My Unusual Life So Far

I am a firm believer that there is life after death. I have only ever shared my experiences of the paranormal with my family (whom have witnessed these happenings in our house as well) and my best friend as you meet too many people in life that like to scoff and laugh when you tell them. These unusual happening's have been occurring for as long as I can remember. I am now 23 years old.

I'll start with one of my earliest memories when I was 3 years old. My family were leaving our local food store and across the road there was a very old cemetery. I tugged at my dad's hand and pointed to a lady in the cemetery that was dressed in black and white sitting on a stone slab with her hands clasped in a prayer position. I asked him to look at the lady and when he looked, there was nobody there, nor was there a stone slab.

When I got older, her appearance and clothes began to make sense to me: she was a nun. It has become a bit of a running joke in my family as she wasn't the first nun I have seen.

I must have been seventeen when I walked down a street I've walked a hundreds of times before. A large woman dressed in a nun's attire muttering to herself, wearing lots of rosaries and crucifixes, walked by me. I've always been drawn to crucifixes though my family is not religious. That's what I noticed first, the crosses around her neck. It took me a moment to process what I'd just seen as a nun is not a usual occurrence in Scotland. I turned to look behind me and there was no trace of her. It is a straight road so there was nowhere for her to go. It was then I realised I'd seen a ghost.

My dad remembers this incident at the cemetery though he never believed me at the time. It was only until he started experiencing supernatural occurrences in our home, did he start to believe in the paranormal.

Further note I did find out a few years ago whilst doing some research on our local area, that a nunnery used to stand just behind the cemetery, so to me that is not a coincidence.

Our family home is really a flat situated in a high-rise block. There are nineteen floors in total and the flats were built during the 1960's so they're not that old. It is common knowledge though that there have been a number of suicides, one of which just happened on the floor we lived on.

So much has happened in the flat it would be impossible to list everything so I'm just going to tell you about the things that stick out most in my mind. When I was a little girl, I remember seeing transparent cat's legs running across the bookcase. My older sister also saw the exact same thing but on a different occasion.

When our last surviving cat Sweepy passed away, I was devastated and I remember this moment, just a week or so after her death, I was knelt down in the kitchen by the fridge. I remember the distinct cold feeling of a cat rubbing itself against my back (I was wearing a thin school shirt at the time so I know I definitely felt something rub against me). Months later, we got a kitten Buffy. She was fast asleep and we were all in the living room watching TV. Both my sister and I heard a cat meow but it wasn't a normal meow; it sounded desperate, lost and to me it sounded like Sweepy. My dad never heard it nor did Buffy stir. It does upset me to think that if it is my dead cat, is she still in the flat, wandering around? Does she still come up to us but we just walk on by?

A few years later whilst I was on my laptop, I remember my sister walked across the living room and she tripped. She looked scared, then told me she had just tripped as she had just seen Sweepy on the carpet, washing itself, then the cat looked up making eye contact before vanishing. My dad always brushed it off, saying we were imagining things but one night, he came into our room, almost in tears, as he had heard the strange cat's meow.

Other people we have spoken to that live a few floors down have experienced things also. One man who's sadly passed on now told my dad that he had found three silver crucifixes in his house over a series of months and they weren't his. He would hear the lift door open in the early hours of the morning and a woman with high heels walking but they would just stop suddenly.

On two occasions, we had come back from shopping to find the cats terrified and cat litter and cat food strewn around the living room.

There's a spare room that we use mostly for storage but no one likes going in there especially at night as there is a heavy oppressive atmosphere. I used to write a lot of fanfiction to entertain myself as a teen and I would sit in that room during the day on my laptop to get peace and quiet. I would read out what I'd written and as strange as this sounds, it felt as if someone was with me. Not in a frightening way but as if they were keeping me company, listening to me talk. My dad always had a go at me for using too much electricity and burning the light bulb and told me to sit in the living room with everyone else but I refused and would sit in that room in the dark, with just the light coming from the screen of my laptop, but I wasn't afraid. I just felt as if I was at ease, as if someone was with me and they were quite happy sitting me with, listening to me read out my stories. Eventually my dad had enough and was getting freaked out by the idea of me sitting in that room by myself in the pitch dark as he kept saying there's something negative in that room, so he made me sit in the living room from then on.

Years after, I was coming down the hall looking for my sister. I saw a shadow of a figure in the spare room on the wall and I called my sister's name. The shadow suddenly moved back out of sight as if I wasn't meant to see it. Suddenly my sister came out her own room and I told her what happened. We went into the spare room, it was empty. Whenever we talk about it now, I always say I got the feeling whoever it was didn't want to scare me, that I wasn't meant to see him or her, that's why they tried to move out of sight.

I do think there's a number of entities that inhabit our house as my dad and sister have both heard a man heavy breathing from the spare room; my sister when she was seven years old saw a teenage girl standing in our hall dressed in jeans and a checked shirt, then disappear; my dad and sister have also seen a silver cat on a few occasions.

One night I woke up in the middle of the night feeling someone stroke my back but I can only describe it in a motherly way. Instantly I felt a terrible fear as I knew no one was in my room but suddenly a feeling of calm overwhelmed me and I fell back asleep.

In late 2009, my sister shouted on me in a panic and I ran into the living room. She told me the bookcase cabinets had been rattling by themselves and I sat down for about a minute, then it happened again. Suddenly only what I can describe was a flash of white light in the kitchen doorway and there was a great feeling of electricity static in the air. My sister was terrified but somehow I wasn't, I was more intrigued and stood under the doorway. The static feeling stayed there for a good five minutes before fading away.

My mum and dad got divorced when I was 11 and my mom got her own place. I would stay on weekends and one weekend when I was 14, I had the overwhelming feeling of being followed. I remember I kept turning around whilst walking to my mum's and the air about ten feet behind me looked hazy and it had a human shape. It was only after this time I started to feel as if there was something in my mum's house. It got to the point I refused to sleep in my room and would sleep in my mum's room.

My mom had got a new cat, Tigger, and one afternoon, he ran into my room. I freaked and ran after him, desperate to get him out of there, when I saw him on the back of my two seater chair. His back legs were being pulled up and down by an invisible someone and he looked terrified. My playstation was on the table and the power suddenly came on by itself. I grabbed the cat and ran out of there.

After a few months, I started to sleep in the room again but my mum would have to sleep in the spare bed next to mine. She would always wait until I fell asleep, then disappear back into her own room. I woke up one morning and I looked out into the hall where a mirror was hung which reflected the front door. For some reason, I was drawn to the mirror and wouldn't look away. Suddenly I saw a figure in the mirror, it was a peach coloured head and shoulders with no hair, features or clothes but it passed through the front door in the mirror. It was if the entity that had moved into my mum's house was letting me know that it was leaving but after I had seen it, I was shaking and couldn't stop crying I was that frightened.

I've now since moved out of my family home and visit my family on most weekends. One night I stayed over in my old room with my sister. I was having a dream when I heard the sound of a bell which I can only describe as angelic, then I was going towards a white light. Suddenly I woke up and I heard the bell ring out a further two times. I would have just attributed it to a dream but my sister also heard it and it was loud enough for my dad to hear it in the next room. I have never experienced anything like that before, it sounded pure, as if it was from heaven itself. I've read online other people have heard the sound of bells.

I do not believe that it is just the house itself that is haunted, I believe that my family and I are sensitive, that it is genetic us being able to see these things.

Outside I have seen flashes of people that disappear. I was on a bus one time that takes us to a nearby seaside town so it's like a two hour trip. I saw a Hispanic looking woman reflected in the rearview mirror of the driver's cab (the driver was a man). She had sunglasses, red lipstick and black hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wasn't a passenger and I remember looking over the seat trying to find her but she wasn't on the bus but I could still see her in the mirror as if she was sat on the bus. After that, a horrible feeling washed over me and I slid down on my seat as far as I could until she was no longer in my eyeline.

That same bus my sister had a paranormal experience. It was night and she was coming back with my dad, there was just another woman sat behind them and no one else. My sister heard a little boy's voice call out "Mummy" right in her ear.

I have experienced two odd things at my work, a large office building I've been employed in the last four years. One night I was leaving with some of my colleagues, I went to push the ladies bathroom door open and I felt someone push the door shut from the other side with a lot of force. I naturally assumed perhaps someone was getting changed in the sink area so I hung around in the corridor for about a minute when one of my colleagues appeared asking me if I was waiting for someone. I told her someone was in the bathroom and had shut the door on me. She looked at me strangely and pushed open the door with no problem. Inside all three cubicles were empty and I was stunned as no one was in there but there's no doubt in my mind someone had shut that door shut on me.

A few months later I was sitting with two guys I worked with in the canteen. We were just talking normally when one of the guys suddenly jumped and he looked frightened. He went on to say he had just heard a man moaning right in his ear.

Lately on a few occasions, I've been in a cubicle and have heard the taps which can only come on when you sweep your hand under the sensor, come on and when I come outside, the taps are still running but no one's there.

Recently in my mum's new house odd things have started happenings, lights are turning themselves on, scratching at her bedroom door. She doesn't like talking about it as she says it encourages these things to happen. I stayed over in on a camp bed one night in her living room and at 3 in the morning I heard a loud bang and my entire bed shuddered as if someone had slammed the headboard. That cat leapt of the bed and hid himself and there was a feeling off static electricity in the air. I sat up the entire night unable to get back to sleep until the light drifted in and the heavy feeling left.

The flat I am living in right now nothing, at first happened and I didn't feel anything there, but one night I was woken with crashing and dragging sounds coming from my bathroom. I was too scared to open the door and was trying to convince myself it might be a mouse. But eventually I opened the door, armed with a hairdryer and nothing had been moved.

Fast forward to this year, I have seen my full length mirror shift forward right infront of me, my hairdryer move by itself. The road I live on is filled with old Victorian houses and is very secluded. My best friend refuses to walk down it at night and goes the long way around as she gets a bad feeling.

One time I was coming back from our local Tesco, about 4pm, and I was just passing the house next to mine, when I felt someone's presence right behind me, then someone actually grabbed my shoulder. I tore around and no one was there.

Latest thing that has happened to my dad on this road. He had left mine at about 8pm and had chained his bike to the fence opposite the road. He was just unlocking the bike chain when he heard footsteps and looked around. He said he saw a man with long shoulder length black hair parted in the middle wearing biker gear walking towards him but he couldn't see his face. He turned back around for a moment and turned again. The man was gone and there is literally just a fence on that side. He couldn't have disappeared into a house.

The weirdest event happened to my sister. She was in our kitchen years ago and said she suddenly saw a black and white sheepdog sitting in the space between the washing machine and the cooker. She told my dad and his face paled as there is an old tale in our familyline that of a black and white dog that appears when someone is about to die. My dad's mum died years ago but she often told them about various members of our family from the 1950's that have seen this dog that disappeared and the sound of milk bottles clattering on a cobbled street.

My dad's still reporting paranormal happenings in my old house but whatever it is, I don't feel it is harmful. I believe other things come into the house but don't stay. I have sort of acclimatized to it all now and accepted it is part of my everyday life. I still get unnerved from time to time but I try and not give way to fear. I like to think it's just invisible people, no different from the people we pass on the street and we shouldn't be afraid of them.

I'm not so sure about angels but for a long while now, I have been finding a lot of white feathers appearing in the oddest places. My mum says its an angel watching over me. I do feel a cold breeze around me a lot and I can't explain it but it feels like a familiar presence that I'm comfortable with.

My sister is still struggling with it all as she's told me recently at night she's felt someone sit on the bottom of her bed and heard her model animals she collects being moved around on the dresser. She doesn't want the spirits there and tells them to leave her alone. She doesn't want to know. I find myself on the other hand wanting to find out more and more about the other side.