I want to begin with some updates. I was talking to my mother on Sunday, 9/13 and we started talking about our family home and the fact that she needs to sell it and I just came out and asked her about the lady that used to live there with my stepfather. I asked her if they were married to one another and she said no, he didn't marry this woman because the woman was already married to a man that was a porter on a train. She and her husband had several children also. The man would be gone several weeks at a time and when he would leave my stepfather would move into the house with this woman and when it was time for the husband to come back home, my stepfather would move out and stay some where else. That was pretty low down and dirty if you ask me. Mother said this was years before he came into her life.
Our house used to be an apartment and if you were standing facing it, this woman stayed on the left side of it and another family lived on the right side of it. This woman's bedroom was the bedroom near our bathroom and the room that we would always see the black figure walking out of and entering the bathroom and disappearing. It would always, always cast a shadow on the floor and you could watch this shadow as it walked on in to the bathroom and disappear as though it walked on through our bathtub and out the window that was over the bathtub. Mother also said that someone did pass away in the house. It was a member of the family that lived on the other side. The father worked on the railroad and Mother can't remember if it was him or if it was a child that passed away in there, but she did say, someone indeed did pass away in that house.
Now, when my mother and my stepfather got together and we moved into this house, the house was boarded up and had all kinds of shrubs trees and weeds grown up around it. It also had a roach problem. Mother said she was the one who knocked down the wall dividing one side of the house from the other because she did not want her children separated. She wanted us all in the same house. I can remember in the bedroom that we would later call the front bedroom which was the one facing the living room and the front door to our house, there being a kitchen with a sink, cabinets and a door, which was later removed and a window was put where the door used to be. The sink was removed and covered and we used the counter top to put stuff on and the cabinets and space underneath where the sink was, we used to store our toys and hung some curtains up to it to so the toys wouldn't show.
It was a very tight fit up in that small room and that's why Mother bought the bunk beds. The room that had the blanket hung up to it, that we used to store things, like blankets and clothes and stuff, used to be a bathroom and the toilet was removed and the hole in the floor covered. Our floors were wood, not the pretty hard wood that you see today, but wood boards and when walking barefoot, we would get splinters in our feet. You could look between the boards and see the ground underneath the house. The house was very cold in the winter and the wind would come up through the floor boards. The kitchen we used had one sink and we would have to put hot water in a huge pot to rinse our dishes in after we washed them in the big sink. The kitchen was a very frightening place to be and was very close to that back bedroom that the black shadow would walk out of and enter the bathroom area. We could always feel someone watching us as we cleaned up the dishes and we would work as fast as we could and get out of there. I always felt safe as long as I was with the rest of my family, but as soon as I would have to go to the bathroom or kitchen for something, it was total fear!
One winter day, my step father had picked us up from school and brought us home. Mother was at work. I believe I was in the 5th or 6th grade at that time. It was very cold and there was snow on the ground. Our electricity was off and in my home town, it seemed like the wind just blew in the wrong direction, the electricity in that town would be knocked out. My two older sisters were supposed to be getting dinner cooked and ready. My oldest siblings the three girls were out of the house by this time. Two were married and one was away at college. My oldest brother was still at home, but he was with some of his friends. Anyway, we were using a kerosene lamp. My stepfather lit this lamp and the wick caught and lit. We couldn't believe what was happening right in front of our very eyes, this fire lifted up off of the wick and floated all the way up past the cover of the lantern and danced around and floated back down again. We were shocked, my stepfather thought it was funny, but we were frightened out of our minds and of course I started crying for my mother. He tried to tell us that that was normal for the fire to do that on one of those lanterns but we knew better. The light is not going to lift up by itself and float all the way past the top of the lantern and then dance around and go back down to the wick again. We couldn't wait until our mother got home to tell her about it. She tried to console us and tell us that he may have had the fire turned up too high in the lantern. She didn't want us to be frightened and we were just too poor to have moved to another house that was just financially impossible. This house was paid for, so it was not an option. We were just going to have to find a way to deal with the haunting's and goings on in this house and it was hard and getting harder everyday.
I would have terrible nightmares about three bald headed blue men that would be following me around in our house. I would try to hide from them but couldn't, they would chase me through the house. Years later after becoming an adult, I saw a commercial on TV with blue men that looked just like the men that used to chase me and frighten me in my dreams. They were the exact same blue color. I can't explain that. I remember when I had to sleep in that back bedroom in the bed with one of my sisters, her at one end of the bed and I sleeping at the other end of the bed. That night I had such a bad dream, I sat up in the bed and reached down at the other end of the bed and slapped my sister in the face. She woke up dazed and wanting to know why I slapped her and I couldn't explain it. I had a really bad dream.
When it warmed up, I rode my bike to and from school. I was in the 6th grade when this occurred. I rode my bike home and being the first one home, I would do the same thing everyday, which was sit on the front porch and wait until my sisters got home or if one of my friends were home, I would go over there.
This particular day, my friends weren't home and I sat on the front porch waiting for my sisters. I could here walking going on in this house, talking; the door knob the front door would jiggle to let me know that someone was at the door. Our front door had three square windows on it covered by a curtain and the curtain would move like someone was peaking out. The curtains in the living room would pull back like someone was peeking out. This day was a day I will never forget. It is etched into my memory as if someone took a branding iron and branded it in my brain.
I had to go to the bathroom so bad and there was nowhere outside to go without someone seeing me and I not only needed to do #1, but the #2. I couldn't hold it any longer; I had to go in that house. I used my key and went in the back door which is next to the bathroom and also that back bedroom where the shadow would always come out. I went into the bathroom and the bathroom door had two holes in I that had a belt from a house coat or robe tied on it which we would use as a handle to close the door and wrap the belt around a nail in the bathroom to keep the door from opening. I could hear something moving around outside the door and it looked and felt like something was peeking through the holes in that door. I finished doing my business, washed my hands and went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. I turned the glass of water up to my mouth and started drinking when I heard someone walk up behind me and turn our gas oven on and the pilot lit with a loud wush, it frightened me so bad, I dropped the water and hid between the stove and the kitchen cabinets. I was shaking and I thought I was going to die that day. The oven was on and it started heating up and I was right on the side of it and could feel it getting hotter and hotter as I coward and cried. I knew I was not imagining this was happening and this spirit was standing there watching me, I could feel it and in my mind's eye, I could see it laughing at me.
I stayed there knuckled down until I heard a car going by and it stopped at the corner and I just started screaming at the top of my lungs, here I come, don't leave, I'm in here, I'm coming out and I just got up, turned the oven off and bolted out of that house. I don't even remember locking the door and didn't care if I did or not at that point. I hopped on my bike and rode off down the street to this park that was on the next block and that's where I stayed, shaking, frightened, confused, angry, and filled with so much hatred of that house. I could see our house from the park, so when my sisters came home, I went home, not wanting anything to do with that house. I told my sisters what happened to me and I told them when I did finally leave that house, I wasn't going to ever come back. I didn't feel safe in that house at all.
Thank you for reading. I am working on some other stories too. Will be
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