Haunted Cabin in the Smokies?

A nice cabin in the Smokies, a perfect place to get away from it all and work on a horror novel, right? Well, how about a real ghost story for you? That's even better.

The First Night

Strange things happened the very first night. Early in the night a small animal (a squirrel or a bird) was scratching on the metal covered roof. It sounded very light and darty, just like a squirrel. The sounds of it's claws were easily heard.

No big deal, but then later towards 1 or 2 in the morning, these sounds vanished to be replaced by footsteps of what sounded like a barefooted little child running - playing - back and forth on the roof. This went on and off for hours. Was it an animal? This sounded like no animal. Besides, the sound and the vibration of the steps were heavy, something sounding like it was around 30 pounds. That would be a mighty big squirrel or a huge raccoon on top of a 4 story cabin! The roof is covered with aluminum sheeting, yet there were no sounds of claws on the aluminum, just the sound of a barefooted child running on wood, then slowing down suddenly - as if to hide in some sort of game. These were footsteps and you could hear the heel land and the toes push off. I grew up in a two story house for a few years and these sounds were familiar to me. These footsteps ran across the roof, from one end to the other. Then pausing for a few seconds, they would run back across to the other side again. This went on for what seemed like hours. We couldn't believe what we were hearing. Our cousin sleeping on the couch on the second floor living room also heard this and couldn't sleep either. At the time, I totally forgot that I had a digital audio recorder built into my camera, and am still kicking myself to this day for not recording any audio of the footsteps.

My brother on the first floor wasn't immune to hearing phantom sounds either. He kept hearing someone walking up and down the stairs all night- so much so that he couldn't sleep and was compelled to go to the stairs to see who was making the noise. No one was there, of course.

I finally decided to ignore the noises and try to get some sleep as we had a big day ahead of us. I succeeded, only to suddenly awake as I felt someone was pushing the edge of my pillow towards my face! Instantly, I turned my head around and saw that Snoppies was sleeping and facing the other direction - she didn't move my pillow. I tried not to freak out as I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, hoping whatever touched my pillow wouldn't do it again.

Then towards 4 a.m., once the noises began to die down and everyone was actually sleeping - a loud crash was heard throughout the house! It came from the 1st floor which bolted me awake from my 3rd floor bed and had me flying down the multiple stairs to get to the source of the sound. I thought someone was breaking into the cabin, it was that loud.

Everyone converged to the 1st floor living room and we all were astonished to see the hefty glass door of the fireplace laying flat on the floor. It was unbroken, but the sound of it crashing sounded as if it should be in a million pieces. What's strange about a glass fireplace door falling? It was flat on the floor about 2 feet from the fireplace! It looked as if it fell forward - much forward of where it should have landed, and it was perfectly parallel with the fireplace as well as equidistant to a couch in front of it. It looked as if it was placed there, but very loudly!

We examined the glass door panel and where it connects to the fireplace. It made no sense to us that the door should land where it did if it simply fell off it's hinges and somehow slid into it's final position. The way the hinges and gravity works, both of the glass door's hinges would have had to fail at the same exact time to even allow it to land parallel with the front of the fireplace, much less 2 feet away.

The Second Night

The following morning I called the cabin rental office, which was miles away, to report the broken fireplace door. I made a joking comment about the place being haunted and asked if anyone else who stayed at the cabin ever reported anything similar. The lady was polite, but she ignored my question and continued with, "We're sorry for the inconvenience, the repairman should be there sometime today or tomorrow to fix that."

I replied, "Thanks." Then I persisted with, "So no one ever complained about ghosts or anything strange happening here before?" I added a slight laugh to see if that would help. She paused a few beats, then said, "No. Is there anything else I could help you with today?"

That night was our last night at the cabin, so we had a party. There were cards and karaoke going on. We were loud, but we were up on a mountain and no one could hear us anyway. Or so we thought.

After several hours of our extreme racket, someone - or something disapproved.

I was up on the 3rd floor packing when all of a sudden a sound louder than the karaoke party shook the entire cabin. Three extremely loud bangs pounded on the walls, as if a SWAT team was trying to break down a barricaded door. It shook every wall. In fact, it sounded as if the pounding was coming from every wall. Everyone stopped what they were doing. The karaoke was muted and there was silence.

Once again, I flew down the stairs to see if there were police at the front door coming to shut our party down (my first instinct), only to run into my brother running up the stairs. He thought the sound came from above him where the party was at on the 2nd floor. I told him lets go look outside to see if we can catch who just pounded on the cabin.

We looked out the 1st floor windows. If someone did come up to the cabin on that lonely, dark mountain road and bang on it 3 times with what sounded and felt like a battering ram, the sensors on security lights would've kicked all of them on. The forest would've been lit up for 20 yards in all directions. It was pitch black. I stepped outside and couldn't even take a step before the lights then snapped on. The sensors worked. I went back inside.

Needless to say, the party died down a short time later. The next day we left our cabin on the mountain. Haunted? Who knows, but definitely a place to visit again.