The Everlasting Experience

I've decided to send you a detailed account of my encounters with ghostly phenomena because I cannot seem to get away from it. Let me start from the beginning: I was born in Okinawa, Japan and have since travelled all over America and back again, and at the moment I live in Delaware, US. As much as I have travelled, I would have thought that the house I looked forward to would certainly not have the same problematic situations as the house I was leaving. Yet everywhere I go I seem to have some encounter.

My earliest memory of something that just wasn't "right" happened in Oceanside, California. I lived on a military base and several experiences happened there.

Once, I woke up in the middle of the night, terrified from a nightmare, and called to my mother several times. When she finally arrived she looked sympathetic with a tired sound in her voice, but the funny thing is I don't recall her saying much of anything, which is unusual. As I related my dream to her, she answered in a serious of nods and facial expressions, and when I asked her about my nightmare she suddenly disappeared! My own mother vanished before my eyes! I was petrified! I called to my mom again and she came in again, this times groggy and agitated, which seemed a little more normal. But I was afraid she'd disappear again and was extremely nervous around her. At this point in time I was around five years old, so I had no concept of ghosts other than skeletons in sheets, and did not have any assumption that what I had seen was a ghost. All I did understand was my mother had disappeared into thin air and I was alone.

Another incident occured in the same townhouse where a friend of mine and I were in my room searching for a rubber snake. In my bedroom closet there was a small crawl space that was not considered an attic although it was located where an attic should be. The crawl space had a small door that had been painted over numerous times and could not be opened anymore. My friend and I were about three feet away from the closet when suddenly my bedroom door opened, leading into a pitch black hallway (at 5 or 6 pm on a summer's eve?) And we both saw red eyes looking in on us. It lasted a few seconds and then it faded away and the hallway was bright with light again. Needless to say both of us fled the room but was terrified of running through that door! After moving to Long Beach, CA, things seemed to calm down a bit, but there was always an eerie feeling in the hallway of my apartment. Seeing as how I've never lived in a house, but always rented an apartment, townhouse, studio, hotel, etc., so I have always lived in a place where many previous tenants lived. I figured it was, by that time, a monster because I lived there from around the ages of 8-11 before I relocated to another apartment in the building. I think perhaps the ghoul followed me beacuse the creepy feelings were present in that house as well.

My most frightening experiences, though, happened while I was living in a Brooklyn apartment in grand ol' New York. Once I awoke to a frightening scene of my bedroom door rattling and shaking violently as if someone wanted to be let out...or in. And the bed I was sleeping on sounded as if someone were jumping or else conducting some physical activity on it because the bedsprings were squeaking loudly but I couldn't feel it moving. Two other witnesses, my mother and sister, came running to the door to see what was going on. They said they watched to door and it wasn't moving at all. The sound continued though, it was quite peculiar. There was also a section of the apartment were one would constantly see some shadowy movement. Sometimes it would be less, just a slight flicker...others you could see an actual figure move across from one room to the other. I always thought it was just my imagination when I saw it out of the corner of my eye until I looked straight at it and watched it move into my parent's room.

My father also had an experience in that apartment when he awoke one night to find a floating mist over his bed. I was in the living room when I suddenly heard him shriek in fright (my father? a distinguished military man, a former marine, who presently worked at a federal prison, shrieking? I was surprised too).

I've also seen faces in my television and heard random people talking in the living room, but was too frightened to go look until the voices stopped. My father has also heard a little boy crying, but it only happened the first couple weeks we lived there, and no one else heard anything. I've felt like there was a man standing at the foot of my bed, watching, on several occasions.

One of the scariest things I've experienced, though, was not so much the visual as it was the emotional. I was in the living room, late at night, when suddenly I had this feeling I was not alone. I had been seeing various shadows move across the bedrooms as I had seen many times before, but that night there were more than usual. I became chilly and walked into the kitchen for some reason I cannot recall. As I walked out, though, I had the most terrifying feeling as if someone was running up behind me and I screamed in surprise and shock because it felt like it ran right into me and right *through* me. Then it disappeared, but the feeling was so horrible I sat down on the couch and couldn't breath, I just watched the corner I has just walked around to get out of the kitchen with wide eyes and a deep fear.

I've also seen a strange man walking down the parking lot ramp with a rope in his hand, looking quite awkward. My building had security guards but I knew them all and this man was unfamiliar. In my stairwell, my friends and I played with a makeshift Ouija board and were chased out with the words "Go Away" and heavy running footsteps in an echoy, empty staircase. This apartment building was crawling with paranormal activity.

I had two ghostly friends in my room with whom I grew familiar with and even talked to, naming them "Jack" and "Jill". They wouldn't respond or appear to me in visions, but I felt them around and have said things like, "Where did I leave my book?" after searching for what seemed like forever, and upon re- entering the room, there my book would sit, on my bed waiting for me as if it had been there all along (which it hadn't). So I didn't mind these two much but they seem to be a weaker presence than the foreboding one who occasionally made his presence known at the foot of my bed. I felt like the two friendly spirits were afraid of this one so I didn't do much in terms of saying hello to the scarier man. I had no doubt, though, that this apartment had at least ten different spirits in it, and those where just the regulars.

I would get random presences like the crying boy and the strange face on the television who would stay from a short period of time and leave.

Now I am currently located in Delaware where I have had minimal problems compared to New York but still there are odd happenings, of which I will send you some pictures as soon as I possibly can (within the next few days). Of these situations there are feelings of dread and cold rooms. My room will sometimes smell like cigarette smoke or peculiar food that seems to be rotting. There are disturbing noises from the empty space up in loft where pipes run and bats live, and maintenence workers spend time fixing air conditioners. I can hear footsteps and loud banging noises, even when there are no maintenence men working. There are also several pictures we have taken, that seem so have some inexplicable mist over them. I am hoping you can possibly give me an explanation to this? I seem to be constantly surrounded by ghoulies, which makes me wonder if I'm not plagued with the same ordeal that poor little boy from "The Sixth Sense" had to deal with.