True Ghost Story

Here's my story:

For the first 16 years of my life, I lived in the house my grandfather built in a small town in Central Jersey. Before my grandpa built the house, there had only been a barn in the back of the property and one other house on the street [owned by one of my grandpa's sister-in-laws]. By the time I was born, the barn was gone and all that was left was a rather large fireplace in the backyard. I really always hated playing in the backyard, mostly because I always felt someone was watching me. And never, never would I play near that fireplace, mostly because it always freaked me out.

The thing that really set me off about the house was when I was around 6 and I was sleeping in my mom's bed [I always did this]. I woke up in the middle of the night, which was not abnormal for me, but what I saw then was abnormal. There was a man standing in the doorway, staring at me. He was wearing overalls with a white collared t-shirt underneath them, with a hat but I don't really remember what it looked like. He just kept staring at me, so I finally asked him who he was. Instead of answering my question, he simply told me to get out in a low, scratchy voice. Being a little kid, I immediately lay back down and pulled the blanket over my head, waiting a few minutes, and then woke my mom. By that time, he was gone. Years later, I brought it up to my mom, asking her if she really thought I just had a bad dream, which had been her explanation at the time. She became slightly anxious and then finally told me she was sure I had seen a ghost because of one of her own experiences.

Apparently, many nights she felt like some one would slip into bed with her. She would just think it was me, but when she turned over to ask me if I was okay, she would find no one there. Eventually, she stopped sleeping in her room, and it stopped.

We moved when I was 16. My mom taught at the town's high school, and eventually we discovered that the reason why our house was for sale when it was was because the previous owner's daughter had died in the house. And the place she died? Well, my bedroom, of course! The girl had just went to sleep one night and never woke up. Every morning, I would wake up and go down into the basement to go on the computer, and I would find the TV on.
I thought maybe my mom had left it on, but every time it would be on the Spanish Language channel.

Now, mom and I aren't Spanish, nor do we know it, so there would be no point to us watching it. I decided to do some digging, asking some people in the high school who knew the girl who had died, and apparently she had taken every level of Spanish available in the high school and had planned to go to college so she could teach Spanish. Lets just say I was a little scared. The next morning, I went down and the TV was on again, and I politely said that if she wanted attention, this was not the way to do it, and that I would just prefer her to leave me alone. After that, nothing again.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings. It just feels good to actually tell someone.

By: winchock@eden.rutgers.edu