When You're Not Looking

I`ve always enjoyed ghost stories as a child and carried it over to my adult life, but I never thought I`d have an experience with spirits myself.

It started when I moved to Massachusetts from Pennsylvania in the early fall of 1994. Now there are many ghost stories associated with New England, Salem, MA, being well known for the Witch Trials, with many innocents falling victim to the "hangmans" noose. Poor tortured souls that are said to still roam the cobblestone streets and homes of which some still stand to this very day.

My experience began a few months after my husband, three children and myself moved into our first apartment. It always seemed that the air was really thick, unless you`ve had that kind of feeling, it`s hard to explain. We (my husband and I) seemed to have a lot of disagreements, and a feeling of being agitated, but not knowing why.

One night after one of our (it seemed like many) "disagreements", I decided to sleep on the sofa. I fell asleep facing the back of the sofa. I awoke with that kind of "wide awake" feeling, and the strong sense of someone watching me. There was a chair in the corner of the room, and thats where I felt I was being watched from. The feeling was so strong that had I turned to look, I felt I would have seen it. I felt it was a man`s presence and that he was extremely angry. I was afraid to move. I covered my head with my pillow and tried to go back to sleep. My heart was racing and I just lay there, waiting for it to get light outside. As soon as it became light I flew out of that room not daring to look at that chair.

After that night, before I entered any room, I would stand in the doorway and look around first. I asked my husband and children if they felt anything, they just looked at me funny and said, "Like what"?.

Well a few weeks went by and nothing happened. I just attributed my feelings to bad nerves. Maybe I wasn`t getting enough sleep or maybe too much caffeine, yes, that had to be it. Jittery jumpy nerves from too much coffee, I`ll just cut back, I thought.

One afternoon, my daughter, son and myself were in the kitchen having lunch, talking, and joking around. All of a sudden the television volume turned way up all by itself. We all looked wide-eyed at one another and went in the living room to check it out. I just laughed it off thinking the TV must be giving out and we need a new one. But when my daughters stereo started turning on by itself and noises (like pages in a book were being flipped through really fast) were heard coming from her room, I really started to panic.

Then the lamps in the living room started to turn on. That was when we moved out.

A few years later, a friend (she grew up in the area) and I were discussing our experiences with the "paranormal" when I related this story to her (at the time, she happened to live down the street from that building). She said, "Oh, didn`t anyone tell you about that place"? I told her no, I knew nothing about it. She then proceeded to tell me that it was a boarding house years ago, and that when a local "state hospital" (a place for the mentally ill) was closed down, a few of the "patients" took up residence there and that there was a terrible fire that claimed the lives of 17 people. As soon as she said that, I got goosebumps. The poor souls don`t realize they are dead and still live there, and I guess my ghost thought I was invading his "home". God Rest His Soul!