I hadn't intended to share another story right now, as I have 'Window View' waiting for approval. Two coming out at once seemed excessive, but for some odd reason I'm feeling a nudge.
First a bit of history. My father's family were caretakers of a very old cemetery in Kentucky for all of his growing up years. He and his family dealt with death and the supernatural daily to hear him talk (rarely done but oh wow can he tell some doozies). He left to join the military, and his oldest brother stayed on and are still caretakers. The position seems to be passed down, although I don't know entirely how that works. We never had a lot to do with my father's family, except his youngest brother, uncle Ralph.
My mother used to call Ralph a 'devil worshipper' as well as other things that weren't so nice but she didn't forbid him to come around or stop us from visiting with him. He had an apartment outside of Antioch, California. The front was a quiet street, but the back was a huge open area that lead into the hills just outside of the old Somersville area, just a stones throw to Somersville Road, up to the Black Diamond Mines.
I am giving you location, because if you read Father Knows Best, you know that area is very... Active. Actually Rose Hill Cemetery is rather famous, which I didn't know until I was writing Father Knows Best, but it makes perfect sense given my experiences, and especially my brother's experience.
Anyway, we kids, there were 5 of us, used to spend a day at my uncle's place, roaming around the hills, getting 'lost' for hours only to turn up at dinner time or as the sun set. We'd always have to crowd in to my uncle's bathroom to wash up before dinner, and it was a melee, I mean 5 kids, ages 8 to 16, were bound to be rambunctious while trying to get clean. I look back at that time and laugh. We probably made more of a mess than got clean, but it was fun.
Anyway, me being a girl and younger, I was smaller, so I was always the last to get cleaned up and that meant I was the last to get dinner. I was tired of that and I thought I was being clever. Instead of struggling to get to the sink where my brothers were jockeying for the soap and water, I turned to the bathtub, thinking to wash up there. The curtain was closed and I pulled it aside and just about jumped out of my skin. Sitting in the tub, stained water up to her chin, was a little girl, younger than me, perhaps 5 or so. I yelped, and my oldest brother came over and shoved me aside, to my shock he reached down and turned the water on, not paying the little girl any attention at all. I started to yell at him when all the sudden she and her dark stained water were gone. Of course I was last to dinner that night again, but I didn't care because for some reason I just wasn't hungry.
All that evening I kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eye, and later that night, as I sat and brushed my hair, I saw her standing in front of me. She was very frightening to me. Not because she was an apparition or that she was nude, but because of her appearance. She looked bruised and broken. There was dirt and blood smeared on her skin and her hair was matted with a mix of the two. I screamed and my uncle came in from where he and my 16 year old brother were out smoking skunky smelling stuff (now I know MJ but at the time I didn't have a clue). To my surprise, he addressed the girl, "You're not supposed to scare the kids." That was all he said, but the girl vanished in the blink of an eye.
He took my hairbrush from me and began to brush my hair as I tried to crawl through his chest. When I asked who that was, he said it was a friend of his playing a mean trick and that if I saw someone scary again I was to tell him right away, but I was okay now, I was safe.
I said okay, but when I got back home I told my mom I didn't want to go back to his house because of his mean friends. When I told her about the girl my mom looked like she was going to breathe fire, but she agreed, and I never went back. It was about 6 years later that my mom broke all ties with my Uncle. We didn't see him for more than a decade after that. I can't say I'm sorry about that. I agree with my mother's decision about not allowing me to go back. Had it been me as a mother I wouldn't have allowed ANY of my children to return to that place or visit my uncle again.
I don't know who or what that girl was, and I never asked. If anyone would like to hazard a guess I'd really like to hear about it.
I also don't know why I feel a nudge to tell this story as I'm not seeing any value in it, but maybe someone will relate.
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