I Remember the First Time I Saw the House, Though I Was Barely More Than a Toddler. As

Georgia M. ENGL-1010 Mr. Clark 9 October 2003 Word count 605

GHOST STORY

I have a ghost story to tell, and it’s true. It happened in the 1950’s in the house we lived in. My family moved there when I was four years old. It had been a magnificent home at one time, built at the turn of the century or maybe the late 1800’s. Back then, it had been a stately two stories with a balcony; but now, more than half a century later and after many renovations, it looked like any other older home in the neighborhood. The old porch on the second floor had not been referred to as a balcony in decades. It would be torn down in a couple of years. I remember the first time I saw the house, though I was barely more than a toddler. As we entered the kitchen through the back door I seemed to have a feeling that told me this house was special. As I grew older, I would occasionally reflect on the strange sense of familiarity I had experienced that day, but it did not seem to be bizarre or disturbing. Maybe, as children tend to do, I accepted the unexplained as being a normal part of the universe. One night, when I was eight years old, I couldn’t go to sleep when it was bedtime. From my room, I had a direct view of the kitchen when I was lying on my right side. The moon must have been full, because I could see that the kitchen was light. I lay there, my mind wondering. How much time had passed, I couldn’t say, but, turning on my right side, I looked into the kitchen. The woman walking through our kitchen had hair down to her waist and her gown flowed on the floor around her ankles. She didn’t make a sound as she crossed the kitchen. Her gown, her hair and her face were a shimmering, marble white. She was beautiful. For a few minutes I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even feel any fear. I guess my brain was trying to find a logical explanation for what I had just seen, because I decided to call out to my mother and ask her if she had been walking through the house. She said no. On some level in my psyche I knew that what I had just seen could not have been my mother. At that time I had never heard the expression of a person “being in denial,” but I guess that was an accurate description of my mindset at that moment. For a minute or two I think I tried to come up with an explanation. Then, I put the covers over my head for the rest of the night. The next day, my parents told me I had been dreaming. There was no such thing as ghosts. That was only in the movies, not the real world, they said. I pretended to accept their explanation, but for many nights after that, I looked for the lady in white. I never saw her again, but I heard a story later that gave me chills. The neighbor next door had come over for coffee. I was a little older then, probably ten or eleven. She told about an incident that had happened at her house several years ago. A female relative of her husband’s was spending the night. They awoke in the night to hysterical screams coming from the guest room. The relative swore she had seen a “woman in white.” She refused to ever spend the night again.