A Haunting In McKean

The Beginning

Overcast skies loomed above Tim and Maureen as they rushed to finish yard work before Mother Nature let loose. The couple had just returned from a trip to Cleveland on this sweltering, humid, July afternoon in 1968. Maureen, on her hands and knees, diligently weeded at the northwest corner fence, her back to the house and to the event that was about to unfold. Her husband, Tim, was approaching from the south, toiling behind the push-mower. About halfway done with the yard, he set his right foot up on a rear wheel, crossed his arms over the handlebar of the lawnmower, and paused for a much-needed break. Facing north, his view was of the house on his right, the yard in front of him, and his wife working ahead to his left.

It was then that “the man from Glad” appeared from the corner of the garage. Tim called him that because the man looked like Saran Wrap; a definite form, but all see-through. In a straight line the figure walked from the northwest corner of the garage straight towards Maureen, but he did so approximately ten inches off the ground! The figure, estimated to be six feet tall, was dressed in a robe and a hood which completely obscured his face (Tim got the impression that the figure was male). Moving at about the speed of a priest’s procession after mass, Tim could see the contours of the robe shifting as if legs and knees were moving beneath it. Yet he could see no feet as the robe fell all the way to the bottom of the figure’s invisible ground, about ten inches above the physical ground. Though Tim could make out this figure, he was astonished to be able to see the houses, yards, trees, and shrubs across the street behind it; the figure was transparent.

Tim’s heart rate increased as he shook his head and rubbed his eyes. Although he felt no paralysis or inability to call out, he felt mesmerized by what he was seeing. Instead of fear, he felt more in awe and kept wondering, “What is that?” He simply watched the figure approach his wife. It stopped about three feet behind her, brought its hands together and up in front of itself as if praying, and bowed its head. Tim noted the long, wide sleeves on the robe. After a moment, the figure turned, walked directly back towards the garage, and disappeared.

Tim, historically a skeptical man in nature, was vastly unsure what to do. He knew he could not act alarmed, so he simply began to mow the grass again, constantly glancing between the garage and then his wife, who was still weeding, seemingly ignorant to what had just happened. Tim finished the strip and turned around, now able to see into the garage. No apparition was there. He stepped over to Maureen and asked if she was alright. Of course she was! She went back to weeding, and Tim went back to mowing. They had friends over that evening, and Tim said nothing about the incident.

Always the skeptic, unless there is some science or logic or proof to back something up, Tim had no idea what to make of the incident. He felt a mixture of confusion and fear, and he even considered going to talk to the local priest about it. But things like that tend to leak out, and one can never be sure that even a priest will take you seriously, so he decided against it. For one week he said nothing to Maureen about it, but finally he broke down and told her what happened. At first she was terrified, but then she said perhaps it was her guardian angel. Maureen was one of the rare children to be born with a veil over her face, known as a “caul”. It is traditionally believed to be a sign of good fortune and protection in many cultures, and Maureen attributed the incident to the caul… but she still would not go out to the corner fence for a year.

The Voice

About a month later on a Friday evening, Maureen was home alone because Tim worked second shift. She was sitting in the living room reading a book, trying to stay still because the air was very hot and humid. Suddenly, she heard what she thought was Tim’s voice call her name. She thought this was very odd, considering it was only around 7 P.M., and her husband wasn’t due home until 11:30. Maureen got up, opened the back door, checked the garage, but didn’t see her husband. She then went to the dining room and looked out to where the patio was being constructed, but she didn’t see him there either. Shrugging, she went back to the living room, back to her book…

A few minutes later, the voice called out again, “Maureen!” This time, it was agitated. She sprung up from the chair and checked everywhere again, wondering if Tim had come home early but was locked out somehow. Not seeing him, she checked each area more carefully, but he was not home. Nobody was out there. Finally, she nervously returned to the living room and began reading once again.

“Goddammit Maureen!” came the voice again, this time obviously quite perturbed. Terrified, she grabbed her purse, fled the house, and spent the rest of the evening at the neighbor’s until Tim got home.

Someone Else Is Home?

The next incident happened around 1975 when Tim and Maureen were down in the basement building a wall for a small storage room. By then, Janet was just a baby, and the dog Lady was getting old. Directly above them was a spot on the floor which had traditionally squeaked whenever the weight of a person strode across it. As they worked, they heard this squeaking above their heads. Tim dismissed it as Lady, but she was fast asleep in her basement bed nearby. They paused, waited, but heard nothing more, and kept working.

A few minutes later, they heard the creaking again. Tim went upstairs to investigate. Janet was asleep in her crib, and nothing was disturbed. Thinking perhaps it might have been a fluke or the house settling, Tim went back downstairs to continue the job.

Then it happened a third time. Tim crept up the stairs with the sinking feeling that there was an intruder in the house, and Maureen followed him. They checked to make sure all the doors were locked, which they were. They then checked all the closets and under all the beds; there was no one else in the house. Janet still slept peacefully.

Quite nervously, the couple returned to the basement and kept working. Then, suddenly, there was a loud crash which came from the master bedroom. It sounded as if a lamp had been thrown to the floor and had shattered. Tim and Maureen raced up the stairs and into the room only to find nothing amiss. They proceeded to check the rest of the house again, but there was nothing out of place. However, this time they called it quits on the basement project.

Carol’s Evil Fish

The younger of the two daughters, Carol, had an inflatable toy fish for the bathtub. It was yellow with a clear plastic belly containing two bells. She loved this toy, but everyone else hated it because it looked “evil”, even before this incident. One evening in 1979, Maureen had her friend Mary Ann over while Tim was at work. They rounded up all the kids’ toys, including the fish, and put them in the toy box in Janet’s room. Then they put the kids to bed. Now, Janet was a light sleeper, and it was well-established that you do not awaken Janet because once up, she stays up and cries all night long. Carol was asleep in her room down the hall.

After awhile, Mary Ann got up to go use the bathroom, which was right next to Janet’s bedroom. When she was done and opened the door, she began screaming. Maureen, shocked and afraid that she’d wake up Janet, rushed over, asked what was wrong, and begged Mary Ann to stop screaming.

“How could you?!” Mary Ann said in an angry whisper, pointing to Carol’s toy fish on the floor, “I hate that fish!”

Maureen objected, stating that she’d never go into Janet’s room and chance waking her up just for a practical joke. Mary Ann did not believe her, but Maureen swears she did not get that fish back out of the toy box.

Door Slamming

On a hot, humid, still summer evening in the early 1980’s, Maureen went into the bathroom adjacent to the master bedroom to run water for a bath. It was around 7 P.M., just after the world news. The heavy wooden front door was open, and the metal-framed screen door was shut and locked. It was a windless evening, which was why Maureen was surprised when she heard the front door slam shut. She went out to investigate, but Janet was in her room playing and Carol was in her room already sleeping. Not only was the door shut, but it was locked, which required someone to push the doorknob’s button in. So even if a freak breeze had somehow whirled through the house to cause the heavy door to close, how could it have locked?

Regardless, Maureen opened the door and went back to her bath. A few minutes later, she heard the door slam shut again. She grabbed her robe and dashed out to see what had happened. Again, the door was closed and locked. Thinking it might be a sign or that someone was trying to tell her something, she left it that way.

Footsteps in The Attic

The roof of the house is known as a hip roof, where its sides gently slope downward. If you go up into the attic, you must crouch down or crawl through the middle, but it is impossible to walk. It is even more impossible to move about near the edges as the space gets shorter and shorter as you near them.

That being said, it was a Sunday afternoon in winter when Janet came screaming out of her room, terrified by the footsteps she had heard above her ceiling. Maureen was in the bathroom next to Janet’s bedroom and had also heard the footsteps, which was impossible because both rooms were at the house’s edge. There was between four and sixteen inches, depending where you were, for someone to walk in the attic above them, which was not enough to make that kind of heavy footfall. Maureen, knowing that Janet was unaware of the house’s ghost and deciding that was not the best time to tell her, convinced her daughter that the sound was merely snow and ice melting and falling off the roof. Janet believed the story and went on with her day.

Tim, on a different occasion, heard the same type of footsteps over the dining room ceiling, which is on the same edge of the house as the bathroom and Janet’s bedroom.

Spoons Rattling in the Sink

One evening as Maureen sat on the living room floor playing video games, she heard silverware rattling in the kitchen sink. She got up, went out to the kitchen to investigate, and found only a few spoons in the sink. She separated them and went back to playing video games. A few minutes later, the spoons started rattling again.

TV # 1

In the middle of the night during the early 1990’s, the living room TV turned on at high volume. It woke Janet, who simply thought it was odd, went out, and turned it off. For some reason, Tim was not home that night. The next day she told her parents, and they thought it might be the ghost or maybe just an electrical problem.

TV # 2

About six months later, again in the middle of the night, the living room TV turned on once again at high volume. Tim was the one who woke up this time. Thinking it was one of his daughters, he stood at his bedroom doorway and yelled out at them. Janet, from her bedroom, called back that it wasn’t her. Carol, calling from her room, said the same. Maureen grumbled for Tim to go out and turn it off. He left the bedroom and headed out to the living room, surprised to find the room enveloped in a thick, misty haze. He turned off the TV and very quickly went back to bed.

Moving Newspapers

While alone one night, Carol decided to clean up the house a bit to impress her parents. She straightened up the living room, putting all the magazines in a pile next to the couch and collecting all the newspapers for their pile on the floor near the patio door (her father liked to read the paper in the patio in the morning). After all this, she went to her room for a couple hours. Later, she went out to the kitchen to get something to drink, and she was astonished to find the pile of newspapers on the kitchen counter in front of the microwave!

All the paranormal activity stopped around the time when Carol, the youngest daughter, reached puberty. This is consistent with many other family home hauntings.