Early 1983 Hampton, Virginia was filled with nice houses and good families. But that came hand in hand with haunting pasts.
English teacher Shawn Regan was 8 years old when he was babysat by 16 year-old Lita and her mother Louise. Their three-story home served as a place for fun and games, but the attic was a different story. Split into Lita and her brother’s bedrooms, Regan said strange things often happened.
One day while Regan and his sister were downstairs watching cartoons, they heard Lita’s screams from the attic. “Get out of here!” echoed down the enclosed stairs leading to her bedroom. “I told y’all to stop bouncing that dang ball on the stairs and running on them!”
As Regan began to explain that they were watching cartoons, he locked eyes with Lita as a basketball slowly bounced down the stairs and landed at his feet.
Lita gathered all the children, a boy named Joseph, Regan’s two sisters Jennifer and Christina, and Regan into her bedroom, tears filling the corners of her eyes. She pulled out a stack of cassettes whispering how nobody believes her as she pops in the tape. The tape begins to play and white noise fills the room until a low raspy voice beckons “Liiiiiitttaaaaa… Liiiiittttaaaaaa.” She explained how she left the cassettes running as she slept, only to find this in return.
The fear of that day turned into a series of games in which the children would all mock the spirit they believed inhabited the house. One of which they liked to call “How long you can stay in the closet.”
“Somebody would go into the closet, and we would latch the door behind them. We would see how long you could stay in the haunted closet before you knocked on the door to come out,” Regan said. He had to beat the record of eight seconds so he slowly took his spot into the dark room. As the door latched, he counted to ten. He knocked once and no one came to open the door. The dark, dead silence took over Regan as he began kicking, screaming and hitting the door for several minutes. After several attacks at the door, he slowly slid his hand onto the handle and let out a slow whisper. “Help me.”
In that moment, a large hand draped around his, slowly twisting the knob and opening the door. Without looking back, Regan stepped into the fear-filled gaze of the other children.
Jennifer explained how they didn’t hear the knock or his attempts at safety. They all had tried to open the door to check on him, but they felt somebody pulling against the door, keeping it from opening. Only when Regan opened the door did the latch unhook and the knob regain it’s ability to turn.
After Regan’s close encounter, his nerves were on edge. His visited to an older lady down the street. She asked him what was wrong. He drew her a picture of a ghost standing behind him and told her that Lita and Louise’s house was haunted. The old woman raised her eyes and pointed to the old house.
“You mean Cecil’s old home?” she said. She told Regan the story of Cecil, the World War veteran who came home a little too late. Cecil’s family had moved before he had returned home, leaving to evidence of where they could have gone. The pain and heartbreak he felt grew stronger, causing Cecil to take his own life.
“He found the strongest beam and hung himself. That beam ran right across Lita’s closet.” Regan said.
Regan recently got in touch with Lita and some of the other children who would spend their time in the home, but asked about Cecil the reaction stayed the same. “Please don’t bring him up again.”
