Okay, so it wasn’t a castle. More like a 1964 ranch style, three bedroom, and one bath house on about a half-acre. We were the first family to move in (I was about seven years old at the time). Everyone who lived there through the early eighties has a story. These were actual events and experiences. I will keep a lighthearted tone but some of these events were quite frightening. We’ll start with my experiences.
My first recollection of something that was odd was a recurring nightmare that began in that house. I would be lying in bed and suddenly couldn’t move. I felt like I was shrinking or the bed was growing huge. Before long I was a tiny boy in a huge bed and when I looked around, I was surrounded by large, grotesque faces staring intently at me. They were uttering strange sounds that scared the crap out of me. I would try to move or scream but I could not control my body. I would wake up sweating and crying. Looking back, I believe I was not actually asleep or at least not every time. I found I could even bring it on by imagining I was getting smaller and allowing myself to remain perfectly still. I was probably about twelve when I started being able to control the dream enough to make it stop. What I would do when the dream started and the faces started staring was force myself to imagine myself getting bigger and ignoring the ugly people. By the time I was a teenager, the dreams “stopped.” Well, maybe…
The unusual things were few and far between for many years. I often would think I saw something move at the periphery of my vision and when I glanced quickly over, it would seem like what I had seen had just darted behind something. When I investigated, there was nothing there. At the time I thought it was my imagination but after leaving that house I have never experienced that type of apparition again. Ever.
Dad (Frank) followed his job through the early part of 1967, moving us to the San Fernando Valley first and then to Brigham City, Utah. During the late spring he had a heart attack and we returned to that house. While in Utah, we adopted a Siamese cat. It hated that house. My sister named him Robespierre Ffft after a cat in a Disney movie. We just called him Pierre. Pierre was always hissing at nothing. He was always stressed and watching things we couldn’t see. I think he had an ulcer as his breath became almost intolerable. He slowly became more ill with time. We finally put him down around 1980 when he was about 13 years old. What was he seeing or hearing that we were not?
Around 1974, Mom’s (Betty) drapery business was booming and Dad had a motorcycle repair business that was fairly lucrative (at least we siblings thought so) so Dad had an idea. He had already enclosed the carport into a garage where he repaired motorcycles. He was going to get a loan and build a room onto the back of our house that was to be a family room. We could have a pool table and a fireplace. He also mentioned we could have an above ground swimming pool in the backyard. As he was designing the room, he decided to move the pool inside and thus, when it was finished, we had a large room with a fireplace, pool table and a small in-ground pool. The pool was only about twelve by twenty and only five and a half feet deep at one end but it was still an indoor swimming pool! There were two problems with that pool. It cost Dad his health (ruined his knees and he had another heart attack) and the hauntings increased substantially. With time we think that it was the hole we dug that released a few “spirits” but I’ll cover that later. Dad also had to close his shop because of his health and Mom made it into a drapery sewing room.
Dad’s Motorcycle Machine Shop
Family room with pool, fireplace and pool table ca. 1976. I still eat popcorn by the handful.
Backyard ca. 1973 before the addition showing where it was added on. Images from an 8mm home movie. Not quite the exact same angles but the best I could find. Carport had already been turned into a machine shop.
The hauntings consisted of strange noises, strange sightings, lights going on and off (also the TV), cold spots and some other interesting things. What I experienced the most was the dream came back but it was a little different. It started the same but by now I knew how to stop it. There were times that it took a while and the faces were bigger. If it continued too far, the “people” started to grab at me. I only had that dream maybe six times that year and then they were gone again.
I was always hearing knocks and thumps. By this time my brother had moved out of our room and I had the room to myself. I remember one night in particular. It was winter and we had several inches of snow on the ground. I had just crawled in bed. I kept my door closed (as teenage boys preferred) and someone knocked on the door. “Yes?” Another knock. “What do you want?” Nothing. So I opened the door and asked Mom and Dad, whose room was across the hall, what they wanted. They said it wasn’t them and they had heard no noise at all. “Maybe it was the ghost,” Mom said. I knew that they had not knocked on my door because I opened it quickly after the second knock and they could not have moved that fast to get back in bed. So I went back to bed. Then there was a knock on the outside of the house. I looked out the window and saw nothing. I had that nightmare again that night. The next day I looked outside my room and the snow, which had not been added to overnight, was pristine.
A few years before this we had fun playing with an Ouija Board. When the activity had escalated, we thought that maybe it was the culprit. My friend and I had recently been baptized into a Christian Church. That board had to go! So my sister, my friend and I took that board out to a hill near our house and decided to burn it. We poured gasoline over it and struck a match. It took a long time to burn. While it was burning, it started a strange, eerie whine. It sounded almost like a scream. It was engulfed in flames for several minutes but for some reason, the word “no” would not burn. After more screaming, “no” finally started to burn. I get “goose bumps” still when I think about that night (including now).
Dad and I had ordered some infrared film to see if we could catch a ghost on film. One night we set up a camera with an intervalometer and with a flash attached. It would take photos every several minutes all night long until all 36 images were taken. We made sure the rig worked perfectly and all batteries were new. It was quite an ingenious setup. We put a filter on the flash that only let infrared light through so that no one could see the flash. We even tested it without film (infrared film was EXPENSIVE back then) and everything worked perfectly. I activated the intervalometer and went to bed. The next morning we were excited to see if we had captured anything. Since we had a darkroom, we could develop the film and have the results by noon. The first thing we noticed was that the frame counter had not moved. ALL the batteries in the camera, flash and intervalometer were dead.
The shadow figures we saw were always brief or at least those I saw. One I remember was when I was in the living room and I may have been playing the piano. I saw out of the corner of my eye a shape move. When I quickly looked down the hall, I saw just a glimpse of a dark shadow dart into a bedroom. I investigated and found nothing. I remember a time I felt a cold spot in my room that lasted only seconds but could not tell you if that was the same day. I also remember once when I heard Pierre meow very strangely and when I looked, I saw one dart into my room and Pierre followed it with his eyes. The hair on his back was standing up and he arched his back as he stood up. I remember feeling goosebumps at the time but was not convinced that what I saw was not a very tall mouse or actual shadow from a plane or bird flying past a window. I did investigate and found nothing. When I came out of my room, Pierre was nowhere to be found. Definitely hiding somewhere which was very common.
I do remember seeing some of these shadows at night. A shadow at night down a dimly lit hallway with no accompanying headlights on a window or with any other people nearby is an inconsistency I can’t explain. I tried to duplicate what one looked like but this is not quite accurate. Picture it as a movement at the corner of your eye and as you quickly glance over you get a brief view of something darting behind something. No actual shape was discernible by me.
Recreation. Lasts only about one second from sense of movement to disappearance of shadow. Frame from one of my old movies. Same hallway but the hanging drapes and pot were gone by then (mom would hang drapes everywhere for her drapery business).
The instances of the on and off lights and the TV turning on by itself continued. We would always accuse someone in the house for leaving it on or changing the channel. Same with the lights. Eventually we started talking to the “spirit” as if it was a friend. It helped to reduce the fear to the point that I was not scared by the time I got married and moved out.
My last experience came just before Mom and Dad moved out. I was visiting Dad and we were the only ones in the house. It was late probably around 9 or 10 PM. I walked into the dining room and toward the bathroom (you can guess why). I saw someone move out of the corner of my eye moving toward the front door. I stopped to look into the living room to see who it was. It looked like someone had just ducked behind the lamp and table against the wall. Where I saw it, it could not have been my shadow because I saw my shadow from the dining room light near me on the floor. As I walked toward the bathroom, looking that way, it seemed to peak at me from behind the lamp and then duck back, away from the wall but back behind the lamp. I remember saying something like, “nice try,” and went into the bathroom. Just inside the bathroom and after I closed the door, I walked through a really cold spot just inside the bathroom door. I stopped and went back to the cold spot and while in it, I could hear voices. Not like white noise that our brains try to make a pattern out of but like someone talking in another room. I could not understand a word. If I walked out of the cold spot it would stop. When I moved back in the voices continued. I do not remember staying long enough to relieve myself but I do remember almost immediately telling Dad about it and saying “good bye.” He was pissed that I left him alone with the ghost.
Recreation of what I saw.
We discussed these things over the years and came to the conclusion that when we dug the hole for the pool we disturbed a grave which accelerated the occurrences. Or perhaps it was an old burial ground. I’d be more apt to fully believe that if we had found some bones. Maybe the guy with the backhoe saw some but none remained visible in the huge pile of dirt that we left there. I made some stop motion movies with army men on that pile. Then again, my nightmares started right after we moved in. I have heard that the Utes called this valley the “Spirit Valley.” Coincidence or just folklore? Good question.
Over the years I have watched TV programs about people who study and hunt “ghosts” to try to figure out what we were experiencing. More on that in the Afterword. These instances didn’t happen every day. I don’t remember more than maybe a dozen or so over several years. Personally, I really don’t believe in “ghosts” as such but do believe in “Electromagnetic fields.” Also in “Fear Cages” caused by elevated EM fields. I even would be open to dark energy being a cause (play the “Darth Vader” theme here. “Dark Energy” is a force which cosmologists think is causing our universe to expand). But dead people? If we all left ghosts, the world would be overrun by them. None of my experiences were actually dangerous. Mostly meant to be ornery or a little mean. Definitely scary. Still, those dreams come to mind and I get that feeling of someone watching me. Then there was that knock on the door. “Whose there?”
My mother and brother will add their experiences.
The House on Highland Drive
By Betty Copley
The house was purchased new and we hadn’t lived there long when my husband decided he could no longer work for the man he was working for and quit his job. He was unable to find another job and his brother-in-law told him to come to LA. He went to work for Marquardt and was there a short time when they transferred him to the plant in Ogden. We hadn’t been there long when he suffered a heart attack so we kicked out the people renting the house and we moved home. I think we were only gone three months.
I went to work immediately and the kids went back to school leaving him and Pierre alone. It was a busy house with the three kids and their friends coming and going.
We added a mate for Pierre, named Pixie and soon the house was invaded with Siamese cats when six rambunctious kittens arrived.
With so much activity I am not sure when we came to realize that we shared the house with someone else. Nor can I remember the sequence of events.
Frank was quite ill and on several medications. When I came home from work he would tell me about the shadows he would see in the hallway and one time he saw a little girl in a red dress. I wondered at the time if it was because he was so ill or perhaps the medication he was on. In time he was better but still talked of seeing the shadows. One time we were in bed and he had his arm straight out over the edge of the bed when he felt like someone had touched his hand and it was ice cold. That is one reason when I am in bed NOTHING is hanging over the edge of the bed. The other reason being I don’t know what might be under the bed.
In time I started a drapery business at home and often I would lean the rolls of fabric against the wall. One time we were in the living room when suddenly three rolls of fabric slowly slid sideways to the floor. Gravity or…?
We were all experiencing strange things by now and had decided we must have a ghost or ghosts. We even wondered if maybe we had brought one in when we brought Aunt Fannie’s cedar chest in the house after she died.
One day Frank and I were about to go out the front door when the piano played several notes. We laughed and I told it to go ahead and play it as no one else had the time.
We had determined by now that it was just playful and wouldn’t harm us. We hoped.
Between the kitchen and dining room we had louvered swinging doors. Late one night I was standing in the kitchen when suddenly a light shone on the doors. The way the house was situated there wasn’t any way that car lights or any light could have shone on them from any direction. Immediately the phone rang and it was Larry calling to tell us he had taken Audrey to the hospital. Did the ghost have a premonition?
Louvered doors were located where the photographer was standing when this image was taken. The light could not have come through the tiny opening above the sink. You can see a clock on the wall in the other room. Nor through the doorway because it would have cast Mom’s shadow on those doors. There were no roads in that direction or any yard lights. Ed.
The four of us Frank, Sooz, Dave and I took a trip to Oregon and Mom thought she should stay at the house at night while we were gone. She didn’t think we should leave the house empty. Well—–she only stayed one night. In fact I am not sure if she stayed the whole night. She never told us why she didn’t stay.
Frank was outside one day talking to our next door neighbor when they heard kids laughing and running in the house. Our neighbor asked him if the grand kids were in the house and he told him that he was home alone. I guess every once in a while our neighbor would hear kids laughing and running in the house when we weren’t there. Either the ghost left or got lost and couldn’t find us when we moved as we never had any experiences again. And our neighbor said the people that moved in never talked of having any. Nor have we.
With the five of us and Pierre and his family and later Larry and his family moved in, I wonder what happened that went unnoticed.
A Hair Raising Instance
By Larry Copley
Once upon a time about 39 years ago, I separated from my first wife. I was staying with my parents Frank and Betty Copley. Their house had an addition built on the outside of their dining room. It was a family room with a pool table and indoor heated swimming pool. There was a short wall separating the family room and pool. The sliding glass doors from the dining room was replaced by an archway. The family room floor was about a foot lower than the dining room. A couch hide-a-bed was against the short wall facing the archway.
Hide-a-bed against wall separating room from pool.
One night I was having a hard time sleeping, probably from all the stress of the situation I was in. While laying on my back and staring at the ceiling, a black form flew in from the dining room and hovered over me! Picture the Grim Reaper, no face with a sickle in hand! I was so terrified my body was shaking and all I could do was moan. The ordeal lasted maybe 30 seconds but seemed like an eternity! Vanished…gone. Thankfully my bladder was empty, however I still checked my shorts for dampness. Praise God I never had another instance like that! At least at that house…
(Editor’s note: Archway was where a window had been not a sliding glass door but when I am as old as my brother, maybe my memory will be as bad!)
Afterword
By David Copley
My wife and I have enjoyed watching TV programs on ghosts and paranormal activity. While some instances we experienced can be explained by natural or coincidental occurrences, most are similar to things they investigate on these programs. One is “shadow people.” Both my father and brother describe a shadow figure. The things I saw were out of the corner of my eye and then when I turned and looked in that direction, they darted out of view. Describing it as a shadow figure disappearing behind a wall, lamp or door fits that description.
“Cold spots” were quite common. Maybe the house I live in now is heated more efficiently but I have not experienced cold spots like the ones in that house since. That chill that makes the hair on your skin stand up and give you “goose bumps” is common but it is different than when someone gets an “eerie” feeling. This is an “eerie feeling” with a chill times ten. Cold spots have also been described as drawing the power out of electronic devices. Again this describes the batteries being drained in our setup to catch any ghosts or shadow people on infrared film.
Voices being heard but unable to understand the words is a common thing in our everyday world. When I experienced it in the bathroom, it was a part of the bathroom that was best described as a short hallway into it. Surrounded by rooms and the water heater room which made the builders extend the bathroom past that point, giving it a four foot hallway inside the door. I have tinnitus now and if a TV is low and I am in another room, bingo, it sounds like far away voices I can’t understand. But back then, I had not damaged my hearing from black powder firearms yet (a reminder – use hearing protection when using firearms!). Also, we have evolved to look for patterns in everything. If you could see a saber-toothed cat crouching behind a bush, you were more likely to pass that ability on to your ancestors. The same with distinguishing sounds from white noise. We tend to hear patterns like voices in white noise (like a stream can sound like it is trying to say something or playing a tune). In a perfectly quiet house, before computers, MP3 players or Alexa’s were invented, there is a question on it being an acoustic focal point from a sound in the house. Also the water heater made noises I was quite familiar with after about 15 years living in that house. I won’t take the time here to explain an acoustic focal point but you may have read where Verne described one in “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” Also, I was nowhere near a window, air duct or electronic device. It would be best described as the safest place to be in the house in case of a tornado. Again, I haven’t experienced that in the last forty years.
Poltergeists. These television programs have described poltergeists as more of a ghost that haunts a particular person, as opposed to the playful haunting I always believed them to be. Poltergeists tend to leave when a person in the house leaves. Could one of us have caused this haunting? Some may say I have haunted this planet ever since I was born but that is a different issue.
I have also heard of hauntings following people’s belongings after they pass away. Perhaps Mom was right about Aunt Fannie’s cedar chest. Then there was the old family heirloom (a large bowl) that seemed to be connected to some bad luck in the family. Then why did it stop when my parents left the house?
This old family heirloom always made me feel funny. Even a picture of it still affects me!
An egregore? Out of my league here. Something like a thought-form that is created by a group of people for better or worse. Even after reading about it I am unsure what to think. If it works, maybe all of you can think real hard about making me rich. Sorry. I had to try…
Electromagnetic fields (EMF) can cause people to experience dread, fear and possibly hallucinate. A room with very high EMF’s are called “fear cages.” Did Dad do a bad job when he did the electrical work enlarging the house? Then why the few experiences we had before that? Also most of my experiences were in the old part of the house. My brother’s experience was in the new part. The TV and the lights in the new part were sometimes opposite of what you thought you left them when you last left the room. If it was wiring, how did it keep the light switch in the correct position for on or off? Hmmm.
In conclusion I am still a skeptic. I have spent my life searching for more information, trying to learn as much as I can about a subject. My favorite author was Isaac Asimov and he liked to explain the path to knowledge for a particular advancement in science. Finding the why was a big part and a big part of my search for knowledge. I rarely make a final decision on a subject (which is why I will always be a political independent) until I am convinced we have all the facts and then keep an open mind for any new information. I would dismiss all of these as coincidences or faulty memories, such as “did I leave that light on?,” if it was not for so many of them. And then, they stopped when we left that house. My brother experienced something in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains a few years later but that is a different story. That house was haunted. By a spirit, ghost, something we created inadvertently or scientifically explainable phenomenon not associated with the paranormal remains to be seen. For now I will keep an open mind.
Shadow Figure Breakdown
Sounds like a ghostly hoedown. Actually, my last run-in with a possible ghost was in 1982 or so. I was visiting Dad as I described in my “The Haunting of Copley Castle.” I wanted to break it down and see if I can rule out all possible explanations. We’ll start with what I remember,
One of my last visits to Mom and Dad’s before they moved was around 1982. Mom and my sister Sooz (Susan) were at some event if I remember right (I do not believe Sooz was still living there) but at least Dad and I were alone. It was getting late and I needed to get home. I was married and living either in a Grand Junction apartment from 1981 to 1982 or the house we were renting in Clifton starting in the summer of 1982. We were in the family room chatting when I decided I would go to the bathroom before going home. I got up and walked through the dining room. The layout of the house with important locations is shown below.
I walked through the dining room and as I was about even with the middle of the table I was looking at the floor about six feet in front of me and I saw something move in the living room. I looked up and saw a shadow dart behind the lamp straight in front of me. As I passed around the table I looked along the wall behind the lamp and saw what looked like a shadowy head dart back behind the lamp. I remember saying something like “nice try,” and kept walking towards the bathroom. After entering the bathroom and closing the door, I passed through a cold spot. Not like a draft but more like a bone chilling cold space (hard to describe). After I got as far as the sink, it was gone. I went back and stood in that cold spot (I can still feel it forty years later). While in it I heard what sounded like voices far off and no words were discernable. All I remember after that is telling Dad about it and then going home. He was angry with me for leaving him alone with the ghost. Too bad. Whether I used the bathroom or waited until I got home is not clear all these years later but I think I held it and left immediately. First, I have been trying to find photographs of that angle where you can see the living room and the lamp. I found it in an animation I made of the invisible man throwing darts. Basically, a frame at a time and lots of string. I also found a photobomb of my sister peeking around the corner in one frame (at least I hope it was her!). Here is that frame. It is only one frame in the sequence so in my movie goes by so fast you hardly notice it (I didn’t see it for over forty years! I only found it because I was looking for the photo angle!). Here it is. See her on the right side? Remember that image of someone looking from around something.
You can see the lamp in the distance above the dining room table. Also notice the chandelier lamp above the table. It was the only light on in those rooms. In the family room where Dad and I were talking, there was a bright hanging light above the pool table to the left of where this image was taken. Here are a few shots to show you the layout of the various rooms.
Family Room with pool, pool table and fireplace.
Living Room, south to the left and north to the right. Window is on the west wall. On the right wall was the lamp as seen in the second image.
Dining room from the living room. Family room is through the arch with the pool in the distance. The hanging light in the family room was practically never on because it was housed in stained glass and was only decorative.
As you can see the only light illuminating the living room was the one above the dining room table. My shadow would have moved from against the swinging doors into the kitchen and as I walked around it, followed the wall until it landed in the living room. It would follow that south wall until I walked around the table. I saw that unknown shadow in the living room before I had passed the end of the table. It darted behind the lamp. I remember seeing it separate from my shadow. When I came around the table the shadow appeared to be peering from around the lamp, just like my sister was in her photobomb. I remember stopping immediately and it ducked back behind the lamp. My shadow moved from left to right. The second shadow moved from right to left. It disappeared. My shadow was still there. I cannot find a possible source for that shadow now and I couldn’t then. I remember moving back and forth once and it did not repeat. The other thing that struck me when I was comparing these photographs was the shadow would be about four feet tall. The height of a child. I remember Dad saying he saw a child in a red prairie type dress once. Hmmmm.
This sequence shows approximately what I saw. Top row as I was walking by the table, bottom sequence while walking around the table and down the hall.
To the bathroom I went! Now let’s talk about heat. The house was heated by forced air through floor vents. There was a swamp cooler in the hallway and dining room ceiling. Here are photos from an old 8mm video of the hallway and the ceiling above. It was a video of shoes walking down the hallway and knocking over the camera, making the views come from the same location. Video is on my blog!
The cold spot in the bathroom was nowhere near the vent from the swamp cooler. Since I have long forgotten the time of year, I cannot be definitive but here is my take on it. There was a floor vent near where I felt the cold spot. But the cold spot was high. I felt it around my head, shoulders, arms and torso. I do not remember my legs being colder than the rest of me. Cold air sinks since it is heavier than warm air. Besides, I have been in cold spots in houses since and it has never been the same.
The voices are a puzzle. Their being only in the cold spot and where it was located is another puzzle. No air vents above me. Floor vent near my feet makes no sense as it coming from there either. No one could have been under the house. Only way into the crawl space was from my bedroom closet where the trap door was and I had the closet jam packed with old toys and things that I could use in my stop motion animations. We did not have any speakers near there and I have not heard those kinds of voices since. I understand the concept of acoustic focal points where a voice can be focused and the sound waves converge a long distance from the source. Jules Verne used it as a plot device in “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” The door was closed and it was only in a cold spot.
In conclusion the conclusion is that there is no conclusion. I can’t explain what I saw, felt and heard. Too many things happened in that house for them all to be a coincidence. Ghosts? Again, I am skeptical. I only wish I knew then what I know now so I could have researched it more but that also applies to EVERYTHING! I am one who would go back and do high school again if I could. I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again (probably would make all new ones). Was it a “shadow person” as they call them on TV shows about ghosts? Or was it a light play that tricked my eyes into thinking they saw something? Again, I haven’t seen anything like that since. Was the cold spot an area where a ghost manifested itself, drawing all the energy, leaving only a cold spot? Or was it a vortex of air currents that swirled into one spot before dissipating. Was it an acoustic focal point where the sound of a TV just happened to focus in the cold spot? Or could it be… “And you really don’t remember. Was it something that they said? All the voices in your head calling Gloria.” (Apologies to Laura Branigan, I like the song, though). Glory, glor-ee-ah!
Geeking Out with Dave 