A ghost story for this 30's post.


Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Reflection/Dream or Real?
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 1997 23:01:24 GMT

I've been fortunate enough to find a bunch of older stories on Obiwan's Home Page and fell in love with the fact that people aren't afraid to tell their stories. So I tracked down your newgroup and am attempting my first post. Here goes, bear with me.

I will post more later if it's received well.

This one took place when I was very little, about 5 or 6. We had just moved into a new house, about a block down the street from where my two brothers had been born. The previous owners had taken less than perfect care of the house and the back porch, (which was enclosed) was filled with bags of garbage. It took my parents, with me helping (mostly getting under-foot), almost two weeks to make the house clean enough to move into.

Once that was taken care of, I plodded myself upstairs, proclaiming loudly that the room at the top of the stairs was mine, that Elizabeth had said she'd share. My parents looked at me strangely, but shrugged and chalked it up to an overactive imagination, but giving into my request for the room.

About a month after moving in completely, I went to bed; tossing and turning, unable to sleep (I think the first day of Kindergarten was the next day...). As I rolled from facing the wall to facing my dresser across the room, I had a feeling that something in the room just didn't seem right, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Focusing my eyes as best I could, I realized that I was seeing my reflection in my dresser mirror. But, no, wait, I didn't have a blue nightgown on! I did a double-take.

A girl of about 16 or 17 stood in front of the only window in my room, clad in a pale blue gown, but white otherwise. She seemed to staring into the backyard for some reason. As I watched her, I began to drift off to sleep, feeling nothing menacing about her. Then suddenly, that changed.

The temperature in the room dropped almost 20 degrees as she slowly turned from the window and looked straight at me.

At first I was stunned. But as she began to approach the bed, her face changed from it's calm facade to a truly malevolent portrait. At about the same time, I remember a music box of mine beginning to play in the background (odd thing to happen, though my mother confirms this).

Downstairs, my mother heard the music box start and came up to see if I was out of bed and to yell at me. Halfway up the stairs, she says, she heard me scream. All I remember is Elizabeth fading as my mother burst into the room and the music immediately stopping at the same time.