My name is Dakota Dart, I am a 29 year old Native Canadian female. I am intelligent and have never been diagnosed with any mental illness. Now that the informalities are out of the way....On to the good stuff.

My story starts a long way away from home. In 1990, I was a group home resident in Montana. We took weekly outings to different educational locations around Montana and Wyoming. On one occasion we went to the Little Big Horn Memorial. We travelled up the long, windy road to the top. My roommate and I were looking out the drivers side windows of the large van when I saw a Native man dressed in a loin cloth. He wore a beaded breast shield and large headdress. He sat atop a white horse with a red hand print on its flanks. I turned to "Sally" and said "Did you see that?". To which she replied, "Umm,That depends on what you think you saw." Everyone else who was looking towards the graves then wanted to know what we spotted. I told them to look for a traditional Indian on a white horse. When we got around the large rock formations our driver stopped so everyone could see. We could see the whole valley on the back side of the hill but we could no longer see the man on horseback. There is no way anyone so conspicuous could hide in that time frame. We could see for miles. "Sally" and I were freaked out but everyone else figured we were making stuff up.

We concluded our trip by going to the museum by the highway. I asked the curator if they hired locals to ride around for tourists. She told me that local natives consider the area sacred and would never "put on a show" for anyone. I peeked her curiosity and she asked me what I saw, so I told her. She started rummaging around and finally pulled out a photo. She said "Is this who you saw?" I was absolutely dumfounded when she showed me a photo of the man I saw, complete with horse and hand print. I don't remember if he had a name but the curator called him "The Guardian". He appears and disappears and leaves people in awe. I was not afraid of him and his presence has been etched in my mind since that day. I found out later that my birth Dad (a full-blood Dene Indian) had died earlier that year. I often wonder if "The Guardian" was my dad coming to see me for the first and last time. He was on sacred land, a place where heaven and earth touch.

The next encounter was after my oldest was born. In '93 we moved into a haunted 4-plex suite. The T.V. turned itself on and off and once I unplugged the X-mas lights surrounding the kitchen window because the reflection on my computer screen was irritating.(my back was turned to the window) I grabbed 2 sodas from the fridge and went back to playing a game with my boyfriend. A few minutes later we could see the reflection back on the screen. My boyfriend looked at me and said "I told you to unplug the lights, not just flick the switch." I told him that I had unplugged the socket from the wall. We turned around and sure enough the string of lights were on but we could also see the cord dangling past the plug-in. The lights were not plugged into anything but they were definitely on.

I took a stuffed bunny away from my crawling daughter. I had washed it and it's fur was matted. A hole had opened in its seem and stuffing was coming out. I put it on the closet shelf in the spare room until I could fix it. We went to the kitchen, I was washing dishes and my daughter was playing in the tupperware cupboard. 10 or 15 minutes later I noticed that something in the hallway had my daughters attention. I asked her what she was doing and she turned around and showed me the bunny I had just taken away from her. I was miffed as to how she got it and figured it must have fallen off the shelf when I turned around. When I went to take it from her the 2nd time. I noticed that the fur had been combed out and the hole was gone. This kindly spirit also saved my daughter from a fall down the stairs.

My boyfriend at the time and my now husband also saw this occur. By all laws of physics she should have gone down the stairs. She was horizontal to the top landing when she swooped back up and landed in a sitting position on the top stair. (the neighborhood is called Little Harlem, this tidbit will be relevant later).

Sometime after this incident I was at my buddy Ted's place. We were sitting in the living room watching T.V. when the ashtray went missing. We are both smokers and had already smoked a couple of smokes that evening. His place was pretty sparse and we searched everywhere twice. We got a plate to use as an ashtray and Ted told me about his haunted chest. He said no matter what he does he can't get rid of the contents of the chest. We opened it and was full of old clothes, newspapers and trinkets. We dragged the heavy old thing to the garbage chute and dumped the contents down the hatch. We took the empty chest back to his apartment and I left shortly after. The next day I went back and there it was. All the stuff we threw out the day before was back in the chest just as he said it would be. Before you tell me that he rifled around in the garbage just to mess me up you need to know a few things. He lived in a 14 story apartment with a garbage chute that smelt like bodies were dumped in it. The bins at the bottom are surrounded by brick walls and a locked gate. If he'd been able to get the items from the garbage they would have been smelly and slimy. The papers would have been destroyed. It was as if we hadn't dumped the contents down the chute at all.

My best friend David lived in Little Harlem 10 years ago, back when I first met him. Ashtrays went missing at his place too. He always said "wooooo, It's the ghost". A few years later he moved to the hill overlooking "Little Harlem" Not much happened there until one night in particular and nothing happened after.

I was very ill with kidney disease and alone at my trailer. David invited me to stay awhile so that I would be monitored. He and his roommate were having a sports get-together. There was at least 6 guys in the living room. I was sleeping in David's bed and it was only about 7 in the evening. I could feel David put a cool compress on my head and he was stroking my hair. The way your Mom would when your sick. I woke up when he brushed the side of my face. I started screaming when I realized I was alone in the room. David came in right away and calmed me down. I thanked him for getting me a compress but told him I wasn't happy that he had tickled my cheek and ran off. He said I'd been sleeping for 3 hours and that he hadn't been in since the game started 2 hours ago. I handed him the cool compress and said he had to have come in since I had a fever and a cloth would not have stayed cool for 2 hours. The guys in the living room validated his story.

I moved to Calgary in March '98 just after the birth of my 2nd daughter. Things got active in the spring of '99. My daughter went from sleeping all night every night to screaming for hours before exhausting herself out. (This behavior perplexed me until we moved to "the creepy house" more about this later). Little things would go missing and reappear in really wierd places. Keys, wallets, credit and bank cards to name a few. By this time, we had given my little friend a name "Jake". My daughter is 7 now and still blames Jake if something little goes missing and then shows up in a wierd place.

I started to predict disasters after we moved to Calgary. This has nothing to do with ghosts but a week after we moved to the city. My husband mentioned the oil refinery near our trailer. I didn't now what he was talking about. As we went home, he pointed out the refinery across the road from the trailer park. I said in a very flippant way, "Gee, I wonder when that'll go up in flames." Ironically six months later it did just that. Unfortunately, Ryan died that day. It was the Hub Oil disaster. I have predicted many other bad occurrences since. I have learned to keep my little comments to myself.

In 2001, We moved back to our community and into what we call "the creepy house". My oldest was living with my mother and was over on the weekends. She only saw 2 strange events. My husband left the house to get a coffee while the rest of us got ready for a day at my mother-in-laws' farm. When he returned he put his styrofoam cup on the stove. The girls bolted out the door and we followed them into the backyard. They were putting a few sand toys in a bag for the trip. I had put the extra clothes bag in the car while my husband went out to get his coffee. I had no reason to go back in the house. He went back in to get his coffee and lock the door. The coffee was gone. The four of us looked everywhere and finally gave up.

We had a great day and got back about 7 or 8 in the evening. To our surprise the coffee was exactly where my husband left it and curiously it was steamy hot. The other time it was just us girls and Erin the babysitter. I fed all the girls sub sandwiches. My youngest wanted fruit salad and got the container and a fork to serve it. I put the fork upright stuck in a hunk of fruit in front of the girls sitting around the table. As a group we got bowls and spoons to eat our dessert and sat back down. The fork was missing. We looked everywhere around the table and it was just gone. I told the kids to come with me into the bathroom because we were going to try something. I opened the door and stated" Jake, put the fork back where you got it from." I had the girls wait for a few minutes and we returned to the table and sure enough the fork was back in the fruit.

My daughter wouldn't sleep in her designated room. She would cry and tell me about the thing in the closet. My oldest slept in the "cold room". The temperature never got above 18 degrees Celsius in that room. It was the bedroom of the only other person who had ever lived in the house. We swapped the girls rooms. The little one fell asleep right away and slept well for the first time in years. The oldest never mentioned anything in the closet of her new room. Ironically, the guy who lived at the house after us had a small girl as well. I saw him on the street 4 months after we moved out and asked him how he liked the house. He said they moved because his girl would scream for hours at night and talked about the thing in the closet.

My cat would stare for hours at a corner in the living room and into the master bedroom closet. The hangers would tinkle by themselves. At night you could sometimes feel someone sit on the end of the bed. The covers would tighten around your feet. I asked my husband if he felt what I felt and he said that it was the cat. I said it can't be because the cat was sleeping right beside me.

The lights in the master room would turn and off and on by themselves. I was reading once when they started to flick on and off. I got teed off and yelled,"Quit playin' with the lights!" and they turned off. I then stated, "Hey, I was reading here." and they turned back on.

My youngest was playing on my bed one day it was cool outside so all the windows were closed (So I know it wasn't a wind gust). I was in the living room with my husband when we heard a door slam; followed by blood curdling screams. I ran into the back hallway and our door was shut I was trying with all my might to open it but it wouldn't budge. KB was still screaming at the top of her lungs when my husband started on the door. He turned the knob and put all his weight on the door and it just wouldn't open. I finally screamed,"STOP" and the door popped open. KB was blue in the face and shaking uncontrollably when we found her under the blankets.

The chandelier over the table had 6 lights in it. I heard a squeaky noise and then the light darkened and then I heard a little tinkling noise. I heard the noise again and it got a little darker and then tinkling. I heard the noise again and finally took a look at the light fixture because the light bulbs were dying. I got on a chair and to my horror the lights weren't blowing out they were being unscrewed one at a time and the bulbs were falling into the sconce bottoms. I went to bed immediately and covered up my face with my blanket. I closed my eyes tightly and come heck are high water I was not going to open them until morning. The pranks and hi jinx were no longer cute and irritating. Things were getting downright scary.

Faces were seen in windows. A man in a fedora and dark coat stood at the front door (we had a frosted window in the door). We heard what sounded like a military man in heavy dress going up and down the stairs. You could even count the 14 stairs he climbed weird thing is we only had 12.

Something started pushing people down the front steps of the house. We were walking a short distance from our house when KB started stumbling around. She got up turned around and yelled, "STOP IT" Then she looked at me and said, "Mom-Mom make it stop." There was nothing there at least nothing I could see.

I got a little statue of Mary in holy water as a gift from Lourdes. I just happened to put it in the bathroom on the shelf above the mirror. Creepy stuff never happened in the bathroom until one day I was plucking my brows. I had my glasses off and I was sitting on the counter. All of a sudden everything that had been on the counter and the shelves flew off and crashed down around me. I ran out of the bathroom and refused to go back in even to get my specks. My husband thought I had an accident until he went in to retrieve my glasses. It looked like a tornado had gone through the bathroom. I made KB's bed the next day and found Mary carefully placed under her pillow. The only spirit I wanted around was that of the former occupant. I think she was the one who protected the family from the scary ones. KB had a friend that she talked to frequently. I asked her what her friend looked like and she said she wasn't sure because she couldn't see her only hear her.

One morning I caught her peeking out my bedroom window talking to someone. I could hear rubber ducky garden shoes squeaking on the lawn. I asked her who she was talking to and she said,"the nice nana in the garden." I had noticed that the garden was watered every morning when I got up. So logically I figured she was chatting to the sneaky neighbor who was helping me keep my garden look so nice. I got to the window and asked where she went because I couldn't see her. KB responded by saying,"She's right there Mama, Can't you see her?" I didn't see anything besides my watered garden. I was starting to go a little off my rocker at this point. My friends wouldn't come into my house anymore because of fear and everyone else thought I was crazy. I was accused of intentionally scaring the pants off my kid for sick kicks and 15 months after moving in we moved out. I couldn't take anymore.

We moved into a trailer numbered 666 and ironically all obvious paranormal activity ceased completely. The psychological damage has been done but we are healing slowly but surely. The master bedroom door was slammed shut by the wind whistling through the open windows. KB was in our room and freaked out but was reassured when we showed her it was only the wind. Doors in our house are left propped open so they can't slam on their own now and no closets are ever left closed. If KB sees a closed closet she will open it.

The thing in the closet left permanent scars on my daughters psyche. I have dreamcatchers, religious icons and dragons blood to cleanse my house. I wear a long chain with saints and religious symbols weighing heavily around my neck. I will never allow "THEM" to take over my life again. Next time, I'm going to go "Buffy" all over them. I hope I scared the bejeebers out of all you in techno-land. I feel a great weight off my shoulders.

P.S. I ran into the guys who lived next to the creepy house. They were at a night club and asked if I would like to come over to their house party. I must say I chickened out because I am afraid of being near that house. I would like to ask the current residents if they have seen anything out of the ordinary but I can't even bring myself to do that.