Haunted Antiques: A Haunted Estate: The Vortex: Haunted Antiques: A Haunted Estate, #1

By Michelle Reid

Vivid descriptions of real-life Paranormal activity that will make you a believer in life after death and the existence of other dimensions that interact with ours. A must read for anyone who seeks the truth!

Haunted Antiques: A Haunted Estate: The Vortex is a Supernatural, Paranormal, Chronicle, Based on true events.

After Margaret inherits her deceased aunt's estate of treasures, she moves from New Orleans to her dream home, in California, but soon discovers a Dark Entity, a dark nightmare, lurks, within.
Somewhere between this very old Victorian house and the massive amounts of antiques, antiquities, artifacts and relics, she owns, lies the answer to this Supernatural Vortex Energy that dwells within and has become the perfect prescription for frequent, and unstoppable, hauntings, terror, and bad events, that abound.
Can Margaret live happily ever after in her dream home with her cats Lucky, and Salem, and new Handyman boyfriend, or is the Paranormal Vortex too much for any of them to survive.
This fiction novel is a dramatization of a supernatural, suspense thriller, and love story that chronicles the paranormal horror and events surrounding one person's life and those who dare to join her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michelle Reid
• Release date: Oct 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201428563

Book preview

DEDICATION

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This book is dedicated to my grandma, Olive Callender, who died December 2015. In loving memory of my ‘gran’, who I sensed around me and could smell her presence, strongly, during the editing of this book, I know she is always around me and guiding me.

PREFACE

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This book was not only written for the lovers of the supernatural, horror, and thriller genres, but also for the lovers of, odd, unusual, unique, historical artifacts, and the studying, and preservation, of such items.

Items that might carry residual energy, a haunted antique, can cause a home to be a haunted estate with bizarre, and sometimes, tragic, events to occur.

Having been born with a natural, innate, eye for and admiration of ancient items, items from all cultures, I started collecting these treasures since my late teens. This book is for all the supernatural, horror lovers, and also the antique, antiquity, artifact, and relic, collectors of the world, those that are aware of and revel in, the powerful historical and spiritual aspects these items can bring into an environment, sometimes causing an out of this world experience.

This novel is based on true events that have occurred to me, over the years, in different homes and locations. This Series follows a journey in understanding the physical world, the afterlife, spirituality and religion.

CONTENTS

1

MEET MARGARET BROWN

Margaret Paige Brown, often called Maggie by her friends and family, was a quiet, mild mannered twenty-five-year-old, unmarried woman, born in the South. Margaret was from New Orleans but had always wanted to live in the South West part of the country, specifically, California. The thought of California with its many trees, warmth, general year-round enjoyable weather, and flourishing nature, was perfect for an outdoor loving individual, such as herself. She longed to be there.

Margaret was from a long line of French Creole family lineage and was said to be a descendant of the infamous Marie Laveau, The Mambo Queen herself, but this fact was never confirmed. Margaret was also from a long line of Psychics, Seers, Tarot Card Readers, Clairvoyants, and Clairsentients. She also possessed a natural old soul ability of sensing energy in very old items, such as antiques. Margaret loved antiques of all kinds; the older, the better was her watchword. She cherished visiting her Aunt Jane who shared her love of antiques and had acquired an extensive collection of such items, collected over the years.

With the unexpected death of her close Aunt Jane, Margaret inherited a good portion of her vast estate and her vast wealth. Money and her extensive antiques collection were gifted to Margaret in the Will, including the ancient brass urn Jane wanted her ashes in after she was cremated. Her urn of ashes was never to be buried or spread anywhere; she explicitly spelled it out in her Will. It was to be kept in the home, along with her treasured items, so she could be with them and enjoy them—forever.

That was what Margaret loved about her aunt: She was different, eccentric, free willed, and thought out of the box; she didn’t conform to anything but herself. With these newly inherited riches, Margaret headed West to California to fulfill her dreams and live in contentment with her ideal surroundings, her ideal environment.

Without too much thought on that warm Spring Day in May, Margaret packed up her newly acquired antique riches and other possessions in a rented cargo truck carriage attached to the back of her car and drove herself the 1600 miles from New Orleans to California. Margaret had no specific spot in California where she wanted to live and ended up in a quaint town just North West of Southern California, between Santa Barbara and Big Sur, where she found and bought the perfect, fixer up, of a very old Victorian home to call her own. The house has lots of trees around for her, a big garden, and a pool in the backyard. Margaret was in heaven.

Margaret gladly bought this beautiful, majestic, 1840s, three story, seven-bedroom, Victorian home. It was over 175 years old but with recently painted dark stained exterior, newer shutters, and well-maintained iron gates outlining the property’s perimeter. On her first visit to this home, with her real estate agent, Margaret could feel the old memories, old energy, and historical imprint of the home. As a voluntary disclosure by her real estate agent, Margaret was told she was only the third owner of this very old home, and that for a period until the 1970s, it stood vacant, but she didn’t know why.

The Agent continued the history lesson of the home mentioning that the original owner, from the mid-1800s, died peacefully in the house, her treasured home, shortly after her husband’s death in around the 1920s. Each room gave Margaret’s highly tuned senses a rise—a reading on her internal meter as she combed through each room with its thick energy and strong personality, envisioning which of the antiques from her Aunt’s collection she would want to add to each room. Margaret fell in love with this house almost instantly. She fell in love with its natural old-world charms and put in an offer for it, without too much thought or hesitation—the offer was accepted.

Margaret placed a cash offer, with no inspection or contingencies on the house, and was moving in within a week. The previous owners have already moved out and were living in Arizona, according to her real estate agent. Margaret hired local help to unload her many boxes, most of which were from her deceased aunt, into her newly purchased Victorian home. She was elated to be in California.

Margaret enjoyed estate sales and knew she would be adding to the already extensive collection she inherited from her eclectic, eccentric and beloved Aunt. Margaret envisioned themes for each room of her newly bought seven-bedroom Victorian house. She envisioned a Parlor or Game room, an Old-World inspired room, an Antique Dolls room, an Old Antique Books room, and of course a Victorian inspired room. From her years of antique browsing and estate sale casing, with the fund from her acquired inheritance, she knew she would have no problem filling all these rooms as she envisioned. She already had more than enough antique décor needed for all the rooms and knew many of her antiques would be spilling out into the common living areas, such as the living room, the den and even the kitchen.

Shortly after moving into her California home, Margaret brought home two companions—two rare Himalayan kittens; one all white, which she called Lucky and the other all black, which she called Salem. She called them the twins, because they came from the same litter and therefore, were the same age. They behaved almost identically too. Margaret also took a Freelance job— blogging in a column for the town’s local newspaper—just for something to do on her free time. She didn’t even want to be paid as she had told them, explaining that she just loves to write. Money was not an issue, given her newly inherited wealth.

Margaret spent the first month in her Victorian home unpacking the seemingly unending inherited antiques and decorating her home with these items. It was obvious Margaret’s aunt collected antiques from every country and all cultures; as an avid traveler, her aunt spent much of her time abroad. There were more than fifty old antique paintings. Many were portraits of people Margaret didn’t know if they were family, someone her aunt knew, or just strangers, but they gave off an eerie ambiance all the same. Still, Margaret hung these many paintings throughout her mini mansion with pride—pride in her aunt’s collection. There were over thirty antique statues—statues of all kinds and in a wide variety of sizes—some very big and elaborate, some medium height floor statues and even table sized statues.

Her Aunt collected animal statues, religious statues, historical figures statues, but it appeared her favorite was the ancient Mystical Goth statues, as she had many more of this kind than any of the other statues. Margaret struggled on where would be appropriate to display them, especially the enormous ones like the Gargoyle statues, the scary flying lion statues, the Victorian women’s heads statues and the list of the oddities her aunt collected went on. There were ancient African Masks and African Fetish statues to display, a gorgeous pre-world war one Hutch with old intricate, detailed, wood carving throughout. There were also Victorian and Edwardian chairs, loveseats, rockers, dining room tables, and couches, among others, all from different periods and times in history.

It was a lot of work but Margaret loved every minute of it and reveled in the knowledge that she now owned all this wonderful, fascinating and historical antiques, antiquities, artifacts and relics, and of course, the lovely and intriguing old inscribed brass urn Aunt Jane had her ashes in. She placed the urn perfectly on top of the mantle above the fireplace in the living room, so that Margaret had her as the focal point in that room along with a lovely portrait painting of her aunt that she had an artist in France paint of her several years earlier, when she was vacationing there. Margaret proudly hung the painting of her aunt up on the living room wall, close to her urn of ashes on the mantle.

When Margaret wasn’t unpacking or playing with her playful kittens, she was outside in her enormous backyard sitting on the patio with a cool drink, swimming in the pool, or lounging in the Jacuzzi tub that was all part of this wonderful Victorian find.

2

LOVE OF ANTIQUES

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The days flew by and Margaret submitted her first blog installment for the column in the local paper, which was well received. She wrote about what she knew best, antiques, as she slowly started to get acquainted with her town, the local shops, and the people around. Margaret started noticing, from the newspaper, many estate sales being held close to her home and throughout southern and central California. She was starting to get the itch to check a few out.

Finally, one Saturday in late July, Margaret decides to spend the day going from estate sale to estate sale and see if there was anything that would catch her eye. There was a very old Victorian wood chest ornately decorated with Gemstones that she must have. So, she did. She brought it home to add to her several other old wood chests, but she loved it all the same.

Margaret still had many more boxes to unpack but as her large home filled, she knew she needed to pace herself. She was having trouble sleeping at night from being over tired and even though exhausted, her body was giving her a funny feeling—an unusual feeling—which she didn’t understand seeing she was young, healthy and always fit. Margaret was having very vivid nightly dreams, and if it wasn’t her nightmares waking her, then it was the kittens, who would often wake her during the middle of the night with non-stop meowing and scratching at something.

Margaret didn’t know what to make of the usual disturbances in the night but chalked it up to living in a very old home. Old energy from the house and possibly the previous owners, coupled with the kittens playing with and finding any number of attractions there warrant their bizarre nightly behavior, was Margaret’s internally registered explanation of the situation. Being an old soul, she was not scared of living alone—except for her two four-legged companions—in this large old home. Being around antiques was second nature to her, so she was baffled by the terrible nights she was having since moving in there. As time passed, Margaret was experiencing an increasing number of unusual occurrences at night that were now starting to leak over into the day.

On a Sunday morning in August, Margaret awaked in a startle. She heard someone, a female voice, whisper her name. Margaret sat straight upright in bed to see where the voice could be coming from. She looked to the floor and there beside her bed was one of the antique dolls and in the corner were her cats looking inquisitively at her.

Margaret was puzzled. ‘How would this doll get in my room, sitting on the floor beside me so perfectly, surely the cats couldn’t do this,’ she studied. As she tried to wrap her mind around what could be going on, her cats started hissing at something in the room but what? Margaret had no idea. Margaret jumped out of the bed. ‘This is insane,’ she thought, as she picked up the doll from the ground and hustled the cats out of her room.

Margaret went to shower, then went downstairs for coffee and to feed the cats. She was still trying to rack her brain around what could have happened earlier. ‘Did I sleepwalk in my exhaustion and place the doll there on the floor? But that doesn’t explain what the cats were hissing at in my room,’ she thought. As Margaret opened the refrigerator to get milk for her coffee and some eggs to scrabble for breakfast, she noticed a black substance on the lids of the containers in the refrigerator but couldn’t find the source of the black liquid. Again, baffled by this strange event, Margaret cleaned all the black liquid in the refrigerator and let the unsettling sight leave her mind, for the moment, as she needed to finish her next blog installment for the local paper by Monday.

That week, Margaret blogged about all the great estate sales she went to in the area and wonderful antique shops too. After finishing her article, thoughts of the bizarre incidents came flooding back into Margaret’s mind, but she made herself drop the puzzling thoughts, because there was no way of making sense of what she experienced. She simply didn’t try to. She chalked all the strange events up to a freak of nature, maybe her recently deceased aunt returning and playing tricks on her from the other side—and she did have a great sense of humor when alive.

Margaret was settling into her new life; her days and nights were progressing quietly, uneventfully, and routinely. When suddenly one morning, she was awoken by the slamming of a door, possibly a cupboard; she didn’t know. Margaret ran downstairs. She was frozen in her tracks by what she saw as she approached the kitchen. All the hinges on her cupboards, on the right upper side, were all completely off, dissembled, leaving all the ten plus cupboards slanted, tilted sideways to the right in an unsettling synchronicity.

Apprehensively, Margaret enters the kitchen to take a better look and unexpectedly walks through an extremely thick, dense and cold spot in the room. She quickly looked over to her cats, who were sitting together, as usual, and looking back at her. Margaret was hoping that somehow their reaction would give her a clue on what went on here, but they looked back at her in an unknowing manner. The cats had a puzzled look themselves; a look of, ‘we did not see or hear anything unusual, but that something or someone was obviously here,’ Margaret studied.

Margaret was starting to be on edge, unhinged. Even though she knew old homes and old items like antiques could carry unusual energy sometimes; even though a peculiar event can occur in association to them, what she was experiencing was to a scale she had never witnessed before. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she would never have believed it herself.

That evening, Margaret decided to take a much needed hot and relaxing bath. As she started to soak into her bubble bath, feeling calm and her mind free of stress, the lights in that bathroom started flickering uncontrollably. The flickering started slowly but continued uninterrupted, and with increasing intensity, until she decided it was best to turn off the lights and lounge in her bath by candlelight, which she did. While in the tub, her mind went to how a similar light activity happened just days earlier, with the chandelier in the dining room and the bathroom on the main floor. ‘Must be a faulty electrical circuit in