It's been a while since I've written about ghosts.
So, I thought I would share with you another one of my encounters with the spirit world. This one involves my sister, Hannah, and several toy horses.
My parents' house is haunted. No question. (See December 2012 entry titled "Chicken" to read about another encounter in that house.) I believe there were as many as three separate spirits/ghosts in that house at any given time. One was my paternal grandmother. One was a spunky spirit who just wanted attention. I believe this to be the spirit that knocked on the wall in the encounter I wrote about in the December entry. The third one was not quite so nice. I'm not sure he (not even sure how I know it's a he) was evil, necessarily, but I don't think he is a very happy dude.
My sister and I, independently of one another, starting calling him by a name. Imagine our surprise when we discovered we had chosen the same name: Paul! We were floored. Anyway, Paul never showed himself fully like my grandmother did. (Actually, come to think of it, one time my sister saw our maternal grandfather in her doorway, clear as day. The eeriest thing about it for her was that he died 3 years before she was even born and she only recognized him from pictures! How freaky! She was only six at the time!)
Paul always appeared like a shadow. Very tall, at least six feet, broad shoulders, pitch black. He just ate up light all around him. You couldn't miss him no matter how hard you tried. He'd move and you'd see him and turn your head and he'd be gone... but you had seen him still. I can't tell you how many times I had friends over who would suddenly snap their heads to the side and say, "what was that??" I would always say, "nothing... I didn't see anything," because it was so much easier to do that than to say, "oh, just our resident shadow ghost." They'd have been screaming out the door faster than I could blink.
Hannah and I have always been a little afraid of Paul. Aside from the fact that he's a giant black mass, he has a nasty habit of looming around when you're by yourself. You just know he's there! Anyway, on to the experience:
In the summer of 2006, my sister (then age 9, almost 10) was sitting on the floor in the family room playing with 6 or 7 toy horses on the floor. She had all of them but one lined up side by side and the last one was in her hand, "talking" to the others.
(ok sorry this is freaky, I have to interrupt myself to tell you all that as I'm sitting here typing this story about ghosts, my dog Abigail just leaped off the couch where she had been dead asleep and ran over and started growling, howling and barking at the stairs. There is nothing there!!!!!)
I was walking past the doorway to the family room, on my way to the kitchen and I stopped to talk to Hannah. Their house has a pretty open floor-plan so when I say "doorway" what I mean is a giant 8 foot wide doorjamb that nearly reaches the ceiling. Anyway, as I was standing there talking to Hannah about whatever it was, her row of toy horses fell over. Like dominoes. We blinked for several seconds. This was not an uncommon occurrence for us.
"Paul!" I scolded.
Suddenly, Hannah's eyes widened and she I realized she was staring at a spot just over my shoulder. All the hair on the back of my neck and on my arms stood up. I didn't dare move.
"He's behind me, isn't he?" I said.
Hannah nodded slowly. Then her eyes tracked to my left, and a moment later I saw the familiar shadow out of the corner of my eye, ducking into the dining room (that has a real, normal sized doorway.)
Almost exactly 2 years later, my bestie G was visiting me from Canada. She had been sleeping on an air mattress in my room. We were downstairs, about to go somewhere I think, and she had to run upstairs to grab something really quick. I had mentioned something about ghosts but I had not told her about Paul, specifically.
G started up the stairs (which curve around to the right) while I waited near the bottom. About 2/3 of the way up, she stopped abruptly, turned white and came dashing back down. "Kate!" she hollered, although I was standing right there. "There's a man in the doorway of your room!"
"How tall was this man?" I calmly asked, suspecting that she had just met Paul.
"Tall! Really tall! And it just looked like he was a shadow!"
Damn. That's him. "Come on, let's go, and I'll explain what just happened." Needless to say, G didn't want to go back up to my room by herself for the rest of the time she stayed with me!
So that's Paul. Not sure who he was, although I've heard some rumors. I haven't heard anything about him from Hannah lately. I haven't seen him since 2009 when I moved out for the last time. Gosh I hope he didn't follow me here!!!
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