Was It a Coincidence?

Everything just seemed to happen so fast.. I never even had time to recover from one death before another one happened. I was only in elementary school when all of this occurred. The first death being my choir teacher and the high school basketball team, the second death was my uncle, and the third...my newborn nephew—all occurred in January of 2008. Ten years later and I’m still not sure if it was my mind playing tricks on me because I was overwhelmed with all the sudden deaths of loved ones and people whom I cared for or if it actually happened.

I was at home with my mother and father who were in bed sleeping peacefully. I kept tossing and turning, so I went downstairs to get a glass of water, hoping that would help so that I was able to go back to my deep and peaceful sleep. What I had seen, though, would have scared any child. As I got down the stairs, I was rubbing my eyes tiredly, about to walk through the living room to go into the kitchen when I had run into something that stopped me in my tracks. I was really confused as to what I had run into, so I had slowly looked up, taking a few steps back. In my doorway, there was a girl in a white nightgown who had seemed to have committed suicide. She was hanging there with a rope tied around her neck. It scared the living daylights out of me. I ran to my mother's and father's room crying, not knowing how to explain it to them without seeming crazy to them, so I had kept quiet and said I had a nightmare.

The second encounter I had was with my uncle who had passed away, except I wasn’t scared, I was in disbelief. Yet again, I couldn’t sleep, so I had went downstairs to get another glass of water, just to halt three quarters of the way down the stairs. My uncle was sitting at our computer, looking at something and had swirled around in the computer chair to look at me, and we both just kind of stared, not saying a single word. Even if I could have said something, I was in too much of a shock to really speak. I had watched him fade away into thin air. Once he was gone, the computer was shut off, but the chair was still turned facing me. That’s how I knew I wasn’t completely crazy, considering every night before I went to bed, I would always tuck the chair in under the computer desk. I tucked the chair back under the computer desk, then proceeded to go get my glass of water. I was more at peace knowing it was the friendly spirit of a loved one, compared to the previous night. I kept this a secret as well, up until just recently when I finally told my parents during our conversation of paranormal activity.

My third and final encounter of this horrible month that I wish I could just forget and not have haunt me every day of my life was the same girl as my first paranormal encounter. It was the girl that wore the white nightgown and had committed suicide. Compared to the first encounter, this time...it was different. I was petrified. It started out the same as the other, not being able to sleep well and going downstairs for a glass of water and bumping into something on my journey to the kitchen, just this time…it was different. Horrifying, actually. Instead of hanging from a rope like when I first saw her, the rope was hanging along the side of her and she was standing in front of me. As I slowly started to look up with fear in my eyes, she started to look up as well while taking a step closer to me. By then I had seen enough and turned around as fast as I could, running for my life up the stairs straight to my room, closing the door behind me and jumping into bed, crying, scared of what might happen next. After about a half hour or so and nothing unusual happening, I had finally gone back to sleep, still shaken from what I had just witnessed.

I couldn’t bear to tell anyone what I had witnessed because of the fact that the people I did tell thought I was hallucinating or that I was lying. Ten years later and it still haunts me, but I kept it as my dirty little secret. I don’t even think I told my fiancé. I can’t help but think that my sightings occurred because of the death of my beloved uncle and nephew, that their deaths had brought me the gift of seeing the supernatural. Is it all just one big coincidence? Was it because I was heartbroken and hallucinating, or did it actually happen?