Kathleen

Before I start let me explain that I am completely open to other rational explanations for what happened to me, but as of yet I have not been able to find any. That being stated I will tell you my story.

When I was seven years old my family moved into a rental house in a suburb of Seattle, Washington. It was my maternal grandmother, my mother, father and myself. All of the women on my mother's side of the family, I have learned since, have been considered "sensitive". When I learned of this proclivity later in life it explained many things about how we all reacted in this house.

From the moment we moved in my mother, grandmother and myself refused to go into the basement alone. Since I was young at the time my memories are sporadic but I remember a few specific things about the basement. It was reached by a stairway that led from the upper floor to the front door and switched back to go down to the basement. The basement had a den and a laundry room. It also had a storage room. I remember that my mom kept the door to the storage room closed and never used it at all for the year we lived there. I remember that none of the women, including myself, would go down in the basement alone. Even when she had to do laundry my mother would take someone with her for the five minutes it took to put the load in the machine. My most two clearest memories are of a feeling like someone is behind you watching you about to hurt you and of my faithful brave little Corgi suddenly growling at thin air. All of this pales in comparison with an experience that I thought for years was just a dream.

One night I woke up straight out of sound sleep and I "knew" that there was a man in the basement that needed my help. He needed me. You have to understand that I was seven and as a child I believe we are more open to things like the paranormal. We accept many things that adults are conditioned to think of as silly. Being an accepting child I got out of bed and was halfway down the first flight of steps to the basement when I saw a beautiful lady standing on the stairs with me. She was pale with auburn hair and a lilac satin dress on. She was nice whereas I knew the man that needed me downstairs was a mean man. I don't remember if she spoke aloud or I just "knew" what she was saying. I do remember her saying she was a freind of my mommy's and that everything would be fine if I didn't go to the basement. I remember her saying this over and over. Finally I got tired and went back up to bed. I never told my mother about the nice lady on the stairs until years later. We moved from that house as soon as the lease was up.

When I was thirteen my gramma passed on. After the funeral my mother got out a large blue steamer trunk that had been moved from house to house with us. She explained that she had had an older sister who had died at sixteen of leukemia. While my grandmother was alive my mother hadn't ever spoken of her sister Kathy because she didn't want to upset gramma. In the trunk were some dolls and coloring books and pictures of my mom and Kathy. I don't know why but when Kathy died someone had taken a picture of her in the casket. The "lady" on the stairs was the exact image of Kathy in the casket down to the red lipstick, hairstyle and lilac satin dress. At that point I told my mom about what I had seen on my way to the basement that night and she started crying. She said that when I was born she had prayed for her sister to watch over me.

My mother gave me a silver bracelet that had belonged to Kathy and I have never removed it since that day. It is my good luck charm.

There is an addendum to this story. As my mom and I talked about the house we had lived in we found that we had experienced a lot of the same things, like the hair on the back of our necks standing up as soon as we descended that last step and the feeling of absolute evil watching us that disappeared as soon as we went upstairs. My mom decided to do some research on the house and found that the previous owner of the house had killed his wife and left her in the firewood box by the fireplace downstairs and then hung himself in the storage room. Speaking of addendum I have never been able to go alone into another basement.

I don't "know" that Kathy was there in spirit but I "believe" she was.