The Old House Where the Dead Will Not Rest

The late Madame Ethel Woodlock, then, an 83-years-old grandma when she narrated this story to this writer about five years ago, had peacefully met her Creator in 2006. She was survived by her four children and ten grandchildren; all them are living in the United States.

The Woodlock family in Midland Park, New Jersey had always shrugged off the popular town legend that their home was haunted – until they had their first ghostly encounter in 1961.

The tragic past of a Victorian mansion in the US has left it haunted by the ghosts of those who met their grisly deaths there, according to a prominent artist who lived in the house for 27 years. Ethel Woodlock, a celebrated painter, claims she did not believe in ghosts when she and her family moved into the 117-year-old home in Midland Park, New Jersey.

But by the time she moved out several years now, the octogenarian grandmother was convinced that the home harbored the spirits of at least five people, and even a cat. “When we moved there in 1953, I thought people who believed in ghosts were a little crazy,” said Mrs. Woodlock. “But I have changed my mind.” I have heard and seen ghosts, there, and I know I’m not crazy. They do exist…”

Mrs. Woodlock and her family had always shrugged off the popular town legend that their home was haunted – until they have their first ghostly encounter in 1961. “I was drifting off to sleep when a loud bang shook the house,” she recalled. “At first, I thought the chimney cover had fallen, but then there was second and third explosion.”

“I ducked instinctively when suddenly I was hit by something freezing cold.” Other members of the Woodlock family heard the body-shaking explosion, but only Mrs. Woodlock was struck by the mysterious blow. The terrifying incident made Mrs. Wood-lock take more seriously the rumor that her three-story mansion was haunted, and she started to examine its past history more closely.

Her research brought to light the tragic deaths of several people in the home, including a woman murdered there at the turn of the century, a teenager who plunged to her death from a window while trying to elope in 1904, and an alcoholic who was driven to suicide in 1911.

Following their first encounter with the unknown, the Woodlocks and many of their visitors were also terrified by the sounds of footsteps, inexplicable cold spots in the home, and the apparition of an old woman in black raising her gnarled hands in the air at the head of the stairs.