Rude Awakening (2)

I have always been fascinated by "paranormal" events, especially listening to and researching ghost stories. I have had several encounters throughout my life, and thought that I would share a few with you.

I was living with my parents and older brother in an ordinary looking house on the end of a dead-end street in a city near Green Bay, Wisconsin. I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 years old when the events started happening to me in that house. The three rooms where things would happen were in the bathroom downstairs, in my bedroom at the top of the stairs and down in the basement. (Of course... these types of things *always* happen in the basement, don't they...?)

In the largest room of the basement, my brother and I kept our toys... this room was our playroom where we could be rambunctious while we played and wouldn't disturb my dad, who slept up on the second floor during the day time. (He was a police officer that worked the graveyard shift.) To get to the basement, there was a doorway to the stairs leading down. To the left of the top of the stairs was the door leading to the back yard. The staircase was straight and was always dark, even with the lights on. I grew to become terrified of these stairs, especially if I were climbing down them alone. I always felt like someone was watching me at the bottom of the stairs... I never felt like it was an evil presence, but merely that it liked to scare children and tease them. I remember several times falling down the last few stairs, even when I would make considerable efforts to scoot my way down the last 5 steps... you know that motion... where kids kinda slide down each step on their bums, rather than walking on their feet... My mother always thought that I was clumsy, despite my pleading that I was indeed being careful on the stairs. I think that whoever was down there liked to trip me up on the last few stairs. It delighted in seeing me stumble and fall on my face. Note that it never tripped or pushed me from the top of the stairs, as this type of spill might have ended fatally for me... No... it was always a teasing sort of spirit, kind of like the way an older brother or sister plays tricks and rough-houses with their younger sibling.

After stepping off the stairs, you walked straight and entered the playroom, which spanned over to the left. However... if you kept walking straight there was a short door that lead to a sort of closet, where my brother and I kept our collection of board games. This room was always icily cold to the point of being able to see your breath, even in the middle of the humid Wisconsin summers. I abhorred going near this room, often insisting that my brother or father go fetch the game when we wanted to play one. I guess I sort of deduced that whatever was tripping me on the steps "lived" in this room, and I didn't want to have any part of it. I was scared that it would lock me in there or something.

On to the other rooms... the bathroom was located on the first floor, and was the only bathroom in the house. There was a frosted window that was above the bathtub on the wall opposite the door. One time late at night I went in there and saw the shadowy image of the shoulders and head of a man... it was a profile view and he was doing what appeared to be working, swinging what looked like a sledgehammer over his shoulder with both hands. I just froze and stared at it in terror.. I watched it for a moment, at first thinking it was my dad, but I knew that my dad wouldn't be up doing anything like that in the middle of the night. (He would have been at work anyway.) Quickly I forgot about having a need to use the bathroom and high-tailed it up to my bedroom. It was there that I had the most lasting and terrifying experience of my childhood life...

My bedroom was to the immediate right of the top of the wooden stairs that led upstairs... down at the opposite end of the hall was my parent's bedroom, and in the center was a very small room that my mother used as a sewing room. (My brother slept in a room downstairs.) Since most of my toys were down in the playroom, my bedroom was fairly empty... I had a double bed, a dresser and a small shelf that held my large collection of stuffed animals. There wasn't even a closet built in this particular room originally, and my father was in the process of constructing me one... All that was completed was a couple of drywall structures off the wall to the right of my bed, he hadn't even installed a door yet.

One night I was sleeping peacefully on my side, with my back facing the unfinished closet, when I was awakened by a very sharp jab to my lower back, like someone was very forcibly poking me with their finger... It felt like a "wake up and get out" kind of poke. I instantly opened my eyes, initially thinking it was my brother picking on me... It poked me again, harder this time. I sat up in bed and looked around, but no one was there... The air seemed heavy around my bed, dense with a crackling sort of energy. I could still feel the sensation in the area of my back where the thing had poked me, kind of like when you bump into something and know it's going to leave a bruise... So I knew I hadn't been dreaming. Needless to say, I was absolutely terrified and I leaped out of bed and tore off running to my parents room. My mom consoled me and let me sleep with her that night... but that wasn't the end of it... The poking happened several times afterwards. My parents would never let me take more than one stuffed animal with me when I went to bed... so after they tucked me in, I would hop out of bed and grab handfuls of dolls and place them around me in the bed... a feeble attempt at making a stuffed animal cocoon, thus (or so I had hoped) deterring the thing from poking me. Sometimes it worked, and sometime it didn't... I could never tell if it was the same entity that used to trip me in the basement... but its actions were similar in that it never wanted to harm me too badly; it just liked to frighten and tease.

Well, after a long, unsatisfactory marriage, my parents were divorced and I moved with my mom and brother down to Texas to be near my mom's side of the family. Thankfully I was out of the house, but I still built my "shield" of stuffed animals at night, up until I was about to start junior high school. Like I said, it had made a lasting impression upon me... to this day, I rarely sleep alone with my back to an area of the room where someone could walk up and poke me from behind.

I never mentioned the incidents to my mother when I was young, for I was sure my parents would say I was dreaming, etc. When I was older, however, I had mentioned it to her once while we were talking on the subject of ghosts and she was dumbfounded by the experiences that came out of my mouth. She revealed to me that she used to get odd feelings in the bathroom and kitchen of that house when she was home during the day... (while dad was asleep upstairs and the kids were at school) Like she was being watched by an unseen presence... particularly when she would shower. She said she had always chalked it up to an overactive imagination or some sort of psychological effect of being in an unhappy marriage to my father. I've never asked my brother if he had any strange experiences in that house, perhaps I should.

I never got a chance to do any research about the house, to learn about its history or previous owners. Now that I'm older, I'd like to do some digging and see what I can find about the house (if it's still standing...)

I've had some other encounters when I was older in junior high and high school in a house down in Texas, but I think I will save them for another time, as this post has become long enough.