What Are You?
Annie Tyler, California, USA
October 1998
Iwas sixteen years old and every day after school when I got home I would have something to eat and take a nap because I have always been a night owl and stay up way to late and I always would get sleepy around 4:00 p.m. My sister and I shared a room with twin beds. I was taking my usual late afternoon nap with the bedroom door partially open when I was awoken by a presence in the room. I automatically turned my head toward the foot of my sisters bed and saw a figure sitting there dressed in a hooded robe or cloak with its hands resting on its lap and head tilted down like it was looking at its hands. I could not see any facial features, only the outline of the head and shoulders, which only looked like a person sitting there. The bedroom was partially dark with light coming in from the hallway and it was now about 5:00 p.m. I turned away from the figure thinking it was my sister. As I turned my head and closed my eyes to go back to sleep, I thought, what is she doing sitting in the dark like that?. I turned my head back to the foot of her bed and this figure was now sitting in the middle of her bed bending forward looking at me. It reminded me of the outfit that Father Time wears. I was staring into its face trying to make out who or what it was when two shinny lights came from where the eyes are suppose to be. The harder I stared the brighter the lights got. I jumped up and ran down the hall and told my mother I just saw a ghost. She went into the room, but it was gone. I slept in my brothers bedroom that night with my heart in my mouth. I was terrified. I never saw anything else like that since, but three years later when I was pregnant and my husband was in prison I had spent several days visiting my parents and in that same bedroom while I was making the bed I heard a mans voice call my name and it sounded just like my husbands voice and I came out of the bedroom and hollered at my mom that Tony just called my name and he was here. I went outside and started calling his name and looked all around the outside and inside of the house calling him. I know I didn't imagine it. Someone called my name as clear as day and it startled me when I heard it. I didn't know what to make of this and why these events happened. Years later we divorced and I heard my ex-husband was playing Russian Roulette and the gun went off and he died. I am 57 years old now and these events are just as vivid now as when they happened when I was a teenager.