Part II
There are phantom disappearing houses all over the world. On the website www.anomalien.com, there is the story of three men, Jack Robertson, Nick Hill, and Michaele Landale who worked for a farm supply company in 1971. They lived near Ponca City, Oklahoma and were called in by their boss one day. The boss asked them to go to a local farm and recover a large livestock feeder from the farm. It was an expensive piece and had not been paid for. The men though it sounded like a simple enough job. They decided to get their other work done, and then to fetch back the equipment that afternoon before quitting for the day. The farmer who had bought the equipment had gone out of business the previous spring, and the equipment needed to be cleaned up and resold.
The three men drove to the farm in the large truck from the supply company. They passed the farmhouse on their way down the road to where the barn and the outbuildings were located. They found the heavy piece of equipment but could not load it because it was nearly full of feed. There was nobody around the farm that they could speak to and emptying this equipment would require that they go back to the supply house and get specific tools to do the job.
As they were turning around the large vehicle to leave the farm, they noticed some fallen down fencing. And beyond the fencing was the front yard of an old house. It was a big white house, that looked empty. However, the house also looked to be in very good repair. The men checked out the old house and commented on the fact that it was a shame nobody was living there.
When they got back to the supply company, they informed their boss of the condition the equipment and their need to have it emptied before they could load it. The owner of the company decided that he would go out that evening and empty the machine so what would be ready for the three men to pick up the next morning.
The next morning the three men jumped back into the truck and headed out to the farm. They passed the farmhouse near the road, took the dirt trail that led to the barn and outbuildings, and loaded the equipment. The men backed the truck up preparing to turn it around, and that’s when they noticed it. The beautiful old white house was gone. Weeds and grass grew up beyond the fence in the area that had once been yard. There was no sign of the house whatsoever. Although the men asked around, they were never able to prove that a house had actually stood at that site. If it had not been for the fact that three of them had seen it together, they might not have spoken about it, but they bolstered each other’s story. So, what did they see and how did it come to be there, and just as importantly, how did it disappear?
Perhaps one of the strangest disappearing phantom houses I have ever heard of is located in Suffolk, England. in 1816, farmer named Robert Palfrey was working in his field cutting and baling hay when he suddenly felt a cold breeze overtake him. He looked up in surprise and saw a beautiful red brick house appear before his eyes. Not only was the house suddenly there, but so were extensive gardens. As he stood staring in awe, the entire scene vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.
Robert would not be the only witness to this disappearing phantom house . Others would come forward throughout time and describe it in almost exactly the same terms that Robert used.
In 1912, Robert’s great grandson, James Cobbold, was working in the same field when he was suddenly overtaken by a strange cold mass. James would later say he heard a giant whooshing sound as if a rush of wind was tearing through the field, and then suddenly a great red brick Georgian style house appeared before him. He described the gardens very much in the same terms as his great grandfather once had. For several minutes the house remained in front of James as he stood and stared in awe. James would later state that suddenly a sort of fog appeared out of nowhere an enveloped the house for a few seconds before it vanished.
If this were the end of the story, it could be said that either the old man or his great grandson were delusional or pulling off a hoax for attention, but it is not the end of this story. In 1926, a schoolteacher was walking through the area with one of her students when she and the student claimed to have seen a large house surrounded by a high brick wall and substantial iron gates. They stopped to stare through the gates at the house and admired it. The two commented upon the house and how pretty it was. It must have belonged to someone of some wealth as it was well-kept with substantial gardens.
The teacher and the student returned the next spring to explore the area once more. They remembered the beautiful estate and decided to retrace their walk of the previous fall. They took the same paths but were astonished to find that nothing of the property remained. The teacher would later write, “We were both very puzzled. At first, we thought that our house and wall had been pulled down since our last visit, but closer inspection showed a pond and other small pools amongst the mounds where the house had been visible. It was obvious that they had been there a long time.”
Later, the teacher would ask around to find out if there had ever been a house on this location. She was told that no such house had ever been located on or near the place where she and the student claimed to have had this experience.
Author L. B. Taylor chronicles another phantom disappearing house in The Big Book of Virginia Ghost Stories. According to the author, in Falls Church, Virginia a woman named Luisa took an interest in an historic old house known as the Stone House. It sits on land where there were battles during the Civil War. Luisa enjoyed driving past the house and did so often. There it sat solid and still.
One night Luisa and her parents decided to go out to the battlefield area to watch Halley’s Comet because the area was open and dark, and they would get a much better view. As the trio were returning after sky gazing, they passed the intersection where the Stone House sat. To everyone’s surprise, the house was gone. That couldn’t be, but it was gone.
The trio pulled over and got out. It was the right intersection. Luisa drove it all the time. The other landmarks were there but where the house had been was an empty lot. It was overgrown with weeds and nothing was disturbed. Surely if the house had suddenly been taken down there would have been signs. Earth should have been moved, debris should have been strewn around and a there should be other signs, but there was literally nothing.
The trio went home bewildered because they could not figure out how the house had been torn down without any disturbance to the area. They also wondered how the weeds could have grown so fast. It was a mystery that made Luisa sad. She had so loved the old house.
A couple weeks later Luisa happened to take the road past the site of the Stone House. Her eyes flicked across the property at the intersection from force of habit, but then she froze. The house was there. It looked exactly as it had before her parents and she had discovered it missing. How was that possible?
After Mr. Taylor’s book came out a reader wrote in and stated that she had experienced exactly the same thing at the Stone House She was a local from that area and had known the house all of her life. In fact, when the historical society had given a tour of it, she had taken the tour because she was so interested in the property. However, one night the writer had taken the road past the house on her way home. She was shocked to see the old house gone. The lot was empty and weed choked. She went home feeling sorry that they had torn down the house. Later, she would drive through the area again and the house was back where it belonged, looking like it had never left. What is going on there? Is it a time slip forward or backward? How is this possible?
There are countless other stories of Phantom houses appearing and disappearing. There are even stories of Phantom trains, planes, cars, and other mechanical devices. So, we’re left with a couple possible theories. The first is that these are ghosts or shadows of what once was that somehow manifest for us to see. That could mean that they were simply images absorbed as energy into the environment and discharged due to some mechanism at irregular intervals of time. This would be similar to any residual haunting. There are those, though, who believe that what we are seeing are either the future or a rift in the dimensional framework that allows us to see what exists in the same space, but in a different dimension. And perhaps both of those theories hold some weight. But any way you look at it, it appears that houses can become ghosts.
Next Week: Spirit Possessed Mirrors—Part One
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Credits:
Bennett, E. N. (1971). Apparitions and haunted houses: a survey of evidence. Ann Arbor, MI: Gryphon Books.
Crowe, R. T., & Mercado, C. (2000). Chicagos street guide to the supernatural: a guide to haunted and legendary places in and near the Windy City. Oak Park, IL: Carolando Press.
Taylor, L. B. (2019). The big book of Virginia ghost stories. Guilford: Globe Pequot Press.
Scott, B., & Norman, M. (1992). Haunted heartland. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Seaburn, P. (2018, May 30). Mysterious Disappearing Phantom Houses. Retrieved from https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/05/mysterious-disappearing-phantom-houses/.
Disappearing House – Bachelors Grove Cemetery & Settlement Research Center. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/bachelorsgrovecemetery/paranormal-history/disappearing-house.
Briggs, S., & Connor, S. (n.d.). Weird Suffolk: The Rougham mirage. Retrieved from https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/weird-suffolk-the-rougham-mirage-1-5506297.
CUBA ROAD HAUNTINGS. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/whitecem.
Anomalien.com. (2019, December 29). The Bizarre Story Of The House That Wasn’t There. Retrieved from https://anomalien.com/the-bizarre-story-of-the-house-that-wasnt-there/.
My Supernatural World 