Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

When I was young, anywhere from 5 to 12 years old, I feel as if I was somewhat of a magnetic field for paranormal activity. I am now 19, and have a theory that children are more susceptible to paranormal activity. I became interested in that sort of thing at an extremely young age, I was fascinated with ghost stories, and frightening movies. I loved Halloween, it was my favorite holiday besides Christmas. And my first paranormal experiences started, like I said, at an early age…

When I turned 5, both of my parents (divorced) became remarried. My mother and stepfather lived in the house I was born in, and my father and new stepmother moved to an old country home in North Georgia. It was about two hours north of Atlanta, where I lived. Now, my stepmother, Terri, had given birth to a boy, named Stephen, who would have been a year older than me, had he not died at the age of two in a car accident. I was unaware of this, until I told Terri that at night I kept seeing the shadow of a boy in the room that I slept in. I hated sleeping there, so I made either my dad or Terri lay with me until I was fully asleep. Every now and then, objects would be moved during the night to a different location, and things would go missing from time to time. Eventually, my mother stopped making me go stay with my father and Terri, because I was absolutely petrified of that house.

Now, I had met my best friend in the entire world when I was 4, we went to daycare together. Lisa was two years older than I was. Her and her mother, Louise, lived alone, in a neighborhood down the street from me, and we were basically the sisters each other never had. Since my parents both worked extremely late, and Louise got home from her job at the hospital around 3, I’d spend all my afternoons, from age 4 until about 11, at Lisa’s house. When Lisa was about 8, and I was 6, Louise remarried a man named David. David had a long medical history, including having a prosthetic leg. David’s footsteps had a very distinguishable sound: his shoes would click, however there was a very faint sound of gushing air (kinda sounded like ‘pssssh’) with every other step, as a result of the prosthetic leg’s knee joint compression. I barely took notice of it, until David’s death. He died about two years after being married to Louise. And soon after his death, I was sleeping over with Lisa, and being silly girls, we were awake late playing games… until we heard his footsteps. Step, psssh, step, psssh, step, psssh. We hid under the covers frozen until the sounds stopped. Needless to say, neither of us slept that night.

However, that was just the beginning of David. He would turn lights on and off, play with the channels on the television while we were on the couch and the remote was on the coffee table, move things such as blankets, shoes, and even Lisa’s pet hamster. Lisa told me one night, she felt a cold hand touch her cheek, and when she confronted her mom the next day, her mother had no idea what she was talking about. David’s gestures never seemed harmful, they were all rather playful – scary at times – but never vicious… I had never experienced a vicious spirit until I met Brooke…

Brooke and I were in first, and second grade together. I was about 7 to 8 years old for my next paranormal experience. Brooke had a crazy family. In her three bedroom home lived her parents, Susan and Greg, Brooke, her baby brother, Daniel, and her two cousins, Tori and Heather. Heather was 16, and could drive. She slept in the basement. Susan and Greg shared the master bedroom, Brooke and Tori shared a room with two twin beds, and Baby Daniel got his own room. Before I came to stay with Brooke, she warned me of strange happenings in her home. Heather had the radio suddenly turn on while she was the only person home; Baby Daniel’s remote control trucks would frequently move on their own, with the remotes being on top of a table, untouched. But my experience at Brookes house, was by far my scariest…

Tori and Heather were staying at their Grandmothers home the night I stayed over. Brooke slept in her own bed, and I slept by myself in Tori’s bed. Even though we were in the same room, I was scared. Brooke slept with the door open, and I slept very lightly, so every noise that I heard woke me up. I was very restless that night, and I remember hearing Susan, Brooke’s mother, wake up for work. I then fell into a deep sleep, and woke up a few hours later to voices.

In the next room over, I heard Greg, Brooke’s Dad, (or so what I thought was Greg) whispering in a very playful voice to Baby Daniel, who was cooing and laughing. I thought nothing of these noises, until the playful whisper turned menacing. I could not hear what was being said, but it was a deep, growling, garbling, demonic whisper – and Daniel, in turn, started to cry very loudly.

What happened next made the color drain from my face… Greg, annoyed by the frightful screams of the baby, emerged from his own bedroom at the end of the hall, walked past Brooke’s open bedroom door, and into Baby Daniel’s room. There was absolutely nobody else in the house who could have been making those noises, Brooke was in the bed right next to me, and other than us two, Greg was the only person home – and he had been asleep in his room.

That was the height of my paranormal activity days – when me, my mother, and my stepfather moved to Florida, our new home had vertical blinds, and every now and then they’d crash and clank into each other while no windows were open, the air vents were closed, and all fans were off. Lights turn off and on every now and then, and occasionally the timer on our oven will go off. But nothing I have ever experienced was quite as scary as the voice I heard talking to Baby Daniel.

Sent in by Shelby Nicole Voegeli, Copyright 2011