Abernathy Haunted House Has Long History of Paranormal Activity
An Abernathy, Texas house holds stories of faces appearing out of nowhere, eyes on the ceiling and guests waking up with black eyes and bloody noses.
One of my workmates, Jody Smyers, first told me about the house in Abernathy and led me to Keila Bost and her mother, June Odom, through an article his mother, Jacquelyn Smyers, wrote about the house in 1979. The article talked briefly about the ghost in the house. Jacquelyn owned the Abernathy Weekly Review newspaper at that time.
The house, built in 1909, has a long history and legacy of paranormal activity. So much so that families who have lived there in the past and presently treat the occurrences as normal.
I talked with Keila Bost and her mother June Odom, who moved into the house in the mid 1970s.
Keila said a ghost inhabited her room on the second story of the house and would mess with her while she slept. She told 98 KOOL's Jacqui Neal that she would go to bed with rings on her fingers, and would wake up in the morning to find them stacked up beside her on the bed or in various places around her room.
Keila and her mom both talked about a creepy cellar that neither one of them liked, as well as times when the kitchen floor felt like it was vibrating.
June Odom said pictures would fall of the walls and coffee pots would overflow. On one particular night, Odom said she heard voices upstairs. Thinking that Keila was on a late-night phone call, she yelled upstairs, admonishing Keila to get off the phone. A sleepy Keila then stumbled out of her bedroom, clearly just waking up.
Keila also shared a story about her first ex-husband who spent a night downstairs in the house and vowed to never step foot in the house again.
Another male guest woke up with a black eye and bloody nose. He went back in the house afterward and would only go upstairs with someone with him, slowly, one step at a time. Eventually, he fled the house altogether.
Other people have also had negative and scary experiences in the house.
Keila, her mom and current owner, Debbie Stoffel, all said that they don't feel afraid of the presence in the house.
Stoffel said that she was standing in the kitchen one afternoon and the floor began to vibrate, "feeling like an underground railroad" - something Keila had also experienced in the kitchen years earlier.
Her oldest son said that just a week ago he was coming downstairs for dinner when a mysterious face appeared at the bottom of the stairs, then vanished. Her youngest son, who is 10 years old, said he woke up one night and saw a pair of eyes on his ceiling.
Stoffel also said there's one room in the house that no one sleeps in except her cats. Which, upon talking to Keila, sounds like her old room.
I asked Stoffel, who moved here from Arlington, Texas two years ago, why she and her husband decided on Abernathy and this house.
She said that she used to draw her "dream house" when she was a little girl, and when they drove up to the house in Abernathy it "was the house I used to draw, right down to the curved porch, the nooks and crannies. I just felt like it was calling to me."
- BONUS!
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