A Stranger In The Night?

I was around 7 years old when I had my first encounter with the paranormal.

My father had just left home, and I was devastated, I was very close to him and believe it was the reason it all started.

I was staying with my aunt for a while, along with my younger sister. It was a bungalow set in the rural outskirts of a Leicestershire town. My mother's house was on a council estate around 7 miles away, and couldn't have been more different. The bungalow had been built in the early 30s by my grandparents, and was my mother's family home; my grandfather and uncle were also living there. It gave me some security as I grew up, a familiar safe place.

It must have been around the end or beginning of the year, it was very cold and the old heating system was pretty useless. My sister and I were sharing the huge double bed with my aunt. The bedroom door was open to let in the heat from the living room fire, and I was under a very heavy pile of blankets. It would have been around 1981, before the modern duvets became common. I woke up needing the toilet, I remember looking into the living room and making out a chair, the moon was very bright, the night was clear and still, very still, I couldn't hear the birds I usually did, I distinctly recall listening very carefully for the slightest sound, my aunt started to snore very loudly next to me, and a relaxed a little. I had just plucked up the courage to get out of bed when the room just suddenly grew freezing cold, My breath was coming out as though I were smoking a cigarette and the comforting sound of my aunts snoring had stopped. I burrowed deeper into the bed and peered over the top of the sheet into the empty room beyond.

Across the room was the kitchen door, My granddads dog Prince slept there, I could hear him crying the way a dog does when its scared, the only thing Prince was afraid of was thunder, but after what seemed like an eternity of holding my breath there hadn't been the slightest rumble, and Prince was becoming more agitated by the second, suddenly he was deadly silent, it seemed as though he was watching or waiting for something. I looked into the middle of the room, something had caught my attention.

It was a white mist; it appeared from nowhere and grew thicker and larger while silently drifting toward the TV that was out of my line of vision. It continued to grow in size until it was the length of a tall person, stopping where I could still plainly see it. It than slowly took the form of a woman in a long dress or shroud. The strangest thing to me was the fact that she had short black curly hair, not white and transparent as the rest of her body was. She was praying, and for the entire period of time, which was perhaps no more than a minute, she stood motionless, until slowly and while still in the praying pose, she gradually lay flat whilst sinking through the floor, into a, and which I later described, burial position.

Prince started to whine again and after a few minutes settled down. I started to breathe again; I had been holding my breath without knowing it. I was so scared I actually weed the bed! This did wake up my aunt who hadn't stirred at all during the whole time.

I told her everything, shaking and crying the whole time. In the morning, after much persuading, my aunt told me that my grandmother, on my fathers side who I had no memory of, had died of cancer and had been buried with her wig. She wouldn't tell me anything else. I had always understood she had died when I was just a baby.

About 7 years ago I found the grave of my grandparents, My grandfather had died when I was 13, I had been told he had died when I was 2, for some reason I had not been told the truth. My grandmother had not died when I was a baby, but had passed away in 1981, when I was 7 years old.

I never saw my dad again, or any member of his family, but it would seem the woman in white I have never forgotten, was a grandmother who came to say goodbye.