they were sleeping peacefully as if nothing had happened, which apparently it hadn't. The noise was extremely loud though. Loud enough that we felt the thud of this heavy object when it was heard. No Explanation.

Many mornings we would awaken and go downstairs into the kitchen to find the drawers open on one side of the room. Our kitchen has many drawers and doors. We always thought it was the cats who have been known to paw at a drawer until it comes open. But on two occasions, I have opened my bathroom door in the morning, being the first one up, only to find the drawers opened up in the shape of steps. By that I mean, that the first was pulled all the way out, the second a little less, the third, less yet and the top one only about a quarter of the way out. My daughter has always slept up in her room with the door closed, has never once gotten up in the middle of the night for anything, and even if she did, has a bathroom of her own just feet away from her own bedroom door. No Explanationn

Several years went by with no strange occurrences until just about a week ago. My son Nicolas and I were in the garage about three feet from the door into the house. He was standing on a stool so he could crush aluminum cans in a crusher, and I was standing at the ready to throw the downsized product into a plastic lined trashcan we keep for just that purpose. The door was ajar leading into our house, and the doorknob jiggled about three times real fast. We both looked at each other instantly. I opened the door thinking Debi was on the other side with a bag of trash or something that prevented her from turning the knob. Nothing. I walked in further and Debi was at the stove cooking dinner the way she was when Nicolas and I first went out. I said, "So, I guess you didn't rattle the doorknob huh?" She asked what I was talking about and I told her. She said that maybe one of the cats had tried to jiggle it. However, there weren't any cats around anywhere, even though I opened it within seconds of when it happened. No Explanation

And now for the most bizarre incident to happen in all the time we have lived in this house inhabited by left over energy. We replaced our original wooden garage doors with roll up doors about six years ago. We have a large door for the two-car section of the garage and a smaller door for the third car section of the garage. These doors have windows in them. The large door has four sections of six fan shaped windows and the smaller door has two sections of six fan shaped windows. Looking from the street, from right to left, if you look at the last six windows, you are looking into the part of the garage where my car is parked overnight, but where I have a woodworking shop while it's not in there. One night as I was driving home, I pulled into the driveway, and pushed the button to raise the smaller door. It wouldn't work for some reason. As I pointed the transmitter at the door, and watched, I saw what first appeared to be a fire in the last six windows. I then realized that it was only the last six windows. If it were a fire or anything legitimate, it would have shown through the other windows as well, since there is no partition in my garage. When all cars are out, it has a floor space of 20'x34'. A huge open space. Yet, here was a flickering yellow light, not reflecting as if something behind me made it, although I naturally looked all around me. It was casting a yellow orange glow flickering inside on the cabinets too. I got out thinking that there must be a fire no matter what. I opened the larger door and looked around the smaller one expecting to see a flaming pile of oily rags or something, but there I was staring at absolutely nothing. I pushed the button for the smaller door and it opened. Never again happened, nor anything like it. No Explanation

Energy is a funny thing. I don't understand it except when I don't have any. If I knew more about quantum physics and hyper electromagnetism such as the experiment conducted by the U.S. Navy on the U.S.S. Philadelphia (where according to recorded accounts, the ship vanished under a massive dose of electromagnetism and reappeared miles away and then appeared back to the dock where it started from, only to leave several men at the other location), maybe I'd know what goes on here. Short of that, your guess is as good as mine.