Sooo, I'm super psyched to see so many people have supernatural/paranormal experiences and I'm not the only one. Quick history to my stories, both sides of my family have really strong intuition. I wouldn't say we're psychic or mediums or anything like that, but parents/aunts/uncles/cousins have all told me plenty of their own stories once I got older.
As a small child I had a few experiences, but my parents poo-poo'd on them because, "Oh well, you don't ever want to tell a kid that ghosts are real, otherwise they'll be scared all the time." I'm not sure how that helped them at all considering I spent years too afraid to sleep in my room because of the presence I felt, but eh, nothing can be done about it now.
I would find out in my teen years that at least my mother always believed in ghosts and I still hold a bit of a grudge toward her for not helping me figure out what was in my childhood bedroom as a kid. She even admitted that the house felt strange sometimes, so just - URGH! Frustrations.
'Nother quick little side story to my mom. I remember being little once and I didn't want to sit in Sunday school with the other kids, so one of the teachers opted to take me back to the main worship hall. Standing in the back, with all of the pews filled and people facing away, I couldn't see my mom and I was getting worried she wasn't there. Then she coughed and I was able to pinpoint exactly where she was because I knew the particular way she coughed, that the inflection in the way she did so was a sound only she could make. That will be important later on, but hey, on the topic of sharing can any of you pick out family members by subconscious sounds they make?
But anyway, this story isn't about her or that house. My parents divorced when I was like 7ish, they both moved out to get fresh starts. My dad bought a new house when my brother and I came to live with him.
The whole ordeal starts, I suppose, with a dream my aunt had many years later. She said she saw her father, my grandpa, come to her from a swirl of mist and really clearly say, "Take your brother Danny to the hospital. He doesn't want to go but he has too." She was so sure this was my grandpa that the first thing she did when she woke up was drive over to his house and take him, protesting the entire way, straight to the doctor's. My dad was very much one of those people you can't argue other sides to anything on. He gets ideas in his head, he gets set in his ways and that's that. I honestly feel the only reason he went with her is because she was one of two older sisters and three older brothers and, as the baby of the family, he would have had a lot of experience being pushed around by all his siblings, so better to just do what she says and get it over with then have to fight her.
My dad hated hospitals. He thought having so many sick people gathered together didn't help them get better faster but kill them quicker, and that's why he never went to see a doctor himself. I have a distinct memory from childhood of sitting with my father out in the parking lot while we waited for my mother and brother to finish the appointment with the pediatrician; dad refused to sit in the waiting area.
And my dad didn't take very good care of himself either. He ate a lot of junk food, drank nothing but sugary drinks, never exercised, etc. So when my aunt took him in to see a doctor finally, they told him he was merely weeks away from having a major heart attack. When I got the call from my grandma that he was in the hospital over all this I was hardly surprised. Upset, especially when I had the striking realization that whether it be then or ten years from then I was going to have to deal with losing my parents, but nowhere near surprised.
Prior to all this it was painful for me to even speak with him on the phone because his speech would be slurred really bad like he had cotton in his mouth all the time and it would take a while for him to respond to simple questions or just hold a conversation. So I think I was more surprised to get a call that he was in a hospital and still alive rather then he was sick.
Unfortunately, he didn't live much longer. He was in the hospital for about a week before they released him and he did start making changes to his lifestyle to improve his health. I got to visit with him for a month and he looked and sounded much better then he had in years. But a week after I had to go back, though, he had a heart attack and was back in the hospital. This time he stayed for about a month and I was actually on the drive down to come see him again when I got the call that he had passed on.
I don't remember if this was before or after the funeral, because the next two months were kind of a blur, but I do know it was a Wednesday though. On Wednesday there was a hotdog joint down the street from the house and they had a deal that was something like $0.25 for a single plain hotdog so naturally dad would come home around dinnertime with like $6 worth of hotdogs and some fries and that was just the usual thing every Wednesday. My brother and I were both in that don't-want-to-change-the-routine-cuz-we-still-expect-him-to-come-walking-through-the-front-door phase, so we went out and got the hotdogs from the place and we're sitting in the living room where we'd usually eat. We left the front door open with a locked screen door to let in the breeze because it was nice outside. As we're divvying up the food we hear footsteps.
I knew my father by the sound of his footsteps just like I knew my mother by the sound of her cough. He wore these cowboy boots so there was this distinct two note sound to every footfall and I knew the pacing between his steps. I looked at my brother and he's looking at me and we don't even have to say anything because we both know. And we rush to the screen door and we're standing there looking out and of course the footprints stop and there's no one. I unlocked the door and walk outside, the whole street's deserted.
We went back inside and ate in silence. Nothing else happened that night. I ended up staying with my brother so he wouldn't be alone while he finished high school and was often home around noon. Dad was sort of self-employed and he would usually be leaving the house around noon to go into his office. I remember sitting in the living room just thinking "this is usually when he'd be leaving," and the front door popped open. It did that around noon and 6PM, the time he'd usually come home, for weeks. Not violently nor did it open much, just that the latch would pop and it would open just enough to notice the door was ajar. And I hated having to close the door at noon because I was always scared it would feel like shutting him out.
I've had a pretty bad falling out with my dad's side of the family in the years that followed so I haven't been back to the house in a long while. I will probably never go back so I don't know if he still makes the rounds. I know the door was still popping open the last time I spoke with my brother, who still lives in the house. And the aunts said they could feel him from time to time.
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