.

Things happened slowly at first! 

Submitted by Arillia/Brenda:  parkerb@charter.net

  Imagine what it would be like to sit in your living room with your entire family and hear someone walking around upstairs, knowing nobody is there. Imagine seeing black shadows in one and three dimensional forms darting around your walls and furniture. In July of 1996, this is  how it all began in our house. It was weird, we tried to reason that a stray animal or something had gotten into the house. We passed a large cat like thing on the stairway, in the kitchen, living room, and all upstairs rooms. Eventually we realized that it was not a stray animal, but perhaps an animal who was only with us in spirit. It began about mid July 1996. We, my husband, myself, and our son and 2 daughters, had lived here since June 1, 1993, and had never had anything out of the ordinary happen. My oldest daughter and I, being the only two in the house that were awake, heard three light knocks on the bottom of the front storm door. This is usually an indication that our big gray tiger cat wants in. The cat was nowhere to be found, but I really believe that that is the night I let the first one in. About two hours after the door incident, both my daughter and I heard someone walking around upstairs in the landing...we checked to make sure that nobody had gotten up, but they were all asleep. This was only the beginning. Thinking back to that time so long ago now, I would never have imagined this happening to us. Things were slow happening in the beginning, when I think back, it's like they wanted to break us in slowly, so as not to raise any suspicions. Occasional footsteps sounding in the upstairs landing, catching glimpses of the "shadow cat" as we began calling it, "the thing" when we're really in a rush for words. These first incidents could be explained away in the beginning, but the only ones who really saw the black shadow cat were myself and my daughters. My husband and son thought we were losing our minds, especially me. It seemed like the events would happen for about three months at a time then stop for as many as two to three months before starting up again. Each time they would begin again, it seemed as if it were more active than the time before. By the third appearance of the footsteps, we began seeing large black shadows darting quickly across rooms. Usually the dining room and upstairs landing. We began feeling as if we weren't alone, and were being watched constantly. My husband and son....by this time believers, as they had actually experienced seeing the "black cat", were not able to question the two girls and me any more about our sanity. My husband and myself have both had experiences with the "black cat" in which it actually touched us. It woke me up in the middle of the night by jumping at my chest and I could could sense that it was playing, as I could hear the faint tinkle of a cat collar bell running away from me as I sat up very quickly. My husband had a similar experience one morning when he believes it was trying to wake him up to take our son to work. The only difference is, he awoke to see it sitting on the edge of the bed looking at him, and then it lunged forward and whipped by his head. He still is amazed by the force he felt when it flew past him. On several occasions we've had pounding, hard pounding on the back doors. The pounding has waken us in the wee hours of the night. When you go to see what's going on, it will stop, and nothing is there. Our youngest daughter, who was only about 8 years old in the beginning, has actually been able to touch the "shadow cat". Even at eight, we didn't tell her what we thought was happening in the house. One morning as she was getting ready for school, she looked up from the couch and saw a (I will give her exact wording here) brownish/blackish cat sitting in front of the desk in the living room. She got off of the couch and went over to it, bent to pet it, and her hand went through it and then it disappeared. She then came screaming into the kitchen where I was busy with breakfast dishes to tell me what had just happened to her. I asked her what it felt like, and she said it made her hand tingle and the hairs on it stood up, she also said that the cat itself looked black, but it had a brown outline that had little squiggly things moving around in it. Amazing description for an 8 year old I thought...of course assuming that the squiggly's were energy moving around the cat. I didn't panic too much until the shadows became more than just the cat. When I began seeing over six foot shadows, it became a little unnerving. We didn't get the internet until February of 1997, so by that time, I was so glad to be able to communicate with others who believed and had some experience with this sort of phenomena. Over the last 4 years, we have seen 8 different ghosts, black shadows, etc. We have had them breathe in our ears, my son's bed was shaken one night, the footsteps in the landing and on the stairs continued on, and the black cat seemed to disappear when the larger shadows began appearing. There were days I would be at home alone (kids in school and husband at work), and I could hear the upstairs being torn apart, and yet when I'd go up, nothing would be out of place. It sounded as if the black cat was playing up there. I can tell you that in seeing the many different ghosts here, they usually don't have a defined face. It's more like the shape of a head, but misty features. Even the cat was only clearly discernable by the shape of it's body and it's ears at first. But today, four years later, when I see the cat on occasion, it has been in full color and has it's features, as if it is stronger or something, but you can see right through it. It was under the desk in the living room just two weeks ago, and it startled me because I had just been playing with our cat outside about ten minutes before seeing it and it took me a few minutes to realize it was the ghost cat. Last summer, we quit seeing the ghosts as much, but other things came to light. They now make lots of noises...less footsteps, but we can here them under our beds ruffling around at night. We hear them in between the walls upstairs, they seem to be walking around in them. They speak to us in familiar voices, (i.e. other family members, friends that visit frequently, etc.) it's often times very eerie....especially when you are alone. Also, we have smells now. We didn't experience them in the beginning. The worst is the Cigar smoker, because he will approach you and blow this smell into your face, full force. We also smell a flowery scent from time to time, and cigarette smoke. One in particular, which is the absolute worse, is what we call the "pig farmer". It smells just like someone rolled with the pigs and came into the house. This smell only appears in the living room. The others can be smelled anywhere in the house except the kitchen. The kitchen seems to be a safe haven from our visitors. We have had numerous objects go missing for days and weeks, only to have them return close to where they disappeared from, but never in the same exact spot. Some items have never been found to this day. The weirdest thing thing that has happened to date, is the evening my oldest daughter came to me, white as a freshly bleached sheet, and said, Mom, that thing just took my putty right out of my hand and it vanished into thin air. At the time my daughter was 16, just about a month away from her seventeenth birthday. She had been sitting on the edge of her bed playing with a glob of physical therapy putty. She had held her hand out with the putty in it and was opening and closing her hand when the putty appeared to jump in an arch like fashion out of her hand, fall almost to the floor, shoot backwards toward her bed and disappear into thin air. The same evening a picture had gone missing from her wall in back of her bed. We, my husband, daughter, and I went through her room with a fine tooth comb and could not find either article. We searched the closet, dressers, under the beds, and in every nook and cranny. We did this several times in the next few days and found nothing. Two weeks after this incident, I was going through a box of pictures under my daughters nightstand, when I lifted the box up to open it, there, underneath it was the picture that had been taken, just a few feet from the wall where it had vanished from. Almost three weeks later, my daughter found the putty, melted to her floor, under her bed where we had searched many times and come up empty handed. If you hadn't been there, you would think that these things were all logical mishaps, things we overlooked, But these things have happened so often, that we know differently. It's almost as if they want you to doubt your sanity. In the end it's better to have a sense of humor about these things than to take them too seriously. I'm afraid they would feed on our fear and become very strong if we allowed it. The house itself, is a rental home. We've been here for 7 years and almost two months. I've researched the history of the house that appears on this lot for the first time in 1911. There have been two deaths in the home. That of a 38 year old woman who died of some long illness in 1936. Also a 68 year old man who died here in 1961, also of a lingering illness. I've talked to the girl who lived here the longest, and she only had one experience in the home in here 13 year stay here. She said she saw a man at the top of the stairway when she was six years old. There are many things that have happened and still do happen. If you have questions or theory's, or just want to chat about things that go bump in the "Day or Night", feel free to email me anytime. Sincerely, Arillia/Brenda.

BACK TO GHOSTSTUDY.COM HOME PAGE

Thanks Arillia & Brenda for sharing your story with us.  :)  
.