SARAH’S HAUNTED ROCKING CHAIR

 

I once got a chair from an antique shop. I put it in the corner of my bedroom and had planned for it to be my nursing chair for my second child. Every night I would wake up and see a woman in a dress, like an early schoolhouse teacher dress, sitting in it. I asked her to leave again and again, but I kept seeing her in it at night. She wouldn’t leave, so eventually I put the chair on the curb with a note that it came with a ghost and to take with caution…and someone took it! Never saw the woman again after that. I don’t even think I asked the ghost woman what her deal was, I was too annoyed, haha.

 

– Submitted by Sarah Petruno

 

Sarah’s story makes me wonder if the chair was haunted residually or intelligently. It doesn’t seem the ghost woman that Sarah saw said anything or interacted with her, which makes me think that it was more of an energetic imprint on the chair. Perhaps this was a chair that the woman had sat in night after night while she was alive, which left her spiritual imprint upon it. Curious to know who picked up the chair o! the curb and if they’re having any experiences or if it was Sarah’s intuition that allowed her to see this spiritual imprint. Would you pick up a piece of furniture from the side of the road that potentially came with a ghost included?

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THE ANTIQUE OWNER’S BED SET

 

While I was perusing my neighborhood antique store the other day, one of the booth owners happened to be there stocking her section with some new items. Considering antique stores are known to house all sorts of objects with various histories and hauntings, I asked her if she happened to have any experiences of the paranormal kind. She told me she did, but requested to remain anonymous. This is her story:

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I have been doing this for about thirty years. Picking great antique finds. That’s how I furnish my house, and I also sell them in my booth. And so the one haunted object that I did find, unfortunately, was a bedroom set, the whole set, and it carried a whole lot of energy. The first night that I slept in it, I had my first instance of sleep paralysis ever. And my husband had a string of protection beads that he made me, and I hung them on the bedpost that night. The next morning the string had broken. That was my first and last night in that bed. It was out at the curb the next day, and the neighbors were looking at me, and I’m like “this is really not a curb pick that you want to pick up.” I do believe that energy, that lots of things carry energy, and so a lot of the times you can feel it. Especially when you go into an estate sale, you might feel the leftover energy that’s still kind of zooming around. I did go into an estate sale that was a former chapel for various religions, and I did not end up buying a lot of stuff from that. They did have several Buddhist items, which I did buy a couple. I felt they had really good energy. But there were a lot of dolls, and I find that fabric retains more energy than almost anything else. So I’m very careful about fabric. There are several things I always buy new, like a new mattress ’cause I’m not sleeping on someone else’s. And I think we also give so much of our energy away when we’re sleeping and resting, for something like a mattress to absorb.

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The antique dealer brings up an interesting point regarding fabrics retaining more energy than other materials. Does the density of an object contribute to the amount of energy it is capable of absorbing? I would be curious to study that theory more deeply; however, it seems that regardless of the material an item is made with, there is always a chance for it to become haunted.

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BUSBY’S STOOP CHAIR

 

Thomas Busby was to be executed, but not before creating a curse. In 1702 in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom, Busby was to be executed by hanging for the murder of his father-in-law, Daniel Auty. Auty and Busby ran a coin-counterfeiting business together, and it’s said that their argument stemmed over Busby’s treatment of his wife, Auty’s daughter. Whatever the reason, Busby was arrested, charged, and executed. At the crossroads where his body hung (and by some accounts was left to hang long after his death) sat an inn. One version of the story states that it was at this very inn that Busby was at when he got arrested. Another version states that on his way to be executed, he asked for one final drink, which was had at the inn. Regardless of which story is true, his ghost supposedly haunts the inn to this day. Busby was no stranger to this particular inn, as he had his own chair that he always sat in while having drinks. The legend says that whether it was when he got arrested or while having his final drink, he cursed the chair, saying, “May sudden death come to anyone who dare sit in my chair.” And if the stories are true, the curse worked.

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In the late 1800s a chimney sweep was brave enough, or fool enough, to sit in the chair. The next morning, he was found hanging dead outside the inn. During World War 2, Canadian soldiers dared each other to sit in the chair. They never returned after being sent o" on a mission. Even more deaths surrounded the chair and those who sat in it, including people who fell over dead days later or even got in fatal car accidents leaving the inn. The chair had called the Busby Stoop Inn its home, but in the late 1970s was moved to the Thirsk Museum, where it now resides…hanging from the ceiling to prevent anyone from sitting on it.

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According to some researchers, there is no way the story of the haunted chair is real due to the fact that it appears the chair would have been made in the decades following the execution of Busby. If the curse of Busby isn't real, then what could be causing the apparent deaths associated with the chair? Is it superstition getting the better of people or something else?

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