Ok... I know a lot of people dont believe in the unexplainable that we call ghosts. I have always believed in them however, because as a small child I came in daily contact with them, even though I didn't know that's what they were.

My story is set in an old farmhouse that I lived in from the age of 6 months to about 5 1/2 yrs old. There were three distinct entities in that home that I can clearly remember, though there may have been more. Even though I know we shouldn't classify spirits as good or bad its the way I've always thought of these three. One was good, one was neutral, and one was definitely malevolent.

The first spirit (good) was of an old man. Since I was a small child at the time it never occured to me to ask my mother who he was. To me he was just a nice old man that came and played with me when I was lonely or had tea parties and the like. I didn't find out who the man was until about ten yrs after I had moved out of that house.

To my surprise my mom one day pulled out some old family photos and there he was. He turned out to be one of my ancestors although I'd have to run down through my family bible to find out who exactly he was.

The second spirit (neutral) was of more a playful nature... possibly a child. Although I never actually saw this particular ghost it was always moving things around and playing with my dolls and such, which is why I'm led to believe it may have been a child. The most interesting thing this little spirit did was to rearrange the order in which some people in an old painting were sitting. It was a family of four sitting on an old style slat rail fence and every morning my brother and I would run to this picture to see how they would be arranged that day.

There were several occasions when I would wake up at night to see some of my dolls being moved around in a manner that looked as if someone were playing with them. The most interesting part about this ghost though is the painting that he/she would arrange the people in. Although my brother and I both clearly remember going and looking at this picture every day, and we could both draw it identically from memory... my mother swears to this day that she never owned such a picture or one like it and no such thing was hanging in that house when we moved in or when we left.

Where it came from I don't know... where it went I don't know... but mostly I think it's interesting that my brother and I both saw it and remember it so plainly.

Finally, on to the third spirit (bad) that I remember. This fellow was never openly mean or hurtful to anyone although I feel it's only because he never had the opportunity to be. I say he although I never saw him, but often heard him. His footsteps would pace up and down the attic stairs at night, which were directly above my bedroom closet. The footsteps were very heavy sounding, like those of a man in work boots. He'd pace for about 15 minutes every night and then stop. I often saw a shadow moving down the hallway away from the attic door towards my parents bedroom, but it would vanish about halfway down the hall. It wasn't a shadow like someone would cast on a wall but as if someone held a flashlight straight down on you that moved with you... the shadow was always on the floor.

There was also a cool breeze that would follow in the wake of this shadow and would raise the hair all over your body. This man also had a propensity for dolls that I won't go into in detail at this time except to say that there was one doll in particular of mine that I had to eventually get rid of because I was so terrified of the thing. He would move this doll at night and often times I would see it and the shadow that followed this fellow.

The last incident occured one night when I thought my puppy had gotten into my room because I had heard what sounded like an animals claws moving around under the bed, where my puppy liked to hide. I noticed that the doll was missing however and when my mother and I got down and looked the doll was under the bed with one hand hooked into the bed rail on the far side... sort of leaning against the wall as if it had been interrupted climbing into the bed from the wrong side. The following day was when we got rid of that doll.

As a small child I often had what are known as night terrors... which is like a waking nightmare. I often would sleepwalk and wake up in strange places the following morning and only vaguely remember nightmares about a large man that was after me. I feel it was this entity either being picked up subconsciously and frightening me or maybe coming into my room and myself "running" from him in my sleep.

The house has since been torn down and only one family lived in it after my family moved out. It was a very old house, I'd guess around a hundred years old or so... but even that family had some strange things happen to them while living there.

Most interesting is a photograph that they took of themselves (man and wife) standing on the front porch of the old house. Although the porch and the two people in the photo were in sharp focus... the rest of the house was just a blur. If possible I will try to contact the man and see if he still has the photo around anywhere.

Since moving out of that house I have had some unexplained encounters... possibly because I grew up in a house that I was sensitive to them. But I have never seen nor sensed any of the entities that were in that home. So, I feel they stayed behind when we left.

The site where the house was located is now the back loading dock of a local store... I think I'd also like to contact some people that work at this store and see if they've had any strange experiences especially at night.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this and I will likely tell more about my experiences at this house at a later date and let you know if I have gotten a hold of that photo or heard anything back from some of the store's employees.

Thank you.

That spirit seemed to have an affiliation with dolls for some reason, which was particularly scary for me as I have always had a large collection of dolls. There is an old wives tale called the grandmothers curse, but it can extend really to any family member or close friend of the family.

What the curse entails from the different versions I have heard, is that a family member or friend will have no intentions of buying anything for someone but they pass by a store and just go in. While there they see something and think "This would be PERFECT for so and so!"

Well my grandmother had done that at one point when I was about 4 yrs old. My clearest memories of the "bad" spirit in that house were connected to the doll that she bought me, hence the reason for the title. It was a large doll, about 2 ft. tall, one of those thats made to sit on your bed as a decorative thing. It was made in a classic clown style... red and blue jump suit, white face with blue diamonds around the eyes, big red smile, white gloves, black shoes. The head and hands were porcelain and the rest of the body was plush.

Well, the "bad" spirit, like I said, seemed to like dolls, and that one in particular. That doll gave me the creeps the first time I saw it, and the feeling only got stronger the longer I owned it. I used to make my mother "lock him in the closet" because it frightened me so badly, but then my grandma would come along later and take it out and put it right back on the bed "where it belonged"... this of course in my little childs mind meant "he got out".

My grandma never understood that I was afraid of it and would get upset when it was up out of site as it was an "expensive" doll and "made for decoration". At night, after I would go to bed she had a bad habit of putting the doll in a rocking chair that sat across the room from the side of my bed... so if I woke up I could see "its pretty face"... yeah OK lol.

Well there were many nights in that house that I would wake up terrified from some bad dream or another and here that doll sits looking at me. Well as anyone who's ever had nightmares knows... when you wake up in the night, all colors seem to wash out of things... everything looks black in color not red or blue... so I would see a perfect little white face with black diamonds where the eyes should be and a big gaping black mouth. This was enough to scare me senseless, and I was always afraid that I would see the doll move while I looked at it, which only made things worse as you can imagine.

One night I woke up from a pretty bad dream and when I looked over at the doll it seemed to be sitting at a different angle from the way it was when I fell asleep. I decided to ignore it and try to go back to sleep. No such luck.

I couldn't help looking at it and trying to figure out what was different that night and when I looked the second time the doll was sitting completely sideways in the chair! Well at this point I completely freaked out and started screaming for mom. When she got there she "locked him in the closet" for me so I could sleep...of course, thinking it was all in my imagination.

The following night my grandma had put the doll in that chair again, and again I woke from a pretty vivid nightmare. I look over and the doll was staring right at the bed! I tried to look away, but I was afraid to, I thought if I didn't watch him (don't know why I thought of it as a him) that he would "get me".

As I watched, the doll appeared to turn his head slightly as if laughing at me... well THAT did it... I screamed for mom again and told her what I had seen. She thought it was just the aftereffects of the nightmare causing me to see things. So, in the closet it went again.

On the third night I woke up for no apparent reason (no nightmare this time) and thought perhaps my Dalmatian puppy Bell was in the room because I could hear what sounded like puppy claws on the hardwood floor. This is probably what woke me up. But, when I looked up my door was closed, as it had been all night and I knew Bell was not in my room when I went to bed.

I started getting very scared at this point and looked over at the rocker, but the doll wasn't there. I screamed for my mom at the top of my lungs and she came running (thank god!). When she got to my room I told her what I had heard and she said maybe Bell had walked past my door and that was what I heard.

But, she still agreed to help me look for my doll, she thought maybe my brother had taken it as a prank to scare me. So, we proceeded to search the house starting in my brother's room. We checked everywhere we could think of and found nothing... but the doll wasn't in my closet either.

Before going back to bed I remembered that the noise had seemed to come from under the bed... and we hadn't checked there yet! My mom sort of gave this long suffering sigh and got down to look and I think she saw "something" but didn't know what it was, cause she got this wierd look and started pulling the bed away from the wall.

She pulled the bed about 2 ft and then got on it and looked down the other side by the wall, and after what she saw she let me get rid of the doll the following day.

The doll had been leaning against the wall under the bed with one knee propped up like it was getting ready to stand... and appeared almost to have been trying to pull itself up that side of the bed, because one of the porcelain hands was jammed down into the bed frame. It was jammed in so tight some of the paint rubbed off when mom pulled it loose.

The following day she let me put the clown in a bag and carry it to the garbage myself. Now the part of the curse that's the oddest... is that whoever buys the gift can never seem to understand that someone might be afraid of it. My grandmother had been extremely upset when she found out I had thrown away the doll, and said she never even knew that I was scared of it....even though my mom had told her as much at least a hundred times... and my gram is NOT a forgetful person.

She wanted to go get it out of the garbage and put it right back in my room... but luckily the trash collector had already come by :)

After about 3 months or so my gram began to realize what had happened and said she never remembered either myself or my mom telling her I had been frightened of the doll.... and to this day she still doesn't know why she bought it... as she never really liked it... but thought it would be "just perfect for her baby".

I have never been able to sleep in a house where anyone owned a clown doll since then... I won't even buy any for my kids... just too much.

SPOOKY!... I will post more stories at a later date... but this is the one most people seem to want to hear... so there ya go! ... hope you enjoyed it and can maybe relate to it.