Haunted Attraction: Ghosts in Small-Town Pennsylvania

Have you ever worked at a haunted attraction? Well, Donovan did. But the scariest part wasn't the job, it was what came after. My name is Edwin and he was Donovan. It's true scary story. My name is Donald Sneider. Born and raised in small town just outside of York or Gettysburg. I grew up in a very religious family. We were Brethren, which is a branch of Christianity, very similar to Mennonite. As I got older, I grew away from the church for sam and I'd still have my faith in God and all that, but it definitely pulled away as I got older. Growing up in the late night these early two thousands, just like most kids, you know, I got into the horror aspect of movies, and I like to be spooped and scared and all that. I would watch ghost adventures with my brothers. That was something we always liked to do. That thrill of the paranormal was always there while I was growing up. I think I was about fourteen or fifteen before I could get a real real job in town. There was a little haunted attraction here close to where we lived at the time. It was called the Haunted Mill. A lot of people Lokova, Pennsylvania know about it. Yeah, they took volunteers and then you got paid through the month of October. At the end of the month, you got paid or volunteering. But anyhow, I was in the one area at the time. It was called a Dark Sound, and it was just a barn pretty much, and it was set up like a maze and people would go through. I was working in the one area they called it the Psycho board, where there was a cage and there was a long hallway that came in and a long hallway that let out. The long hallway that led out was pitch black. Doing my job, I chased somebody down the long hallway and it was very late at night. I think it was about one in the morning, because that's how later we reopen. After I chased that person around, I had to turn back and get to my post. While I'm coming back, there is a trap door in that hallway that led to the entrance hallway. That door opened, and when that door opens, it lets light into the hallway. When that door opened and I saw that light, I saw, I guess an outline of a and it looked like they were beckoning me to come through the door. So I hurried up and I want to go through the door. Next thing I know, I'm back in the Psycho area. Like I faced through the door, like it was never open, and I was so tired, and I was just like, maybe they shut the door before before I got there. But as I got older and I think back to that instance, it was very strange. While I worked there, my friends worked in the far side of the barn, the dark Stone, and they worked in the Toxic Garya. The one guy, the one kid, name was Wesley. He experienced what he told me was an apparition floating in the rafters of the barn that he could see, just slowly, just almost circling above him. Nobody else saw it, only he saw it. And I remember that night that he saw it. He quit. He never came back. Understandably. Over a decade later, I'm back here in Mangusvills. I live right across from Hane Mill, and I went and I took a ghost tour that they had out of curiosity. I went back to the dark Zone, which is now called the Als of Eyes. The layout is all changed, but I still remember in my head those areas. The back left corner in the middle to the right. As I'm talking to the investigators, they informed me that the two areas that I told them about are the two areas they've had the most activity. Okay, there was something going on. I did see something. My friend Wesley also saw something. And what they also told me at that time that I didn't know was apparently a little boy was working up on the rafters or playing up on the roof of the rafters and he fell to his death once again the click. He saw the apparition up in the rafters. That blew my mind a little bit. That caught me off guard. A lot of people, like even the hunters themselves, told me of what they've seen. They had what they called stick figure or I forget what they called it, but it was like a stick figure that they caught on camera, a very long stick figure that was very tall in the room right above where the kid fell to his death. As far as I know, several people in this area have all had experiences. There's actually other parts of the mill that all have reports of activity. That's why a lot of people are attracted this area, because they're very interested in the paranormal. My parents always told me the one thing that you never do is try to communicate with things from the other side because of very religious But all they ever told me to fear or really because they didn't really believe in ghosts, was of course demons see this day, never I've never tried the Ouigi born. I wouldn't even dream of it. It's just something that my parents didn't even teach me that. It's just something that I feel like, I know, I know personally that I should not communicate with the other side, just a personal preference. I have nothing against the people that do. Somebody has to venture forth and find out the unknown. I was at a friend's house. I was about sixteen seventeen years old, and they tried to break out the Ouiji board. I actually, when I think back to it, I got pretty mad at them. I remember yelling at the top of my lungs, but I said, if you use that right now, I'm going to leave, and they're like, okay, we won't use I found out later that they did use it after I left. The one kid he got really scared and he left afterwards, and he told me, you're right, Donald, and we never should have used that thing. I'm not going to tell you I told you so, but sometimes that you've got to be careful with that stuff. I guess in my mid twenties twenty three twenty four, I went through a divorce. I was in a pretty dark area of that time, and my interest in learning and hearing about stories grew. It's almost like my friends and people that would hang around always had a story of like an instance with a paranormal and it was very interesting to me that. It's almost like I drew these people to me and they would tell me their stories, and I found it very interesting. My ex wife, she had a story where when they were younger, the basement was extremely haunted and they knew for a fact that it was something malicious, and her mother went down there and rebuked it several times. I think they ended up having to move. I don't believe they were able to get that entity out of there, but I remember hearing that and just thinking, Wow, that's scary stuff when you hear it and you had an experience, because at this time I didn't have any actual experience personally. Flash forward to twenty twenty three, just in the new year, I met my now wife, Sydney We were dating for roughly four or five months. We had just started a field work for her occupational therapy training for college. So when she did that, we moved in together. But we were staying a few nights at her mother's house and a few nights at my apartment, which was in Manga Smells right across from the hand mill. And I should note that I assumed I would have activity here at my apartment, but I didn't, which is very fortunate. It's like right across the street. You think somebody would wander rope at her mother's house. So I'll tell you this little in death her one night where they're having dinner, and her mom proceeds to tell me as my curiosity of the paranormal came out, and I asked them, just casually, have you experienced anything? And she immediately hit back with oh, yes, actually in this house, And I said right here. She said, yeah. Actually we've had lights flicker. We've had the one DVD cabinet out in the living room, which was connected right to the dining room, right where we were. She said, I used to open on its own, unexplained, she said, a friend of hers they have a little or ch area outside of the kitchen. It's like a small keep Cod house, so it's three stories. It's the basement, the middle section, and on the top where all the bedrooms are. But there's a little screen and porch just outside. There's a window looking into it from the dining room, and then there's a door leading out to it from the kitchen. She said her and her friend were out there just hanging out, looking out at the at the birds and squirrels and all that, and all of a sudden, her friend apparently noticed a figure in the garage window straight ahead. They told me that it was a shadow figure. Apparently. I just found out that she saw an actual face looking right at her. I wasn't really scared. I was almost excited to hear about it. But once again, I didn't want to stir anything up or challenge it or anything like that. But her stepfather chimed in. He said, yeah, there was a time where she was away and I was in the living room and I heard the door to the basement slam show very loudly. He said, it like it. He thought there was somebody in the house, and he's got a lot of guns, so he did what anyone would do. Got his gun started upstairs, cleared the upstairs, cleared the main floor, and then went down to the basement. Nobody there was nobody in the house. He checked everywhere, but he knows for a fact, and apparently he's had several experiences, so it didn't shake him at all. But I'm just there at the dinner table thinking, wow, this is pretty crazy. Shortly after that, I would say probably three weeks to a month, we'd set up shop in the basement. Of course, that's just the only free room they had. We had our bed down there. We put some LEDs on the wall, and it was a very large room, a lot of space, and then like most basements, there was a support beam in the middle the dead center of the room, and then to the right of that support beam, to the left, if you're facing from the staircase, to the left of that support beam was a little cabinet going from the support beam to the wall, so it was like a little prep area where you could fold your laundry and all that. And then to the right was just nothing but a big area where we had a little table set up in the right corner, and then straight ahead, lined up with that support beam is where we had our king bet that we set up. Well, there was only one light into the basement, as most basements are set up where you turned on front. When you walk down you turn it on, so we'd always turn that light off and have the LEDs lit up so we could have a little bit of light so we weren't to pitch black. Something that started happening is we would come back from work and we could have done dinner and the LED's would be a different cop. We always kept them on purple or light blue and they would change to red blue, the dark blue orange for some reason, and we didn't know why. We didn't really look into it too much. It didn't really startle me that much at first. I thought it was her changing lights. Had a little powwow and said, oh, hey, you're not changing the lights. I'm not changing the lights. Who's changing the lights. We did eventually find out that it was her brother also had LED's and his lights would change ours without us night. We did not know that at the time, so it was still startlingked to us, and it ties into what happens to me and sets the stage a little bit shortly after the whole dinner scenario, I'd say it was about two to three weeks. We were going to bed, and she went to bed first. She fell asleep first, and I was watching TV. I should note that Sydney talks in her sleep a lot. She will just have conversations like she's at work, just say yachts and Ed's things, nothing too wild. I've gotten used to it. I eventually not off. The TV was left on, and it's a TV that doesn't auto shut off. So next thing I know, I'm adding a dream and out of body experienced dream where I'm in the great corner of the stationment to the right of our bed, and I specifically remember coming too and seeing us in ben I looked to the left and I saw us slaying in bed, and I remember feeling happy. I'm like, man, hey, there we are. But all of a sudden, I look over towards the stairs, right where that support beam is, which is only a few feet away from the end of our bed, and all of a sudden, I just see a full black figure staring directly at the bed where we were sleeping, where I just looked at us, and I remember in the dream, I was I froze and I was just staring directly at it, wondering what in the world what is this? I was croising in fear in the dream, and next thing I know, it slowly turned its head towards me in the corner and looks directly at me. And when that happened, I instantly woke up in bed. And when I woke up, I was drenched in sweat, and it was not we were in the basement. It's very cold down there. I didn't sweat that often. I wasn't even hardly under the cup said. I was drenched in sweat, my eyes wide open. And the first thing I noticed, Oh my goodness, the lights are off. It's pitch black down here. I couldn't see it thin and I just had this stream. I'm looking straight up in bed as anyone would if they woke up. I didn't jump up. My eyes just flung open, just a palpable fear, not danger. I didn't feel like I was in danger. I just felt like someone was checking out what's going on. But I didn't look forward because I didn't want to give it presents. I didn't want to give it a type of power like I actually recognized it before I know what's going on. Before I could even gather my thoughts, all of a sudden, Sidney to the left of me springs up in bed, straight up in the little slouched forward like sitting straight up, looking dead ahead right at the post, and says, what the hell is that? As she slowly points forward. I said, what do you see? What's there? What is? And I didn't look ahead, and I looked directly at her to the side, to the left, and then she slowly lowered her hand and slumped back in bed and started storing right afterward. At this point, I was just like, okay, I have no idea what's going on. I'm just completely just my mind is just thinking, like what in the world's happening. I was very scared because I never had anything like this happen. I feel like most of everyone's had the out of body dreams, but any time that I have those, it's never been anything where I see something and then in the same room, let alone, and then step back to reality and then this stuff happens. I've never experienced anything like that. I remember just said, you know what, just try to go to bed, I said, because if you get up, you got to go all the way over and turn the lights on, just leave a bee, so it obviously doesn't want to hurt you, just is leo d. After probably what felt two or three hours, I think I finally managed to go back to sleep and I woke up. Of course, the first thing I said when I woke up, Sidney woke up with me, and I said, do you remember anything of what happened last night? And she said no, but why are the lights off? I was like, I don't know, but do you remember jumping up in bed and pointing and saying what the hell is that? And she said no, I don't remember anything. I should also say that she did burn incense in that basement before we moved in, So I feel like if it was a malicious spirit, I feel like it would have been either saying it a little bit or flushed out or but yet, like I said, I didn't feel anything malicious or evil. But what I did feel was that I felt like it was a man. Definitely felt like almost like a man checking on, Hey, why are these people in my basement? They like confused of why there's people at his house. That's what it felt like to me. I did later find out after I told them that her mom never told me this, of course, but her sister didn't. She said, yeah, they actually found an unmarked grave back behind the house, a little bit aways from the garage where they saw the face. Her friend saw the face in the garage window. We visit a lot. I still look in the garage and I try to see if I can catch him in the axe, like peeking at him. Not in a quirky way, just because of curiosity. But after that happened, I was a little I was shooking. I I had issues sleeping there for the first few weeks, but I eventually got over it. Just as soon as I got over it, about three weeks later, same thing. Sidney went to bed and I was watching TV and I was slowly starting a doze off, and all of a sudden, I hear something right up against my ear. It sounded like one of two things. What I feel like it was, come out here. I looked around. At this point, I woke her up. I wasn't too concerned about making her mad, and I said, did you hear that? And she said what. I was like, I swear to heard somebody say in my care come out here. And she's like, I didn't hear anything. I was just like, of course not at this point. I feel like he may have been outside of the garage at the time, and maybe he was trying to reach out to me, communicate with me and make himself known. I'm out here if you want to come hang out and see me, But of course I did not interact. That's just how I am, how I was talk how I feel. Sidney told me that her father in law got a metal detector and they've been metal detecting out back behind the house. It was like an old dunk. Apparently they found edsid bottles from the late eighteen hundreds back there, so whoever is buried back there could be a pretty old soul. If you or anyone you know has a story to share in Spanish, let me know. It's for a podcast in Spanish called de roor Historias Realis, and my contact information is in the description of this episode. To share your own story here, visit true scarystory dot com and fill out the form until it and ad free and support the show. At the same time, join us on Scary Plus. If you're following the show, I will talk to you next week. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary. Everyone see us soon.