Chapter 2

There have been many things I have seen over the years that I can't explain. Many of which makes me wonder if I had gone insane when I was younger. Or even sometimes I have wondered if I died in my car accident instead and this is all something else. Several of these stories have been taken from true events that I made into fiction stories.

One I remember well,chapter 3: Who Says Death Is the End. I was in college at the time, living in the dorms. Because I was always depressed, I often thought of death. At Halloween, I had a cheap plastic glow in the dark skeleton decoration hanging on my door and it so happens to be, that of course that night it decides to move on its own.

At the time, my boyfriend now ex-husband, had thought it was absurd that I was freaking out about a decoration of all things. He didn't know what exactly I saw at the time, until years later when other strange things happened that neither one of us could readily explain. The rest of it, however, was made up to make the story more interesting.

When I was a child, I was lonely and bored, so I used to read all kinds of horror stories from various authors including Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Anne Rice. They all fueled my dreams from time to time, but nothing like my real-life experiences did.

For instance: In Charlie, I really did have a ventriloquist doll as a small child. I remember one day my brother Bill came into my room with it in his hands. As a child growing up with parents that never had a lot of money, I was thrilled by the prospect of having something like that given to me.

To this day, I still don't know where he got it from. As I played with it, I even tried to do the ventriloquist thing. Of course, I wasn't good at it, so it eventually sat in the corner, untouched. The first night that it sat there, I started to have nightmares. Strange dreams that ran rampant, because of my highly creative mind.

There were times that I could swear that after waking up, I'd find it in a different place then it was the night before. I would always wonder if my brother hadn't been playing tricks on me to scare me or something. However, one night, it scared me the most.

When I woke up in the middle of the night and my room was pitch black, all I could hear was someone calling my name quietly from the side of the bed. Trust me, I covered my head with the sheet and didn't come out till morning. The moment I did, I made sure to place it facing away so it wouldn't stare at me anymore.

The ghost stories stem from truth, because still to this day I see the shadows float through the rooms in search of something. Perhaps they don't know they are dead or that they are shadows from another time like a memory of sorts that lingers in old houses. One might even wonder if there are bodies buried under the concrete. Because when these old farmhouses were built, there were often family cemeteries not too far from them.

To give you an example: Just the other day I was walking out of the bathroom after washing my hands, when I saw someone pass in front of me and go into the next room to the door. I automatically thought it was my oldest daughter because she had to feed her chicken outside at this time. So, rushing over to ask her something, I look around and see no one there. At that moment, I feel a shiver go up my spine, and then a coolness in the room that wasn't there before. When I walked into the next room, I didn't feel it there anymore and I suddenly felt fine.

Have you always had strange dreams of either falling or flying? I have and I know that my therapist would have said that it was a sign of insecurity. I don't exactly know for sure, because some nights when I woke up, I fell off the bed and landed hard on the floor. So hard that it knocked the air right out of my lungs.

Too many times, have I felt someone staring at me in the darkened living room at night and there was no one standing behind me. Even though, I felt someone touch me. Was it all in my head? I guess I will never know, or will I?

Have you ever watched your animals start to act strange when they stare off at something and there isn't anything there? I get that a lot around here. Sometimes I feel it at the same time and when I look down at my cats, I can see it in their eyes.

So, I ask a question of all of you that don't believe in ghosts and things that go bump in the night. If you heard your name called out from the end of your bed, would you get up to find out who or what it is? Or would you hide under the covers like I have countless times before?