What to Do With a Spooky Spot

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “What to Do With a Spooky Spot.” Listen to this episode.

Every summer a family's beach house feels like paradise, except for one spot, some sense something lingering there. In this episode we address the problem and the ghost. Welcome to episode 30 of My True Ghost Stories. This story is about a vacation beach house that my family regularly rents. We spend about two weeks there every summer together with different family members from my big family coming and going during the two weeks and some of us would stay the whole two weeks.

This house was beautiful. An old-style Jersey shore cottage two houses away from the beach with hardwood floors, mini small bedrooms, two floors, and the same family had owned it since it was built. Now they rented it to vacation families like mine. The house was decorated in true beach decor with beachy items that were obviously curated slowly over the years. Some beach houses decor represents like one trip down one aisle in Walmart, but this house's furnishings were clearly the result of slow, thoughtful collecting.

An ocean painting, a bowl of seashells, a beachy lamp, most of the items decorating the house looked like antiques or found items. And the result was a very homy, serene atmosphere. The house was well laid out full of comfortable places to relax and had an overall vibe of positivity except for one spot. There was one spot in the house that felt unsafe, scary, and whenever I walked through it I felt a wave of extreme anxiety. And this spot was at the top of the stairs.

There were two floors in this beach house and there was a staircase leading to the second floor at the top of the stairs with the door to a bedroom, a few steps in, and over to the side on the landing was a small bathroom. The feeling of anxiety would start as I passed the bathroom and peek at the top of the stairs, making me feel desperate to get out of the spot. And I was not the only person experiencing this in the beach house. My boyfriend commented one day, I think there's a ghost or something at the top of those stairs. I feel like someone was watching me every time I pass that bathroom.

It gets even worse when I get to the top of the stairs. At night, if I had to get up and use the bathroom, I would get there as fast as I could and not look up. I didn't want to see anything. I had a very strong feeling that there was a woman standing there on the landing watching me. And the feeling was so intense, it seemed like I might actually see her.

And as brave as I am when it comes to ghosts, I can't handle actually seeing them, especially in the dead of night. My daughter described her experience once at the top of those stairs in the beach house. She said one day she turned the corner from the landing to the top of the stairs after just having passed the bathroom. And in her words, she said, I was standing at the top of the stairs. And there was like this wave that went over me as I stood there.

And the world just seemed different afterwards. So something was going on at the top of those stairs. It all came to a head one night when my boyfriend and I were, for some reason, I can't remember, we were in the beach house all by ourselves. We were upstairs in one of the many small bedrooms relaxing and we started to hear noises. Hello, we called out, knowing that nobody was due to arrive there for hours.

Is somebody here? We heard shuffling around and what seemed like the sounds of someone using pots and pans in the kitchen. Nobody responded to our calls. Is somebody there? I told my boyfriend to go downstairs and check.

I was so scared because I knew in my heart of hearts that nobody was in that house. I knew that the sounds we were hearing from the kitchen in the beach house were coming from whatever entity, whatever ghost that had been making itself known to us at the top of the stairs. My boyfriend went down the stairs, God bless him. There's nobody here. He called up.

So scary. When he came back upstairs, he said, you've got to do one of those clearing things that you do, Jennifer. There's a ghost in this house. At this point in my life, I was somewhat new to doing actual clearing as a medium. I had a few techniques that I had learned at the Botanica and from my friend Victoria, the Intuitive, and I had done a few house clearings.

But I had never experienced a ghost like this. A ghost that stresses everybody out and makes noise in the kitchen. No. This was new and this was scary. There was a mystical shop in the next beach town over and I had a feeling that they would be able to help us there.

So me and my boyfriend headed over there the next day. We did not tell the rest of the family about the haunted noises in the kitchen from the night before. No point in scaring everybody else. We went into the store shortly after it opened with the urgency of people with a major leak under their sink running to the hardware store for a pipe wrench. Now, if it had been a plumbing problem like that, a leak under the sink in a vacation house, we would tell the owners of the house and they would call their guy and he would come over and fix it.

But this was a problem that we did not feel comfortable sharing with people that may or may not believe in this kind of thing. I mean, imagine that call. Hi. There's definitely a ghost at the top of the stairs here at the beach house. We think it's a woman and she's stressing everybody out and last night she was making noise in the kitchen.

So do you have a guy you could call to fix this? No, we did not want to make that phone call. So rather than make that call, we had decided to fix it ourselves. So there we were in the mystical shop. There was a salesperson behind the counter when we entered.

We rushed over. She greeted us and we blurred it out. You gotta help us. There was a spot at the top of the stairs in our house that seems haunted and last night we heard someone moving around in the kitchen and there was nobody there. Now I love botanicas and mystical shops because when you come to them with a paranormal problem, they take you as seriously as the guy in the hardware store when you describe your major leak under the sink.

The lady behind the counter listened intently to our description of what had been going on in the house nodding and as we finished up our story, she said, okay, here's what you need to do. Coming out from behind the counter, she headed for a bunch of baskets that were near the entrance. She picked a sage bundle out of one of them. The sage bundle is for smudging which is a spiritual ritual for dispelling negative energy. She handed it to us and she said, okay, light this and let the smoke go up into the corner of the ceiling near the top of the stairs where you feel the spirits energy.

The place where everybody gets dressed out. Then go around the whole house and let smoke go into all the corners. For that, leave the doors and windows open for one hour so all the negative energy will go outside and knock it trapped. Then she headed over to a big wall of shelves that was all candles. Candles were different intentions, making money, breaking a curse, finding love, things like that.

She pulled a red candle off of the shelf and around it was a paper wrapper that said, home, clear and blessed. And under it, on the wrapper, in smaller print, was a verse. The salesperson said, after you finish the smudging with the smoke and after you close the doors and windows, like this candle at the spot that was haunted at the top of the steps and then say this verse written here. And leave the candle lit for one hour. And she reminded us to take the paper off and put the candle on a plate for safety.

This will work, she said, with confidence. And we happily paid the $15 for the two items and headed back to the beach house with our little brown paper bag. It was worth $15 to maintain someone else's house because we still had a week and a half left to this vacation and we wanted to enjoy it. That'd be scared and anxious the whole time. My boyfriend, my daughter and I, performed the ritual later that day when everyone else was at the beach.

We lit the sage bundle, letting the smoke drift into the corner of the ceiling at the top of the stairs as directed by the lady at the mystical shop. And then we went all around the house and put smoke in all the corners and then we opened up all the doors and windows, which was no big deal as it was summer. As I said earlier, I had, at this point in my life, begun my journey as a medium. And I had begun talking to spirits and I had helped a few to cross over. But this spirit had been different in that it was to me at that time really scary and was making noise.

I couldn't bring myself to try to talk to this ghost because I was too scared. I would probably not be scared now. I am more used to it. But I wasn't ready then to talk to her and cross her over. Again, too scary.

So maybe this is how it was supposed to go. Smudging, open doors and windows, teamwork and a candle. After an hour of having the doors and windows open after the smudge, my daughter, boyfriend and I headed to the top of the stairs to light the candle and read the verse. We put it on a small plate, removed the paper wrapper and lit the home, clear and bless candle. And then we read the verse.

And this is the verse. This house is cleared, divinely blessed. What disturbs the peace is now at rest. The guardian of graves and spirits lost will remove from here the energy crossed. Fill this place with peace, love and stability, returning it to a state of tranquility.

And you can buy this home, clear and bless candle online. Link is in the show notes. We left that candle burning for an hour as instructed and we took turns hanging out near the top of the steps to make sure it didn't get knocked over. Then we blew out the candle. After we were finished with this ritual, I wrote the verse onto a regular piece of paper and disposed of the wrapper that had come with the candle.

Because the wrapper had a picture of a Ouija board on it and I'm kind of superstitious about that kind of thing. So the wrapper with the Ouija board picture went into recycling with a prayer and a goodbye and the candle and the paper with the verse on it that I had copied went into a closet in my room at the beach house. And after this ritual, it felt better in the house. A few family members noticed that it felt better, but definitely me and my boyfriend noticed because that night there were no Phantom noises in the kitchen and there was no anxiety at the top of the stairs. And the rest of the vacation was great.

A few weeks passed by and I was at a family gathering back home in the city. It was before dinner and I was sitting with one of my sisters, a sister who had not been at the beach house that summer. And I was describing to her in a general way the ghostly activity that had been in the house, the anxiety that we had felt in one spot. I didn't say the exact location of the negative energy in the house. I kept that part vague.

I didn't want to suggest anything to anybody. And I told her about the trip to the mystical shop, the ritual with the smudge, the candle, and the verse that we had recited in the house. And one of my brothers who had been to the house that summer and in summer's past was listening to our conversation from the other room. My sister completely believed the story of the ghost in the beach house and found the whole thing amazing. My brother still in the other room listening did not comment.

After I finished my conversation with my sister, I went out onto the beach. To the front porch. A minute or so later, my brother, the one who had been listening from the other room to my story, came out. He looked upset. He said, Jenny, I was listening to your story in there.

The spot in the beach house that had the ghost, and he grimaced a little as he asked, it's at the top of the stairs, isn't it? I smiled, and at that time my daughter was outside as well. On the sidewalk, out of immediate ear shot of me and my brother's conversation, but close enough so that when I called out she heard me. I said, Amanda, that's not her actual name. I said, Amanda, where is the ghost in the beach house?

At the top of the stairs, she answered. I looked at my brother. At the top of the stairs, I repeated. My brother then described an experience of feeling completely fine, just enjoying a relaxing day that summer at the beach house. And then walking along that upstairs landing that I've been describing, the one toward the bathroom on the second floor of the beach house, he said that when he passed the bathroom, he started to feel anxious.

And by the time he reached the top of the stairs, he was in a near panic, with absolutely no idea why, and this overwhelming feeling of needing to get out of there fast. He said he went down the stairs, quickly and ran outside, where all the anxiety immediately disappeared. He had since learned to rush past the bathroom at the beach house and never to linger at the top of the stairs, because it happened every time he walked on that landing. Well, it's gone now, I said. He had left the beach house that summer before I had done the ritual.

I told my brother, it is safe to go back. My brother went on to say that at first he had been listening to me tell my story to my sister and had been ruling his eyes like, okay, crazy sisters. But then he remembered his spooky experience at the top of the beach house stairs. So now he was a total believer and so grateful that he could return safely to the beach house and enjoy his vacation next year. Which he did.

Which we all did. And the energy has remained clear for years now. So it worked. And who was that ghost? There were some ideas tossed around.

Maybe it was the ghost of someone who had stayed in that house at one point. Maybe it was a relative of the owner's family who had passed away. Maybe it was a ghost who had just decided to take up residence in his busy vacation home. But the predominant theory was that it was the ghost of a former live in maid. The reason this was the predominant theory was that we had told the story of the haunted top of the stairs to a neighbor there.

A full time resident who knew the history of that beach neighborhood and knew the history of our beach house. And this neighbor said after hearing our ghost story that the room at the top of the stairs used to be a maid's room when the family who owned our rental had lived there full time before they had started renting the house out for the summer. And when she described the maid's appearance to me, it sounded like the woman who I had imagined standing there. The one whose energy was so strong, I was afraid I might actually see her ghost and not to see her in my mind's eye. So that's who I believe the ghost was, the live in maid.

But I don't know for sure. I do know that what's important is that the energy was cleared, the ghost left the premises and hopefully she is at peace on the other side. If you've enjoyed this episode of My True Ghost Stories, please take a second to subscribe and give it a big review and share it with a friend to help this show grow. And that's all for today. Thank you for listening to today's episode.

And if you think your house is haunted, want energy cleared from your space or need a custom spiritual ritual, I'm here to help. Don't forget to join me here every Tuesday for a new episode. Until next time.