Budding Awareness in a House Full of Secrets

I have always been sensitive. Some call it intuitive. But I have always had knowledge others weren’t aware of. For example, my mother and her sister decided that my cousin (2 days younger than I was) and I could come up with names for our grandparents independently.

We weren’t influenced by each other or heard anyone speak of it as we lived in different states, my parents and I in New Mexico and he and his parents in Texas. At the age of 2, my grandparents came to visit, and I ran outside yelling for my Papa—exactly what my cousin had started calling him. How did I know his “name?”

In elementary school, I would anticipate the teacher by pulling out the book and opening to the page I thought she would want us to open to, and I was right more often than not. It became a game for me. It was also at this time that I would have a strange vortex shaped object that would appear in my vision, always in my left eye, which I now understand as an Einstein-Rosen bridge.

Why was it there? I am not completely sure, but I suspect it has to do with my growing understanding of mediumship and crossing spirits over into other dimensions.

The older I got, the more I realized that strange things happened around me. One year I just HAD to get this toy that was light activated. It was a nondescript shape of a creature wearing a dark blue cloak.

It had two small lights for eyes and one for a nose. When it detected a change in light levels it would twitter a maniacal mechanical giggle that was fun—when expected.

I had a basement bedroom at this time, with little light coming in at night, certainly no light changes. When this toy started giggling in the deep dark of night I became so afraid I removed the batteries. When it sang out without those batteries being replaced, I threw it away.

There was also a time my favorite, yet outgrown, stuffed doggy got lobbed at my head by an invisible hand! And I don’t know how many times I heard my name whispered behind me when no one else was home!

An Old Home

Around the same time, 7th grade or so, my father got remarried and moved into my step-mother’s home. I had visited this house many times over the years as before the marriage my step-mother was a close family friend and I knew my new step-sisters well.

The house was large (3 stories), dark, and old…really old—built in 1895. I never felt very comfortable in that home, preferring to play outside on the trampoline to feeling like I needed to keep looking over my shoulder.

My father and step-mother worked hard to renovate that house. They brought light and love into the home. I had a bedroom on the third floor, plainly furnished. Since I split my time between there and my mother’s house, I didn’t have much by the way of possessions there at the time. One thing I did have was a Magic 8 Ball.

My little step-sister and I would sit in my room and ask it questions. At fist we were just playing around, but one day while we were goofing around, my bedroom door opened by itself. In our infinite preteen wisdom, we grabbed the 8 Ball and started to ask pointed questions to the “ghost’ we quickly named George.

Naturally, we received typical Magic 8 Ball answers such as “It is certain” and “Don’t count on it.” The next day, however, when the door opened again, we picked up the 8 Ball only to find that there were bubbles inside the small window and it would no longer show a single answer. Maybe this is a common flaw of this toy—but we attributed it to the spirit we were sensing not wanting to be questioned.

A Sense of Menace

At the time that I entered high school, my mother moved to another town, taking my little brother with her. I decided to move in permanently with my father. I took my little brother’s room which was on the second floor and across the hall from my dad’s bedroom. This is when things really started to get weird.

Up to this point, I had been used to some strange activity like the door opening on its own, the strange behavior of the light toy at my others, and that unsettling whisper of my name, but I wasn’t really prepared for the fear that can come with these experiences.

A sense of menace and heaviness always seemed to be oozing out of my parents’ room like a miasma. I could never get by it fast enough. One Christmas my little step-sister and I decided to pull a prank on my dad by getting one of his sweaters out of his closet and wrapping it to put under the tree.

Getting up the guts to enter that room was nearly impossible. We worked as a team to get in and out as quickly as possible—not because we didn’t want to get caught, but because that sense of impending doom and the sheer terror was palpable.

Things started to disappear in the house. My father’s suitcase that he took on business trips dematerialized out of that same closet without a trace—for 3 years! As the family was packing to move after I left for college, that suitcase reappeared covered in dirt. One time an entire set of dishes went missing out of the kitchen. I don’t think those ever came back. My step-mother would say they “went to the other side.”

Contact Established

After moving into my new bedroom, I started to wake up in a panic with a shadow hanging over me. I began dreaming of a girl—not always the same age, but always the same girl. I would have a particular sensation right before she would appear in my dreams—my heart would feel like it was sinking in my chest.

I attributed this to fear at the time, but now after 25 years of experiences, I understand that this is how it feels when an uncrossed spirit near. In one dream, I was doing my hair in the bathroom, looking in the mirror at myself. There was movement in the claw foot bathtub behind me and I felt that heart sinking feeling.

Up popped a little girl, the same girl, around the age of 4. She had curly brown hair pulled up with a red ribbon and a dark blue sailor dress with a matching red tie. I remember laughing and picking her up like she was someone I had known for a long time. I carried her through the house to show my dad so he would believe me about the house being haunted.

Another dream not too long after that included the same girl, but in high school this time. She was wearing a long letter sweater, a calf length pencil skirt and saddle shoes. Instead of direct interaction with her, I was watching like it was a movie. She was preparing for school, and judging from the hair style and clothes, it appeared to be the late 1940s or early 1950s. She was excited because she heard a rumor her crush was going to talk to her and she wanted to look her best.

The next night, I had a dream within a dream. I dreamed that as I was preparing for bed I left a pencil and paper beside me on top of my covers. I said out loud to the girl that I would love to communicate with her, but it would be easier if I knew her name. I told her that she is more than welcome to write her name down for me while I sleep.

In my dream, I fell asleep. While asleep I felt that heart sinking sensation. I woke up, but being afraid, I stayed as still as possible. I knew she was right there! I could hear the pencil on the paper as she wrote her name! I opened one eye and saw her.

She was in the same letter sweater with her hair in a pony tail tied up with another red ribbon. I knew it was the same girl from the previous dreams. She wrote down her name. Aileen.

She saw me and gasped. That scared me completely awake. My heart was pounding so hard. I couldn’t get the sound of that pencil out of my head, but I knew it was only been a dream. And now I had her name.

Heed the Warnings

I had recently started dating a young man who lived a few blocks away. He was in a couple of the same classes, and I noticed him walking by my house often after school. We spent more and more time together during my senior year of high school.

One day he was on his way over to visit me, walking from his house to mine. It was night time, about 8 PM. The sun was already down. Alone in the house, I headed to the third floor to wait for him. The room that used to be mine had been turned into a TV room and I kicked back on the bed that was in there to relax.

Just as I was getting into the show, there was a series of loud banging and knockings coming from the first floor. Assuming my boyfriend had hoofed it quickly over, I ran down the three flights of stairs and flung open the front door—but no one was there. I ran to the back door. Again, no one was there. I checked all the windows. Not a soul in sight. So, I headed back upstairs.

As soon as I got settled back down in front of the TV, the crazy banging and knocking returned. I ran down stairs for a second time. No one at the front door. No one at the back door. No one anywhere around the house. Thinking maybe some hooligans were up to no good, I called out into the night, “That isn’t funny. I will call the police!”

I made sure the doors were locked and went upstairs, again. Fear crept in as I felt my heart sinking. I didn’t like it. I didn’t even reach the top of the stairs again when the knocking and banging returned. It must be the spirit in the house. I could feel it. I went to the back door this time. My boyfriend was approaching the porch, his face swollen with a goose-egg over one cheek, lip split and bleeding.

We hurried inside, and he told me that he had been jumped in the alley. The girl spirit must have been trying to warn me!

It All Comes to Light

Later that week, my boyfriend’s mother took us out to eat at a Chinese food restaurant. It was the first time I had Chinese food, so I remember it well. He told her about what happened in the alley, and I chimed in with my experiences with the crazy knocking like I was being warned.

It was at this time that his mother told me that her mother grew up in my house. She remembered playing in the home that was then owned by her grandparents as a child. My mouth fell open. I asked what her mother’s name was. “Aileen,” she said, and she had died several years prior.

Was it possible that I was dating the descendent of the ghost haunting my house? I believe so. This was my first encounter with an intelligent spirit who had not left this plane, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

I left for college just a couple of months after this incident. My family moved out of the house a few months after that. I have had consistent nightmares about spirits in that house ever since. 17 years later my parents moved back to my hometown.

They lived in a different house, naturally, and split up a few years ago. When I contacted my step-mother about photos of that old house for this article, she told me that she had just repurchased the home and is in the process of moving back in.

I think that house has reached out to me over the years through my dreams and reached out to her as well. I am curious as to what the future of that house, and my loved one back in the home, will bring.