i have seen ghosts twice in my life. This story is,
unbelievably, about 22 years old; it is the first, and most
dramatic of my experiences, and occurred when I was a
college student living in Woodside, California, at my
uncle's home.
One of his neighbors, Connie, asked if I would like to
house-sit for her one Friday and Saturday. She was willing
to pay me, and as she had a then-15-year-old son, who
would be spending time at a friend's, I think the idea was
to have a slightly-older and responsible person sleeping in
the house to keep him from having a party during her
absence! I was told I could bring a friend, and I did - my
best girlfriend at the time, Michelle.
Our Friday night was fairly uneventful. The house is in an
upscale, wooded part of Northern California, so Michelle
and I enjoyed eating "chick food" and drinking wine,
looking out over the lovely view from the wraparound deck
of the home. Two odd things happened: I noticed
that, whenever I went outside, I would close a gate that
led from the driveway - which was relatively steep - to the
house. But every time I saw it, it was open again. Connie
had mentioned there might be workmen around the house, so I
assumed that they were somehow leaving the gate open -
although I never saw anyone work on the house. (This gate, I'll add, led around to the lower part of the
house, the room in which Michelle and I were staying. More
later.)
Also, we were drinking iced white wine (we were 20, what
can I say) and Michelle's glass just exploded in her
hand, basically. But we were sure that it had something to
do with the ice cubes. Maybe we were right.
Saturday night, or early Sunday morning, we were
sleeping in the "guest room" downstairs from the living
room. It was actually a sort of games room/TV room with a
wet bar and a stone fireplace that ran upstairs into the
living room. We were awakened by the glasses in the wet
bar tinkling together. Now, this is Northern California,
mind you - land of the earthquake - and we were sure it was
just a small tremor, because when we turned on the light
the clinking stopped. Examination of the bar showed
nothing broken or out of place. So we turned out the
lights.
A moment later, not only did the glasses begin to make much
more violent tinkling - there was a waist-high soccer game
in the room (you know, the pre-electronic sort of game that
is operated manually by flipping the soccer players) and
the players were spinning around! Well, we were scared to
death and decided to run upstairs. My friend Michelle
claims she felt a "whoosh" go UP THE FIREPLACE to the main
floor living room. Which is where we decided to turn on
every single light and wait until dawn.
There was an L-shape couch in the living room and Michelle
and I each claimed a different "leg" of the couch. I
decided to make coffee, came back from the kitchen, sat
down on the right-hand (from the seated person's
perspective) leg of the couch; Michelle sat on the left
leg, so there was a 90-degree angle between us, on my left
side and her right side.
Out of the corner of my left eye I saw, laying next to me
on the couch - my side of it - a little curly-haired boy. He had
dark curly hair and was about 4 or 5 years old. I decided I was
mad, it was peripheral vision after all and we'd
certainly had an out-of-the-ordinary experience and were
hyper-vigilant, I reasoned.
A few minutes later, I had to ask: "Listen, I just saw..."
I was interrupted by Michelle, who said "..a little boy on
the couch?"
We saw the same thing.
A few hours later, after dawn but
still quite early, the teenage son of the house came home.
We told him about our experience. Was there any little boy
who had been around the house?
This was odd, because he didn't seem surprised that we'd
asked. And he told us he had had a brother, who would have
actually been slightly older than he; as a young child, he
had been struck and killed by a mail truck while he rode
his bicycle down the steep driveway.
I also asked Connie about it at the time: Anything odd
about the house (I didn't mention the child, fearing it
would upset her). She declined, but there was something
odd about it - she didn't really want to talk about it.
My opinion now is that the son was afraid to stay in the
house alone and that Connie was well aware that there was
potential for some sort of paranormal activity.
This story comes from Woodside, California, where it
occured c. 1980.
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