A gift or a curse? You decide.
I want to start by saying all the events I am recounting here for you are true and in no way embellished just to make a good ghost story. We had move to Navy housing in Virginia Beach, Virginia when I was 11 yrs old. I am the oldest of three children. When I was 10 my family discovered that I am sensitive to things not always seen and let’s just say I also have a gift of knowing things before they happen. Anyway here is my account of things that happened in that townhouse.
It was July 1981, when we moved to Navy housing in Virginia Beach. Because I am the oldest child I was the first to pick out where I wanted my bedroom to be. We had a four bedroom town house so I picked the next biggest from the master bedroom, my sister naturally got the next biggest and my baby brother the smallest.
My brother had trouble sleeping the first night we were there. We didn’t think much about it because it was a new house and he was four at the time. As time went by he still wouldn’t sleep in his room, and would crawl into bed with me. I soon grow tired of sharing my bed with my brother and asked my mom to change rooms with him. The first night I spent in that room I felt very uneasy. I brushed it off as it was a new room.
For the five years we lived there the feeling never went away but only got worse and so did other things that happened there. One night I went to go to bed and I noticed that one of the pillows on my bed seem to have the shape of a head lying down on it. I didn’t pay much mind to it until I got into the bed and was getting ready to go to sleep and felt like someone was breathing on my neck. I didn’t say anything to anyone, I was scared but I brushed it off deciding it was best kept to myself.
About a week later my mother had a weird experience. My father was out to sea as he was most of the time during that time of my life. Mom was in the bed this one night and she said that as she laid there it felt like a hand had passed over her eyes like someone didn’t want her to see something.
A few nights later, we had another occurrence we cannot to this day explain. My mom would lock the front door before going to bed and she would wake up to the front door open completely as well as the patio door which was also locked and closed. This is where it gets really strange, on the one morning we didn’t find all the doors open we found a pile of dirt underneath our dining room table, and no evidence of where it came from just a very large mound of fresh dirt sitting there. We couldn’t believe our eyes, we checked every possibility of where this dirt could of come from but never found the answer.
I still have strange things happen to me but nothing like what I experience in that town house.
Written by Dawn Chavez, Copyright 2009
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Hi Dawn,
Thank you for sharing your story. I was serving in the Navy back in ’84, and Virginia Beach was my first duty station. I just loved it there, not just because it’s a beautiful place to live and the Base is wonderful as well, but, I had met my husband there who was also serving in the Navy. Anyway, getting back to your story. When I was stationed there, I had a friend who was married and who also lived in the Base Housing townhouses. She was telling me that sometimes she felt a little uneasy in her townhouse unit and that she felt like someone was watching her, even though she was totally alone and her infant son was sleeping in his crib.
I had stayed in the Navy for two tours and then had gotten out. My husband stayed in the Navy and throughout his Naval career, we have resided in various Base housing units throughout the country and abroad. Some of the military housing units in Japan are, I felt, haunted as well. While we were stationed in Japan, I had experienced several such instances.
Again, thank you for sharing your wonderful story. Have a nice weekend.
Hi Dawn,
In answer to your question at the beginning of your story, I feel that it’s a gift, when someone experiences the supernatural world around them. And hopefully, it’s a nice experience and not a bad one.
Sounds haunted to me mate. Lucky you don’t live there anymore.
I am also the oldest of 3 siblings and a sensitive. As a child I nearly had a break down because I did not understand how to deal with being so open to the spirit realm and really had no one to help me through the ordeals. I didn’t really come to peace with it until my mid 30s although I did a lot of shadow work in my 20s. Shadow work is a term used among witches for psychological healing. I learned to not fight my gifts but to accept that I am different and would not want that to change for the whole world. I have a friend who is a medium and I have apprenticed with her for a few years. And I thank the Gods for the friends who have come and gone from my life for all they have taught me just with their support and understanding because they too have gone through much of the same. I do hope you have a good support system in place. It really does help. Now I know and accept and have no fear of spirits, good or bad. The funny thing is that now I would worry if that side of myself shut down and I couldn’t feel them any more. I would hate not to have that connection. So I do understand your experience as a child and hope you see it as a gift not a curse.
Dear Dawn,
Your experience in sounds very scary!
I would not like to see my pillow indented, feel hot breath on my neck, or have an
unknown, unseen hand over my eyes.
I have experienced the hot breath on my neck and pressure on my body during the night.
I attributed this to some sort of entities that were “just passing through” at the time.
It/They did not stay with me. I did have to have someone come and do a cleansing of my
place, tell it/them to leave and leave me alone, and spread salt across all of the doorways.
It was very strange and uncomfortable to say the least. I felt it/they had come due to
a section of ground being dug up behind where I reside. I don’t know if they came
from an old burial site, which used to be up the road from where I live, prior to the
1900s. The cemetary was defaced in the 1970s, by a man who purchased the property that boardered it, he took a tractor and pushed the markers down into a creek bed.
The community uproared over what he had done, but, he had done it, so, right now
there are countless unmarked graves less than a football field from where I live.
The old cemetary could have spawned my occurance. But, I did not think so, my
entities were not old settlers, they appeared to be Hispanic in origin, one appeared to
be a Native American. So, I really don’t know, I am just glad that they have left me alone.
Your haunting was very active, “he” wanted you to know that “he” was there.
Opening doors takes very active energy. The pile of dirt under the table is very strange,
it makes me wonder how “it” transported it. Ghostly pockets or hands?
Very scary tale!
Glad your family survived the time there without any of you being physically harmed.
Thanks for sharing your story.
thanks for the great ghost stories. what a time you’ve had tell us more if you can!!
Hi Dawn,
My father was stationed in Virginia Beach in ’81 and we stayed in the same housing project. I was ten at the time so it’s quite possible we were childhood friends.
The housing was spooky at times (especially at night) but the pile of dirt you found is really creepy because I can remember at the time, that potted plants were mysteriously disappearing from the homes of numerous residents in the area. One neighbor actually paid my brother and I to keep a look out for the thief. So I set a plant out as bait and stayed up for hours into the night before falling asleep. Early the next morning the plant was gone and we never did find out who (or what) was stealing the plants.
Before we were accepted into the navy housing, we lived in an apartment complex in Virginia Beach which was located next to a a small, decrepit graveyard. The stories I could tell about that place would make the hairs on your neck stand up and run away. I would love to find out the name of those old apartments.
hello dawn,
i lived in saftly circle navy housing by gate 5 in 1986-91 i moved in the townhome when i was 9 years old. that place was creepy. things would move. when you turned around and you knew you didnt place it there. one night i went to the bathroom and i looked into the mirror and i was thinking my pass by me. as i looked out in the hall. there wasnt anyone there, there was a sound of a little girl on the stairs and a ball bouching. in my room at times it was hard to breath. and one night i felt someone sit on the edge of my bed and a hand placed ok my leg. i turned on the light and there wasnt anyone there. my mom and dad had stuff done to them too. we moved out of there in 91. 12 years later to the dated the townhouse i lived in burnied down, the only one in that place to catch fire and couldnt be lived in. and how i know, i went back to show my friends when i use to lived and saw that the place i live at was gone and i asked what happen. i think that place was doomed from the first time i saw it.