ALL HALLOW'S GRIM blog party part I

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The 31 Days of Halloween
The Countdown to Halloween
The Real Witches of Halloween

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I am going to share my one Ghostly experience, that was ongoing for several months. (actually spanning over a couple of years all totaled)

As a teenager I did a LOT of babysitting, I was good at it. I became an Aunt at the age of 11, and since I had some experience from that my next door neighbor started asking me to babysit for 1 hour or less at the age of 11, while she went to the store, after a few times she stayed out longer. the neighbors children were 3 and 6 months. We moved away 2 years later. My babysitting skills came with me, and became better. I was made an Aunt for the second time at 13 years old. (I am telling you this now, as it will have  bearing later in the story.)

Where we moved to, was 1.5 hours south of where we lived and it was a "condominium community" which were very trendy at the time...basically they were like the old row houses. We were one of the first families to move in. What families were there were either young couples with small children or older couples with no children. I was miserable, I left my best friends. I was smack in the middle of puberty and my mom was in the middle of her "change" to say we "butted heads" was an understatement. I hated them for moving us, both of my parents. Looking back now I know I blamed my Mom more than my Dad.

The the townhouse to the right of us had a family of 3 move in a few weeks after us, their daughter a real tomboy was almost 3 years younger than me. However, she was the only kid I met close to home. we sort of became friends. I think we both realized, that we weren't really crazy about each other but it was companionship. the townhouse to the left of us stayed empty for a very long time, approx. a year and a half. There were some strange happenings that we noticed, even before anyone moved in.  We did find out from the "office/model" that the condo was sold, and that they didn't know why no one was moving in.

During the time that this condo was empty, there were several times that we heard the sound of what would be furniture being dragged across the floors. and there was thick firewalls between each condo. My brother was attending college away from home at the time and would come home on the weekends, and he and I would stay up late and watch the rock n roll shows, chiller theater, regular movies and a new show "Saturday night live". So many times the noises we heard were so loud that my brother would actually go outside and try to see if there was anyone there. He'd go out the front door and look through the front windows and look up at the 2nd story front windows, and then repeat this process out the back door.  After the first time he did this, I decided to go out with him if he ever did it again. I loved my brother and looked up to him, so I am guessing I thought hanging with him and doing what he did would make me cool.  A few weekends later we heard the loud sound of a heavy piece of furniture being dragged again, like a large dresser or cupboard. we went out front, and WHOA! one of the upstairs windows was open about 6 inches.  these windows could not be opened from the outside, they were automatically locked when closed. My brother yelled up to see if anyone was there. No response. we went back through our house to the back to see if we could see anything in the back of the house, nothing. we went back out front and the window was now CLOSED!

This kind of nonsense kept happening. Finally a family moved in, they had 2 girls and a boy. The boy was 1 year older than me, one girl was 1 year younger than me, and the other girl was 5 years younger than me.

the girl closest to my age and I and the other girl from next door started to pal around a bit.

After a couple of months this girl told me there was a ghost in her house. I told her about what were heard and witnessed. We were both weirded-out as was my brother, because these were brand new homes.  I asked her what was going on in the house. She told me, things would get moved, and they would hear whispering sometimes. However, the really scary thing was every night between 3am and 4 am her younger sister would sit straight up in the bed and be screaming and crying. *(I should say that we never heard her screaming, my Dad says it was because of the firewall...so again that makes for the furniture dragging noise to be quite strange) Tammy said, that her sister was totally still asleep while doing this, and when either her or her Mom went to comfort the sister, she would stop crying and screaming but would stay asleep and then start singing quietly, a song no one in the house knew.

The family was renting this condo, they had a year lease. They broke the lease because of the haunting of their daughter and left in the middle of the 7th month living there.

Once again the condo was empty, and we would still hear noise from time to time, and find windows opened. Yet the weirdest thing was one night during my brother's patrol, one of the burner's on that stove in the kitchen was on, rings of bright red. (electric stove) we could see it from the back of the house as that is where the kitchen was and there was a sliding glass door. my brother ran into our house and woke my parents who told him, to go look again, and make sure we weren't imaging it, and if it was still on, to call the cops.  We both argued that we both saw it, so how could it be our imagination? we went back outside, it was about 2am. This trip out back made us look like idiots to our parents, as now the stove was off not even a lingering orange, how could that be?

Come back in a few hours for part II