Christy

There are skeptics who will read this, but I guarantee it on my life that my experiences were real, and forever cemented my belief in spirits and the after life. I never believed in ghosts until my family moved into a very nearly condemned house. You know, fixer-upper. Big city, little money, you know the deal. We didn't know that there had been a murder in that house until after we moved away.

It took almost 2 years of continuous work, but we made that house beautiful. It was a big house, and we were renting for next to nothing because our landlady lived right next door, but it was nowhere close to perfect. Even though it was a big house, the set-up wasn't that great. My sister and I had to share a room. My other sister got to sleep in the basement, although how she did it after what started happening, I have no idea, my brother got his own room for a while, and my parents shared a room, obviously. Well, after a while, we loved the house. It was bright and had lots of windows, perfect for heating and cooling. We had a huge living room, a huge dining room, and a huge kitchen. It was perfect for our huge family.

Everything was pretty normal until we cut down the giant pine tree in the back yard. I don't know why, but I think that unsettled whatever spirits were there. I've learned since then that spirits don't like change in their environment. Some unexplainable events started happening; weird things that I could only categorize as paranormal. This wasn't the first time I had encountered paranormal activity. In another house we used to live in, we could hear the spirit of an old man walking around at night, almost as if he were on patrol. I remember one time I had gotten a balloon, and drew a face on it with a marker. As the helium started leaking out of it, it didn't sink to the floor like a normal balloon would. It seemed to be caught in the middle. It drifted from room to room, the face always pointing forward. We tried pushing it to the ceiling and to the floor, but it stayed right there in the middle drifting to each room for couple of days, until we finally found it on the floor next to the couch. We moved not long after that.

My sister and I, like I said before, shared a room. It was very easy to hear voices carry up the staircase, seeing as we were right off the landing. But sometimes we would hear someone call my name from downstairs, and no one was down there. I never felt frightened, only curious and confused. At first you try to dismiss the voices carrying up the stairs, you find excuses. Mostly you can blame it on your imagination, but that only goes so far. The reality was someone was calling my name when no one was home.

The next instance was one night, my sister was already sound asleep, but I was having trouble because I had an uneasy feeling. This would be an experience I couldn't blame on my imagination. I felt a force bear down on me while I was trying to sleep. A heavy breathing filled the room. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, but a minute later it passed. It was around that time I realized whatever was inhabiting that house had singled me out. The thing had never called my sister's name, even though she was hearing the same voice. It had progressed so now not only did it sound like someone was calling my name from down stairs, but right outside my door, and sometimes right behind me.

After school one day, it just so happened I was home alone for an hour or so. I decided to play with our new computer. This was only the second computer we had ever had, and this one was far better than the one before it. It was a Christmas present, and it only being February, there were still things we hadn't discovered. I found out that we had a voice recorder. So, just experimenting, I let it run the entire time through, without saying anything. I wanted to know what it would sound like if I just let the recorder run. Well, playing it back normal, I heard something that I knew I hadn't heard while recording. There was no noise made during that time, not even a squeak from my chair. The bird was even unusually silent, which is strange, because usually she whistled like a maniac whenever she knew there was someone within earshot. Well, the noise was almost indecipherable, but hearing it a couple times through, it sounded like a cry for help. What was exactly said was " Noooo! Doooon't!" It was a very pitiful sound, of someone wailing, especially if you can't identify who or what that someone was.

As soon as someone got home, I let them listen to it. They brushed it off; saying that it was an effect from the computer, or that could have been a car driving past. But how can they explain the unmistakable sound of someone, a woman none-the-less, saying "no, don't". And our house is silent, unless windows are open. We were set back far enough from the road to where we couldn't hear the cars if all the windows and doors were closed, and being February, they were. My mom said it could have been the heat vent, but since when do heat vents talk? I recorded in complete silence; nothing could disprove the existence of that voice on our computer. Of course I saved it, and tried to record in total silence again, but it was a rare afternoon that I got alone. With 6 people in your family, hardly a moment goes by when at least one person isn't home.

Finally, after all of that, I saw her. I knew it was a girl, or a woman, because whenever we heard someone call our names, it was a woman's, and I had recorded a woman's voice. I had gone into the basement to put a load of laundry into the washer. My sister's basement room was right next to the laundry room, and there was no wall that separated it, only a long table, and a chair move against the washer. When you are looking straight at the washer, or in my case, in it, you can see the chair slightly out of the corner of your eye. I bent down to pick up some more clothes from the basket I had brought down, and when I straightened, I saw out of the corner of my eye, a figure that hadn't been there a second ago sitting in the chair.

As soon as I looked directly at the chair, there was nothing there. It didn't take but half a second, but her image had been burned into my memory forever. She had long dark hair, very straight, ending near the middle of her back, wearing a red v-neck shirt that was form fitting, and a black skirt that seemed to be made of leather, ending right above her knee. She was light skinned, and fairly modern looking. I hear a lot about hauntings by spirits that had died hundreds of years ago, but not her. She had to have died within the last 10 years. The funny thing about seeing her though is her image was blurred, but her face is even more so. I could tell exactly what kind of clothes she was wearing, but I couldn't tell anything about her face because it was so blurred.

One night, my sister was having a get-together with a bunch of friends. My mom had just bought a digital camera to go with our new computer. It was a new toy that we all started taking pictures with. We took a whole bunch of group shots, and funny poses. I remember we only took 21 shots, because I was the one who took most of the pictures. My mom loaded the pictures onto the computer and there, in between frames 17 and 18, with no number attached to it, was a girl with long dark hair, a red shirt, and black skirt, sitting on the couch, looking straight forward. We caught her profile, and she looked exactly the same as when she was in the basement. I recognized her instantly. It was an odd picture, because the entire frame was out of focus, and she was faintly outlined. Her feet seemed to disappear, and let me just say, it scared the heck out of every girl at that party. Also, no one was wearing a red shirt. Not even my brother. It had to be Christy.

Christy was the nickname I gave her for unexplained reasons. It was just a name that popped into my head one day, and that was her name. It wasn't too long after the discovery of Christy that we decided to sell our new beautiful house and find somewhere bigger.

About a week after our move, my mom came to me with a newspaper clipping from 1993. All she did was apologized for not believing me and asked me to read it. It turns out a girl, about 17 years old, only a few months older than me, was murdered by her drunken father over an undisclosed altercation in our house. She had been shot in the face with a shotgun. And, I kid you not, the picture in the paper was a school photo, she had long dark hair, and a red v-neck shirt. If the picture were bigger, I would have bet money she had on a black leather skirt. Her name was Tiffany Katherine Postell.

I just wish there was a way I could have helped her. She targeted me, not in a mean spirited way, but almost as if she were crying for help, and I was the one she was asking. If there was a way I could go back there, I would.