LOCATION & DESCRIPTION:
Built in the town of Murray, a suburb just
South of Salt Lake City, in the late 1890s by a devout Mormon,
Tobias Gibbs, the house was described as a small, but cozy fixer
upper.
Because it was built on solid rock, there
was no room to have a basement, which made the layout a bit
unusual, and unfortunately may have caused the accidental death of
the original owner, which is later explained in this story. While
the house only had one floor, there was a little 15 x 9 ft. room up
in the attic, right under the rafters of the house, that was built
when more room was needed by the original owner's family. As there
was no room for a staircase, one needed to climb up a steep ladder
through a 5 ft x 3 ft. hole in the bathroom ceiling to reach this
attic room. Next to this hot, little attic room, was the furnace
and storage room, which had a rather odd entrance, located 39
inches up the wall in the attic room. One has to step on a chair,
and /or hang onto a rope, which hangs down from the rafters, to
reach the crawl-through hole, 30 inches square, to reach the
entrance to this furnace /storage room.
MANIFESTATIONS:
When the C family moved into this old
house, they discovered that they had a resident ghost hanging out
in this little attic room, who also felt free to wander around the
rest of the house, giving signs to the whole family that pointed to
its presence, which made everyone a bit jumpy. The neighborhood
history told the tale of how a man was found hanging from the attic
rafter rope, through the hole in the ceiling of the bathroom,
looking like a suicide.
1) The C's children and others who had
slept in the attic room, saw and heard odd things.
2) Mrs. C heard noises in the attic.
Occasionally, Mrs. C felt something unseen touch her, when she was
by herself.
3) One night, while sleeping in the
bedroom, located right under the attic, Mrs. C was awakened by a
touch on her leg, and was startled to see two eyes starring at her
in the dark.
4) Mrs. C, a compassionate person, wanted
to try to help this entity. She asked the ghost to tell her a name
she could call him. In response, she heard sounds coming from the
furnace. One was an oboe sound, and then a tuba sound. She put the
two together and came up with Toby. Since a James Gibbs had sold
the house to the C's, and had told them that his father had built
the house, she put 2 and 2 together, and came up with the idea that
Tobias Gibbs was the name of the ghost.
5) A seance was held in the attic on July
10, 1967, led by a professional haunted house investigator, Douglas
MacGregor, Mrs. Christianson, university students, and a talk show
host, Tom Carlin. While MacGregor's equipment didn't register any
temperature changes, or unusual electrical charges, something did
happen that made a believer out of skeptic Tom Carlin. Douglas had
given everyone in the attic a sealed, foiled package of 4x5 press
camera Polaroid film, which Tom decided to sit on top of, to make
sure no one tried any funny business with his film. During this
seance, in the blazing-hot attic room, Carlin felt cold chills
around his neck and ears, which traveled down his back. After the
seance, which had no true manifestations, MacGregor checked all the
film packages. All the film was blank, except Tom Carlin's, which
gave the ominous warning, "DANGER!" Carlin thought it was a poison
pen letter, totally making him a believer, vowing never to go up in
this attic again! He felt that the ghost could stay up in the
attic, and he would stay out, willing to wait to meet this entity
someday for an interview, when both were existing in the afterlife,
as to why Carlin received this message.
6) On May 7, 1968, Mrs. C started to
practice exorcism rites, as all this ghost business conflicted with
her religious beliefs. She had a vision when she shut her eyes. She
saw a 20 year old man, with 2 white figures on either side of him,
and he left with them. Temporarily, Toby wasn't around at all,
until Oct. 1968.
7) On October 1968, Mrs. C awoke to see the
same young man sitting beside her on the bed. She asked him why he
was back. He spoke to her, saying, "My Work Here is not finished."
She soon found out what he meant.
8) December 1, 1968 - Mrs. C used a folding
chair up in the attic room to stand on, in order to get to the
crawl space to the storage room, to check on her Christmas
ornaments. When she stepped back down onto the chair, it started to
fold up. A clear voice told her to "Go with the chair!". She wisely
followed the advice, instead of jumping off, which was her first
reaction. After recovering from her fall, she realized, that if she
had jumped, she would've fallen through the entrance hole to the
attic, and would've been found dead on the bathroom floor. She
heard the same voice that had told her to go with the chair,
saying, "That's how I died." Suddenly, Mrs. C suddenly realized
that Toby's death was not a suicide at all, but an accident. Tobias
had tied a rope to the rafters, with a noose on the end, to be used
as a step to get to the furnace/storage room. When he came back
down out of this storage room, the object he stepped down on fell
over, causing him to fall, just like her folding chair.
Consequently, his head landed into the noose he had earlier used to
get up in the furnace room. When his body fell through the attic
entrance hole, he hung himself accidentally.
The reason for the haunting became obvious.
Everyone had thought he had committed suicide, and he hadn't. Plus,
he had inadvertently had built a dangerous addition onto his house,
and didn't want anyone else to die like he unfortunately did. He
felt he needed to warn others, and save Mrs. C from the same fate.
Carlin's received message, "DANGER", was one of only warning, not
hostile intent.
Still Haunted?
Unknown.
Now that all has been revealed, hopefully
Toby has found peace at last. You can bet the C's found a way to
make the attic problem safer, so hopefully no more fatal accidents
would ever happen.
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