Battle Creek, Michigan
We had a great ice storm in January, 1984, which knocked our power off for 3-4 days. I was 11 years old, my brother, 16. My parents had divorced and during one of these nights, I was spending the night at my dad's house, and my mother and brother made up a bed in the basement at my mom's house to keep a watch on the pipes. They were afraid of them freezing. Anyway, late at night, my brother was awakened by footsteps coming down the stairs. They stopped at the bed, and after a pause, he heard what he thought was a person walking back up the stairs. He thought it was an intruder, so he grabbed a flashlight and shined it up the stairs. He saw what he described to be a man, tall, shirtless, with tall black boots, wild hair and penetrating eyes staring directly at him for a moment. Then the figure vanished immediately. Shaken, he went back downstairs and woke my mother. They both heard it walking around upstairs, and as I said on BAS, he got the hell out of there and spent the night on a bench.
This was not the first activity in the house, just sort of the climax. This ghost or whatever it was used to walk up and down the stairs on most nights at about 1:30 am. It also caused light bulbs to fail. We did experience some cold spots within various rooms as well.
I heard footsteps walking downstairs several times. My brother and I were both completely terrified by this thing. After a couple years of random activity, it disappeared. A couple of memorable mischievous highlights: One morning, my mother awoke to find her entire underwear drawer cleaned out. She never did find the underwear. Another time when I was about 16, I came home from school to find an ashtray in the house filled with water, the cigarette butts that had been in it formed in a seemingly perfect circle around the outside of the ashtray.
My mother also had an experience late at night some years after the ice storm. She always slept in the basement after the ice storm, and one night she felt something sitting down on the bed. That was the only time I remember her being scared by this thing. My dad was amused by it, and used to call it Yahoote. (Ya-hoot-ey). I prayed to God to make it go away, and I believe because of that, I didn't hear it as much as some of the other family members did. My parents had built the house themselves, so it couldn't have been an former occupant of the house, but we did go so far as to look up the history of the land.. It was interesting, but we never did figure out the mystery.
So that is my story! A lot of people don't believe in this kind of stuff, but I sure do, I experienced it first hand.
Submitted by Jenny