What is Following Us?

I actually started to "feel" things in my preteens. I became the "Ghost Hunter" of the family and the butt of many a joke, so to be utterly honest, I smothered this "talent" so that at every family gathering, there were no new stories for the family to harass me about. Most of my young experiences I have completely forgotten, one or two stick out in my memory but otherwise I became a "normal" teen in the eyes of my extended family.

Now my teenage daughter has become a sort of magnet. I find this a bit disturbing as we also have a four year old who appears to have a firm grasp on things that have happened before, almost as if from another existence. He can give, in a four year old way of doing things, time lines and such and has even warned us on occasion of things to come. Either that or he is one of the worlds leading child storytellers.

Nine years ago, when our daughter was six, we lived in a mobile home park in Goshen, Indiana, USA. The houses were rather close together, so much of the audio phenomenon we have discounted as to the proximity. In the middle of the night running footsteps could be heard running down the hall, only in one direction, towards the master bedroom. While taking a bath in the garden tub (Master bath off of the Master bedroom) I would have to cover the eight mirrors that were above the his and hers sinks and counter top, walls and even the glass in the door so that my daughter could actually play in the tub. If the double glass doors (pretty heavy for a mobile home) were left open they would have to be closed or she just was not comfortable in the room.

Our daughters bedroom was in the front of the house with her window facing out into the street. The neighborhood was quiet and for the most part trustworthy, yet she felt the need to cover up her window. She had a walk in closet with sliding doors that would lift off of the track in the middle of the night. Her bathroom had an adjoining wall to that room and was decorated very much like a little girl would dream of a perfect bath, but she could not walk into it alone. We initially thought it was because the front door of the home was directly across from it. In fact, if someone was coming in the front door, and someone was coming out of that bath, the doors would hit if they were not opened cautiously.

Eventually she opted to stop sleeping in that room. She could not give us a concrete reason for her not wanting to stay in there, she could only tell us that it was a dark, cold room and it made her sad. If she would have a friend over, she would not take them into the room for more than a few minutes to choose toys, then they would be out and playing in the living room.

My husband decided that we needed to move. A new baby was on the way and our daughters discomfort was a bit much for a Daddy to handle, I think. Approximately a week before we were to move into a three story house in a different city about seventeen miles away, we were lying on the bed of the Master bedroom explaining to our daughter all of the new changes she was going to have to deal with.

There was a new school, friends, neighbors, practically a new life for a nine year old. We were just talking and looking at the ceiling fan, assuring her that we would not change, just circumstances, when the fan began to spin slowly. We checked the wall switch and the pull cord and both were in the off position. There was no breeze going through the house at the time and the three of us were the only ones visibly present.

We moved to Elkhart, Indiana, USA. Things went smoothly for a while and it appeared as if our daughter was adjusting quite nicely to her new life and circle of friends. Our bedrooms were upstairs, ours at the head, our daughter across the hall and our son was at the end of the hall farthest from the stairs. Our daughter woke us up late one night and described hearing gunshots or the backfiring of a car coming from her closet. She had a walk in, fifteen by eighty foot closet that had been used as attic space by previous tenants and as we moved in while the reconstruction was in full swing, we attributed the sounds to echoes from the road bouncing off her almost empty closet as she did not have enough clothes to fill the space and the carpeting had yet to be laid.

Her room was always the coldest in the home. We gave her space heaters, electric blankets, put heaters in the hall, cranked the thermostat up during the day thinking it would warm it up. We had the furnace serviced and left all the doors opened to maximize heat flow through the house. Our son's room shared one of the walls of our daughter's closet. His door began to slowly shut itself. I could never see anything behind the door, but it felt as if someone was holding the door and closing it while watching the stairs, almost as a child would if sent to their room and told that someone would be up in a few minutes to talk to them. This was a feat in itself as the carpeting was quite plush and it took a bit of muscle to shut it. As our son was still in the infant years he was still sleeping in our room and not yet his own.

Our daughter welcomed a new friend in her life that we never got to meet. She would sit in the closet, with the heavy metal accordion style doors open playing and talking for hours. In our son's room his musical toys would start playing of their own accord, Cd's and tapes would not play in that room, (radio would) but if we took the portable player into another room it worked perfectly. She had recurring stomach problems, and at school behavioral problems were beginning to occur after choosing this room.

While walking down the stairs to get ready for school one morning she fell down ten of the steps, picked herself up on the landing and promptly fell down the remaining four steps. When questioned she said she felt dizzy and just lost her balance. Twice. My husband (270 lbs, 5'11", body build of a wrestler) was shoved UP the stairs and on another occasion someone actually left a hand mark on his ankle when they grabbed it as he ran up the stairs to quickly check on something. We found him laying on the carpet as if asleep.

Friends who stayed the night in the bedroom in the basement (direct line under the bathroom and our daughters closet space) claimed to have their toes gently played with, they have heard breathing when no one was there, someone sat on the bed with one of our male guests and a rustle as if of fabric was heard. A friend who stayed in our daughter's room while she was away for the weekend became quickly and violently ill and could not make it out of the bed in time to be sick. She remained quite ill until we moved her into another room on the ground floor of the house where all of her symptoms just stopped.

I was getting ready for work one day and I finished the shower, came out and briefly spoke to my daughter before she headed off to school and returned to the bathroom. My husband was a stay at home Dad at the time. I got a bit dizzy, almost as if you stand up too quickly and woke up to my son crying and my husband on the phone explaining that they just found me on the floor. No medical reasons for any of us to be passing out.

I asked a lady at work about House Blessings as I knew that both her husband and herself are Healers. With two of her associates, we sent the menfolk outside for a while and blessed the entire house with our daughter in attendance. She complained of feeling uneasy and said that the whole thing was creepy.

A few days later I was told to watch her for signs of possession. Maybe it wasn't the house, maybe it was actually my child. So I enrolled her in out patient therapy with a psychologist nearby who was known for dealing with the "unknown". The results were not what we expected. If anything we had an increase of activity, and no instructions on how to deal with them, so after three years of therapy I took her out.

Two years ago we moved about four miles away for reasons totally not related to the activities in that house. We now live right on Main Street and we are having just about the same types of experiences in this home. An insurance man came into the house and asked who lived in the attic. (No one, it is an unfinished room that does not yet even have a full length floor installed.) The door opens on its own and there is a hook lock on it.

A friend was visiting with her one year old and she will not return. The baby came in and toddled past the attic door and played at a little desk we have set up. Within moments the child became ill and threw up. We took her outside to play and she was fine. We came in to get a bite to eat. She wanted to sit at the desk and that is where she ate. Afterwards she started playing again and got ill. No fever, no new foods or drink, there was no known explanation for her illness.

We get phone calls at all hours of the day and night where no one is on the other side. One of the bedroom doors opens when no one is around. Music is heard in one corner of the living room where there is no radio and no speakers, we put things away for a time and find them in a place we wouldn't store them, toys still go off. The alcove inside the front door is our computer room and it is always the coldest room in the house. We have plexiglass up on the outsides of our windows, yet to be comfortable in there we have to run a space heater.

I am lost. I used to explain things away by saying it was just the ghost of the house, but IF it is my daughters energy how do I fix that? She's fifteen now, if she is a magnet or whatever, I need to know how to help her deal with whatever is going on. I closed it all off at an early age, so I am afraid I have no way of showing her the ropes. If it is a ghost following us, or different entities, what do I do to put them at ease? When we move again, what is to say that these occurrences won't happen again?