Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I was born and raised on a small Caribbean twin-islands called Trinidad and Tobago. The Caribbean is full of its own strange tales about the supernatural and paranormal, it being a part of the world heavily influenced by the voodoo practices of ex-slaves.

As a child, I spent most of my time at home in my grandparents’ house, situated on a hill called St.Barbs, in Laventille, P.O.S. I always heard stories from the neighbors, and even my mother, that my grandparents practiced witchcraft. It was not until I was about five years old, however, that I began to believe this after having some strange encounters myself.

One morning, when I was six years old, I was away from school, recovering from an asthma attack. My grandmother, who was retired, was the only one at home with me. At one point, while I lay in my room, she came in and informed me that she was going out, and that I would have to be home alone for a bit of the day.

Dreading being alone in the house, (and even more so because I was ill) I began to beg her not to go. After a while, smiling, she told me she was only joking with me, and that she was only just going outside to get the washing done.

After she left, I lay alone in the room. I was sure I could hear weird sounds coming from the kitchen even though there was no one inside the house but me. Eventually, I could bare it no longer, and left the house to sit out in the yard, where I could see persons passing by and be closer to my grandmother.

For a short time, I was preoccupied with a small group of picnic ants circling what seemed to be a small piece of candy on the floor in front of me. head bent, I was not aware of what was going on around me.

At one point I happened to raise my head and look toward the direction of the front porch. To my surprise, I saw my grandmother hurriedly walking toward the porch, and entering it. She then locked the porch gates behind her, taking the keys inside with her. I was very surprised and upset, seeing that she couldn’t possibly have passed without seeing that I was sitting there on the bench, and more so because she had locked the porch gates, knowing that was the only way for me to get into the house.

I ran quickly to the locked gates, began to shake them, and yell: “Grandma, don’t you see me out here? Open the gates, I have to come in!” but she ignored me and I watched her walk further into the house, oblivious to my yelling. I glanced toward the side of the yard, near the washroom, looking for a way to get into the house. To my utter disbelief, standing there, by the laundry room door, was my grandmother. She was smiling at me, and dressed in an entirely different outfit than the one I had just seen her wearing when she went into the house.

Even more surprising was the fact that when I looked at the porch gates again, they were wide open, just as I had left them when I first went into the front yard. I knew my grandmother couldn’t possibly have  changed into different clothing and reopened the porch gates so fast. I didn’t know what to think.

When I got older, I tried to convince myself that I was mistaken; that it was probably just the fact that I was ill that made me a bit confused as to what I saw, but the truth is, I KNOW what I saw… and it was as real as anything else in my surroundings that day.

This is a true story. Not a work of fiction.

Written by Danielle Dixon, Copyright 2009