Haunted Floor Play

Not every haunting comes with big drama. Not every ghost wreaks havoc and terror with slamming doors, screams and wails, eerie apparitions, and visions of violence. Some hauntings are quieter, more subtle. Sometimes those that linger find smaller, and irksome ways to let the land of the living know they are still around.

Tarrytown residents, Julia and Jim Deegan’s lived in what they self described as an

“…old farmhouse built in the colonial days. 200 years old. It had a very narrow stairway. And when you went down the stairs, you felt something. The dog would not even go downstairs.”

-The Sunday Courier, October 30th, 1994.

It’s possible and seems that they shared the cozy old home with something else. Something else that just chose to take a backseat, until the Deegan’s moved.

Upon relocation, Julie and Jim found that something wasn’t quite right in their new home. Nothing loud and jarring, but something more akin to annoyance. A small rug in their bedroom would not, no matter what, stay in place.

It inched, bit by by from the foot of their bed across the floor. They used carpet tape, anti skid backing, weights, and even an exercise bike to keep it from moving, and it still pulled and struggled against their efforts, wishing to move across their floorboards.

They thought perhaps it was the particular rug, imbued perhaps with then stairway energy from their house in Tarrytown, but a new rug would begin to do the same thing: a slow incremental creep towards their bed. It seems something else just had an issue with any rug in this particular spot.

Returning from a vacation resulted in them finding the rug completely pushed up against their bed, folded and crumpled as some force still wished it to move despite the obstacle. They straightened it out again. As was now part of their routine.

They’re no obvious explanation for the carpet’s travelling, and the Deegan’s proclaim it a chore more than anything. Surely a ghost would find something better to do than adjust decor? But with such a mundane mystery, the most frustrating part for them is that no one believes them.