Jessica

When I lived in St Paul MN. I was married and my son was only 2 1/2 - 3 years old. My wife was pregnant and it was a happy time. My son was always very playful so I never found it out of the ordinary when I would hear him giggling and laughing from the other room. However, when I would come in to play, he would stop how he was playing and it would be how we play. Nothing seemed strange until one day he asked me to leave so he could play with his friend again.

I inquired much about this friend and continued to do so over a period of several months. Asking the same questions in vary different ways and always getting the same answers. He said her name was Jessica. At that time we knew no Jessicas and wondered how he had even heard the name. But we figured it was from a show or heard it in others talking. He said she was very pretty and very funny. She loved to play and didn't have any feet. Now I was very intrigued. He also said that he can see his toys behind her, which we later found out that he could see them through her. This went on and on for a while.

One day I asked him where she comes from and where she goes when she leaves. He brought me to the bathroom and pointed at the ceiling. Now I have to tell you that I had remodeled this home before we moved in and he had never seen the home prior to moving in. I had built a hidden door to the attic in the bathroom. It had never been accessed since we moved in. But he pointed right to it. Now I must add the really interesting part. When I was remodeling I had found a plethora of little girls toys and clothing that looked like it had been up there for a very very long time. It was all in very bad shape. In order to reinsulate the attic, much of it had to be removed. After it had been removed, things started to happen. Our electricians and plumber encountered things that they left the job site and vowed to never return. They didn't even make us pay them for they labors they had done. Work had finished, we had moved in and months went by with many visits from Jessica but only to my son.

One day he came to me crying because Jessica was going to be going away as his sister was coming on Tuesday. We never told him he was going to have a sister, only that a new baby was coming. And behold, Tuesday my daughter was born.

Time passed and one day I was at a local pub where I met some old timers from the neighborhood who came back every year to the same place for supper. I had never met them before but I know it was more than chance that I did that day. I spent a while conversing with the old lady about the neighborhood as she used to live on the same block as I was at that time. She told me the story of a woman who lived in the sad house. She cooked and did laundry for the neighborhood as back then, during war time, much of the community did things for each other.

Wendy, the woman in the sad house, was asked one day to come to the hospital to see a sick woman who requested her. Wendy was a very large woman and never left her own property. But this day she went and the dying woman asked her to care for her daughter. Her husband had died in the war and she was dying as well. Wendy agreed. She cared for the girl for two or three years until one summer day she was outside and neighbors stopped by to talk when one noticed fire in the back of the house. They worked to put the fire out but the little girl died in the fire. Wendy was never the same. Many from the neighborhood helped to fix Wendy's home but she never recovered. After a year passed, a few neighbors got Wendy out of her home and took all the little girls belongings and stored them in the attic in hopes to help Wendy move on. Sadly, Wendy died by the end of that summer from a broken heart.

This woman who was telling me this story was in tears. It wrenched my heart to see such an old woman sob so hard. After a few attempts to get her husbands attention, she asked him what that girls name was and he replied "Are you telling that story of Jessica again"? My heart sunk. I got a lump in my throat that I could not talk around. I asked specific questions about the home in which she knew I knew it well. I told her about Jessica and she had spent time with my little boy and how she elected to leave and why. I feel that on that day, I as well as that old woman's lives changed forever.

This is a true story. My son and I still talk about Jessica. Strangely enough, my daughter says she feels like she knows her very well.