Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

My Aunt Grace was not really my aunt.  She and her husband were friends of my step father’s who insisted, upon our meeting, of being called Aunt Grace and Uncle Buck. I was 12 years old when I first met Grace. She would regale me with stories of her life and travels. She had taught English at a school that began in a refurbished chicken coop, that school is now a prominent university. Though highly intelligent she did have her quirks, she once came to my house wearing a woven straw planter as a hat.

Even though I had grown up and moved a hundred miles away, I kept in contact with Grace by phone calls or letters. Due to cost my phone calls lessened yet my letters continued to my beloved Aunt Grace.  When neither my calls nor my letters received any reply I decided to go visit Grace myself.

Upon arriving at her house I knocked on the door. “Hello”, I heard my aunt’s distinctive voice say. “HI Grace,” I answered, “it’s me, I haven’t seen you in a long time so I have come to visit”. “I’m glad you’re here,” came the reply. Immediately the door opened and there stood my “Uncle Buck”, dressed in dirty pajamas and smelling of booze. “I have come to see Grace”, I explained to Buck.  “You can’t” Buck answered. “Why?” I demanded.  “Because she’s dead,” he replied.  “Dead”! “I was just talking to her not 30 seconds ago”!  “Would you like to come into the house?” he asked.

Walking past him I see my unopened letters setting on a desk in the hallway. “Is there someone else here with you?” I asked “No, look for yourself” Buck says.  After a thorough search of the house, I even looked in the garage; I found no one home but Buck. I was beginning to think Buck was playing a cruel joke. “If Grace is dead how did it happen and where is she?” I asked. Buck explained that she had gone into the hospital and died 3 days later. When he told me where she was buried I immediately left.

Still not believing she was dead I went to the cemetery and asked the director where my Aunt was. There I found a small brass plaque in the ground covered with grass with Grace’s name on it. As I cleaned off the plaque I cried and cried and talked to Grace. This time I received no answer.

The voice I had heard was as clear as someone standing next to me and talking. Where did it come from? I don’t really know, I had been standing there talking to a woman’s voice and answering, it only lasted a few seconds. I didn’t have time to think about it.

Written by Cheryl Hubbard, Copyright 2009