Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I never knew my mom and dad, my mom died when I was very young and my dad had me put with a fostering agency from the age of 4 as he found looking after me too difficult. I’m now 21 and around a year ago learned of my fathers own death, he had left me a small apartment in the city and all his possessions and the little money he had. At 20 I wanted to get into the city and though I had had nothing to do with my father for the 16 years we where apart I was and still am grateful for what he left to me.

With the help of my foster parents I moved into the apartment and began to sort my fathers things out. Most of it was chucked out, clothes I gave to the shelter and so on. I kept a few possessions, furniture, cutlery so on. One day among the trash, I found a picture of my father, mother and I, it was faded and creased. When I picked it up an almighty surge of emotion ran through me. It was unlike anything I had ever felt. I felt almost sick, with what seemed to be guilt. I immediately dropped the photo and the feeling ceased. It was so odd but I thought nothing of it however, when I once again picked the photo up the same feeling aroused, it was a choking guilt. I didn’t know why I was feeling this, I was confused and frightened. I placed the picture in a drawer and left it there. I didn’t want to see it again it gave me the creeps.

I didn’t look at the picture for the next few weeks while sorting out the apartment. When I went to get it out of the drawer as I wished to frame it, I noticed it was gone. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t moved it and no one else had been in the apartment. I automatically thought I had been robbed, it was the only rational explanation, but I realized it couldn’t be so as I had some old gold jewelry I believed to be my mothers or grandmothers in the same drawer, as that hadn’t been taken. I couldn’t of been robbed.

That night I woke up early morning around 2 am. I felt the horrible feeling I had when I looked at my fathers photograph weeks earlier. I looked out into the room and in front of my window I could make out a figure. I screamed and rubbed my eyes to see if my eyes where still blurred but it was still there, a ghostly out line in front of my window. I turned on the bedside light and looked around again and the figure was gone. I felt  like I had gone mad,. I laughed at my own stupidity and got out of my bed to wash my face, something caught my attention. I walked over to where the figure had been and looked down. It was the photograph. I felt a horrific surge of fear. I couldn’t quite catch my breath, what the hell was this? I picked up the photo the intense guilt and sadness was milder, but still there. I turned it over and screamed, one word was written on the reverse of the photo, a word I could of sworn had not been there previously. ‘Sorry’ is what it read.

The next day I sorted through my options of what had happened that night, had I gone mad? Was it a dream? I have always been incredibly skeptical when it comes to the paranormal, but there was something very strange about these things, but I knew what was going on and it was staring me in the face. My father, my fathers guilt of abandoning me was surging through him until his death and lived on through me, the photograph highlighted his guilt, his family destroyed. The figure in my room I believed belonged to my father, he was a tortured soul, who needed to go to a better place, so I said out loud to the spot in which he appeared to me, ‘Dad. You left me, I forgive you, mom forgives you, god forgives you, its time for you to go and join mom in heaven, plus your kinda freakin’ me out here! haha.’ The uptight atmosphere I had been feeling over the past few weeks left me that moment, and I felt overwhelming love for my father right then. It sounds kinda weird but I fell to the floor and sobbed. I felt my dads presence and then it was gone. I was alone and I knew he was in heaven. Now when I lift up the picture I don’t feel guilt or sadness. I feel unconditional love coming from no one but myself.

Written by Kaitlyn-Anne Thompson, Copyright 2009