The House on Virginia Lake

In a beautiful, large property that has been in the same family for generations.
Strange things have been happening, and in today's story we will learn about
the dark shadows and bizarre occurrences. My name is Edwin and he here is
Holly's true scary story. My great grandfather moved to New Zealand with his wife,
my great grandmother, from Denmark over one hundred years ago. They moved
to the small towns to this big, beautiful lake called Virginia Lake. They
built this big property which was just trees, and so they had these massive
pines. While they were massive by the time that I went to see it,
but they planted these beautiful pines right in front of the lake. And
because New Zealand's very green and it's very all about nature and bird life,
and so it was really pretty. And for some reason they cleared a bit
for I don't know if they were maybe thinking about building a really big house
at one point, but the house that they did end up building was actually
quite small. Considering that they had seven children together. I would have thought
they would have built a much bigger house, but just stayed this kind of
it was almost like surrounded by this forestry and then this kind of beer open
field and then a house in the middle of it, and with this like
really long gravel driveway that you could go up to it from. So the
other house is yeah, it was only like three bedrooms considering there's nine of
them in there. So yeah, they had seven children, and the youngest
was my granddad and my great grandfather. Both of them had my granddad quite
late, so by the time that my mum, auntie and uncle were born,
they had passed away, unfortunately, and the only children that were left
alive were by the time I was born, was my granddad, one of
my great aunts and great uncles, and my great aunt. She stayed living
in that house her whole life, So she was born in the house just
like all the other children, and she died in that house. So she
lived here for ninety plus years. She never left. She never lived anywhere
else. I guess she was just attached to the house. And yeah,
when her parents passed away, she just took over. So we would go
to this house like a couple of times a year just to visit her.
It was definitely the kind of place that gives you the hibbie gebies. It's
very just very it was very worn down and just the epitome of an old
New Zealand kind of just very all wood and cracked paint, and it was
just, yeah, very creepy. And my great aunt was actually my creepier
herself, to be honest. She wasn't very friendly. I don't know,
she was very fit in with that house. And when she passed away,
my Auntie, so my mum's sister ended up living in the house after her
as well, and they both have very similar personalities which just did not usually
scared, like they'd just be like, oh, yeah, it's just a
creepy house. Weird stuff would happen in that house and they would admit it,
and they would talk about it openly and just not be bothered by as
where as the rest of us would be like, no, this is really
uncomfortable. Like as soon as you walk in the front door, you're just
immediately on a like it's just like this I don't know, like this weight
on you, Like the air is so heavy, and like you just filled
with this dread. Like when you think of like the typical cliche like haunted
house, you think this really big mansion and there's so much space and there's
so many things hiding in the shadows or in another room on the other side
of the house. But this was like everything was like they're like in your
space, so if anything was going on, it's behind you, like right
there, like you could see everything. It was just yeah, every time
we walk in there, you're just kind of ooh okay, Like there's like
really old wall paper, really old duck and furniture, and it's just it
was just a very dark house as well. My great aunt had a lot
of cats. That was pretty much the only way that my mom could convince
me to go is for me to go play with all the cats. She
had so many of them there. There was just oh my god, and
they would just be everywhere all over the house. But yeah, there was
this I guess it's not one particular memory. It would just happen pretty much
every time I went there. My cousin and I Ben, when we would
go there, we were about I was probably about eight and he was nine
or ten. And there was this piano room. So I had this big,
beautiful black piano, really old ivory keys and all that, and I
had this one long war that had all these paintings and old photographs of all
the family members and old photos of the house and when they first moved there,
and it's really cool photos. And it was a really cool room.
It had this really unusual dark green wallpaper, I don't know. It was
quite fascinating to us. So we would go in there. We'd be bored,
the adults would be talking. We'd go in there and just and he
would play pranks on me and tease me and try to scare me. And
so we were sitting at the piano and talking and laughing, and then we
suddenly heard this weird sound coming from the piano and we would look down at
the keys and they would be moving by themselves and making this music. And
our hands were like on our laps or not on the keys, and we
were just like oh, and we would I looked at Ben and he was
just silent, and then he just ran out of the room and I was
like, don't leave me. So I'd run after him, and then I
was just saying, mom, Ben's trying to scare me, and he's trying
to tease me into and doing something with the piano. But he was his
I just remember his face like he was standing behind his dad, like and
was like trying to hide, and he just looked terrified. He was like
his face was like white as death, and he was just like what just
happened? And I was like, whoa wait, why do you look like
that? Because when you're young, you don't really understand what's going on.
And my mom started telling him off because he's always teasing me. And then
Ben said the piano was playing by itself, and the adults were just like,
okay, whatever, and they shrugged it off of that, Oh,
it's just an old piano. It's probably broken. That's the thing that old
pianos do. And I was just like, it might do one or two
keys, but it doesn't. Like I remember watching the keys would just because
if someone was playing right in front of us, and we were just like,
this is not okay, this is I just get the shit I was
thinking about it. I'm just like, this is that's not normal. And
it happened almost every time we went to visit. Whenever Ben and I were
together in the house, that played this strange jangly tune when we would play
and it would stop and then it would almost play back to us. It
was very strange, and I remember that room when mom and I were visiting
and we were looking at the old photographs and paintings on the wall of the
family, and there was this one that stood out to me the most,
especially now. There was this black and white photograph from like early nineteen hundreds
kind of thing of this young girl with dark hair wearing this like white dress.
And I asked my mom about her, and she said she was my
great aunt Josephine. And I didn't remember hearing about this particular great aunt,
like I've heard the names of all of them, but I never really heard
this one. And my mom told me that she died when she was twelve
years old of appendicitis, and I was about eleven at that time, so
I was like, wow, she's not much older than I am, and
she died of something like appendicitis, which nowadays is easily taken care of.
And I just immediately was like overcome with this dread. It was like looking
at a ghost. Oh my god, this girl is dead, and she
died a very long time ago. Her siblings grew old and died of old
age. She you know, probably had a very painful death and it's really
sad, you know. I went to leave the room after my mom left,
and I swear the I feel like the photo kind of moved, like
the like her head moved. And I remember staring back at the photo and
I was thinking, like, I'm just saying things like that didn't just happen.
And as I turned my body away to move away, her eyes moved
with me. As I moved, her eyes moved watching me leave, and
I was so scared. I'm still scared thinking about it now, Like she
had these, you know, big beautiful eyes and then they just clearly moved
and I was like, oh my god, like she was frozen in time
like at that point, because that photograph would have been taken not too far
from when she died, like just before maybe, so it's almost like we
think, is she like in that room playing the piano with us or I
don't know, I don't know, but yeah, my cousin Ben and I
we didn't really like being in the house for obvious reasons, and he was
being his typical cheeky self, so our parents kicked us out because we were
annoying our great aunt and she was just wanted some piece of kuiet. So
we went outside to explore and there was this old rectangular pit behind the house
that was really you know, overgrown with weeds and grass and all sorts of
stuff going on. And it was once a swimming pool, but my great
horror, my uncle told us that it was it's now been turned into a
cat cemetery, so for all the cats that the family has had over the
past like one hundred years, they've buried all their cats in there, so
it was like a pit cemetery. And I was like, oh god,
oh that's not very nice. So we left the pool. We were just
like, oh, nope, that's creepy. I don't want to see some
bones or anything sticking up. So we went down this kind of it was
like a path or like a hallway of like tall hedges on that side of
the house, and it was like yeah, just either side of this path
was these really tall hedges and it led into this like small little forests,
like it was just this bush just filled with all these native ferns and trees
and all sorts. But to look down this like long corridor of hedges,
and it was dark at the end because the forest just covers all the light.
It's this dark, really gloomy kind of forest at the end of it
with these really tall, towering trees and ferns and bushes, and it's really
beautiful, but just very gloomy and haunting. And right at the end where
that forest is this kind of heavy drifting mist that hovers were from the rain
or from the trees transpiring, and it's just this thick kind of veil over
the forest. It's just so dense, and it was always foggy from the
rain and the trees, and so you look down there and there's just this
fog and mist, the kind of so you can't really you don't really know
down there, you can't see anything. And I remember one but I'd always
stand at the end and just look down and just be like, oh,
wait, down that looks like something from a movie or something. And one
day I don't know how old I was, but I remember looking down the
long pathway in between the hedges, and I swear I saw like a figure
standing right at the end amongst the mist and the fog. And when my
cousin I would go play in the forest, I saw that dark figure and
just refused to go down. I was like, there's someone standing there.
When everyone is in the house and it's just him and I out there,
What is that? Who is that? And Ben just laughed it off and
just started running down the pathway not seeing it. And as he was running
towards it, the fog kind of moved and the get faded away just like
it was nothing like. It wasn't like a solid person. And my family
is made up of very tall, slim men, so it was it could
have been any of them, to be honest, it was quite a tall
person. I don't know if it was a man, but it was very
tall. But at the time, only my great grandfather had died before my
mom and her siblings were born. Was that him? It wasn't anybody.
Nobody was there. Ben ran into the forest, which we've been in there
many times, but particularly this day, it was really creepy, and obviously
seeing that thing, I was just like, no way having up to him.
So I went inside and told Mom. I was like, there's somebody
here. There's someone on the property that's not us, and it could be
coming to robbers or try to hurt us, and I don't know. So
my mom and uncle followed me out to the hedges and my uncle was calling
for Ben and my mum believed in a creator and spirits and that sort of
stuff, but I didn't really know about any of that stuff well what it
meant. So I was just really freaked out. And I was just like,
it's a person. And my uncle walked down the kind of corridor thing
of hedges down and just disappeared into the mist. And it was just the
silence. It was like all the birds just kind of stopped singing and the
trees went like still, and we were just like, what is going on?
And my mom's probably convinced lots of ghost and I was just I was
like, what what do you mean? And we started and my uncle came
back. He just came back, and but Ben wasn't with him, and
he said, I can't see him. I can't find him. And so
we started calling for him and looking everywhere, and my mum was phrasic.
She was thinking that someone had taken him or were in My uncle was just
convinced that he was just hiding and pranking us or whatever. So we were
walking around the property and on the other side of the swimming pool pet cemetery
thing, there's this kind of old mossy glasshouse. It's very it's very worn
down and it's all overgrown with vines and grasses, and the glass is so
dirty that you can't really see into it that well. And we were looking
inside see if maybe he went in there to hide or whatever, and yeah,
we saw him there amongst all these boxes and old broken pots and dead
plants. We just saw him crouched on the ground in the corner. And
my uncle tried to open the door, but it was locked, and the
only way to lock it is from the outside is a big, huge padlock.
So we were thinking, how on earth did he even get in there?
Is the whole place is there's no other way to get in there.
It's also overgrown. There's no other door or some hole or a window you
can get in. There was only this door with this massive padlock. So
my uncle was like, how on earth did you get in there? And
he was getting really mad at being because he wasn't moving, he was just
crouching in the corner as if we weren't even there. And we eventually got
the padlock open, and then we got Ben out and he suddenly acted like
nothing happened, like he was just like, what's what's going on? It's
fine, even though he didn't go. He was like curled up in a
corner and he looked terrified, but he claimed to have not seen anything or
done anything. We're just like you were on the other side of the property,
which is really far away, and then suddenly you're in here, and
there's no way you could have gotten in here without unlocking this padlot from the
outside and then locking yourself in the inside. But he claimed he didn't see
anything and it was fine, And I just felt like I was the only
one that was like, is this not really weird? Is this not paranormal
or something like? I just see a figure that just disappears into nothingness and
then he disappears and disappears somewhere that it was almost like he was being naughty,
so he something I don't know, locked him in there or something for
as a punishment, remember him just like crouching with this like his head down.
Oh, And we were just like hello, can you not hear us?
Like we're right here and it's just so bizarre, like how did you
even get in there? My mum was freaking out because she's easily scared,
but I was just I was so confused and just what was going on?
I was just so bizarre. I'm a bit older and maybe fourteen maybe,
and this is when my auntie was now living in the house. So my
great aunt had passed away and now she was living in the house and we
would go down there to visit her. But it's yeah, even though that
generation had passed away by then and it was just my Auntie there, there
was still this like familiar presence, like as soon as you drove down the
driveway and still had that feeling of something's not right, like something's off.
And there was this huge tall concrete like a trough like the cylinder just to
the right of where those hedges were that go down to the forest, and
it's covered with this kind of metal mesh and it's filled with water and there's
a whole lot of fish in it, kind of like these beautiful orange goldfish,
and it's the mesh just to you know, keep the birds and the
cats away from the fish. And I would like going there and just looking
down at all the beautiful fish, all these different colors and sizes, and
they would come right to the top. They knew you were going to feed
them, so I would get some fish food and I would be feeding them
you staring into it, and it was almost my height, but I could
like just look over, so just my head could look over the top.
And then suddenly the fish food was making ripples on the surface as it does,
and then the water just went dark, almost like the sky was overcast,
and then the fish just disappeared, like they just went deep down under.
And I was like, oh, okay, don't want any fish food,
okay. And then I was just looking at my reflection there. That
was the only thing I could see. And the water stilled again and went
really glassy, and my heart dropped when I realized there was something behind my
head, like the shape of another head, like a person was standing right
behind me, like right over me, looking down as well. And I
hadn't heard anyone come up behind me, and it was only my mum,
Auntie, and I at the property and they were both inside, so when
I turned around saw no one was there, I just lost it. I
just ran straight into the house. I'm not like a little girl anymore,
but I was, so I was beside myself. I was just like,
I'm never going anywhere alone on this property anymore. Like that. It was
so creepy. It was like a distinctive shape just came behind me, and
I'm like, Okay, someone's right home me and I just around preparing to
run or but there's nothing there. I was quite traumicized by that because I
was just like, who was that? What was that? Is this?
When it made me think about those times with the piano and the photograph and
the figure and the mist and that weird thing with being like is that wasn't
Was that not just all a dream? Like that was real? And all
those meras came back to me and I'm just like, why am I if
I just disregarded all this stuff going on? Look, it's just happened to
me again now. And I was just I was so fricked out. And
I went inside and I was trying to explain it to them, and they
were and my mom told me about her own experiences and the house during her
life, and when she would stay the night there without dog in one of
the bedrooms before I was born, and at night she would hear footsteps walking
up and down the hallway on the other side of the door, and our
dog was, you know, whining, and would be trying to get under
the covers under the bed, and she was normally quite I was really surprised
by her saying this because it's our dogs. She was pretty confident and she
was she would bark and she would be aggressive if she felt threatened, but
she was scared and that was so that was quite unusual. And she said
the footsteps were all different, like some were heavy and some were like lights,
like a young person was walking past. It was like a whole bunch
of people walking past at different times. And my mom was too scared to
get up and open the door and have a look what's going on. And
in the morning, you know, she got up and asked her aunts about
it, and they had no idea what she was talking about. And she
they were like, none of us got up during the night, what are
you talking about. There wasn't It was probably just the floorboards creaking, And
Mum just insisted, no, there there was definitely people like footsteps. It's
not a creaking. It was like a like a rhythmetic walk. It was
as if like the floors kept the memory of the family walking back and forth
across them for a one hundred years. And my auntie said she would wake
up in the middle of the night to smell boiling cabbage. I don't know
why she said. She kept saying, smell cabbage, always smell like boiling
cabbage. And even work up some nights to the house full of smoke,
but no stove or oven was on, and the fireplace hasn't hadn't been let
for decades, so it was just this random smoke just hovering in the house
and the smell of cooking when they're there's no houses for miles, and yeah,
it was so weird. It was almost like the house kept the memories
of my family alive long after they were gone and dead, like all of
them had passed away by them. And some days my Auntie would wake up
and find the pictures on the wall in the piano room all upside down,
or some of them would be upside down, and she would say, it's
almost like that was the indicator of who had been in the house that night,
or if all of them were there or only some of them. And
I was just like, why have you guys never told me any of this.
I'm walking around thinking I'm crazy, and you guys are just like,
oh, yeah, that's what goes on here. It just lives here all
alone. Even without that sort of stuff, just living there alone, a
single woman with only her pets, and there's just nothing for miles. Who
knows what or who could be lurking in the trees or down by the lake
like you can't it's just so dark at night when so yeah, my granddad
because he was the youngest, he was the last to pass away. When
I was seventeen, and my mom and her siblings, they sold the property
and the house was demolished because it was just really derelict. And when I
still go down there to Fonganui, when I walk along the lake on the
other side, because one side is the private properties and most of it was
my families, and so I have to be on the other side, I
can almost feel this. I don't know, it's just like the ear changes.
When you walk to a certain part of the lake. It's like the
front of it's just off of the public for feeding the swans and all that.
And then you walk further towards the pine trees between the lake and my
family's old property, and it just shifts. It goes from this really happy
like families and really bright and sunny, and it's as soon as you go
into the trees, it just shifts to this really heavy area. You just
get really nervous and you're just like it's almost there's something watching you, like
in the bushes or and even the water like gets darker, and I don't
know, it's it's almost like a present suddenly appears with you from something's watching
you from the pines. And it makes me think like, now that the
house was demolished, they whatever was there, whether it was my family,
they now don't know where to go, and they just roamed the lake that
they love, that's their home, and it makes me feel really uneasy as
they feel like, did we disturb them, did we offend them with something
back happened? But there was only this one night and it wasn't particularly a
bad thing that happened. But Mom and I still talk about it to this
day. It was maybe a couple months after the house and was knocked down,
and Mom and I were home alone and my pits were acting really strange.
We were just sitting in the lounge watching TV in the dark, and
we noticed that our dog Stella was just sitting really still, like really upright
and still like she's always just kind of lying down relaxing, but she was
like rigid still and just staring at one spot of the room, and we
just followed her eyes to look and we obviously there's nothing there, and we're
just like, what is she looking at? Can she hear something? Or
and we were going stellar and like waving our hands in front of her.
I was like she was in a trance and we were like, that's weird.
And I wasn't until my mom looked down at the ground at our feet
and my cat was there and he was pretty much doing the exact same thing.
He was like sitting, his tail was wagging like really hard, and
he was staring at the exact same corner. And my mom and I looked
at each other like yolder, wait what nah, that's that's not okay.
And I immediately got up and turned on all the lights and we're just like,
well, what's going on with our animals? And the suddenly the room
we just came accustomed that, the room suddenly felt really heavy. I don't
know, there's the only way I could describe. It's almost like the it
becomes heavy on you and sick and it's it. And we were just looking
at each other, Something's not right? Is it? Like this this is
not normal. Something's going on right now. And we were thinking, is
this something to do with the house getting knocked down, or was it our
family coming to say goodbye? Were they going to move on now or or
did they not really know where to go? Or I don't I say,
I don't really believe in those things, but when stuff like that happens,
I don't know. I just think of any kind of possibility to try to
justify what that was. For a second, I thought, oh, no,
like they've come here, it's like, okay, we'll stay here.
And the animals just snapped out of it and they just went back to normal,
and we were just like, what the heck? And my dad came
home and we told him and he was just like, oh, okay,
whatever. But Mom and I we haven't forgotten that. It was just so
strange. It was just so bizarre, and nothing paranormal or whatever that was.
This happened in our how info since So if it wasn't goodbye, that's
that's okay. If that happened again, oh my god, I would have
been like, no, I can't stay in this house. It was there
something that just stuck with me for years, and it just makes me think
how animals accustomed to It's almost that got like a sixth sense and can detect
things that humans can't, like you know, earthquakes or some people say that
they feel like spirits and that sort of thing. I go to say,
Oh, no, that's not real, like that, that's impossible. But
then I think back to the house on Virginia Lake, and I can't just
act like I completely disregard anything like that. That's something I experienced, that
wasn't my imagination, Like that really happened there and then and other family members
I have experienced it as well. Than This podcast is able to continue thanks
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