The New Resident

I have always been interested in the paranormal since I was a little fellow. I used to make my father bring me inside old abandoned houses that I would see around the area that we lived, in hopes of seeing a ghost and lucky for me my dad would always take me to them if they were accessible. I think deep down that he liked looking in them also but who really knows.

I was about 5 years old when we started doing this and not sure as to why I was so curious about the paranormal at this age, or what even made me want to seek out something that at that age I knew nothing about. I guess I was just a weird child. As I grew older I became even more interested in ghosts and anything else that had to do with the paranormal. The only difference is that when I was younger I didn't fear, or maybe a better word would be understand, what I was actually searching for, because now I'm scared to death of these things but still totally love it at the same time, if you know my meaning.

I apologize for this being so drawn out, I'm just trying to give you a little background on my mindset. So me being as interested in the paranormal as I am, I was always digging for stories, be it from my mother, father, relatives or friends, if someone had a story I wanted to hear it. I wasn't looking for campfire stories, I wanted to hear actual accounts. My dad really didn't care too much for ghosts and goblins, so I never really got anything from him story-wise but my mother opened up to me on the subject and told me some really wonderful things that have happened to her throughout the years. I was really surprised that she felt the same about the subject as I did and, in a way it really brought me closer to my mother. Her encounters are really fascinating and maybe I'll write about them at a later date.

Now on to my story. This happened around 2007 or 2008. I had moved to Boise, Idaho from Gonzales, Louisiana in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina. By trade I'm a meat cutter, some 20+ years. When I moved here I continued to work my trade but eventually, after a year or two, I was laid off of work and had to seek employment elsewhere.

Jobs in my trade were hard to come by.

Though meat cutting paid well, I was not hard up for money. By the grace of God, my home and vehicle were paid off, so I just really needed to make enough to cover food and what little bills that I had to pay. So I was driving down the road one day and saw a "Help Wanted" sign in front of a care facility for seniors with Alzheimer's, so I thought I would go in and apply for the job. I'm a people person at heart and thought I could pay it forward helping these people, not to mention the ghost stories some might would know.

So I interviewed and to my surprise I got the job. I would be working the night shift from 10:00 pm to 8:00 am I had to take a bunch of courses before I could start, meds certification, CPR, things like that but I took them and got all of my certifications. Now this place was pretty spooky. I would be the only person there from 10:00 at night until 8:00 in the morning.

I'll give you a little layout of the building. When you walk through the front door there was a hallway directly in front. To the right was a living room to the left the kitchen and dining room with another hallway that went in between the kitchen and dining room, then to the right another long hallway. All of the floors were hardwood, and when someone walked anywhere within the building you could hear it, it would be pretty loud.

I never asked anyone there about ghosts or the paranormal because I really didn't think bringing up anything dealing with death would be appropriate considering this was the place that these people were living out their last days, so I just did my job. My duties were to do a little cleaning, precook meals for the next day and to check on the residents throughout the night to make sure they were doing alright and before the morning shift showed up I cooked breakfast and administered their medications as needed. I used to spook myself all of the time when I was there: weird noises, sometimes the residents would poke their heads out the door or be standing right in the doorway when you checked on them at night, I didn't expect them to be up after their bed times and this would just catch me off guard and really scare the crap out of me.

Now I worked there for probably a year and never had any experiences besides the residents spooking me every now and then. These people who lived there were just great old people, I really got attached to a lot of them. Although these people had dementia, a lot of them were still quite sharp and really accomplished some great things in life. I learned a lot from them.

There were a few times during my employment there that I would come into work and the person going off shift would inform me that such and such had passed away during the day. This always saddened me and made work that night a little tough, being used to that person being there and checking their room at night out of habit forgetting that they had passed. This happened twice while I was there.

Every now and then we would get a new resident. They would always be admitted in the daytime while I was not there. So when I came on for my shift at night the person that was leaving would have to tell me about the new person, what was wrong with them, any special needs, go over their meds etc... So I came to work one night, it was business as usual, the person going off shift had nothing to say regarding new people or anything else for that matter, so I just went through my normal routine.

It was probably around 2:00 am or maybe a little after. I was in the kitchen preparing dinner for the next day. So I'm doing this and that, I turn around and this sweet little old lady is just looking at me with just the sweetest smile on her face. I'm thinking to myself great, I was not informed of this new person, didn't know her name, didn't know if she needed any kind of special things, nothing.

I worried about these people and I would just feel awful if something happened to one of them because I was not informed that they needed a certain medication (which many did) at a certain time at night. Now, I'm looking at this sweet lady while thinking these things in my head and within a split second, with me looking directly at her, she just vanished. She was maybe four feet away from me at the time. I had just seen my first ghost!

Thinking back on this, I would have thought that I would have crapped all over myself but this wasn't the case. I was totally cool with it and was not a bit frightened, surprised but not scared as I thought I would be if I ever saw a ghost. I never told anyone I worked with about this. I figured it was a person who might have died there before I started working there. It's possible, right?

Well, in one of the hallways on the wall there were pictures of all the past and present residents who have lived there, but I could not find a picture of the lady that I saw that night. I even inquired with my boss if the pictures on the wall were of all of the residents past and present (the place is not really that old) and he confirmed that they were.

Now you must remember that when I saw this lady I thought I was looking at a real live person, she was just that solid and detailed and she as with any other living person had her own distinct look about her, I could pick her out of a line up. I put this incident behind me and went on about my life, continued working there and did what needed to be done, but deep down inside I kind of hoped that I would see this ghost again but never did.

About a year later I was visiting my mom and we got on the subject of ghosts for some reason, so I thought this would be a good time to tell of my experience. I told my mother everything that had happened, described the ghost that I had seen and before I could finish, my mother had a big smile on her face and asked me to come to her room. I followed and my mother pointed to a group of old family photos on the wall that I have never seen. In one of those pictures, as God as my witness there was the sweet little old lady that I saw at work that night. She was my mother's great-grandmother. My mother sat me down and told me how wonderful her great-grandmother was and that she had shown herself to other members of the family as well. That's why my mother was smiling when I was telling her story. She knew who I had seen just from my description.

She said that she's never around long, just pops in and out. As to why, we just don't know but it's like a one time visit. Every family member she has appeared to have never seen her again and up until me it has only been the older family members who actually knew her in life (I was 37 at the time of this) that she has appeared to. I will never know why she paid me a visit that night and probably never will, but it comforts me knowing that when we die it's not the end.

Thank you for reading this long drawn out story. I will write about some of my other paranormal experiences, as well as some of my family's in the near future. I will try my best to make them shorter.