The Ghosts of my Past, Part One

As promised, this is my ghost story. The real ghost story. I was a very young nine years old when my family moved from the city of Cleveland to a western suburb to be closer to my grandparents. And we had just lost our house.

We might as well have moved to another state instead of a fifteen-minute trip down the highway. Cellphones didn't exist back then. We didn't stay in touch with any of our little group of neighborhood friends. It felt as though we moved to an entirely new world.

The house my grandma found for us was an old two-bedroom farmhouse. My sister and I would share the bedroom at the top of the stairs. My parents' room was also at the top of the stairs, but to the right. A tiny room sat toward the back of their bedroom. It looked as though it may have been an upstairs porch that had been later enclosed. That room was my brother's. He was only 2 when we moved in so my parents set up a small bed next to theirs for him. The only bathroom was upstairs and to the left.

Downstairs was the cold room. We named it that not because of the ghosts but because it was unusable in the winter. There was no heat or ductwork. My mother used it for storage. We used it as our playroom. So the random chills we experienced in that room, were easily explained away.

And the creaks in the floorboards... those were the old house just settling. The furnace was loud but that too had been around for a while. Everything was easily explained away. Or at least we all tried very hard to.

My brother was the first to see things. They came out of the little room by the bed where he slept. One in particular came regularly. It had a flowing dress with long, loose sleeves, no feet. It would drift out and leave the room disappearing down the short hallway. Other times it would sit at the foot of his bed.

(to be continued...)