My mom’s mother and father died before I was born. My grandmother when Mom was 5 and my grandfather sometime in the late 80s early 90s. I was born in 1995, so go figure, I was never able to meet them. I’ve always heard good stories about my grandfather, Papa Gilbert. He was a sweet man and was good to my brothers.
The house I spent the first 3 years of my life in was an old farm house. My parents and siblings had lived there a little while before I was born and they had not experienced anything before either. Numerous things had happened, it sounded like rocks were falling down the stairs at night and the recliner would squeak when everyone was in bed. My oldest brother had his own room upstairs and my other two shared one and I slept in the room with my parents in my crib. Multiple times stereos went off and shadows were seen.
This is where it gets exciting. When I was a baby my parents were in the living room with me and the TV and stereo turned on full volume, the remote was no where close to us. They looked above the fireplace were my baby picture was hanging and it turned inside the frame. The frame is a couple inches too big for the photo, I have it hanging on my wall in my room now. When I was three, I’ve always had an early memory, my aunt was babysitting me and the stereo in my brothers room would turn on full blast, she’d go upstairs and turn it off and come back down and it would turn on again. This happened a couple of times and eventually she unplugged it. Soon, the final straw for her would be drawn. One evening, no one was home. Except my aunt had came over and mowed the lawn for us, right in the middle of it all she looked up and saw a shadow in the window. She quit what she was doing and left and hasn’t been back to the house since. Once my father was working night shift at the paper mill, my mom was home with my brothers and I. She called my father to let him know she had seen shadows walking on the front porch.
Whatever this was meant no harm and never came close to harming us. This spirit never arrived until I was born and left after we moved out. (We know this because my cousins ex-boyfriend’s parents have been renting the house for a couple of years and they haven’t had anything happen to them.)
I was three or four when we moved into the house we are currently living in and I haven’t had anything happen to me here except for this; pretty much what brought everything together and solved the puzzle. I was 6 or 7 around the time, one fall evening my dad, brothers, and uncle were out in the garage gutting a deer (hunting season of course) they sent me back up to the house because they were about to take the brain out and didn’t want me to see it. So I went upstairs to the kitchen and back into the living room, sat down and watched some TV. I happened to look to my left over where the stairs were and I saw my grandfather’s apparition. He waved, with a cheery grin and disappeared out the window. Right away, I ran to the kitchen and said “Mommy, I just saw Pawpaw.” and pointed to the photo on the refrigerator. My mom thought it was amazing, I knew who he was.
I tear up every time I share these experiences, not out of fright, but joy. It’s somewhat ironic because every night when my mom would tuck me in, she’d recite with me this poem called “Guardian Angel” that I still have hanging up this day.
“Guardian Angel”
-Guardian Angel guard me
from harm
-Protect in me sleep without
cause for alarm
-Keep me safe through
darkness of night
-And wake me gently with
God’s morning light
Sent in by Amanda Gilbert, Copyright 2010