My continuing series of True Life Ghost Stories to celebrate Halloween. Read Parts I and II here.

True Ghost Stories, Part III

When the Dead Refuse to Leave

My grandmother Margaret had a hard life. Widowed in her twenties with two young boys to raise, she spent the rest of her life as a single mom scrubbing office floors to make ends meet. She shared a ramshackle house with her eldest son Jim, her aging mother, her sister Ruthie and her young nephew Dennis, whom they all helped raise.

One summer when she and Denny and Jim came out to visit us in California, all the boys, including my Dad and young brother, took off on a fishing trip near Visalia. That’s when tragedy struck again. This time Margaret lost her youngest son, my Dad, and the nephew she had loved so much. Denny, unable to swim, fell into the river and my father went in to save him. They both downed together.

Despite these tragedies Margaret was a warm, kind woman. She had a gift of gab and loved to chat up people. When we visited her in Indiana she would take us to work and introduce us to all the people whose offices she cleaned. They all greeted her warmly and told us what a fine person she was. She loved her job and took pride in her work, eventually becoming the head of the housekeeping department. But she never stopped scrubbing floors; she believed in leading by example.

As much as she loved her job, she was looking forward to retirement. What she wanted more than anything else in the world was to visit Hawaii. It was all she could talk about.

When she finally turned 65 she travelled with friends from Indiana to California where we lived, camping along the way to save money. Her plan was to visit us then fly across the ocean—her first airplane ride ever—to that tropical paradise she had always dreamed about.

Sadly, on her trip to visit us she suffered a heart attack and died.

That night my mother woke from an extremely vivid dream where Margaret had come to her weeping so hard she could not speak. My mother did everything she could to try to comfort her and find out what was wrong. But Margaret would not be consoled. And she would not let go of my mother.

She hung onto her so tightly it scared my mother. It felt as if Margaret was trying to climb inside her body. My mother fought hard to push her away, and eventually Margaret let go and wandered off, still crying mournfully.

The next morning my mother was deeply disturbed by this dream. That’s when she discovered that Margaret had died that night—the night she visited my mother in her dreams. My mother always believed that Margaret was crying because she was not ready to leave this world, not ready to give up her dream of visiting Hawaii.

That would have been the end to this ghost story, except for a strange event that occurred about a year later. My mother was talking to a cousin back in Indiana, catching up on family news, when her cousin asked, “Have you heard about Dorothy? You’ll never guess the change that’s come over her this past year, or where she’s off to. Hawaii, of all places! Can you imagine that?”

Well, anyone who had known Dorothy would be surprised indeed to hear that. Dorothy was the spinster daughter of some distant cousins. She had been a recluse her whole life. She was so timid and shy she had never married, never worked, and still lived with her aging parents. The only thing she seemed to love was working jigsaw puzzles. There was always one set up in the front room for her to work on.

Now, it appeared, Dorothy had undergone a complete personality change. Not only was she outgoing and gabby, but she had applied for and taken over her cousin Margaret’s old job! And now she was headed for a long vacation in Hawaii!

Well, my mother could believe it. And she knew exactly what had happened. After my mother fended her off that night, Margaret went searching for a more docile partner whose body she could share. And who would be more compliant than her timid and retreating cousin Dorothy?

Margaret finally got her trip to Hawaii, it appeared, and she and Dorothy had a splendid time together. Not long after the trip, Dorothy quit her job and went back home to live with her parents. She spent the rest of her days peacefully piecing together jigsaw puzzles.

This ghost story ended happily enough, as many of these types of paranormal experiences do. Some call it body-hopping, some soul-sharing, some spirit possession. Whatever the name, this kind of activity, cross-culturally, is more common in women than men. Often when a disincarnate entity takes control of another human body, there is a noticeable change of personality. It can even have a positive effect on the life of the willing partner, some say. While my mother managed to fight off Margaret’s attempt to possess her, Dorothy may very well have consented willingly.

But there’s another type of spirit possession where an entity embodies an inanimate object. My husband and I encountered that type of possession when we were house-sitting for his aunt and uncle one summer.

At first it seemed as if the house was haunted. But it didn’t feel the same as the haunted house I lived in as a child. We weren’t sharing the house with disembodied spirits. Not at all. This felt much more ominous.

The house itself was possessed. We had taken up residence in the belly of the Beast.

True Ghost Stories, Part IV

Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast

We felt so fortunate. Dale had a job in San Francisco that summer, and his Uncle who lived nearby asked us to house sit for them while they were away. We jumped at the chance. They lived in a beautiful home in an upscale neighborhood with a pool—a perfect place for me and our 6-month old son to hang out while Dale worked in the city.

There was only one hitch. Shortly after moving in, I became increasingly afraid to be alone in the house. I was okay when Dale was at home. But as soon as he left for work, a creepy feeling overwhelmed me. As I walked through the house I was aware of something sinister and malicious watching me. It was as if the walls had eyes that followed me everywhere. As if I was living in the belly of the Beast.

I could not stay in the house. Every morning I would pack up food and diapers and books and towels and whatever else I needed so that my son and I could camp out on the patio by the pool all day. There I felt some measure of relief. While the house behind me felt menacing, at least I was not surrounded by those eyes, not immersed in the midst of it.

One of my house-sitting chores was to keep the lush landscaping that surrounded the home watered, and I did my best. But one side of the house I could not water, the side where the bedrooms of the teenage children were located. What I felt staring out at me from those windows was too unnerving.

One day when Dale was home I felt brave enough to open those two bedrooms and look inside. Nothing seemed amiss. Yet I felt sinister unwelcome and looking out the windows that had so frightened me, I had a strong premonition that something horrible was waiting to happen.

This feeling of impending doom came whenever I heard the wind chimes blow outside our bedroom window. How I hated that eerie sound, and how grateful I felt when Dale, for some unstated reason, took them down. I didn’t press him about it. I wasn’t yet willing to share my spooky feelings with my young husband who seemed to fear nothing, who was so practical and level-headed. I was afraid he’d think me silly or foolish. I didn’t want to admit how scared I was in his Uncle’s beautiful home.

But one evening when we were watching TV together, Dale jumped up and switched the channel just as a horror movie was about to play. Until then, he had always loved watching spooky movies.

That’s when I found out that he too had the same creepy feeling in the house—like something evil was lurking, or the house itself had become possessed and was watching us and waiting. We both had the horrible premonition that something awful was about to happen.

So while it was a relief to find that I was not alone, that this frightening sense of being watched and impending doom was not merely my imagination, I could not shake it and could not continue to live there with it.

That’s when I decided enough was enough. Either we were going to have to move, or IT was. I was no longer willing to allow myself to be forced out onto the patio each day. I decided to fight back.

I grew up attending a Christian Science Sunday School each week. I’d been taught that God is Love and All-in-all. I reasoned that if this was so, then God as Love must surround me, must fill the very space that occupied that house. Either this was true or it wasn’t. And I was going to find out which.

So instead of going out on the patio one morning, I sat at the dining room table and prayed. My prayer was simply to feel God’s presence, that Love, surrounding me and filling that house. No thought, no thinking, no reasoning—just feeling Love. And I sat there like that until the whole room seemed filled with a warm inviting light, until my whole being seemed filled with Love, until I forgot all about any evil presence or the need to be rid of it. All that I felt was joy.

When my prayer ended, the house was free. That sense of evil had vanished. I walked around the house and was flooded with happiness. The house was normal, non-threatening. Whatever had occupied it before was gone. Even the children’s rooms were peaceful, empty.

The rest of our stay there was uneventful. Nothing horrible happened then, or in the future, as far as we knew. We did question the aunt and uncle years later about whether they’d had any abnormal experiences in the house, but they never had.

So we never found out why we both felt such a sense of evil and impending doom while living there. I told Dale about how I no longer needed to spend the day outside, that whatever had been bothering me before had vanished. He was not so lucky. That evil sense never left him while we were there, and to this day he says that he would never want to stay in that house. For many, many years we could not hang wind chimes in our home. It was too eerie!

You’d think after having had “exorcised” the Beast, I never again would have been troubled by ghosts or demons or evil incarnate. But you’d be wrong.

Several years later when I had two small children I again was visited by a sense of pure evil. And this time was even more terrifying than being in the belly of the Beast. So terrifying, in fact, that I was paralyzed with fear. I could not move, I could not scream, I could barely breathe. For the Beast had crept into my bed, pinned me down, and sat grinning on my chest.

More about that next time.

---

Read more about The Sea Within Trilogy at this link.

Purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, and Bookshop. Available in ebook, paperback and hardcover.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.