by Revel Arroway

Created on: September 27, 2010   Last Updated: May 06, 2012

The Haunting of Haight House

We moved into Haight House when I was three and my sister a new-born; my little brother would come along just a year later. Haight House was a huge, barn-red farm house planted in the middle of endless corn-fields in Midwestern Illinois. Though it had once belonged to a prosperous local farmer, it had long passed hands to become employee lodging for the industrial farming concern my father had just gotten employment with. 

Before moving in, my father had walked through the house, alone, making mental notes on repairs that would need to be done, corners that would need to be cleaned, furniture that would need to be borrowed. The main entryway had a long staircase that led to the second floor, with a rickety banister that he never got around to shoring up. To the right of the entry was the master bedroom with a dressing room at the back that would become our play-room. To the left was the living room, with a small room off in the corner that would become my sister's bedroom. The kitchen was in the back of the house, once a summer kitchen, later attached to the house with a hall and a pantry that would later become our bathroom. Until the installation of that bathroom, the three seated out-house in the yard would have to serve.  

The banister, on reaching the second floor, wound around a long hall, becoming a rail over the stair-well. At the top of the stairs to the right was a small room that served as my bedroom which later I shared with my brother. Turning left, one passed the attic door: the attic was actually the space under the slope of the roof that had been walled off to make the hall. Going down the hall and turning left again there was the “big room”, another large bedroom, a duplicate of and right above my parents’ bedroom, also with a dressing room that would serve as storage.

As my father walked back from the “big room”, he paused and opened the door which led into the attic area. The afternoon sun shone in from the window at the end of the hall so that, when he opened that door, a beam of light reflected against the wooden beams and planks that supported the shingles of the roof. In that rectangular spot of light, my father saw projected the silhouette of a man, hanging by the neck from a roof beam, swinging slightly. There was no man hung there, but when he investigated further, he found the cut-off end of a piece of rope tied around that beam. My mother, on hearing about this,

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