Paranormal Factor

My childhood home belonged to my family for generations. Built in 1886 by my great-great granfather it had withstood many a depressive moment, and stands tall within its nestle even today, unchanged and seemingly ominous. Although it no longer is inhabited by family the great old Victorian always reminds me of a time in the early nineteen eighties when I began to believe in ghosts.

The memory of an eight year old is always spoken of as imaginative or full of fantasy and unsubstantiated fears, but I don’t totally agree with that theory. Sure, children love to dream of many things, like, being a ninja or a princess, having a real unicorn or a dragon, of being able to fly, and surely it was easier to believe in the monster that lived in the closet.

This is my story of the proverbial monster in the closet which visited me often over a span of five years. The house I grew up in was a veritable grab bag of spooky occurrences and phantom spectres. Many born within my family tree and some others found their demise within its walls; I believe each moment of despair and a part of each hapless soul who died within the house had been recorded and possess the place to this day. Most died of natural causes; still born babies, sickly children who died in early stages of life, old age as well as the many now curable illnesses and diseases.

It was a sweltering August night as I slept in my room at the top of the stairs. My younger brother slept in the room next to mine farthest from the stairway, and our parents shared the room downstairs below my brother’s room. My paternal great-great grandmother had just passed away a mere month before this night, within her room across from my parents. She found solace within death after spending her last few years locked in a time long ago.

I recall her before and after her dementia, she was stern but loving; an old woman who had weathered things that could break even the strongest reserve. The mother of fifteen children, two of which survived to have children of their own. She had outlived three husbands and both of her surviving children who both died horrible deaths, herself dying at the age of eighty-eight in mid-nineteen eighty.

I cannot be sure that I was visited by phantom ghosts of my family, I can be sure of the fact that what ever it was it was not friendly nor did it make me feel welcome in my own house. I never had problems sleeping in my own room before this night. I often coddled my younger brother during the darkest nights when he was afraid of sleeping alone. This one night though, he did not visit me with tears on his cheeks asking to sleep with me for the remainder of the night. I slept alone and unfettered for most of the night. That is until something brought me out of what I recall as a deep slumber. I remember that because when I woke it was like I had been shaken. I thought I would see my brother’s face before mine as he always did on previous nights, but where he should have been there was nothing, just me and the darkness. I called out to him thinking he had given up trying to wake me and had returned to his own room, but he didn’t reply. To this I was grateful since it really was uncomfortable sharing my twin bed, let alone with my squirming brother. I remember that at the time I was not afraid, for the mind rationalizes the unexplained and finds meaning for everything, even in an eight year old mind.

I tried to fall back to sleep, and had almost reached that point when I felt a light breath upon my face. My eyes snapped open instantly, ready to scold my brother for waking me once again. I opened my mouth to tell him to just get in bed with me and stop breathing in my face (I hated it when he breathed on me). But he wasn’t there. I got up to check on him and found him fast asleep, his mouth open and his face cherubic in the moonlight. I debated going downstairs and climbing in bed with my parents, something I hadn’t done since the last time I was really sick. I decided against it and returned to my own room, dispelling the breath on my face with that rational thinking I spoke of earlier. My bedroom window was open and the curtains fluttered in the light breeze; of course it was just the wind, it was the only plausable thing. So, I returned to my bed and snuggled against the wall as far as I could in case my brother came to me for real in the night.

I found that no matter how hard I tried I was not going to fall back to sleep any time soon. So, I lay there staring at the ceiling, my eyes already adjusted to the dark as I counted the flaws in the plaster and pictured cartoon characters in the lines and cracks. This was a little game I played to help me fall asleep. It began to work its magic and I felt my eyelids become heavy. Once more I was asleep, for how long I do not know. I recall a dream I was having, of being in the park with my dog playing fetch with a stick. Then as clear as day I heard a woman’s voice speak my name within my room. It was spoken as whisper in my ear and again I felt the puff of breath against my skin.

This time I was afraid. I did not recognize the voice, it was not my mother, nor was it any of my older sisters for they had homes and families of their own and wouldn’t be in my room in the middle of the night playing tricks on me. I feared to open my eyes, feared for what would be looking me in the face. I pretended to still be asleep. Ghosts must know faking because I heard the voice once again, this time louder and not quite so close as before. With courage I didn’t know I had I allowed my eyelids to open a crack. My heart hammered in my chest and my ears rang with my fear. Yet, my room was empty once again. By now my mind had forgotten to rationalize and every deep seated fear I had was made real as I lay there. Eyes open wide now, I stared out my bedroom door into the hall. I wanted to get up and flee to the safety of my parents room but found that I could not move. Lifting my head and limbs was our of my control, not one part of my body responded to the need to get up and out of bed. It was like I was being held down, restrained in my own bed. I could not cry out either, my voice had been silenced no matter how I tried to scream.

The next moment I found myself looking at a dark mass as it floated outside of my room in front of my door. The smoke-like thing was so dark it blocked out the railing and stairwell behind it. What strikes me as the most scary point of the moment was the fact that I could see above and below the dark cloud. I could see the top of the window that shone down upon the stairwell and I could see the light teal carpet in the hallway at the top of the stairs. The dark thing seemed to billow and churn fading around the edges as it hovered in my doorway for what seemed like an eternity.

Still, I could not move. My terror was so intense I felt my heart would burst from fear. Soon, it began to move away from my doorway toward my brother’s room. This frightened me even more and I fought with all my might to move, to call out to my parents for help. As soon as it passed out of sight of my doorway I found I could move and almost threw myself out of bed in the instantaneous return of my motor skills. I waited, listening for any sound, for the phantom voice again. I found my courage and leapt from bed and ran down the stairs to my parents room. I was hysterical and blubbering and it took a few minutes to be able to speak coherently and explain what had happened. I begged them to check on my brother, for surely it was still in his room. The did and found nothing. This reinforced the notion that I had just had a bad dream. Both my parents tried to convince me it was nothing more than my over active imagination. They wouldn’t listen no matter how I pleaded with them about what I saw.

My mother patted me on the head, led me back to my room with kisses, tucked me back into the one place I dreaded to be, my bed. This happened to me frequently, the same way, with the voice and the dark shadow outside my room. From the first night though, I never allowed my brother to sleep alone in his own room. I was just as afraid for myself as I was for him and we spent many nights huddled together in my small bed.

I learned not to dread the occurrances, but found ways to convince myself it was nothing. But that nothing ended up morphing into more and more occurrances as time went by. I will leave this story off here, for the other happenings are for another day. I just wonder, since I haven’t lived in that house since I was seventeen, almost twenty years ago, if the new tennants witness those same hauntings? Is there another child that sleeps in my old room who is awakened by that voice and immobilization and phantom cloud? Does that child’s parents disbelieve and dispel the fear with false reassurances? I surely hope not, I hope whatever inhabits that house has found the path to heaven or hell, whichever realm it belongs in.

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