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 to the stories that you share with us, So if you have something to share, be sure to head on over to true scarystory dot com and fill out the form. Once we know what your story's about, we want to share it via social media, written format, or through an episode on this very show. To keep getting stories like these, be sure to tap follow on your podcast player for more creepy content. Be sure to check out my other podcast called A Dark Memory, where we go over true historical tales pretty scary and if you're more into storytelling format like creepy pastas, be sure to check out Scary Story podcast right now on your podcast player. 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