The Dancer

When I was 10 my family moved to a house where we lived for 15 years. It was an old house, probably built in the 40's. I don't think the house history is very relevant to this story. However this 'dancing girl' seemed come with the house so to speak.

I have always been obsessed with music and was one of those kids who constantly sings and dances around the house. When we moved to this house I immediately got the feeling I wasn't alone while I was rocking out. You know that 'feeling' someone's watching? I'd felt that before when I was much younger, but I'd never felt it while dancing.

As time went on I started to feel a presence close by in the living room where I was dancing and then I started to notice vibrations in the floor, felt as if someone was dancing along side me. (No sub woofer shaking the floor.) The vibrations intrigued me and scared me in equal parts. I told mum, who's open minded to these things. Mum said "Sounds like you've got a little spirit friend." I agreed and sort of got used to it.

At the same time this was going on, almost every night we'd hear things go 'bump' in the night. Particularly things in the kitchen being moved about, trinkets on window sills especially. One ornament was constantly being 'played' with. This one was a wicker rabbit basket with a little toy baby inside. The lid of the rabbit was always found open in the morning. My bedroom was close to the kitchen and I could hear things being moved about after everyone had gone to bed. Mum and I also heard the occasional voice of a female. It never said anything, it was more like a sigh or a slight laugh. The sort of noise you make when you're trying to be quiet. We put it down to the mystery dancer, mum called her the 'little girl'.

The 'little girl' really started to make herself known when I got my first cd player and cd's. This was the 90's, before mp3's.

The cd player display would show a track number for a second or so, either while a song was playing or while stopped. But this was not a function on the machine, the track number didn't correspond to a track that was playing, or programmed to play next. This could have been a malfunction in the unit. But it then started to happen to the other cd players in the house (all different makes and models). All would do the same thing.

I'll try to demonstrate what happened... Say track 4 was playing and it was business as usual on the display. Then let's say track 9 displayed for a couple of seconds. Then back to displaying the correct track that was playing, in this example track 4. The sound from the track playing wasn't disrupted, only the display on the machine. You had to be physically looking at the display to know if/when it was happening. It was different tracks all the time and we felt as though the little girl was trying to tell us she wanted to hear which ever track number would randomly appear on the display.

I was a massive Madonna fan when I was a kid and it only ever happened with Madonna cd's, never with anything else. You'd be right to wonder what condition my Madonna cd's were in, as young kids don't go hand in hand with caution and care. But I was, still am, very careful with my stuff. Still got all my childhood cd's and none of them have scratches. (I was shocked by the pristine condition of my old cd's when ripping everything on itunes a few years ago. Pretty proud of that.) Enough trumpet blowing about that though.

I don't understand how a ghost could possibly change the display at will. But none the less it seemed very odd the same thing would happen to all 3 cd players in the house, when a Madonna cd was in the machine.

Mum noticed a hand print in the dust of one of the cd players one day. The hand print could have been made by anyone in the house. We compared everyone's hands to the print and no one's matched the size of the print. But still it could have been made by anyone who came through the house.

Probably the most amusing Madonna cd moment happened when no one was home. I got home from school one day to find one of the album booklets opened on my bed. I didn't leave it there, not on a school day and particularly NOT that album. There was one Madonna album that I always kept hidden away in case my Grandma dropped by and accidentally saw it. The album had provocative artwork in the booklet. My parents were cool with it but it wasn't the sort of thing to show Granny. We didn't have any teenage boys in the house either that could account for interest in *that* album art. The cd booklet moment remains a bit of a mystery, we always put it down to the little girl.

Fast forward to a couple of years later. I was almost thirteen and by now was discovering other music, bands like Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam etc. Music unlike Madonna. The cd players stopped displaying random track numbers at this time. I had stopped feeling the presence and stopped experiencing vibrations in the floor. Also the kitchen had stopped going bump in the night.

When I was about 13, well and truly into other music by this time. The 'little girl' was no longer something I thought of regularly. One night around this age I woke up in the middle of the night. Something I hardly ever do. My bedroom felt weird, not positive, not negative, but an abnormal kind of feeling. I felt compelled to get out of bed. No reason to, it was this feeling that I 'should' get out of bed. As if I was being asked to, it was strange.

I got out of bed, opened my bedroom door which opened out to the lounge room. To my right the sofa. The sofa was facing the same direction I was standing, the arm of the sofa was beside my right leg. I saw what I thought for a nano second to be my mum laying on the sofa (as she does when watching TV). But all the lights were off, so was the TV. At first I saw legs laying on the sofa, the legs were wearing bright orange lycra tights. I followed the legs up the body and to the face. It was a young woman aged 20 or so, very pretty, wearing some sort of dancing attire. She appeared to be sleeping or resting on the sofa. Her hair was bright blonde and pulled into a tight ponytail which dangled over the arm of the sofa near my right leg. (her head was right beside me, her legs on the far side of the sofa to me.) I froze and at this point I think I gasped or made some kind of noise. The woman seemed to evaporate into thin air. I was still frozen staring at the sofa. Then a cushion which her head had rested on started to shake violently. The cushion couldn't have been more than an inch from my hand. I filled with terror and ran into my mum's room.

I woke mum up blurting something like "Mum wake up, the girl, she's on the sofa, she's not a kid, she's an adult!" My mum is completely unfazed by ghosts. Mum, bless her, replies very tired and half asleep "Oh how wonderful. Don't worry she just wants to say hi." I completely disagreed with this and wanted to tell her about the cushion. But was too scared to say any more. Mum was back to sleep within seconds. (Thanks mum!) I stood in mum's bedroom for what felt like a long time but was probably about half an hour. I looked out mum's bedroom window, frightened the woman would come in the door behind me, I don't think she did. I could feel a strange feeling still coming from the lounge room. When the strange feeling had dissipated I bolted back through the lounge past that sofa to my bedroom and threw the covers over my head. Morning couldn't come quick enough!

I still get scared just thinking about it.

The sofa incident happened around '94. My impression at the time was that she had really NOT liked my change in musical taste. But I was 13 or so when I jumped to that conclusion. My impression today is that it's something I don't understand. I don't know why she did that.

As a side note I was completely shocked to see she was an adult, not a child. All that time I had assumed she was 'my age'. I don't know why this detail floored me, perhaps it was the nature of the reveal.

I didn't experience much from her for many years, apart from feeling a presence every once in a while. Not a bad presence either. Years went on and I hardly thought of her at all.

Fast forward again to 2005, I was 24 and beginning a new relationship with a man whom I was with for 3 years. I was totally in love with this guy and it felt like the most amazing romance ever.

The first time I stayed at his place I woke up in the middle of the night, again not like me. The same feeling from '94 was in his room, and this time I had the urge to stay in bed. I sat up, my boyfriend was asleep. As soon as I propped myself up I felt like something was on the bed. I saw the same cushion from all those years ago on the bed covers on my stomach, it was shaking violently as it did the first time. The leotard wearing woman was sitting on the bed, I think. She was whispering in an angry tone "Get out, get out" over and over. She started to appear at the edge of the bed beside me. At first she was faint and then she sort of faded into clarity. I hid under the covers and I assume she got clearer, I don't know. I could feel 'something' pushing me out of the bed. It wasn't a physical sensation, more like a strong will. But there was NO way I was getting out of that bed. I could hear her voice getting closer to my ear. My boyfriend, who was facing the other direction, on his side, started to stir. He said, in a tired state, "Come on, over here" He thought it was me whispering at the cat to get out of the room. Everything went quiet and still at this point and he went back to sleep, completely oblivious.

I was very scared that night but it wasn't as bad as the first time. I don't understand where the cushion came from. It was the same one from when I was a kid, it wasn't there in the physical sense this time. The first time it was an actual physical cushion we had for years. But obviously that same cushion was not physically in my boyfriend's room.

I didn't want to tell anybody what happened this time. I asked my boyfriend if he heard anything the next morning. He said he heard me telling his cat to get out. I didn't want to elaborate on that. I was too scared to.

That relationship with that man turned out to be some of the worst years of my life. It was an emotionally abusive relationship. The dancer woman, with hindsight I believe, was telling me to 'get out' of the relationship. I think deep down I somehow knew this and that's why I didn't want to tell anybody.

That was years ago and I've completely recovered from that time in my life. I guess the dancing girl is here to stay. I've felt her presence over the years since then. Still don't get why she had to scare me back when I was 13 though. Maybe she really didn't like my new love of rock music. Or maybe there was an underlying wisdom to her madness that I've yet to comprehend. When I got out of that abusive relationship I thanked her by playing some Madonna. I think she got my message.

I would love to know more about her, perhaps I'll open a dialogue with her at some point. But I don't want to invite any wrath either.

And boy can she make her temper felt!

Thanks for reading.