Cooper Street Experience

A ghostly tale of a childhood adventure.

Cooper Street Experience

By Joseph Parish

In my next anecdote I would like to recount to you the episode of the Cooper Street house voices. The Cooper Street house was an old-style colonial home located in my hometown of southern New Jersey. This home was awkwardly located atop a steep hill which had been held in our family for over six generations. They frequently say that when a possession is held close enough to one’s heart that it often acquires its own personality, however far too many times, we frequently dismiss these thoughts as mere fleeting moments of an over active imagination. The experience for which I am about to relate may very well suggest otherwise.

At the ripe old age of 17, I first moved into our old family home on Cooper Street. The house was built in the 1700's and consisted of a three-story colonial style house with the main rooms on the first floor and the associated bedrooms affixed to the second. The third floor was merely an attic and not often used for other than storage. My elderly grandfather was gradually dying of cancer, but he stubbornly refused to leave the confines of his home for 70 some years in favor of an impersonal stay at the local hospital. My family understood his wishes perfectly and arranged in a system of home health care visits on a daily basis. To assist as we could, arrangements were made for the immediate members of my family to move into the home to aid in the care of my terminally ill grandfather the best we could. As such, we packed up our belongings and moved into the family's old house.

During my initial evening at the home I was assigned to a bedroom on the second floor just above the parlor. Due to my grandfather’s grave condition that parlor had been temporarily converted to serve as his bedroom. This afforded him some measure of mobility around the house. My first night spent in the home, I fell asleep in my room later in the evening after reading several chapters of a recent novel. My parents, whose room was directly down the hall from mine had previously retired for the evening and my grandfather was sound asleep in the downstairs parlor. As I proceeded to switch off the light next to my bed and started to pull the blankets slowly over me, I heard faintly a woman's voice repeating, "Goodnight."

I straight away leaped back up from my reclined position and switched on the room light once again. I hurriedly began glancing around the room looking closely at all the corners as well as towards the door to locate the source of the voice which I had only moments ago heard. I reasoned that it was odd for my father to be up at this late of hours, but upon investigating I could discover no one in my room. I felt with a firm sense of conviction that I had definitely heard a female voice, but under the aspects of a bedroom door which was still fully shut and no one to be found, I was forced to contend that it must have been the winter wind howling amongst the trees outside my window.

Still with a bit of curiosity and given the voice which I had heard seemed so real, I arose from my bed and ventured forth towards my parent's room. I slowly pushed open the door and proceeded to glance in towards their bed, both were comfortably asleep. Still not fully satisfied with finding no resolution for my voices, I next directed my investigations downstairs. I slowly descended the narrow steps leading to the bottom floor and the location of my grandfather's bedroom to see if he was up. Logic dictated that perhaps it was his voice which had echoed into my room since he was resting directly below where I was sleeping.

As I approached his room, I carefully opened his door to peek within and found him fast asleep as well. As I was carefully closing the door again the squeaky old door hinges made enough noise to awake him from his sleep. Since he was now awake, I greeted him joyfully and informed him of the voice which I thought I had heard.

His only explanation for the events of the evening was that many members of our family had died in this home over the many years and that it was most likely one of their voices which I had heard. Over the following month additional voices were added to the chorus of night sounds within the home and he proved to be an able guide in addressing some of the unusual experiences which started to occur to me during my residence at the house. Many people have proposed that physical items often embrace the personalities of their owners. Conceivably, this may be so and then again, who knows with any degree of certainty. Perhaps it was my grandfather's voice which was wishing me Goodnight as he passed away in that very house six weeks later.

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