My Childhood Haunting

I finally made actual, metaphysical contact with the ghost who haunted my childhood home, or at least one of them lol. I knew I saw something when I was 8 years old at night. Up late watching television to distract me from what I could see when I sleep. My sister was long sleep already. But I was responsible enough to watch comedies, cartoons, or old sitcoms like "I Love Lucy", nothing filled with horror or violence, I was a kid, and knew there was no one to console me if I did. So on to my cartoons.

I could see everything in my hallway, mostly because our bedroom door was forever broken. One mysterious day when I was 4, the door came down and never went back up. So I could see every errand, every passing, every time somebody forgot something and had to come back. Everything. So even late at night, I would see the occasional dad sneaking off to the kitchen for a snack, a brother pacing in the hall to burn off energy, etc. Sometimes, my mother getting a headstart on the next days laundry, up late scrounging for socks. I was sure to keep the light on. However, it couldn't stay on every time I was up late, sometime that was ok, because my parents tv light or their personal light would shine close enough to my bedroom. Not everyday.

Your average 8 year old is afraid of the dark. Hallucinations of things seen on television, a wild imagination, fear of a certain animal etc. Monsters are the general worry. I don't remember seeing monsters, yet I was still afraid of the dark. I was afraid of the silence. A child always has a sense of being watched, hovered over, or supervised, these feelings are comforting, and regular, and expected, no need to fear when someone is watching you, right?

The night I saw her, everyone had ran their errands to the kitchen, the laundry, the bathroom, etc. Quiet and dark, everyone slept on. the television running again, like my mind, being entertained by the ridiculous cartoons. I felt good to enjoy this alone. Nobody to laugh at the noises I made when I was tickled with joy. Little did I know I was entertaining a silent audience.

She appeared slowly head to toe in the doorway, back towards my staircase. Her hair is what I noticed the most, on this hollow and freezing ghost. Her dress was of a darker color, but her skin white. But her hair was wrapped in two buns behind her face, as neatly as she could I guess, it must be trouble having that much hair to manage. Her face looked concerned, and pitiful at the same time. I could tell she had secrets, and knew a few herself. She seemed to always be aware of me, but I just met her that night. She indicated to me, that nobody was to know she was there, as if she had always lived like this, in fear. Her energy had some relief, like coming out of the rain, and she got to enjoy this blurry manifestation of herself for a moment. 

I tried to pretend she wasn't there, I tried to cover my eyes over my blanket. I tried to find something to watch to distract this image. I tried to turn on all my lights to chase away the dark. She remained there. The light did not frighten her, only my declaration of her presence to anyone else, her secret. 

Of coarse when I told someone I saw her, I was just lectured about staying up late, and watching things that were bad for me........typical human behavior, I guess.

Anyway, 25 years later, she appeared to me again, this time in a dream. I saw myself in a basement, greyish blue in color, dripping water with mice running around. Many people, mostly female scurrying doing chores, yet no one was shewing the mice away, or cleaning up the water, a crowd of women thinned out,and there she was, she said her name was Beatrice. She looked at me in relief, almost with intention, like she knew I'd show up. The rolled buns in her hair, upright, dirty blonde in color, her dark greyish dress, tucked perfectly. Freckles on her face, medium build, not like the others who were far smaller in size. She was passed by and passed over very easily, as if even in a dream, I was the only one that saw her. She was accustomed to this, and took advantage of it. The others were speaking to each other, but not to her, meanwhile the others could not see me. I was now the ghost in the room. She signaled to the a flag pole outside, which was next to a house. Soon enough the flagpole disappeared, and ended up on top of the house. Physically impossible in waking life, but a metaphor for sure. Wherever underground place I was, had been replaced, covered up or converted into something else.

I remembered in my outside wreck room, there was greyish blue paint on the walls. Underneath was a trap door with stairs that lead to a dead end wall, very unusual I had always thought. It was a room I was always interested in, but was never allowed access to. But Spirits always find a way to communicate. My dog Samson, had tore apart a wall under my staircase, maybe not a coincidence, but we had discovered unusual patterns in the floorboards. Very shoddy work, I thought, it went all the way to my washer room, 

where our washing machine had malfunctioned many times. After many mishaps had created a permanent dip in the floor, one day, where it did its regular overflow spill onto the floor, it had been neglected. No one wanted to deal with it, which is the reason why the floor was so badly damaged. This time I heard dripping and water hitting something. But how is that possible? The water was already on the floor what was it dripping on? Listening closer, it was hitting another landing underneath the house. Another floor, which I assume was concrete because I could hear the distinct contact of another object.

I have yet to discover the mystery of this..............