OLD GRIMES HOUSE
Location: The Old Grimes House is located at
Description: The dilapidated Gothic-Victorian two-story sits on a forgotten and unused back road on the outskirts of town. The condemned structure has rounded windows, ornate wood doors and bay windows and sits on an overgrown yard which has obscured the driveway. The interior is infested with stray and wild animals.
Ghostly Manifestations: The Grimes House is just barely within the city
limits of
“Christmas Eve, 1917,” Government Agent Fox Mulder has a deep personal interest in the house and in
ghosts and UFO’s in general. “Maurice and Lyda Grimes,
living alone in the house, made a murder suicide pact to never leave each other
in death. Their bodies supposedly lay on the floor where they took their last
dying breaths for almost a year until a meter reader looked in through a window
and noticed the bodies on the floor. She was shot in the stomach at close range;
he was dead by the same rifle after shooting himself in the head. Since then,
three more couples have died in the house and always on Christmas Eve.” Fox
told his good friend, ghost hunter William Collins, in 2003.
The first was Robert and Laura Grant in 1926.
Convinced that he was cheating on her, she poisoned him and then drank the rest
of it herself. In 1943, five years after living in the house, Edward and Lily
Richards found a rifle in the house and went crazy blowing out the walls and
doors and then themselves. They were found by their children just a month after
the incident. (Mulder says the rifle belonged to the
Grimes.) Finally, on Christmas Eve 1956, Martin and Jane Moore were found dead
after spending their life savings into restoring the house. Jane had died of
heart failure (although strangulation was once considered) and Martin hung
himself in the library by jumping off the balcony.
“In 1962, David and Gillian Carter hurriedly
moved out after realizing the place was haunted.” Mulder
repeats David Carter’s story first hand. “He said that both he and his wife
were terrified by voices, footsteps, apparitions and the frightening visage of
a man hanging from the ceiling in the foyeur.”
Carter had also mentioned to Mulder about the building inspector who condemned the
house, a witness that he is still trying to locate. “While, investigating the
house, something scared the man so badly that he quit his job and became a high
school teacher in
Today, drivers hear and report other things
from the obscured house. They report seeing the place ablaze with lights and
the sounds and scenes of a party going on. Women laughing, men calling and
music playing, but then they turn the corner and look back and the place is all
dark again.
“I’ve been inside once,” Mulder
admits. “With my partner to try and give any credence to the ghosts…………”
“Did you see anything?”
“Id rather not say……….”
History: Records and deeds for the old Grimes house are missing, but it is at least two hundred years old. The house has been sitting empty since 1962 and it was supposed to be demolished in 1998.
Identity of Ghosts: “The house is haunted by Maurice
and Lyda Grimes and quite possibly by the Grants,
Richards and the
Comments: X-Files, Episode “The Ghosts Who Stole Christmas” Loosely compared with the episode.