Hair Pulling

I've lived in this house on So Cal for about 10 years now. Nothing too exciting about it - no deep dark secret. The very first occurrence happened to my sister and grandmother within the first six months that we lived here.

My grandmother was visiting from Mexico, and was to share my younger sister's bedroom, who was about 6 or 7 at the time. They were asleep, when at about 1:00 a.m. or so, my grandmother was awakened by a squeaking noise. As she got a bit more awake, she also noticed a bumping sound on the floor. She looked around for the source of the noise, and looked to my sisters bed right next to her. She noticed that the bed was shaking quite a bit, but my sister was still asleep (she's a very heavy sleeper). This was not an earthquake according to her as nothing else was shaking.

My grandmother is a VERY religious Catholic, so she took her rosary and began to pray. As she began to pray, the shaking got more and more violent. This finally woke my sister up, and she began to scream her head off, and jumped to my grandmother's bed. Immediately the shaking stopped. My grandmother comforted my sister and told her it was only an earthquake, and that they should pray. The next day, grandma told my mother. As far as everybody was concerned, there was an earthquake during the night ? though nobody felt it except for my grandma & sister. I thought it was kind of strange that my sister told me how strong the "earthquake" was and yet it wasn't reported on the news. The truth regarding this story was never told to anyone-not even my sister until about 8 years later.

Fast forward to eight years later (we still didn't know about the bed thing). My parents were having a lot of problems. Dad thought Mom was cheating on him, etc. Mom just said it was a jealousy phase that all men eventually go through, and that she would never, ever cheat on my father. I believed my Mom 100%! There's this belief in my family that if you are unfaithful to your partner, some huge tragedy will occur to your family ? most likely your children. We've seen this over and over again, and even I believe in this. Well, strange things started to happen. We'd hear footprints up and down the hallway. I also came to hear a weird flapping sound in the hallway. Like if a huge bird had flown in the house. My father checked the attic, and nothing was there. We also had a lot of cats around the house, and they definitely would have scared away any birds. For some reason, my sister and I became very afraid of walking through the kitchen at night (we didn't find out about each other's fear until about 1 year later). Mind you by this time I was 19 years old, married and had a six month old son.

My husband and I were renting out the back half of my parents' house, and shared a bathroom with them. One day, I got home from work, and nobody was in the house. Everybody was trying to get away from their problems it seemed like. Anyway, I was filling up the tub to bathe my son. I was sitting on the edge of the tub with my son on my lap, and with my back towards the open door which led to the main hallway. I was just about to put him in the tub, when I felt a Really hard pull on my hair. I immediately got mad, turned around, and was about to cuss out my husband for scaring me, (he had the habit of pulling my hair), when I noticed no one was there. I felt my heart drop to my stomach. I then picked up the baby and walked around the house calling to my husband and asking him why he was home so early (I was still trying to rationalize this). I yelled out to him to stop playing. I never found anybody in the house, and the only car in the driveway was mine.

Funny how somehow, this didn't scare me as much as I think it should have. I calmly went back to the bathroom, bathed my son (with the door closed this time), and when we finished, locked ourselves up in my room.

I guess I reacted this way because I had a need to maintain control for my son's sake. But the minute someone came home, I began shivering, and really freaked out. I told my dad the whole thing, and he started to tell me about all the things that he had been hearing in the house.

One of the things he mentioned was of him placing recorders in the house to "catch my mom and her boyfriend in the act". He said that there were a lot of unexplainable noises in the house, including a noise that sounded like if a big piece of flat aluminum was being bent back and forth. Also footsteps, music, etc.

My mother did not believe in any of this and said it was our over-active imagination - a sign of a dirty conscience ? mainly my father's for spying. But soon, she started to hear the same things. So she called on a priest friend of ours to bless the house. My family also started going to church regularly. These things didn't stop though, until my mother and father finally fixed their problems.

I don't know if the first occurrence and these last ones are related or not. Maybe it was some kind of poltergeist or something acting up in our house because of the many problems, stress, and bad vibes going around the house. I don't know what it could have been, but we haven't had problems of that nature for about 4 years now ? besides the dead relative visiting. But I'll leave that story for another day.