My Earliest Ghost Experiences

My very first post on this website was about my most recent paranormal experience at the time. I mentioned that I wanted to add more about my experiences, so I decided to break down the big experiences in my life and submit them to the website as well.

Naturally, I would like to start with my earliest ghost experience. Unfortunately for me, I don't remember my very earliest experiences. My mom actually told me about them. I figured I could tell you guys those two and tell you the first one I can actually remember right now.

My earliest experience is going to need a little backstory. My mom played with a Ouija board that she found in the attic of her church when she was like seven or eight years old. She played this game with her brother and it told them all kinds of things. She specifically told me that they had confirmed with my grandma some birth dates in the family, dates that my grandma didn't think kids would remember on their own. Not long after that, my mom started seeing things, she would get touched, grabbed, and beds in the house would shake. It was very scary for them. Whatever it was has followed my mom around ever since. We still occasionally see it around. It's scary, to say the least.

My earliest experience with this thing happened in our very first home, an apartment not that far from the hospital. My mom said that this thing used to bother my dad and me while we were sleeping. She would see us trying to bat away invisible fingers that seemed to be tickling our noses. That's not really a big experience though. It freaked her out enough to remember it but it could have been anything really. The experience that she has told me a few times is actually much more frightening.

I'm not too sure about the details because it's been a little while since she was last willing to talk about it. From what I remember, my mom and I had gone into the apartment from running some errands. She was either holding me or she was carrying me in a baby carrier. The front door we came in from looked down a hallway. At the end of the hall, there was a little table with some things on it, decorative things and possibly a phone from what I gathered. She closed the door and started to walk further into the apartment when something (I believe she said it was a vase) crashed to the floor. Before she could really do anything about it, she heard a growling noise that seemed to get closer and closer. Scared, she ran out the door with me and she didn't go back in until she had someone with her. I presume it was my father that had her go back in the house later. This story freaks her out every time she tells it. I can visibly see that it gives her the chills just to repeat it. She also gets really distant, so it's hard to get details out of her for this one.

The other experience happened in a different home. We moved a lot when I was a kid, all over Iowa basically. This house had a basement and this was the house in which I had an imaginary friend. His name was George and until we moved to Texas (and lost a lot of stuff) my mom had a picture I drew of him. From what I saw from that, he had red hair. George lived in the basement at this house. He was kindly and didn't play tricks. My mom thought the entire experience was cute, except for the fact that he wouldn't leave the basement. When we eventually moved from that house, apparently I explained to her that George couldn't come because he had to stay in the basement. He couldn't leave and he couldn't stay with us even though we were moving on. To this day, my mom says the name George endearingly. She really likes that name.

I can't remember any of those things though. I was a baby and a toddler respectively for each of those memories. I am pretty sure the earliest memory I have was from when I was five. I had a dream that I was watching a baby girl take her first steps towards me. It woke me with a jolt and I immediately left my mother's bed to sit on the carpeted stairs that we had there. I kept touching my arms and reminding myself that I was five. That is my earliest memory.

I was probably around that age for my earliest ghost experience (from memory). I went to my aunt's house to stay the night. I can't remember if we lived in the area or if I was just there visiting my grandparents (who lived within eye-sight down the street). All I remember was that it was just for the night. When I stayed there, I stayed with my cousin in his room, which had a door that led to a bathroom that connected to his mother's room. This wasn't my first time staying over and I knew my cousin was going to get up at some point and abandon me to sleep with his mom. I remember I had to have the closet light on because I was scared of the dark but it was still really hard for me to actually get to sleep

The next morning, low and behold, my cousin had left me, as I knew he would. I didn't want to be alone though, so I decided to go join them in their bed. The blinds were closed but I still remember a lot of yellow sunlight coming in from the windows. The light was probably yellow because it was an old house and the panes were stained with age.

Both doors to the bathroom were wide open. I remember that clearly because I could see the white and gray linoleum on the floor, along the bathtub, under a pedestal sink, and into my aunt's room where my cousin and aunt had the covers pulled over them. I didn't want to wake them so I walked slowly, cautiously through the doorway. I remember hearing my bare feet pad across the linoleum and wishing I knew how to walk quieter.

In mid-step, I saw a huge, dark gray rat cross my path. It was enormous. Think about a grown man's basketball sneaker and you have the size of this rat sans the tail length. It shot out from under the pedestal sink and disappeared into the side of the tub. I want you to get the full image here. While there very well could have been some kind of rat hole beside the sink, the rat literally just ran through the tub. The tub itself appeared to be undamaged and it connected with the floor. This rat ran, with its belly practically dragging on the floor, straight ahead. It didn't dive down, turn, hunch, or even hesitate. It ran directly into the tub and it was gone.

I wasn't scared of rats, mice or bats as a kid. Snakes made me hesitant because I didn't want any needle like fangs in my flesh (which looked a lot more like hypodermic needles to me than other animals teeth) and I was terrified of bugs (particularly spiders), but rats were not a problem. The size of the rat was alarming and the sudden appearance of the rat was surprising, but it didn't scare me. I immediately went to the tub and tried to figure out where the rat went. I couldn't figure it out. There wasn't a hole. There wasn't a raised space (even a small one) between the tub and the floor. There just wasn't an explanation.

Once I figured out that the rat couldn't possibly have disappeared into the bathtub, but I clearly remembered seeing it do that, I went to my aunt's room. I saw that she and her son were curled up on her very tall bed. I would have had to climb up there and jostle them all around to get to be up there with them. I could see that my cousin was curled under her arm and knew that I needed to go somewhere else. It wouldn't have been nice to wake them. I was too scared to go into the rest of the house because they weren't awake, so I went back to my cousin's room and stayed on his bed until they got up.

That day, I told everyone that would listen to me about that rat. I told them every detail I could think of and no one was impressed. I guess they either thought I was making up stories or they just heard "rat" and understood that it was an old house so they figured it was a legit rat. Repeating the story so many times that day and not getting a single reaction beyond a nod was what committed that experience to memory. I am fairly certain I saw a ghost rat that day and that was my earliest ghostly experience.