My Ghost Filled Life

My name is Lori and for as long as I can remember I've always been able to sense things; but don't let me get ahead of myself. My Mom, Mary, and my Grandma, Genevieve, are what some people may call mediums or seers. I have 1 brother and 2 sisters. My father, Tom, is a non-believer. Out of all of us kids, I was the only one to receive Mom and Grandma's "gift". Sometimes I sense things more than I see them.

My Mom grew up in a haunted house on the outskirts of Saint Marys, Ohio. The house bordered 3 cemeteries on Webb Street. She told me that she really hated being there alone and it didn't matter if it was day or night. There were always noises and not the usual house settling ones either. She said it was anything from loud breathing to footsteps to knockings. Grandma had always thought that some of the spiritual occupants came from the nearby cemeteries.

Grandma grew up in a haunted house also. Grandma told me that her Mom had worked for a psychic who told her that there was a curse put on their house because her Dad mocked the supernatural. In the beginning her Dad would be eating and find darning needles and horseshoe nails in his food. This continued until at the suggestion of the psychic, he put a horseshoe up on the north wall of every room and above every doorway. He quickly became a believer himself after that!

Mom told me that one night when she was a teenager, she was home alone and kept hearing knocking noises so she decided to try to sleep on the couch until Grandma and her brothers and sisters got home. She got settled on the couch when she suddenly started hearing loud breathing that kept getting louder and louder as if it was getting closer to her. It seemed to be coming from a corner of the room, way up by the ceiling. She got up and turned all of the lights on but to no avail; the loud breathing continued and when she felt the pressure of an invisible hand on her, she decided she had enough and went outside to sit on the porch to wait for her family.

Grandma thought there were several poltergeists among several spirits inhabiting the home with them. They were always seeing spirit people there and hearing unexplainable noises; putting up with items always being moved or misplaced.

Mom was sort of the middle child of the family. She has 2 older brothers, 2 older sisters and a younger brother. She had an older brother and sister that passed away when they were very young.

One time when Mom was 13, she and all of her siblings were in the front room reading. She said the front room was right off of the entry way by the front door. Grandma was in the basement doing laundry that day. Mom said close to the hall entry way there was an end table that contained a lamp and the family Bible. Stacked on top of the Bible were a couple of books and some magazines. All of the sudden the books and magazines fell on the floor as if someone flung them off. The cover of the Bible opened and stayed up as if someone was holding it vertical to the table. Then slowly the pages of the Bible started opening. They all screamed and ran past the table as that was the only way out of the room. As they passed it the pages continued to lift and be held by an unseen hand against the cover. They ran to Grandma down in the basement, screaming the entire way. She asked them what happened that they were so riled up. They told her, and then realized that their youngest brother was already down there; but he was upstairs with them and there was no way he had passed any of them on the way down. Mom said he was still sitting by the table with the Bible when the rest of them jumped up and took off running. They have no idea who was in that room with them that looked like their little brother because Grandma told them that he had been downstairs with her the entire time.

Grandma lost her first child when he was about a year old. She and a friend were talking while her son was taking a nap in his crib. Grandma said she suddenly started getting a peculiar feeling and then a sudden feeling of peace. It was then that she noticed a small grey feather floating in the room. It floated up then behind a wood stove and then continued through the room about shoulder height. It floated past the fireplace mantel and then disappeared around the corner. She got up and followed it. The feather floated into her sons' room and landed in his crib. She knew then that it wouldn't be long before the Angels would come for her baby. Marvin passed away two days later. He had come down with a high fever with his condition deteriorating rapidly until he passed away. I asked her about the feather. She told me the feather had just disappeared while it was in his crib. This too all happened at the house on Webb Street. Grandma lost her first husband several years later.

The kids all hated to walk home in the dark because they always had to pass one of the cemeteries. One night they saw a man sitting on the fence by the railroad tracks near the oldest of the cemeteries. Mom said he looked like a hobo but was really creepy looking because you could see through him. They all took off running and ran all the way home!

The house also had a ghost dog and a ghost child (about the age of Mom's late brother, Marvin). She said the dog was a beautiful German Sheppard. The dog showed up the day she brought me as a days old baby to the house. She thought maybe it was either my guardian or a spirit guide for me. The first day it showed up she had laid on her old bed with me to take a nap. She heard a dog walk into the room; heard the paw falls on the carpet and its' panting. The dog walked around the bed to the side she had me on and sat down on the floor next to the bed. The dog was as plain as day and the most beautiful German Sheppard she had ever seen! It was sitting on the floor just watching me. She got up thinking perhaps company had come over with their pet. As she sat on the edge of the bed, with her back to the dog, she noticed the paw impressions in the carpet. She stood up and turned towards the dog, getting the shock of her life when it was now solid white and starting to fade away. After that the dog only made appearances when she had me there at that house. Grandma never saw or experienced the dog. That's why Mom felt the dog may have been my personal guardian in that spooky old house. It was also during this time that the ghost child first showed up. It too would only make its' presence known when Mom had me there. She said she would always hear the child walking or running in the hallway or it would walk into the bedroom where she would be laying down with me. Grandma also experienced the ghost child and felt it was her late son, Marvin. Sometimes they would hear it giggle or play with some invisible toy. They both had the impression that the child was only about one or two years old. Numerous incidents, actually more than you can even count, have occurred there since the beginning.

As I kid I could always sense when a presence was close. Grandma moved from that spooky old house into a trailer in another part of Saint Marys when she was in her 50's. The trailer as you can guess also contained a spirit. This one wasn't as evil or mean like some of the ones that lived in the house on Webb Street. Grandma also knew this ghost was there. She felt it was an old man but never explained why she thought that. Sometimes the feeling would be so strong that it would scare me even though I knew it would not hurt me. It was perhaps curious of me. I stayed with my Grandma every weekend and during every break from school, so I was with her a lot. We would always hear knockings there.

One Sunday morning, when I was about 8 years old, while Grandma and I were still in bed talking we heard 3 loud, distinct knocks on the front door. I jumped up to look out the window by the door only to see absolutely nothing. There was no one at the front door! Grandma asked me if I realized that the loud knocks were in fact on the wood door and not on the screen door. I did then and it actually kind of scared me. It didn't bother Grandma at all and she actually laughed about it. She just said "good morning" to whomever it was then got up to start her day. It didn't matter where I was at in the trailer; I felt the presence there constantly. Sometimes it felt like it was following me around but Grandma told me he was there all the time. This ghost would warn Grandma about things; like the day she left a pan on the gas stove and forgot to shut the burner off. She left the room and all of the sudden started hearing this horrible clanging of pots and all sorts of noises coming from the kitchen. When she went to investigate, she found what she had done and realized that her pan was about to catch on fire. There was no explanation of the noises as she was home by herself. She just figured her ghost friend was warning her. Living in a trailer ~ her greatest fear was a fire because it doesn't take long for a fire to totally engulf and destroy one of those.

When I was 7 years old we had moved into a new house that Dad had built just special for our family. Since there were so many of us, we had to share bedrooms. My younger sister is about 6 years younger than me so we had to share a room while our 2 other siblings were in another room on bunk beds. The foot of my bed was towards the door and straight into the room from the doorway. My sister was on the opposite side of the room with the foot part of her bed facing my head.

This one particular night I was having a nightmare. I had a dream that the only place for all of us kids to play in was a cemetery. The dead people were in coffins but weren't buried under the ground. Instead the coffins were on top of the ground with glass shields over the top of them. If the glass got broke, the shards would come up and kill you but we had no place else to play at in the dream. There was a group of us playing with a large pink ball. I was by my best friend when she accidentally dropped the ball, hitting a grave. Right before the glass shards got to us, I woke up in a sweat ~ wide awake! I lay on my left side looking over at my sister sleeping in her bed. I started looking around the room when something kept trying to get me to look at the doorway. I looked that direction and saw a woman! She was solid white, not see through and she was really tall and filled the doorway. She had on either an old wedding dress or a Victorian era dress that the collar was up under her chin and really fancy looking. She was looking right at me and acted like she was going to say something to me. I screamed as loud as I could, waking Mom up who ran into the room. As Mom came through the doorway she went right through the lady who immediately disappeared. Mom asked me what was wrong and I told her about that lady. She had not seen her at all.

In our living room we had an old cuckoo clock that Mom had brought back with her from the time when she lived in Germany. The clock didn't work. So many times we would be sitting in the living room when it would go off by itself after the hands would move by themselves by some unseen finger. Sometimes the pendulums at the bottom would just start moving by themselves. Most always this would occur whenever I was present. We always would hear some invisible person walking up and down the hall.

One summer, one of my male cousins came over to stay a week with us. The first night, the entire night he heard someone walking up and down the hallway and knocking on the walls of the hall. He was so scared that he had pulled the covers over his head and sweated so much that he had colour stains from his pj's on his body and the sheets. He left the next morning and refused to ever come back to the house to stay with us.

When I was 14 years old and home by myself, I was in my bedroom listening to a 33 album of Kiss. I had Dad's old electric guitar trying to teach myself how to play it along with the music. I had my door closed. All of the sudden I started hearing someone walking, pacing the hall, then it turned into running up and down the hall and then the knockings on the walls started. Sometimes it was like someone had their fingernails running them down both sides of the hall walls at the same time. I was getting a little scared by this time and contemplated going out my window to escape. It was getting dusk out. I screamed for it to stop and all of the sudden it did. I was a little relieved that it actually listened to me and had my back towards the doorway, standing by the window. All of the sudden I started hearing breathing in the room with me. My door still closed and I am the only one in the room. I asked it to stop again but instead it started getting louder and louder until it was right next to my left ear. I then felt the pressure of a hand on my right shoulder. The hand wasn't squeezing hard and it didn't hurt me but it scared me pretty bad. I felt pressure of every finger and the thumb and it scared me so bad that I screamed, dropping the guitar on my bed and ran out of the house. I refused to go back inside until my family came home. My Mom came home to find me on the front porch in the swing, shaking like a leaf. She asked me what was wrong and I told her. She was very concerned and told me about the time she experienced the same thing at the house on Webb St. I often think back and wish I wasn't such a scardy cat; that I would have asked it what it wanted or if it needed help. Our house was the first one on that property so no one is sure where the spirit/s may have come from. Grandma always told me I was a magnet for them. I didn't like hearing that when I was a kid.

I lost my father-in-law in January of 1988. He was such a nice, kind and gentle man and a great father. We all took it really hard. My husband and I had only been married since September of 1987. We were trying to have a child at the time of my Pa's passing. We did a lot of soul searching and talking. In April of 1988 I found out that I was pregnant. We didn't want to know what sex the child would be beforehand. My husband and I decided (with the family's blessing) that if we had a boy we would name him after his late Grandpa. In December of 1988 we were blessed with a beautiful little boy. He was everything we could have hoped for and very healthy.

One day when I was home alone with the baby; I was down in the basement doing laundry (the washer was right below the baby's bedroom) when I suddenly heard footsteps above me that stopped right at the baby's crib. I knew it was Pa and I knew he had come to visit his namesake. I went upstairs with a peaceful feeling, knowing no one would be there and I was correct. No one was in my baby's room and he was sound asleep on his side. Often times after that I could feel his presence around the baby. I'd tell my husband but he didn't believe me. He too is a non-believer of "such things".

I often have the insight to know when I talk to someone that it will be the last time I will ever get to talk to them again because they are going to die. It's happened to me twice. The first time I was an adult married with a small toddler when I was on the phone with a co-worker who was calling for my husband. I got a horrible sensation that it would be the last time I would speak with him. My husband and son went out to his house that evening. Later on that night he passed away. The second time it occurred I was at work. A newspaper delivery lady came in and we chit-chatted for a few minutes. She looked at her watch and that's when the feeling hit me. I asked her to please be careful when she left but I knew I'd never see her again. Right after she left she ran a red light out of town by a truck stop and got hit broadside by a semi. She didn't die right away but I know the exact time she did. Several hours later as I'm lying in bed trying to brush the feeling off (I already knew about the wreck and what happened to her) and go to sleep when a sudden feeling of extreme peace came over me. I looked at the clock, noting the time. I found out later on that day that was the exact time she had passed away.

We moved into a different house several years, on the other side of town. We had purchased the house off of a good friend of ours' who was moving out of state. He loved smoking cherry pipe tobacco. Whenever we would go on vacation, we would stop at their house in Georgia to visit with them. A few years after they moved there he passed away from a massive heart attack. So many times after that we have all smelled at times that same cherry pipe tobacco that he used to smoke. Sometimes it is during some kind of construction or remodelling project in the house.

In 2001, a day after Dale Earnhardt had died in that fateful car wreck, I was in my basement cleaning my die cast cars in my hutch. I had the one door open and was really thinking about that wreck and sadness for his family's loss. As I started shutting the door I saw the reflection of a young man behind me, a little off to my left side. He appeared to be around 18 years old. I could see him plain as day in the glass and he was looking right at me. I have no idea who this young man was. I turned around to see no one there with me. I went upstairs to talk to my 12 year old son to see if he was down there or knew who may have been, possibly pulling a trick on me. He said no and he was the only one in the house besides me. It was not his reflection in the glass.

Often times I will feel a presence in the basement but I know it won't harm me. No one has ever died in my house but the next door neighbour's house is another story. A young boy hung himself in the basement over there; many, many years ago. I don't know if he is who I saw in the glass or if it was someone else.

Mom and Grandma would always talk to my son about their experiences with the supernatural. My son is as interested in it as I am and loved hearing their spooky stories. To this day he is still just as interested and so am I. He also seems to have inherited "the gift".

My Mom passed away in 2001, right before Christmas. I was the only one in the room with her at the hospital when she passed. I had been sitting with her for some time but I knew she was already gone; nothing but a shell on life support. The nurse came in to check her vitals and told me that the breathing machine was the only thing keeping her alive. She had no sign of life at all. The nurse had called Dad at home. Dad told her to shut the machine off and that he was on his way there. The nurse came in and told me what he said as she shut everything down and then left the room. I was in there when Mom took her last breath. There were no angels visible, no sign of anything, she was just gone.

About two weeks after this I was lying in bed trying to take a nap before going to work when I heard Mom call my name twice. It was her voice and her tone but it was so soothing and filled me with such peace. I've heard her several times since then and have also felt her presence a lot. Some times while I'm thinking about her a night light will start flickering for no reason. There is nothing wrong with neither the light nor the bulb as I've replaced both and it still occurs. There is also nothing wrong with the plug. It has occurred at times when Dad would be over visiting too.

My Grandma passed away a few years later (after Mom). I often hear her, feel her near me and so many dreams I've had with Mom and Grandma in them. They both are younger and so healthy and vibrant, happy. It gives me comfort.

My nephew had joined the Air Force and we were having a family gathering at Dad's house. My nephew was always my late Mom's favourite grandchild. During the party I was standing in the kitchen taking photographs when I got the strongest feeling ever that Mom was present. I continued taking photos with my digital camera. It wasn't long after that that the feeling of her went away. I was looking at the pictures on the view finder when I saw something on one picture that made me gasp. The picture I took during the "feeling" of Mom being there shows the biggest and most defined orb I have ever seen in my life. The orb is right above my nephew's head in the picture and not in any other pictures either before or after that one.

To this day I continue to have the sensations, feelings and experiences of the supernatural around me. My cats also know when someone is around and let me know. They are not bothered by anything and I think it's because Mom and Grandma were both cat lovers just as I am.

The end... Or is it?

/L.Y. 08/13/2011