When We Lived in a Haunted House for 2 Years

Posted On August 9, 2020

Recently, we were watching home videos we made when we lived in Burundi and one video popped up with an almost 3-year-old Zarah putting on a dance show for us. We were clapping and cheering her on when all of a sudden she pointed towards the corner of the bed and said: “who’s that?”. Mind you, there was no one there!

We lived in this gorgeous haunted house for 2 years. I knew there was paranormal energy from the moment we walked in, but despite the strange activity that followed, my non-believing husband always had an explanation, until he had a personal experience. One which taught him that there could be multiple dimensions to life which we may never fully understand. This nomadic life took us to Burundi for 2 years, from 2008 – 2010. As usual, our housing overseas is always provided by our employer. So sometimes you have no idea what you’re walking into until you arrive. The least we knew was that it was going to be a gorgeous house with a huge yard because all the houses in the Embassy’s housing pool were like that.

We were excited about going back to Africa. We’ll get that African Home of our dreams. The kind that comes with a perfectly manicured lawn, a pool, and plenty of fruit trees, all behind our high fence, for that kind of privacy you need for weekend yard picnics. We had a one-year-old and were hoping to have another child the following year. So the thought of watching them safely run around in the yard, attempt to climb trees and take dips with their cute little floaties on was so exciting. Especially as grassy lawns were almost nonexistent in Kuwait, where we would be moving from. I would learn French. And we could have unusual adventures like driving only minutes from our house to a restaurant in front of Lake Tanganyika to watch hippos while eating pizza.

The day we arrived, our colleagues assigned to help us settle in, also known as the social sponsors, picked us up from the airport to deliver us to our new home. As we approached, she pointed to our house on the street and we drove along this long wall for a while before we finally made it to the gate. “Nice, the yard must be huge,” I said. “Right! You guys have one of the biggest yards in the housing pool and this neighborhood is also frequently visited by beautiful, exotic birds” she added. The driveway was lined with gorgeous tropical flowers, avocado and coconut trees, and a beautiful fountain. Farther away was a well-manicured lawn, shaded by many huge trees. “Wow, nice!” I exhaled. “Oh, wait until you see the back,” she said while unbuckling her seat belt.

The patio in front of the house exuded the same old charm as the rest of the building. It featured many French doors and windows. But my focus was shifted for a minute because as soon as we walked in, the hairs on the back of my neck rose and Little Miss Chief in my head jumped up and asked “what the fnck is that vibe?” I ignored her. But I felt it so strongly; an energy I couldn’t quite articulate. But there was too much to be excited about, so I decided to focus!

Our sponsor took us on a tour around the house and showed us every big, spacious room in it. Then we walked through the dream kitchen of a hoarder: it had an endless amount of storage, and I could picture the perfect spaces for all my empty mayonnaise and yogurt jars. We ended up in the back yard and I was blown away! The yard was the largest I’d ever seen attached to one house. The pool was situated close enough to the back door, about 30 feet away. The gazebo right next to the pool had a charcoal barbecue grill and a bar within. Then the rest of the yard sprawled with strategically planted trees of diverse fruit, but still with enough green space to build a whole basketball court on. “Oh my gosh, this is huge and beautiful!” I muttered. “It is. In fact, the Embassy had two other people assigned to this house before you guys, but they both moved out after a few weeks. The first one said it was too big for her and the other couple just preferred somewhere else”. “Oh well, that worked out for us”. I responded, with an enthusiastic smiling nod.

But Little Miss Chief didn’t let that slide. She got up and said “Really?! Do you even remember the story about the golden egg which no one took for good reason until the unwise fellow took it and quickly learned why no one else wanted the egg in the first place?!” “What are you talking about?” I responded. “oh really?!” She said with a turkey-like neck twist and a finger swipe motion. “You want me to remind you of that story like your a&& wasn’t sitting on the floor with the rest of your siblings when your mama told you all that tale?” “Well, yes, I want you to remind me! Are you not my subconscious?” “Girl, I don’t have time to keep reminding you of sh!t you never pay attention to.” ” Oh, do you have something else to do?” Then she rolled her eyes, turned her back to me, and said “well, the moral of that story is, if it looks really good, yet others have turned it down, then your dumb a&& should turn it down, too! That vibe we felt walking in, you may be pushing it to the back of your mind, but that’s where I live, so I’m still vibing that sh!t!”

Our sponsor pulled me out of my head and handed us the keys, showed us the food they had prepared for us in the refrigerator, gave us some warm hugs and left. Then we returned to the back yard to take inventory of all the trees in the yard. All 43 of them were useful. We had Avocado, coconut, pomegranate, palm kernel, papaya, soursop, lemon, orange, tangerine, and my personal favorite, mango! We identified the part of the yard we’d start our vegetable garden. We’d plant lettuce, kale, onions, corn, cabbage, parsley, basil, bell peppers, and watermelon.

We walked back into the house and I felt the energy even stronger. It felt like someone followed real close behind us everywhere we went. I asked Dwayne if he felt anything, but he said “yeah, nothing more than the strangeness of being in a new house”. I told him I feel a strange energy in the house. And when we sat in the bedroom especially, it felt like a presence kept staring at us from the left corner of the room. “C’mon, Lovette, I don’t feel anything, and I don’t even believe in stuff like that.”  “Ok. Anyway, before we go to bed, we should say a prayer around the house.” I said. “Sure.” He nodded.

Monday rolled around and Dwayne went to work. I stayed home with our one year old and literally counted the hours until he got back. And even though it would still be weeks before the freight container of our household effects arrived, I couldn’t wait to hire a housekeeper for our barely empty house, just for the daytime company of someone I could see. Sometimes, while I sat in the living room, I would see movement from the corner of my eye, like someone was peeking at me from behind the door frame to the bedroom hallway. One day, it was so real, I literally said with a chuckle “Dwayne, stop messing with me.” When I didn’t hear any response, I went into the hallway, thinking I’d see him running back into the bedroom, but there was no one. Then I went in the room and found him sleeping soundly. I tapped him and asked, but he woke up with real sleepy eyes and said “There you go again. You’re driving yourself crazy with your imagination.”

Another time, we were both sitting in the living room, with Zarah sleeping on the couch, and the housekeeper gone home for the day. All of a sudden we heard a series of loud bangs coming from what sounded like the kitchen table. They were about 6 – 7 in a row, I jumped and looked at him, saying “now you see what I’ve been talking about?” He was silent for a while and when we didn’t hear any more sounds, he said “oh, it could be one of the electronic appliances in the kitchen, they make weird noises sometimes.” By now, I was used to experiencing such strange occurrences and having him explain everything, so I just rolled my eyes and kept watching TV.

But my creepiest experience happened on this night when Zarah, whose crib was right next to our bed, woke up crying. I gave her a bottle, brought her into our bed, cuddled, checked her diaper, but she wouldn’t stop crying. So I took her to the room which was supposed to be hers, and tried talking her out of her mood. She was standing on the bed, and I in front of her, still holding hands. All of a sudden, she abruptly stopped crying, took her gaze off me, and started staring intently over my shoulder, as if looking at someone standing behind me. I turned around but there was no one there, and then there was a bang on the closet in the hallway. Before I could make an excuse for what that was, Little Miss Chief said “this is the time to take your own scary movie advice and get the h€ll out of here!”. So I grabbed my daughter and swiftly returned to my bedroom.

At this point, strange was becoming my new normal and I thought I had felt it all. But then I started waking up to the sensation of dirt falling on me in bed. It always happened in the early hours of the morning, and I’d wake up to find all kinds of rocky particles on the bed! The house was in great shape and the wooden ceiling in the bedroom was a beautiful work of art that didn’t involve any cement, so I had no idea where these particles were falling from. Again, I had mentioned it to Dwayne, but he promised it wasn’t anything strange. One morning he was ironing his shirt getting ready for work, and I felt like I just had dirt particles dropped on me again. I was sleeping on my side with one palm open and facing upward, so I felt the particles hit my palm. I immediately made a fist and went straight to Dwayne to prove I wasn’t crazy. I spread my palm and there were little 3 little pebbles in it.

On another occasion, all 3 of us were in the back yard, opening up pomegranates we had just harvested from our tree and emptying them into a bowl. We were extremely conscious of not letting mosquitoes in the house due to the threat of malaria, so we always closed the exterior doors when we went out. We were laughing and joking, having a good time when suddenly we heard a door close in our house. We looked at each other and Dwayne said it must be from a neighbors house. He said this despite knowing the yards were so large we never heard any sounds from any neighbor. So we went back to our pomegranates.  A few seconds later, we heard the exterior kitchen door, which we had closed, open and slam really loud! We turned around to see who just ran into our house but saw no one through the windows. So Dwayne grabbed the baseball bat and went into the house looking for the intruder. He walked through the entire house and found no one.

We had an 8ft fence surrounding the yard, with a guard always posted by the gate, so how could someone have entered our house in broad daylight. It couldn’t have been the wind either, because it was a still, sunny day, and the wind doesn’t close a door inside the house, or open an exterior door before slamming it shut. Then we went to the gate to make sure the guard was there, and there he was. We cautiously returned to our pomegranates as I asked Dwayne if he could now see what I’ve been talking about. “I don’t know what that was all about, that’s for sure.” was all he said.

Another time we had some friends visiting and we were having breakfast under the gazebo. Afterward, we sat there just talking for a while and Dwayne gathered his footballs to throw them across the yard like he often did. He’d throw all 3 and then run around to pick them up and start over again. This morning, he threw the first one with no intention of aiming at anything in particular, and it landed about 30 meters away, on a bench about 8 – 10 inches wide, on the other side of the yard. The bench had no backrest, so we cheered and clapped, saying how cool it was that the ball didn’t bounce off to the ground, instead it landed and stayed on this narrow bench. He threw the second one, and it landed on the same bench right next to the first ball, and again there was no bounce, and nothing rolled off. “Wow! That’s so cool! How are you doing that?” Our friend asked. “Haha! No idea. I’m not even aiming, and I don’t know why the balls are not bouncing or rolling off!”. He proceeded to throw the 3rd ball and it did the exact thing! It landed and stayed next to the other two! This time our guest slowly turned to us with a straight face and said “y’all have a ghost in this house. That’s a little too strange”. We laughed it off, but not before I served Dwayne a hot side eye with cold pursed lips as a ‘when will you believe me?!’.

In December 2008, we found out I was pregnant for our second child and would have to head back to the U.S. in June to prepare for his birth in August. But Dwayne would have to stay back for one more month of work before joining us. However, 2 weeks after we left, Dwayne told me he was coming to us in a few days. “Hey, I’m fine over here, I have my sister and your mom taking very good care of me, so you don’t have to rush”. I said. “It’s ok. But I miss you and Zarah so much, I can’t stay here any longer.” And that same weekend he arrived in D.C.

The next day he sat me down and said I have something to tell you. The weirdest thing happened to me after you left. I was sleeping in the room at night and all of a sudden I felt a pressure on my lower back that literally pushed me from my side to my stomach. Then I woke up and heard the light switch clicking. I sat up and looked to see that the bathroom light was flickering off and on as the switch clicked. It was so creepy, but I got up and went in there and the flickering stopped. I couldn’t go back to sleep though, so I turned the TV and the bedroom lights on and sat there wondering what just happened. As soon as I went to the Embassy the next day, I went straight to the travel office and told them to buy my ticket home. I slept with the TV and lights on for the next few days until I left.

When he was done narrating his experience, I wasn’t sure what volume of laughter would push the baby out early, but I couldn’t hold myself, so I laughed until my stomach started hurting. When I could breathe again, I saw a mixture of humor and fear still on his face and I said “if only you had believed me all this while, you wouldn’t have been assaulted in this manner! That strange energy just wanted you to acknowledge its presence, but were being too headstrong, now look at you.” I laughed some more, but he didn’t laugh, and in September we went back for 10 more months in our lovely home.

In 2010, we were preparing to move on to our next assignment in The Gambia and started our medical clearance process. On my visit to the nurse at the Embassy, she started making small talk and asked me where we lived. I told her and she said “oh, that beautiful house. I know the Belgian lady who owned the house, she’s dead now.” Then Little Miss Chief jumped up and said “What in the name of a Belgian ghostly character did she just say!?” But I was quiet. So she continued “Well, I’ll be d@mned if you don’t ask her right now where the h€ll that Belgian lady died or where the fnck she was buried!” “I’m not asking because I’m not sure I want to know all that now. Maybe a few days before we move out, I’ll come back and ask her.” I never made it back to ask. Neither did I ever ask the two previous occupants why they didn’t stay in the house.