The Black Chandelier

Several years ago my daughter and I had a frightening, ghostly encounter.

First let me explain that the women in my family have always been sensitive to the supernatural. Once my mother was home in bed relaxing and started thinking about her best friend and what she was doing. Suddenly, she heard Dottie's voice and other people's voices. She heard their banter and realized they were playing cards. Dottie was winning. At first, mom thought it was just her imagination, but about an hour later, Dottie knocked on her door. Mom asked her if she had been at the bar playing cards. Dottie said yes. Mom then asked her if she had won. Dottie's eyes grew large, and she asked, "How did you know?" Mom said, "I heard you." Then she named off all the people that were playing cards with Dottie at the bar, and Dottie confirmed that she was correct. Mom even recounted some of the conversations that were going on around the card table.

This was just one of many incidents of my mom "tuning into" people and hearing their conversations, even when she didn't know where they were. Needless to say, this kept me and my siblings on our toes because we never knew if mom would "tune in" when we were up to no good. For this reason, I never doubted my teenage daughter when she claimed to see things.

We moved into a house in Crestline, Ohio. It didn't seem particularly creepy to me, but Samantha always claimed to get an uneasy feeling in the house and would sleep with a light or TV on in her bedroom upstairs. Eventually, she just refused to sleep in her bedroom and would sleep on the couch. But even then, she claimed that she saw creepy things on the floor. She said she never stared at these creatures because she didn't want them to know she could see them. One morning she was especially frightened because she said while she was laying on the couch the night before, one of the creatures rose up from the floor and appeared to be looking directly at her. Samantha said it was all she could do not to stare at it or scream. She closed her eyes and pretended it wasn't there.

I asked Samantha to draw what she saw. Samantha is an excellent artist, so when I saw what she drew, I was shocked! We discussed what she saw, and determined that what she saw was most likely something from another dimension and probably wouldn't hurt her. She just had the ability to see things that most people (thankfully) couldn't.

A few years later, we moved into another house in Crestline. Samantha could still see the creatures on the floor, but she purposely tried to ignore them. One evening, she came into my bedroom to snuggle. She often slept with her head at the foot of the bed, and that was how she was sleeping this night. We were both fast asleep when suddenly Samantha let out a blood-curdling scream. I woke up from a sound sleep thinking she was having a nightmare, but when I sat up, I saw a shadow in the corner of my bedroom next to a window. Normally there was light coming in this window, but on this night there was a shadow that appeared to be a black chandelier in the corner that stretched down from the ceiling about 4-feet. This apparition surprised me so much, I let out a start.

In the meantime, Samantha was crying and apologizing for waking me up. I told her, "I see it." She cried, "You do?!" Then I pointed to the shadow. She was shocked to see the shadow. She said she was sleeping, then felt she had to open her eyes. When she did, she saw an awful face, like a gargoyle, staring at her, and that's why she screamed. Samantha was surprised that we both saw the shadow in the corner. Normally I couldn't see the supernatural things she saw, but I never doubted that she saw them. We stared at this black chandelier shadow - neither of us wanting to make any sudden moves or sounds. After a few minutes, the shadow faded and disappeared, and the normal light came in through the window. We couldn't believe what we had just seen. I got out of bed and told my husband, who had been watching TV in the living room, what we just saw. He didn't sound too interested. Of course, I didn't think he would be since he hadn't seen what we had.

The following day, when my daughter was at school, I walked through the house talking to the spirit we saw the previous evening. I explained that this is our house and it does not belong here. I said I didn't think the spirit meant us any harm, but that its appearance was frightening my daughter, then I asked it to leave.

We never saw another shadow spirit in the house after that. My hope is that this restless spirit finally found peace in the afterlife.