Spooky Stories from Elgin, IL. was an October feature of stories from Elgin residents about unusual happenings, spooky events or an other-worldly resident that might still be hanging around. In most of these stories names and locations have been omitted or changed to protect the privacy of still living residents and their homes.
These stories are meant to provide a safe and fun scare.
Please enjoy and feel free to share!
Fixing up an historic victorian had been R’s dream.
When the beautiful old house came on the market he just HAD to put in an offer. A few months later, the 123 year old Queen Ann was his.
The renovations started right away. R’s focus was on updating the very outdated 70’s style interior to something more modern, tho still paying homage to the home’s original design. From R’s perspective, everything was going well. There were no major surprises hiding in the walls (as can be the case with a structure of this age) & the work was progressing nicely. He was feeling very good about his purchase & plans to make this old house shine.
It was a very nondescript day in March when the things started to happen.
That morning R had asked his friend to come by around noon to take out his 2 dogs. G was happy to help. Swinging by on her lunch break, she let herself in the front door while calling for the pups. She stopped short upon hearing a heavy set of footsteps stomping around upstairs. ‘Is R home? Why is he stomping?’ she thought as she glanced thru a window at the empty driveway ‘…No… his car isn’t here—Oh God!’
With the dogs, now by her side, she grabbed their collars & pulled them out the door into the front yard. She noticed her hands were shaking as she pulled out her phone & dialed R.
On hearing the news of a potential intruder, he quickly drove home to confront the unwanted guest. G stood across the street with the dogs, watching the house. Feeling safer at a distance, she wondered if she’d catch a glimpse of anyone trying to sneak out.
R’s search of the property came up empty. He was baffled as he checked all the potential exits in the home. Except for the front door, every one of them remained locked. The windows, like many old homes in the area, had long ago been painted shut & looked untouched. Confused & a bit unnerved, R shrugged. “Who knows. It’s an old house.”
After what he now referred to as “the incident”, R started to notice that things were a bit off in his dream home. Not only did he start hearing the footsteps himself, but now the HVAC would randomly turn on when he was sure he’d turned it off. Lights flickered & framed pictures started falling off the walls. He also started having an issue keeping his bedroom door closed. He didn’t allow his dogs on the 2nd floor, but somehow the door always ended up opened.
Then there were the lightbulbs. Occasionally R would find an old lightbulb that looked as tho it was straight out of the 1950s laying in the middle of a room he’d been working on.
With everything going on, he’d taken to finding out about the history of the house & decided to look up what finding a lightbulb meant. He was pleased to read it was a sign of favor - apparently his ghost liked what he was doing with the place!
Around this time R had started dating S. She loved the old home & tho she was a bit spooked by the mysterious happenings, she also found it thrilling. So when the two side table lamps simultaneously tipped over & fell to the floor one quiet evening in mid autumn, she looked over at R, sighed & commented that she preferred his ghosts flicker the lights instead.
Every month or so a new “something” would occur, seemingly to keep the couple on their toes. Whispering conversations just out of earshot began in the winter. R would hear what sounded like a man & woman in deep discussion a few times a week. He often wondered who they were & if they ever wondered who he was.
Thru conversations with the neighbors, R had learned that one of the previous owners, an elderly man, had passed away from a heart attack in the upstairs bedroom. When that room became the focus of the most intense activity, R & S weren’t that surprised.
Late one evening, both R & S were startled awake by a sudden cold blast of air whipping thru the bedroom. A sheet R had put up dividing the room dramatically billowed & fluttered in the whirlwind. When everything finally calmed down, what seemed like a small, faint, glowing ball of energy, could be seen dancing along the wall.
Impulsively, R looked towards the windows, thinking they must be open & had let the breeze & light in. As his eyes adjusted to the dark shape of the very still blackout curtains, he remembered he hadn’t replaced the windows on the house yet. They were all still painted shut. The room was nearly black except for the energetic little orb.
Grabbing his phone, R pressed record. They were both thoroughly spooked, but also, this was a great opportunity to get some evidence of at least one of the oddities that haunted their historic abode.
As he watched the orb jump along the bedroom wall, he thought about all the other things that had happened in the home & let out a sigh. It seems that he wasn’t the only one who loved this old place. ‘I suppose we can all learn to get along.’ He decided, hopefully.