PHILIP I had a bit of a rough life as a child, trying to avoid my abusive alcoholic dad, win my elusive, manaholic mom's love, and raise my two wild brothers. But this ghost story doesn't begin until I am 12. Some of my friends were on a "Bloody Mary" craze and looking for a volunteer whose bathroom mirror they would call to her through. I was always trying to impress my friends, so I said we could use mine. Saturday, after my father had left for work, everyone came over. There were seven of us crammed into the bathroom. There might have been room in there for all of us, except we were scared to death so we crowded up against the door. My two brothers, two girlfriends, two guy friends, and myself right next to the door handle and the light switch. Tammy was the oldest of us, and supposedly the smartest so she was voted the one to call 'Mary' out. She said 'Bloody Mary" three time and then turned around with a little difficulty being we just crowded in closer with every step she completed. She told me to flip the light switch three times, and then all we had to do was wait. I turned my head from looking at her to look at the switch, but stopped and froze when I saw the mirror slightly glow with a blue fog. I don't remember what everyone else was doing. It was as if I went into a trance. I was staring into the mirror as a face began to form in the blue fog. It wasn't 'Bloody Mary' as we all expected, it was a young man's face with beautiful glowing blue eyes, and he was looking right at me! All of a sudden, the light goes on and I am squinting, trying to figure out who broke the spell. Everyone rushes out of the bathroom and out the front door of my house. I just sat there staring into the mirror. I wanted to turn the light back off and see if he was still there, but I was so scared I had peed my pants. I changed clothes and then found my friends sitting outside on the sidewalk. They started yelling at me, asking me if I was crazy, did 'Bloody Mary' put a spell on me, and a million other questions. When I think back now on what my answer was, I think it must have been because they would think I was crazy. I said that I didn't see a thing, that's why I didn't turn the light on and run out. they all gave me suspicious looks but didn't argue. Everyone forgot the incident but me, but that was because things had gotten strange at home. If I walked past the lamps in the living room, they flipped on and off. My TV and radio would cut on and off, change channels and volume by their selves. Doors would open by themselves when I would go to use the knobs to open them. Sounds of cabinets opening and pots and pans clanging in the middle of the night would prompt my dad into asking who was up after bedtime. After my dad went into one of his fits of rage one morning, that night I heard a cabinet open with a creak. I began to cry and I begged it to stop and to my surprise it did, immediately. I realized then this had something to do with me and only me. I tried to communicate with the ghost in many ways, but was not successful until we had moved into a trailer park where I met a girl who said she knew how to talk to ghosts. One night I snuck out and we held a seance. At first, I was very cynical. As she was holding my hands with her eyes closed, I was pretending to concentrate and was peeping through my eyelids at her think about how much trouble I would be in if I got caught. I jerked a little as her hands became icy cold. I peeped open my eyes and she was looking at me with the same glowing blue orbs I had seen in the mirror about a year ago. I tried to jerk away but she held tight and told me in a voice not her own not to break the circle. Once again, I felt as if I was in a trance, held by his blue eyes. He told me his name was Phillip and he just wanted to protect me, because I was like his sister who had died along with him but had gone on to Heaven already. I asked him why he hadn't and he told me because he hadn't chosen to yet, he still wanted to be alive. We had a great conversation for about 10 minutes when his voice began to fade and hers reemerge. His eyes dimmed and became the green of hers again. He said my friend was getting weak and he should go. I asked him how would I talk to him again and he told me to think of him just as I fall asleep and my first dream would be of talking to him. Every night thereafter I would dream of speaking to him. One day, about a week later, my dad was set off by something, no telling what. He came after me, intending to hit me but stopped mid swing and just stared at me. I didn't want to provoke him so I just stared at him with wide frightened eyes. He suddenly turned away and did not speak to me again for the rest of the day. There were many instances like this one, and I came to be a little more brave when facing my father. But there was one time, in fact the last, that my father hit me, and I was not protected by some unseen force. He almost broke my nose when he kicked me in my face. I snuck out that night and my friend called the hospital after seeing my purple face. My aunt met me up there and told the nurses that I must have fallen when I pushed me dad down the steps. I got hysterical and started screaming that I didn't touch him. Later, my brothers told me that dad had seen me sneak out and went to go after me but when he stepped on the first step off the trailer he suddenly flew up in the air about five foot and was knocked into the trailer next to us. I knew what had happened and I smiled a little that my father had not actually gotten away with hurting me. All of my life, up until two years ago, I have had conversations with Phillip and he has protected me, even when I didn't want his help! I will write more about him later after I see how well this story did. Send me and email if you have any comments or questions, or just wanna talk. NEXT EPISODE I am going to start this story where I left off with the last. After the incident with my father, I decided to move in with my mother. My sister-in-law was also living there while my step-brother, her husband, was overseas in the military. My sister-in-law and I hated each other with a passion! She was very two-faced, always smiling at you while she is plotting how she can hurt you. One night it was storming really bad and the lights went out like they always do in Lakeview, so I got out my mom's oil lamp and lit it. Brandy (sister-n-law) hated storms, so I decided I was gonna scare the heck out of her. I started to tell her how I had a personal ghost and he didn't like Brandy because she was so mean and two-faced, and she had better watch out. She was already jumpy, now she was really jittery! I told her what he had done to my dad, and she jumped off the couch and yelled that she didn't believe in ghosts. "If he's real and he wants a piece of me why won't he do something now?" All of a sudden something cracked and Brandy flinched and covered her face with her hand like something hit her. The lantern was out, but we still had a few candles lit so I could see she was holding her hand to her eye. I asked what happened and she said there was something in her eye. I brought her over by one of the candles and saw that she had a small shard of glass right beneath her eye. It had missed blinding her by about 1/4 of an inch. I pulled it out and helped her clean it up. The lights came on a little late and as I was putting the lantern up, I saw a crack in the glass, it was in the shape of a P, with the whole of the P being where the shard of glass had come from. Brandy saw it at the same time I did. She freaked out and called her mom to come and get her ASAP! She didn't come back while I was living there either! This is one of the few times that even I was scared of Phillip, I didn't think that anything would actually happen. After this, I was a little more cautious about what I said and did when it came to my personal ghost and other people. You can email me anytime and ask me anything. Contact me here: deanafinley@sbcglobal.net Submitted From: Deana Finley, TX, USA