Lifelong Experiences

For most of my life I believe I have seen "things" that until I was older, I didn’t realize could be considered ghosts. My humble little story began at the age of 4 (or there about) at my old house, which was just outside of Muswellbrook in the Upper Hunter of NSW.

My dad being a truck driver, would often have to wake up very early to leave for work, and I would often hear footsteps up and down the hallway of our house. I should mention that this house was close to 100 years old, and was used by slave owners as a place of residence while working their slaves, who had the task of digging up sandstone on the land around the house. Anyway, I always assumed these sounds were my dad getting up to go to work, so I paid little attention to them, apart from the occasional times when I would get out of bed to see him only to find no one was awake. After my dad left, the sounds continued, but again I didn’t think much of this.

When I was older, around 10 now, I remember seeing a blue orb floating by one of the windows on our enclosed veranda. The orb was no bigger than a fist, and it floated from the window diagonally to the right of me, and disappeared just before it reached the wall on the other side of the room. Of course, I thought this was strange. It’s not every day you see a ball of blue light float past! But I had no idea what it was, nor had I ever heard any of the theories behind orbs. Small things like this continued to happen through out my life, and when I reached 14, things got scary.

The veranda where I originally saw the blue orb was renovated and became my bedroom, and a wall was built to block a doorway that would have connected my new room to my sisters room. I woke one morning, and in the pre-dawn light I saw an extremely tall figure standing by my cupboard wearing what appeared to be some sort of preacher outfit, with a black wide-brim hat. I also noticed he had some sort of checkered band around his neck. He just stood there, and being too scared to jump out of bed and run to one of my sisters nearby bedrooms, I stuck my head under the covers and waited there for what seemed like hours. When the light outside got strong enough to penetrate my blanket, I poked my head out and he/it was gone.

Whatever it was, it had a terrible presence. You read and hear stories of all sorts of spirits, but most of them can fall into two main categories. Nice? and not nice! This was definitely not nice. That day, I walked into the kitchen to hear my mum and oldest sister talking, and my sister was saying how bad she slept last night. I then told them about what I thought I saw when I woke up, describing in general how "he" was tall and what "he" wore. It was then that my, becoming somewhat scared told me that she had seen the same man standing in the doorway that used to join her room to mine (when it was still a veranda) and that he would never walk past the doorway, he would just look in at her.

After this, we had the house blessed by the Father at our church. I’m not really a religious person, but this did seem to help, neither my sister or myself ever saw the figure again.

Since then, I have moved to a different house, and I still have the occasional run in with strange spirits.

The ones I have encountered more recently seem more like "shadow people" that I have read about on the Internet. As their name suggests, they appear shadow-like and transparent, without full form. Some appear to have smokey flames that come from their body while others appear more like a liquid-shadow. They also have a terrible presence, and seem to only show up to cause me grief and frighten me, making strange sounds and lunging at me, only to disappear in an instant. And it is not only at home that I encounter them, I saw one at my grandmother’s apartment, in Bribey Island, Queensland, and several at my sister’s unit in Brisbane, although these fellows did nothing to frighten me, they just stood there for a while before moving on.

A somewhat humorous story (that seemed a lot more scary at the time!) is one of how my head was "fondled" by something un-seen while staying with my friend in Canberra. My friend and I always fell asleep with a DVD or video on, just because it helped us to relax. One night, the remote was no where to be found, so we were forced to turn the lights out without our movie on, and the room was surprisingly dark. In fact, you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. After laying there for some time in silence, I felt movement above my head, as though someone were rummaging around for something (I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, beside my friend’s bed) and after a moment, a hand brushed past my head, then moved back and rested on my head a moment, before giving me a pat or two. I assumed this was my friend looking for something on the floor, so didn’t think anything of it. Right after this, my friend said "Can you see anything?" to which I replied - "No, why? What are you looking for, the remote?" Friend - "Huh? No? I just asked, ?cos I can’t even see my own hand and it’s right in front of my face!"
Me - *Sitting bolt upright* "What? Didn’t you just? touch my head?"
Her - "Uuum.. No? why?"
Me - *Insert profanity* "SOMETHING JUST TOUCHED MY HEAD"
Her - "WHAT!?"
Me - "Something? just patted me on the head?"
Her - *Profanity*

At this point we leapt out of our beds, turned the light on, and sat there shaking for a while, before deciding we would sleep in the lounge room with a light on!

Thus ends my little series of stories of encounters with the paranormal. I hope you enjoyed reading about them! Because now I’m feeling kind of scared, as I stupidly chose to write this in the middle of the night, after everyone has gone to bed =(