Take a time machine back to the mid-20th century, a time when tales of the peculiar and unexplained were best told by intense middle-aged men in black suits as they cocked their eyebrows, cradled their cigarettes, and stared directly into your soul from the other side of the television screen.

“The extraordinary occurrences began at 3:30 on the afternoon of Monday, February 3rd, 1958, in the home of Mr. James M. Herrmann at 1648 Redwood Path in the town of Seaford, Long Island, New York.” At least that’s what LIFE magazine reported over sixty years ago, at the beginning of an article making remarkable claims. According to allegations made by the otherwise milquetoast Herrmann family, their three bedroom, single story slice of the American dream was being haunted. Haunted by ghosts. Ghosts who liked to unscrew the tops of bottles and then knock them over.

The first handful of experiences were unsettling, if not terror-inducing. The Herrmanns would hear a series of loud “pops,” then find freshly overturned shampoo containers, pill bottles, and the like scattered around the home. One occurrence was unnerving, but when it happened several more times over the next week, they phoned the police, as the question “who you gonna call?” had not yet been posed at this point in history.

You moved the cemetery, but you left the bottles

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