I grew up in a haunted house.
The two-and-a-half-bedroom colonial-style dwelling was built in 1952. It sat on a hill on a cross street connecting Route 17 to Park Ave. It was white, with a brick face, and had a garage and basement at street level.
I was eighteen years old when I moved out, but my parents lived there nearly forever in my lifetime. I’m the youngest of three and we moved in when I was but a few months old.
There were ghosts in the walls. We’d hear them going up and down stairs, knocking from the attic, and slamming closed the basement door I swear we left open.
As a child, I never was touched by a ghost.
Although there was this one time when I was awoken in my dark bedroom by the touch of a furry werewolf hand. Shocked, I threw my hardest punch into space. My brother said he saw a flash of light when my fist hit him square between the eyes.
We shared a room together. That was the last time he tried to scare his younger brother.
He and my sister were out of the house by the time I’d started high school. I moved out after freshman year of college.
I’d never live there again, but I’d return to that home for decades.
For holiday breaks from college.
For family visits after moving to North Carolina.
I’ve slept in nearly every place in that house, except for my parents’ bedroom, which was strictly off limits.
Sometimes I slept in the bedroom that used to be my sister’s. Other times, in my own room, which still contained some childhood memorabilia. New York Mets bobbleheads, Matchbox cars, and old art projects. The basement had been turned into a studio apartment where my brother and other friends and international students made home for short stints.
That basement was the scariest place to stay. Even as an adult, when sleeping down there, I could feel the presence.
There are two ways to get into that studio. Either come through the garage and then pass through two doors one staircase width apart. Or, come down that staircase through a door from the kitchen. The steps were narrow. Winter coats from before the war hung there.
The walls were white and the steps were yellow with black rubber mats. At the bottom of the stairs was an open shelf pantry, a door to the left into the studio, and another to the right into the garage.
One set of stairs.
Three doors.
And a ghost who liked to run up and down, pounding feet, opening doors, and slamming them shut.
My last stay in that home was just before the pandemic. I drove from North Carolina and stayed there a week. It was a rare time that all five of us, the three of us kids and my parents, were together like that. It was to help them move out.
There were too many stairs for a couple in their 80s who were living alone.
Or were they?
The house was full of relics from the nearly fifty years they’d lived there. My parents like to keep the boxes things came in. The attic was filled with all the boxes from every pair of shoes they ever bought. Every hat box. Every kitchen appliance box.
There were my dad’s notebooks from high school and my mom’s clothes from every era of her life. There were my Matchbox cars, G.I. Joes, and my infamous ALF lunchbox filled with unopened condoms.
I kept the lunchbox.
And there were the ghosts.
One night, during that last visit home, I was preparing for sleep in my childhood bedroom. I climbed the stairs, turned the corner, and walked into my room, closing the door behind me.
Straight away I heard the footsteps coming up the stairs behind me. The footsteps turned the corner and came closer to the door.
I looked at the door. I focused on the knob. It jiggled and rattled.
“It’s okay,” I said. “This is your house. You can come in if you’d like.”
The knob turned and the door swung open.
A few days later, we moved my mom and dad into an apartment across the tracks in East Rutherford.
I kissed my mom goodbye. That’d be the last time we’d embrace.
Mom was battling a breast cancer recurrence. It took her at the height of the pandemic.
We watched her funeral over FaceTime from our home in North Carolina.
I don’t think the ghost of Highland Cross would have let her fall down those stairs.
Thank you for reading.
Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.
— Andrew
Originally published on Medium
© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr., PhD.
All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.