Ghost Stories

I have always been able to see things that others cannot. When I was younger, my parents thought that I had invisible friends, which wasn't uncommon for a child. But there came a night when my younger brother woke up crying because of spirits in our room.

My mom ran into our room -- it would have been both parents, but my dad was out to sea -- and saw that I was up and that my brother was in tears.

"What is wrong with your brother?" she asked.

"There are ghosts, Mommy, and they scared him. But I was talking to the little girl in our closet."

My mom took a deep breath and told the spirits that had scared my brother to go away. The harmless ones, she said, could stay. I think she knew, then, that I could talk to supernatural beings. So we lived with them and every day I talked to the little girl in the closet.

When I was eight, my father used to take the whole family to graveyards and other places to work on our family tree. One day, we were in a graveyard, trying to find his grandfather, and I walked away from them because I saw someone. I told my parents and my great-grandmother that I was going to take a walk.

I walked to a bush where an old man -- he was, I believe, between seventy and eighty -- was pointing to a headstone. He told me, "This is my grave. Let your Mommy and Daddy know." I just looked at him and nodded my head.

I went back to them and I told them that I had found the grave we were looking for, with help of an old man. They looked around and told me that there wasn't a man; we were the only ones around, they insisted. But I assured them I had seen a man, and they told me I had too much sun and it was making me see things.

I was irritated at not being believed, but I was also used to it. We went back to my great-grandmother's house a little later, and they started to pull out old photos. I was peering under their arms and around their hands at the photos, too, and I saw a picture of the old man in the graveyard.

I pointed at it. "That was the man I saw," I said. They freaked out a bit, because I had never seen him before, and they didn't think it was possible for me to know what my great-grandfather looked like. He had passed when my younger brother was born.

I didn't see any spirits for a while after that.

Besides some spirits looking like they were from the 50s that I saw in middle school, I didn't see much until I moved to my new home of Westwarwick. My house was new, just built, but there was still a ghost in my room.

When my family finally moved into the house that October, the ghost came back. I asked him what he was doing there and he didn't say anything but hello. He didn't tell me his name. So I gave him a nickname from a book I was reading. because he acted like Jesse, the ghost in the book. Jesse looked like he was about twenty, and eventually he told me he had been poisoned. To this day, he hasn't told me his real name.

Right before my twenty-second birthday, a little girl of about five came to my room. She looked like she was from the 18th century, and she told me her name was Clarisse. Her parents had killed her because they realized they really didn't want her and thought no one should have her.

My friends and I all went up to this place called the Ladd School, just to explore. We went up to the round building, which was marked as the hospital and morgue. We couldn't get in, but we saw a sign that said, "Kiss your ass goodbye."

Thinking someone might still be there, we tried to get in again, but with no luck, so we walked back to the car. On the way, we passed the sign again. It had changed; now it said, "Kiss your corpse goodbye."

That was unnerving. We drove off to another building; there was a swing set out front. Up against the wall was an open door, the point of interesting everyone else flocked to -- but I couldn't keep my eyes off the swing set.

"Via, what are you looking at?" one of my friends asked.

I was seeing kids playing on the swing set and a little girl being pulled by the arm by what I believed to be a doctor or a nurse. The little girl was in tears, clearly not wanting to go with them. A couple of years went by, and I got accepted to JobCor, which is right near the Ladd School. I started seeing things once more. When I was in the auditorium with my friends, watching a movie, I felt something breathing down my neck. It was a bit weird, as I hadn't felt something like that in a long time.

After the movie, I was informed that the school is haunted by Dr. Ladd and this janitor, who would rape the female patients who weren't all there in the head; if they were pregnant, he would kill them.

In my friend's closet, there is a little boy who sits there, rocking back and forth; he is about four years old. In my wing, there is a little boy who walks back and forth but goes into my friend's dorm room. And just last Saturday, when I stayed on campus, I stayed up all night, for there was a spirit in my room.

I continue to have supernatural encounters, and except in very rare case, I am never afraid of them.