Spooktober Part 6 – Featured Guest Blogger Mike Dinter, The Big House In Michigan

As a fun way to get everyone into the Halloween spirit, and in a nod to comedian Dan Cummins and his wife Lynze, hosts of my new favorite podcast, Scared to Death (https://www.scaredtodeathpodcast.com I thought I would present a special multi-part blog series to share some of my own “personal tales of terror.”

Well, I think we may have saved the creepiest tale for last. This final installment in our special Spooktober blog series comes from my friend Mike Dinter. You may recall me mentioning Mike in Part 2 of our Spooktober blog, The Stranded Snowmobilers when I referenced some of the spooky stories he shared with all of us warehouse guys back when we worked together at Witmark. 

I reached out to Mike on Facebook and asked whether he would be willing to contribute something to our special Spooktober blog, and of course, he didn’t disappoint. 

What follows is his chilling tale about the Big House in Michigan (not that “Big House,” it’s just pure coincidence that we’re posting this story on the day of the annual MSU/U of M rivalry football game in Ann Arbor.)

I want to thank Mike for sharing his story, I think it’s the perfect way to cap off our multi-part Spooktober blog series.

And as Dan would say, “this next story needs no set up.” So sit right back and enjoy this special Halloween treat. 

For more spooky stories, check out the Scared to Death podcast on Pandora, YouTube, or at scaredtodeathpodcast.com 

And if you like what you hear, be sure to give them a positive rating or review.

 The Big House In Michigan

Ok, here goes... Mind you, I haven't, until this point, told another living soul what I'm about to tell here. Okay yes, that's a big ol' fat lie. But I attest, under oath...okay, that's a lie too (the "under oath" thing), but I swear that the story(stories) I'm about to tell is/are the absolute truth to the best of my remembrance. No one will EVER convince me that the big house in Michigan wasn't haunted, until I get to the 'other side' myself and find out for sure.

Finding Out 

My mother, two of my sisters and myself, moved to Tennessee back in '81 because work was very scarce in Michigan where we lived at the time and my uncle said there were jobs galore down where he lived, and we could stay with him and his family until Mom got a job and got on her feet. Mom got a job cutting hair on the military base (Ft. Campbell) on the Kentucky/Tennessee border. After several months, she decided to move us into the small lower-level apartment of the house owned by her co-worker in Clarksville, TN. It was MUCH closer to her work, though there was another reason for her decision to move there...but that's another story for another time.

Now, when I say 'small' apartment, I mean it was 2-that's TWO-rooms, with a tiny bathroom off the back room. Small for one person, nearly IMPOSSIBLE for the four of us. But we were making do...ish. Anyway, after living there for a few weeks, we were sitting around one night, and I don't remember who said something first, but we all started complaining (bitching might be a better word) about how small this place was, and how much we missed the big house in Michigan and all the room it had. Mind you, I was 9 when we moved into that house in Michigan, and 13 when we moved out. I think I was the first to say, though, that one thing I didn't miss was all the times weird things would happen to me there. "Like what?", I was asked. I said that there were so many times that I knew I had left something in a particular place, but it would go missing and turn up somewhere else several days later. And all the times-which were many-that I heard someone call my name, but when I went to see what they wanted, either they said they never called me, or no one was there at all. There were many other 'odd' things that happened to me there, and I'll get to them. This is just the "tip of the iceberg". And not just for me, as I was about to find out...

Sharing Stories

When I told them about hearing someone calling me...only not, they all agreed that it happened to them a lot too. "What else?" someone asked. And the 'Round-Robin' of odd stories began. I'm going to tell these stories of specific incidents in no real order, since I don't remember the order they were told. But I'll start with mine.

 Aside from the random voices calling and the items missing and turning up elsewhere, my first incident I'll tell is of the piggy bank. I was about 11 years old and Mom had bought me a very large green plastic piggy bank with bright pink eyes. I was so pleased with it, convinced that I was going to have it filled in no time and be a millionaire before I was 15...dare to dream. That evening I was sitting across my bedroom doorway, reading, and had the bank beside me, facing the same way-across the doorway. There were 15 stairs leading to the 2nd floor, and the top 3 curved to the left. Then a walkway back along the railing of the stairwell. At the end of the railing, the walkway "T'd". Straight ahead was my bedroom(the 'blue room'), or turn left and there was the large 'red room' bedroom just past the stairwell. Or turn right at the 'T' and go down the hallway-about 8 to 10 ft. to the 'orange room' bedroom. (Yes, the decor left a bit to be desired.) Anyway, I'm sitting across my doorway reading, with the bank on my right side. Kelly, Georgie(2 of my sisters) and Kelly's friend Barb were down the hallway in the orange room with the door closed. I heard my mom call me from downstairs, so I went down to see what she wanted. She said she didn't call me, so I shrugged it off as another of those 'things'. When I went back upstairs, however, I saw that my piggy bank had been turned 90 degrees and was now facing directly out my doorway! For a moment I was frozen. Then I thought maybe my sisters were trying to mess with me. So I thought for a moment of what to say, and headed down the hall, knocked and opened the door myself and asked, "Have any of you been out of this room in the last little bit, because Mom has been calling for you and is kinda mad that you haven't answered." They seemed genuinely confused and annoyed that I bothered them, and said that no they hadn't left the room in a while. There were no signs that they were playing a trick on me, and I got scared again. So I went downstairs to tell Mom what happened, but she was busy with something and only half-heartedly responded with a quick, "Uh-huh." I went back upstairs again, and when I got there, I saw that the pig had been turned around AGAIN, back to its original position! I left the bank in the hall that night, and got rid of it the next day. When I shared this story with them that night in Tennessee, they said they vaguely remembered something about that, but still denied(convincingly) that it was a trick they pulled.

Curtain Call 

Another thing that happened to me was again while I was in my bedroom. The bedroom window was a picture window, about 3 or 4ft square. One night I was lying on the floor, reading(again. I read a lot when I was younger), with my back to the window. I suddenly had a STRONG feeling I was being watched by someone outside the window. There was no ledge or landing outside of it, so I knew it was impossible, but the feeling was so strong I had to turn around and check. I turned slowly, and to my relief, no one was there. However, before I turned back around, I saw the curtains on one side lift about a foot up and stay there for about half a second before dropping again! I jumped back as a reflex. Trying to reason it out, I thought maybe one of the cats had gotten in the room and had run behind them, causing them to kind of billow out. I checked the whole room...no cat. Then it dawned on me--the curtains didn't blow or billow out, they actually LIFTED, hovered for a quick moment, then dropped. An animal-cat or dog-wouldn't cause that. Only someone lifting them could cause that! I ran downstairs to tell my mom, but she was asleep and would have been seriously pissed if I woke her up to tell her something like that. I crawled on the couch and slept there that night.

Hide and Seek 

My sister Kelly(2 years older than me), my sister Georgie(3, almost 4 years younger than me), one of Kelly's friends, and I were home alone one day and we decided to play hide and seek. Whoever was 'it' counted downstairs while everyone else hid upstairs. The 3rd floor from the top(the first one to curve, as I mentioned earlier) was 'safe'. Kelly was 'it', so the rest of us hid as she counted. I hid on one of the lower shelves of the walk-in closet of the 'red room'. I heard Kelly yell from downstairs, "Ready or not, here I come!" A few moments later I heard VERY heavy footsteps downstairs. I thought it was weird that she was still down there, but since she was, I figured if I could be quiet enough getting off that shelf, I was closer to the 'safe' stair, and could get there before she ran all the way up. It took me probably no more than 15 seconds to get to the stair and I called out, "I'm safe!" Just then, all 3 of them came running down the hall from the orange room-she was NOT downstairs! When I told them what I heard, we all went down to check. Nobody else was home-no one down there at all. The heavy footsteps? I still don't know. When I shared that story, Kelly said(and still does to this day whenever that story comes up) that she remembered vividly the fear on my face when they ran down the hall to me.

Dave

One Saturday morning I was watching cartoons in the living room. The downstairs layout was 3 main rooms in a row. The front was my mother's bedroom, with the front closed-in porch next to it. Her bedroom doorway was actually a double door thing-a LARGE opening. The middle room was the living room with the stairway leading up, which was just outside my mother's doorway. It also had a sizeable laundry room off it, but that's not really relevant here. Then the kitchen and dining room in back. The kitchen also had the 'back door' on the left wall, if you're facing the kitchen from the middle room. That was the door we almost always used, since it was actually on the side of the house, and closer to the driveway than walking all the way to the front door. My mother's bed was on the very front wall, so from it she could see all the way through to the kitchen. Anyway, I'm watching cartoons, my mother was still in bed, sitting up and reading. My 2 brothers were still living at home, and were upstairs in their room with a few friends they had over. My brother Gene called down from upstairs for me to go outside for a minute to see if it's cool enough for him to wear a jacket. They were all apparently going to leave soon. I walked into the kitchen, went outside and stood there for a minute, came back in and went upstairs and told him what I thought. I came right back down and sat back down to continue watching tv. A couple minutes later my brothers and their friends came down to head out. My mother was just coming out of her room then, and she stopped them. "Wait a second, where's Dave?", she asked. Gene said he hadn't come over that morning. She said he did too, and they went back and forth with each other for a moment before my mom finally said, "He is too here. I just saw him go upstairs with Michael(me)." I turned around to her and asked her what she was talking about. She said, "Just a minute ago, you went and let Dave in, and you two went upstairs together." I said no, and told her what I actually did. She insisted that Dave was with me when I came back through and went upstairs. I told her I went upstairs alone. She said, "No you didn't. There was a young guy behind you who went up with you, and I just thought it was Dave." I clarified that she was talking about what JUST happened...not that it mattered, since at no time that morning had I let anyone in and went upstairs with them. She said, "Yes. Just a couple minutes ago when you came back from the kitchen and went upstairs, there was someone RIGHT...BEHIND...YOU."    ...there wasn't. 

Falling out of bed

Once my brothers moved out, Georgie moved down the hall to the orange room. She got a new bed of her own and I kept the bunk beds, still sleeping on the top bunk. Sometimes when I rearranged my room, I'd put the beds along the wall the window was on, even though they overlapped the window by a couple feet. I slept with my head at the other end, and my feet were down at the window. There were many, MANY times I'd wake up lying on my back ACROSS the bed(perpendicular), slipping off toward the window--head first. I'd wake up just in time to catch myself and stop from slipping all the way off. If I hadn't woken up, I'd have gone through the window and fallen to my death(presumably) on the sidewalk below. This may be nothing but chance, but once I realized how often it was happening, I stopped putting my bed on that wall. And though again it may have just been chalked up to me moving WAY too much in my sleep, just keep this story/thought in mind when you read what Kelly thought and felt about the house at the end of all this. Almost there, btw...one more story--the only one I remember from us talking that night in Tennessee, that didn't involve me.

Kelly sees him 

Kelly shared this in Tennessee:  She was home alone with her friend Lila, who lived next door, on the other side of our driveway. They were coming out of the front room(Mom's bedroom) and as she passed the stairway that led up, it caught her eye. She and Lila both looked up, and she said they both saw a youngish guy, about 14 to 16 years old, standing at the top of the stairs, about where the steps curved, staring down. He didn't move or say anything, but she said she and Lila both screamed and ran next door to Lila's house and told her parents, then ran to look out their window to watch if anyone left our house. Remember, both the front door and the 'back' door could be seen from their house, since the 'back' door was on that side. They kept watching until Mom got home, but never saw anyone leave. They ran out and caught Mom before she went in, and told her what happened. She said(and Mom confirmed when this was being told) that they cautiously searched the entire house, but no one was in there.

Kelly's thoughts

Lemme start by saying that as we were growing up, Kelly has, on several occasions, had dreams she told us about, and within the next day or two they would come true. Just random things, nothing serious, other than the one of her dog being hit by a car. He survived, thank goodness. But because of her 'premonitions', I always felt that she had a closer connection to 'that sort of thing', i.e. the paranormal. Anyway, she said she was always afraid in that house...that she felt a 'presence' in the house. She said she felt it strongest coming from the 'blue room' upstairs, particularly from the closet. MY room. Remember earlier I talked about slipping off the bed toward the window a lot? Over time I got to thinking...  What if she's right? We found out when we were selling the house that at some point there had been a fire. One of the perspective buyers checked the attic-just one of those square openings, about 2ft square, which incidentally, was right outside my bedroom, off to the side just a bit. When they opened it, everyone including me(I was being nosy), saw that the attic beams were charred. So, what if Kelly was right? What if there had once been a fire, and a teenager was trapped in my room, and tried to escape the fire and smoke by getting into the bedroom closet and died in there?

In my 20's, I was telling Chris Knapp and a couple other guys we worked with, all these stories, and he and I decided to try to research the history of the house. But this was in the early 90's, before the internet. Also, I was in my early 20's and we didn't really know what we were doing or how to go about it. All I was able to find out was that the house had been built in 1880, and found the names of the first couple owners. I'd love to try again and see what I can find, now that info is more readily available. Whatcha think?