Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

First, I am skeptical of ‘ghosts’, I write this not believing in any sort of spiritual world, but, things have happened in my past I cannot explain, I hope this site can.

All my life I have had a very overactive imagination, as a child I didn’t really get along with my peers preferring my own company, I had my own friends at home anyway. These friends were imaginary, they would come and go men, women, children, some would come one day and I would never see them again, others stayed.

One girl in particular, Carol. She never talked, I named her this, as I first found her at Christmas time. My parents would encourage me to make friends at school or with girls on my street. I told them I already had friends, they worried, of course they worried, I was eight years old and had never had a friend around to tea, never been to someone’s birthday party. They worried about these friends, who seemed so real, I would talk about the games we played together, I could describe them with such clarity.

Carol, would be sat on my bed everyday when I returned from school. She had long blonde hair and pale blue eyes. I loved her dearly, she was my ‘imaginary’ big sister. I would smile at her and tell her about my day, she would just sit. I was never sure if she actually listened or not. My mother would come in to ask me about my day and Carol wouldn’t stir. I couldn’t understand how mum couldn’t see this beautiful girl when I could.

One day I returned home and Carol wasn’t there. I burst into tears and ran downstairs to my mum, ‘Carol’s gone. She’s gone.’ I remember how my mother sighed a deep sigh of relief that day, she smiled, ‘maybe your too old for imaginary friends sweetie.’ I remember a cold breeze ran through my hair and a long weak breath being drawn by my ear when she said this. ‘Did you feel that mummy?’ I whispered, ‘no’, ‘someone just breathed into my ear.’ My mum took a deep breath and shook her head and sternly whispered, ‘you can’t have, there’s no one here apart from you and me, what’s wrong with you Taylor? You worry me when you go on like this sweetie.’

All of my life I had never felt negativity in my house, my parents where so loving. But I remember the day Carol left, my life changed. I remember when I was about nine, falling asleep and as my eyes began to close and I began to drift off a dark shadow formed at the foot of my bed, my eyes opened but the shadow was gone. I hadn’t been visited by a friend since Carol left. As I drifted again I heard something fall to the floor. I got out of bed and saw it was my diary, it was open at the date Carol left, I read the passage I had noted ‘Carol left today, I don’t think she’ll be back, the house is dark now.’  As I stood back up I looked at my reflection in the mirror and I saw carol behind me. I smiled at her, she shook her head and looked away, a shadow appeared behind her and she screamed. I had never heard a word from her lips but she let out an almighty scream. I began to scream and fell to the floor. My mother ran in and asked me what was wrong, she was horrified. That night I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Over the next few years I was rarely visited by ‘friends.’ I never saw Carol again. My mother would ask me if I was ever outside her bedroom door at night, as she could hear whispering, she would also see the light flickering under her door as if I was walking past. I was always in bed when she saw this.

When I became a teenager my friends no longer visited, I have forgotten a lot of them. I went to high school and made some good friends there. I have lived a very normal life, now married to my husband Graham with a daughter, Leona. Leona is six and beginning to show traits that I had at her age, she has these ‘friends’ too. These friends are so real to her like they were to me, though I now see they can only be imaginary. However, my husband Graham, said something that has unsettled me greatly, ‘What if they’re ghosts Leona talks to?’ What if they were? but something unnerves me still, my daughters eyes, pale blue. She has eyes just like Carol.

Sent in by Taylor Bishop-Branning, Copyright 2010