A Very Bad House: Stories of Dreams, Spirits, and a Family Gift

True Scary Story

A deeply personal true story from Lucia and Aradia about a family lineage believed to inherit paranormal abilities across generations. From

Key takeaways

• Paranormal experiences appear to be inherited within a family line, particularly among women.
• The belief in house spirits is rooted in Southern Italian folklore, where homes are thought to have their own energy and souls.

Main topics

• Family inheritance of psychic abilities
• Southern Italian folklore about house spirits

Notable quotes

"At some point, it wasn't me anymore. It was a girl with long, long hair, with this long dress, like from maybe the 18th century."

Conclusion

Lucia and Aradia's story raises profound questions about inherited psychic

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I'm Harvey Guillen and this is Killer Stories. Every Monday I'm cutting the lights at Time Story. Except these stories are all real. We're talking brazen heists, devastating cons, serial murders, and cases that defy tidy categories. So join me for new episodes of Killer Stories with Harvey Guillen every Monday. Speaker 4 (0:33) As I was walking... At some point, it wasn't me anymore. It was a girl with long, long hair, with this long dress, like from maybe the 18th century. Speaker 2 (0:50) The strange events began with footsteps in the night. They didn't end there. It would continue for generations, crossing countries, homes, and even dreams. My name is Edwin, and here is Lucia's and Aradia's true scary story. Speaker 4 (1:15) My name is Lucia and I am originally from Italy but I've lived in the United States for the last 25 plus years. My stories, it's actually family stories too because I come from a family of women who've had the gift, basically. Starting from on my mother's side, my grandmother and her sister. Speaker 4 (1:48) My grandmother could see spirits, so she would tell us stories, just to give you a little bit of background. My grandmother's sister had a very peculiar ability. She was able to feel the energy of houses. I'm from the south of Italy, and in the south we have this tradition, this belief that each house has its own spirit. My grandma's sister was able to actually feel the essence of the spirits and see them too. She would always be the consultant if somebody had to buy a house to see if it was a good house or not. And in fact, when my mother was pregnant with me, so this was back in the early 70s, My parents were about to buy the house where I eventually grew up and of course they called her and she did a tour of the house and she gave her blessing. She said this house has very good energy and there's a girl. She's about 16 or 17 years old. That's the spirit and she's blonde with long wavy hair and she's a very good spirit. So my parents ended up buying the house. It was a very good and happy childhood. I have two older brothers, so it was always a happy family. My mom's sister, on the other hand, she was about to buy a house also, and my great aunt told her not to. It was a really bad spirit. It was a very bad house. My aunt ended up buying the house anyway, but her life was always like if there was something that could go wrong, it would for her every single time. Sometimes it was comical. The two families, I remember when I was really little, we had to cross a border from Italy to Switzerland. At the time, there was no EU, so there were still borders. We would cross the border just fine with the car and they would stop them and they would just basically search strip them, open all the suitcases, even the smallest thing. And then, of course, there were bigger things that happened in her life. She lost her son. It was a very, very troubled and sad life that she had. Speaker 4 (4:22) My grandmother and her sister had the gift. My mom didn't want to explore that much. But when I was a child, I could hear footsteps in my house almost every night for years. I was basically born in that house, so I knew all the noises, and I knew it wasn't any of us. Speaker 4 (4:45) We kept all of our doors open when we went to sleep. So I could hear if my brother would get up in the middle of the night, I could recognize his footsteps from the footsteps of my other brother or my parent. And these were very strange footsteps. Speaker 4 (5:09) One night, the footsteps started straight in my room. So it was that of the night. I was still awake. Everything was quiet. And then all of a sudden, footsteps started from where the door to my room was. And they started to walk towards my bed very slowly. I was absolutely terrified and I couldn't open my eyes, obviously, to see what was there. They stopped right by my bed, by the side of where my head was. And after that, all I heard was a sigh in my ear. And after that, nothing. All the hair on my body stood up and I couldn't sleep for hours, but I couldn't hear anything after that. Speaker 4 (6:05) Every morning I would wake up and I would ask everybody just in case, hey, did you get up? Did you do this or did you do that? And nobody could say anything. They would say, I don't know what you're talking about. And my mom's only solution was like, just say a prayer, Lucia, just say a prayer. Don't worry about it. I was never able to see anything. I would always hear it. One other episode that was really unusual, let's put it this way, is this was probably late 80s. So I was probably around 19 or 20 years old. I was in my house and my good friend was there too. And she was on the phone. So she was in a room, sitting on a bed, talking to somebody on the phone. I happened to walk in front of her because I needed to get something from the room. So I walked in front of her and I see as she was talking, she suddenly stopped talking, was looking at me and her jaw dropped and her eyes got really big. I started to look at my clothes. I didn't know if there was something wrong with me or what I was wearing or my hair or something. And I was like, what's going on? And she was like, nothing, nothing. Later that night, she told me that as I was walking. Speaker 4 (7:35) At some point, it wasn't me anymore. It was a girl with long, long hair with this long dress like from maybe the 18th century. And then it was me again after maybe three or four seconds. And she didn't know that. Years and years before, my great aunt had said that the spirit of the house was a blonde girl with longer hair and she was about a teenager, 16 or 17 years old. A few years, I ended up moving to the United States. This was before when I was married and before I had my daughter. Speaker 4 (8:21) We lived in a condo and we had basically our next door neighbor and her condo was basically we shared a wall. We had stairs that shared a wall with the next door neighbor and there were stairs on the other side of the wall also. Speaker 4 (8:41) The next-door neighbor was an older lady. We thought she was an alcoholic, unfortunately. She was a little odd lady. But one night, the police came over because nobody had heard from her for a few days, so her friends were worried. And it turned out that she had passed away in her house. We didn't know that she was there dead for two days before she was found. Speaker 4 (9:12) After that, of course, you know, her daughter came and she was remodeling the house and she was going to rent it out. So we had talked to her and she had told us that the house was going to be vacant for a few weeks. And we knew that during the day there were going to be workers, but at night it was going to be empty. And then things started to happen at that point. Speaker 4 (9:43) We heard knocking on our walls and it was coming from the neighbor's apartment. My ex-husband at that point, he was also very spiritual and he also had the gift. He was knocking back and the more he was knocking back, the louder the knockings were from the other side. Speaker 4 (10:10) until at some point he used to say, okay, Daniela, stop it. Daniela was the name of our neighbor. Daniela, stop it. And then it would stop. But then after maybe 20 minutes or so, it'd start again. Sometimes when I would be all by myself, in my house, I would be sitting at a desk, you know, on my computer. And I used to have a cat at the time. And so it was just me and the cat in the house. And the cat was always sitting