Navy Blue Paint

It was the year 2014, and I was 11 years old. My family (my dad, stepmom, and three biological siblings and three step-siblings) had recently moved from Alaska to Washington State and moved into what we call the "Blue House" because it was painted a dark, navy blue. I don't remember when the first haunting happened, but it was probably about a month or two after we'd settled in.

There is a historical park called Olmstead about 40 minutes away from our home and I was fascinated by it. It used to belong to a family called the Olmsteads who'd settled in 1875 and built multiple houses. A "caretaker", you could say, told us stories about the ghosts she'd see around the property and there were stories about the family being buried under the floorboards. A few weeks after I'd started visiting the park, strange things began happening.

Now that I look back, I suspect that either the spirits of that park had followed me home and had awoken the other residing in the "Blue House", or my own presence had awoken the whole other dimension up and decided to annoy me.

For the first several months, I'd hear voices - whispering - and see humanoid shadows out of the corner of my eyes in broad daylight. My sister had even seen a man in our neglected garden wearing a khaki trench coat, but when she looked away and back again, he was gone. Nearing the spring of my first year and final year at the "Blue House", the hauntings got worse.

And I began to see things.

The first time was after I'd gone to the Olmstead park and it was late at night - probably around 9:30 P.M. I was in my bed with my closet sitting in front of me, doors wide open. My mind was clear and I was fully awake when I saw her. She was nearly indecipherable with my horrible vision (I have glasses), but as the minutes ticked by, she got clearer and more solid. She wore a 19th century brown dress with poufy sleeves and a dirty, white apron. Her chesnut hair was tied in a messy bun and she standing completely to the side. The only thing that creeped me out was her eyes.

Because she didn't have any.

A few weeks later, it was in the dead of night, and once again... I saw another one. Immediately, I got a horrible sense of dread, and it felt like ice was in my heart and was spreading to my vital organs. Another apparition appeared and they (I guess I could call it a "her" because it looked female) didn't have eyes. Just empty, black sockets.

And she was staring right at me.

I snuggled deeper into my covers and said, in a clear voice, "Go away."

That was the wrong answer. Instantly, her whole demeanour changed. Her face contorted into fury and she vanished. The icy feeling in my chest grew larger and she reappeared at my dresser, in the corner of my room.

Much closer than before.

She began to rise from her crouched position and her nails morphed into deadly claws, like an animal. My mouth was sealed shut, and I was so scared I couldn't scream. Her mouth opened and - I turned away.

Shaking like a leaf, I waited for impact, but none came. Slowly, I peekd from under my covers and saw that she was gone.

I was relieved, but I didn't sleep well for the rest of that night.

About a month flew by, and once again, I was alone one day. It was 4:30 P.M, I was the only one in the hallway, and all the lights were off and my bedroom door was open. I was reading a book - a comic, probably - when I got chills. I looked up into the hallway and the sense of dread from all those days ago returned.

Then, there was a head. A disembodied, floating head right outside my doorway. After a few seconds, it slid into the wall and all was quiet. I watched in morbid fascination as the disembodied head repeated itself three times. I decided to get outta there. I abandoned my book, walked out the door - closing it behind me - and went down the dark hallway.

As I walked, I felt a breath on the back of my neck. The hairs there stood up and my skin prickled with goosebumps. Turning, I startled at the sight of another ghost! She (so many were either little girls or grown women) wore a flowing white dress and had a bundle of flowers in her right hand. I stared at her for a second before turning away and full-on sprinting up the stairs to share my tales. Of course my family didn't believe me.

Then, my birthday rolled around. I was turning 12. My sisters' friends were over (I had problems socializing and the thought of having someone over just freaks me out) and was this huge, pink-and-more-pink birthday party. We all decided to got on this weird, dopey ghost hunt and used my brother's speaker-and-microphone to pick up the voices of the dead.

That's when we went to my room at the very end of the hallway.

My brother said he heard whispers. Scratching, as if someone were writing something on parchment. He heard shuffling, and a few bumps and nicks here and there. As an experiment, we left my creepy, glass doll on the dresser and went upstairs. After fooling around with dress-up and cake, we headed back downstairs.

My creepy, glass doll had moved. It sat on one of the dresser previously, and then now it was on the other.

We all started freaking out and yelling at each other, demanding if any of us had snuck downstairs and been a little sh*t and my parents got sick of it. They forbid us from hunting "ghosts" and all that nonsense, and we obliged. The hauntings slowed down to a stop, and by the end of the year... They hadn't said a peep.

That was until I moved to North Carolina in 2015.

And that's a story for another time!