Ghosts, Spirits and My Kids’ Wild Imagination…

Ever since my Grandmother passed away twelve years ago, I have been feeling like I am never alone.  Even if the house is completely silent and free from all and any rambunctious/annoying children, I always feel like there is someone else in there with me.  Being pretty superstitious, and paranoid of everything under the Sun I’ve never fully allowed myself to think of whatever “spirits” may be out there, but after my Grandmother died it had gotten out of hand…

Not only do I have an addiction to pleasing everyone around me, (except for myself) but my constant OCD has now spilled over onto dead people too!  What if the ghost sees how dirty the house is?  Better go vacuum before bed.  What if IT goes to the bathroom and sees my kids’ pee all over the floor?  Better go clean it up.  Is it looking at me while I’m in the shower?  Note to self: buy a new non-see-through shower door…

Days and months after my Grandmother’s passing, the home phone would ring non-stop at all hours of the day and night, and it was always silence on the other end.  This was before Caller I.D.-era so there was no way of knowing where the call was coming from.  The lights would come on at random times, as well as the ceiling fans. It wasn’t until my first child was born that I felt like whatever “IT” was, was actually living in my house.  My son was probably a few months old, when one night he was crying uncontrollably.  There was nothing we could do to calm him down, and as I stood there holding him I turned my back to one of the corners in his bedroom.  His face was facing that corner.  All of a sudden he stopped crying.  It was SO sudden that I thought for sure he was looking at something, but there was absolutely nothing there.  He went from sobbing to laughing within a matter of seconds,which made my skin crawl.  I had goose bumps all over my body as I watched him giggle in delight and stare at the corner of that wall.  Obviously, there was something he was seeing that I couldn’t…  Having a terrible Postpartum depression, I just blamed it on that and tried to move on.

As time went on, the phone calls stopped but the lights and fans in the house continued to come alive on their own, very sporadically.  The same events continued in our second home, but a lot less.  It wasn’t until my son was about three-years-old that I started to get those eerie feelings again.  One day out of the blue he declared that he sees a “man” in the corner just standing there.  It was always a man for some reason…  Then when I had my second son, he too started to see “things”.  While having dinner one night, he yelled out that there is a “Man” walking back and forth in the backyard past our window.  When I asked him what he is doing there, he told me that he is just walking around.  So then I asked if he was a “White” figure or a “Dark” figure, having heard a lot about the “dark and bad kind” of spirits, to which he replied, “White, and I can see right through him”.  Now this child has an extremely wild imagination, to the extent of his teacher keeping a journal of all the things he says during the day, so I didn’t quite believe him at first.  He has been known to weave a good tale on many occasions, with a straight face too…  However, this time it was different.  He yelled it out at the exact same moment as I was having a strange feeling that there was something starring at me from behind the glass door.  As I turned around, my son was pointing to this “Man” walking around in the back yard…

I don’t know, maybe my kids are getting to ‘Mom’s stash of weed’, or just having a wild imagination but something doesn’t feel right.  Its hard to know when my youngest is telling the truth, especially when the day before he exclaimed that on his recent trip to China World he saw all kinds of things,  “And oh my I saw so many different dragons and monsters, and everyone was talking to me in Chinese, and guess what Mom?  I totally knew what they were saying!”  When asked when this “trip” occurred, without hesitation he answered: “When you and Dad weren’t looking!”  Or the time when he had us all fooled by hiding the dog in the closet, telling me she got out and was chasing bunnies down the hill, making me run half-dressed up and down our street looking for the damn thing only to come back to his grinning face as he pulls the poor dog out of the closet…  At that moment, when you realize that a five-year-old just pulled the best April Fools joke on his own Mother, do you threaten to physically harm the child, or feel stupid for not having checked the house first, then run out the door like a maniac???  I am sure my neighbors are used to seeing someone from my household running half-naked up and down the street, that’s not even an issue anymore.  The same kid on many occasions enjoys taking all his clothes off, while chasing the neighborhood kids around.  We don’t condone it, but we also don’t frown upon such behavior either.  Why?  Because I’m just too damn tired to care about what my neighbors think. They know we are freaks, and his nudist ways helps keep people away.  So, go for it kid.

I do however worry a little bit about that wild imagination, and hope that both of my kids are telling the truth about “seeing” various spirits and ghosts around the house.  It is really starting to mess with my head.  I’m not proud of having to tell these “spirits” not to look at the mess upstairs…