Any interesting stories about the hauntings?
The house was built in the very late 1800's
After the slaves were freed in 1888, my family took the valley that today takes our name "Ferreira's Creek"
That house was built on what used to be indigenous land, but there's no registry or stories of major violence happening there, they say the place had a few injuns who left when white man arrived, in the early 1800's, but they didn't care much, it was mostly "hunting land", too cold and too many mountains compared to the rest of the region, they preferred the warmer lands closer to the rivers and lakes.
The place was pretty much inhabited, so the Ferreira's simply moved in and started dealing with cattle first, but the land was more promising for coffee. We were considered very wealthy, until 1929 happened and coffee became worthless almost overnight.
My grandfather who passed away almost 30 years ago used to remember the time well, it was pretty harsh. The farm used to have a huge house with furniture from all over the world. My great-great-grandfather had to sell it all and dismantle the sumptuous home, because it'd be impossible to maintain the upkeep and all the materials were used to build smaller structures, since the focus changed from coffee to basic subsistence. And that house was built with those leftovers.
A couple relatives died there, some became sick there and died in the hospital. In the 70's my grandfather sold most of the land and moved to the city where I live today. The steel mill caused a boom and he opened a small supermarket there. But even before that, the old house was uninhabited, my grandfather had built a new one (the green building on the right of the pic) and used the old place as general warehouse. But my older uncles and aunts say he never liked the old home and they didn't like it either when growing up, so in the early 60's he built a new one. They used to tell stories about hearing noises there at night and seeing lights flickering thru the gaps in the old windows. My mother was very young, but she remembers not feeling comfortable there either.
But the whole valley itself is full of legends and stories like that. There's this one in particular, about a criminal who terrorized the area during the 40's. He would rob and kill farm owners and after escaping death so many times, many started believing he had a pact with the devil. They said that 2 hunters managed to track him down and shoot him in the head and torso with their rifles, only to see the guy run into the woods and reappear a few weeks later to kill again.
After he killed a couple cops, they sent an army team to hunt him down. They said they had to track him for almost a week, it's like the guy never stopped, never ate, he'd simply move and disappear, always spotting the soldiers first.
They finally managed to corner him at the outskirts of what used to be the original border of our lands, near an old tree, a "tajuba" and they had to shoot the guy numerous times and even so, he wouldn't stop moving, so they used machetes to dismember him. Yep.