You Know There's a Ten-Year-Old Boy in the House When....

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The Ghost Story, Part II

I asked Amanda to type up her version of the night I recently posted about. So here's the story from her perspective:

That same night my mom described the "wind creature" (lol) I had my own experience. My experience was fairly boring compared to the previous house I lived in (I seemed to get the brunt of that).

I was watching TV late at night like I usually do and I decided to head upstairs. I turned out all of the lights and as I was walking down the hallway, I just got this weird feeling something was behind me. This sounds stupid but I started running up the stairs and checking behind me.

I wanted to see if my mom was awake, so I peeked inside my parent's bedroom from the doorway, but I barely stepped in the room. I then left and went to my room. I closed my bedroom door and locked it as I do every night.

Now I have become pretty good at telling when someone (like my brother or sister) has walked by my door or is standing at my door. So I heard heavy footsteps going by my door and then they just stopped.

I figured it was mom or dad, so I opened my door and no one was there. The next day I actually forgot about it all till my mom told me what happened to her. Both of us compared our stories and pieced together what happened.

Dawn here again. Okay, we figured out that Amanda had this sense that someone was behind her shortly before I felt a presence myself. It's been awhile since it happened now, but from what I remember, I felt like someone was walking into my room and checking on me, and I assumed it was Amanda. But, whoever it was walked all the way into my room and I could see a shadow go across my bed. Since I was tired and wanted to fall asleep, I didn't open my eyes and figured Amanda would just go to sleep.

It wasn't until later when we talked that I found out she never went into my room. Then, whatever it was that I heard in my room left, and then she heard the footsteps outside of her door, but no one was there.

After all of this, I believe, is when I felt the "wind sensation" (that's the best way I can describe it) on my foot and then in my ear. Then of course, you know the rest of the story (when I went downstairs, the lightbulb, etc.).

Amanda continues with her thoughts on it all:

Some other things that have occurred here have me thinking it is POSSIBLE someone else is here. One day I was sitting at my computer desk which is next to my dresser. I watched out of the corner of my eye as my lamp on the desk began to just tilt over. It fell down hitting my mary, jesus, and joseph statue and beheaded mary. Mary's head went flying into my trash can. Needless to say I was definately freaked out.

The only other thing my mom and me have both experienced is two occasions with voices. My whole family was downstairs and I was upstairs and I swear I heard my dad call my name. I yelled back "what?" and my dad said he never called me. My mom came from the kitchen and said, "you didn't say anything?". Both she and I heard a male voice saying something and we were in two different locations. The second occasion was when we were both in our upstairs hallway pretty late at night and we heard a little girl. We both figured it was Natalie, but she was sound asleep and not talking.

I'm going to post tomorrow (hopefully) about a very weird premonition Amanda and I both had at the same time yesterday while driving home that may have very well saved our lives. It's really eerie how she and I pick up on these things at the same time.

Again, thanks for sharing all of your experiences with me. I wish I had time to respond to each of you individually, but just know that I still have chills thinking about all of the things that have happened to you all and I'm VERY glad my experiences haven't been as vivid or scary as some of yours! Although they've definitely been freaky, to say the least.

Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Okay. This is a post I was debating about posting. Because if your answer to my question in my title is "no," you'll probably think I'm whacked. But if you're answer is yes, then I think you'll get a chill when I tell you what I'm going to tell you.

So here's to hoping all of you reading answered "yes." :)

*taking deep breath to gather my courage*

Okay, some of you might remember me blogging a long time ago about an incident that occurred in our last house. There were dozens of creepy things that would happen there, but the one that frightened me most was when I woke up from a sound sleep, opened my eyes, only to find a man kneeling next to my bed, resting his chin in his hands and staring at me.

I screamed, grabbed my husband and said there was a man in the house. But then he wasn't there anymore.

I tried to talk myself out of what I saw. I was dreaming. I wasn't really awake. I'm a psycho freak and was seeing things. That sort of stuff.

Anyway, our daughter Amanda was around 10 or 11 at the time. I didn't dare tell her what I saw because I didn't want to scare her. But she had some incidents of her own.

We had five bedrooms in that house, and one of our spare bedrooms was right next to Amanda's. We kept storage items in there, but everytime you went into that room, it felt cold and eerie.

At night, several times a week, Amanda would hear a knock on her door. She'd open her door but no one would be there. Inevitably, the spare bedroom door, that's always kept closed, would suddenly be open.

Oh, we lived *directly* across the street from preserved Civil War battlegrounds, by the way.

Okay, so Amanda came to me one day and said, "Mom, I saw a man in my room."

She said he was just staring out her window. She described what he looked like and I almost had a breakdown because she described the man that I saw next to my bed to a "t."

We just found out recently, after what happened here in this house, that he was even in the same pose. He was kneeling at her window, looking out with his chin resting in his hand.

Cut to the house we're in now. A couple of weeks ago, I was half asleep/half awake when I felt something brush up against my foot. It felt like air, though...like a blast of air.

I didn't think anything of it, but suddenly, I felt a pressure sensation in my ear...again like air, and I could hear a moaning sound with it. It was so loud and strong, and I covered my ear and literally started to whimper. Something like "Aaaahhhahhhggg" came out of my mouth.

I sat up in bed, and again tried to tell myself it was nothing. I was dreaming. Now, we've had a dozen things happen in this house that have been eerie, too...too many to mention (but remember how the motion detector went off for no reason in my basement and the police sent a whole team of cops here to search my house?) The basement is the only unoccupied room in this house.

Well, after this wind creature molested me in my sleep (LOL), I had really wicked heartburn and needed to go downstairs to get some medicine. I was scared, but again told myself it was nothing.

I quickly turned on lights as I went down, and I thought about the whole light explosion phenomena. Supposedly, the energy from a ghost can cause lightbulbs to burst and that's one sign paranormal researchers look for.

So I thought to myself, "If a light explodes, I think I'm going to pee my pants."

I am TOTALLY serious when I say that when I turned on my kitchen lights, right after thinking that, the light over my head exploded. And I mean exploded! It was so loud and I was surprised the bulb didn't burst into pieces.

I jumped about ten feet, grabbed the medicine, and even though I felt like an idiot, I yelled out in a shaky voice, "LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" Then I ran all the way back to my bed.

There's more to this story, including Amanda backing up my story once again with things that happened to her that same night. We put all the pieces of the puzzle together with what happened to both of us and it still creeps me out thinking about it right now!

I'll tell you her part later. In the meantime, if you don't believe in ghosts, pretend I made all this up so you won't think I'm crazy. :)

This is What Happens When You're Lazy

Note: I actually posted twice today.....weeeee! So be sure to read the one below this, too. Thanks!

I'm going to do a Seinfeld tactic and take you from the end of this story to the beginning.

Okay, pan to the end.....you see my with my Swiffer mop, mopping juice that's covered just about every inch of my floor.

Just before that, you see me on my hands and knees with paper towels, soaking up the heaviest puddles of the juice.

Then, before that, you see Natalie (my 6-year-old) knocking her juice off of the island in the kitchen, and it sprays far and wide. Kind of like a murder scene, only it's juice, not blood.

Before that, you see Natalie getting the juice out of the refrigerator and pouring it into her cup.

Now to what started this whole thing in motion. My response to Natalie asking me for juice.

"You go ahead and get it," I say as I'm eating my dinner. "I think you're big enough and mommy doesn't feel like getting up right now."

Merry Christmas!

(Can you tell Amanda didn't want to have her picture taken *grin*)

The Baby I Found Alone Today

Oh me, oh my. How do I always get myself into these things? This is how my day was supposed to go today (Wednesday)

~Drive Amanda to mall for her to pick up some job forms and such

~Go to Target and get some of my groceries and stuff.

~Go to library for science project and book report books for the kids.

~Go to pharmacy to pick up my medicine (I'm using a new pharmacy now after yet another horrible, horrible debacle with CVS that I won't even bore you with, but believe me, it was so bad the district manager was apologizing all over the place and I got my $40 script for free. I'm still never going back there again, though.)

So that I wouldn't miss a day out of our homeschool curriculum, I packed up our school books, brought my brand new FREE laptop (Rob got it for me from work and it's loaded, baby!!!) for Matthew to play his class DVD's on, etc.

BUT, Rob called me from Ohio (he was on a business trip) and said his flight was delayed. He was switching flights and needed me to drive to DC to pick him up at Reagan National Airport and then drive him to Dulles Airport where his car was parked.

So....that meant I had to hurry through Target, rush home, scrap the pharmacy and library, get directions to the airport, then head out to pick him up.

This all started to go down when I was in the mall parking lot reading math flashcards to Natalie while waiting for Amanda. As I'm getting the bad news from Rob about having to pick him up, I look over at the car across from me and....

THERE'S A BABY SLEEPING ALONE IN THE CAR IN HIS CAR SEAT!!!!!!!!. In the middle of the freakin' mall parking lot!!!

I told Rob I needed to hang up immediately and call 911. We had been sitting there for at least 20 minutes and the car had been there when I pulled up, so who knows how long that baby was in there by himself!!!

Just as I hang up with the police, a lady pulls into the space in front of me, which is next to this car, gets out, sees the baby, looks around and her jaw drops. I roll down my window and tell her that I've already called the police. She said, "Good, because that's what I was about to do."

She started jotting down the license plate anyway (I don't know why) and I proceeded to pull into another row of cars to park so that if this mother came out, she wouldn't know I was the one who reported her. The 911 operator said that I could remain anonymous...something Rob was very adamant about.

An undercover car got there in less than two minutes. It turns out there was a bank robbery going on and they were in the area looking for the suspect! Think about that....there are freakin' bank robbers wandering around and this baby is in the car by himself!!!!!!!!!

Finally, an officer from the Sherriff's department arrived and started taking my statement. (Amanda had gotten back and was sitting in the locked van less than ten feet away)

The mother still had not come out of the mall. At this point, the baby, who I would guess was about 2-years-old, wakes up and starts crying. You could see that he was confused, sweating, and frantic.

I asked if I should go get Natalie, my 6-year-old, to talk to him through the window to see if it would calm him down.

"No," the officer said. "Usually they will respond to a woman. Try to talk to him and see if you can calm him down."

So I went to the window, and was trying to keep from crying myself, and I told him it was okay....that everything was going to be alright. But he screamed even more and kept yelling "Mommy! Mommy!"

It was all I could do to hold it together in front of everyone. I wanted to burst into tears.

I did get Natalie and it caught his attention for about one second, and then he got frantic again. So I took her back to the van where I felt better about her being anyway.

The police said they were sending a locksmith to unlock the car. The undercover officers suggested paging the mother over the loudspeaker at the store that we were parked in front of.

That did the trick. She came running out of the mall...ONLY BECAUSE SHE WAS PAGED!!!! Who knows how long she would've kept on shopping if she hadn't been called.

The officer asked her why she did it. She said, "I'm sorry. I had to return something."

SHE HAD TO RETURN SOMETHING?!!! The woman that was with me shook her head in disgust and the officer started ripping into the mother.

"How could you do that?!! Do you know what you've done?!! Do you know what a pedophile is?!"

The kid was calm in her arms at that point, and as wrong as she was, I felt so much guilt because I was the one that caused all of this commmotion by calling the police. I was the one that has now brought social services into this mother's life and I'm the one that got her in trouble.

I know I did the right thing. I know she deserves it and it was her fault, really. But I still couldn't help feeling soooo guilty. But, God forbid, if I hadn't called today and she left that baby alone one time and it wasn't me who found him, but a pedophile or bank robber.

Now, the scary thing for me is, I cannot remain anonymous. The officer said I may have to testify in court and that I can't do it anonymously. And when he took down her information on his legal pad, there was my full name, address, phone number, etc. right at the top for her to see.

All I need is some crazy father coming to kill me before I can appear as a witness for them to have their child taken away from them or something. I know that sounds paranoid, but it happens all the time!

The officer gave me his card, said I could call for updates on the case whenever I wanted to, and that it might not even make it to court. It all depends on what child protective services decides to do.

I don't know why I feel bad for this mother. I guess I think about all of the mistakes I've made as a mom over the years (nothing like that, though!) and I keep picturing her at home now, crying and holding her baby, worried about what's to come. Because of me.

This may sound stereotypical, but she was Indian. And the thought crossed my mind, what if she goes home and her husband beats her over this. Now don't judge me by saying that, please!!!! It's just that some cultures believe that that is okay, and I may be wrong, but I think India is one of them. So, I tortured myself with visions of that which just added to my guilt. (And let me be really, really clear here...I do NOT believe if you're an Indian man, you automatically beat your wife...honestly I don't!)

I called my mom and she reassured me. "You did the right thing," she said. "That mother deserves whatever punishment is coming to her. (I didn't tell my mom about the beating scenario, so she didn't mean that!) If she hadn't come out when she did, and the lock smith had opened the car before she arrived, the child would've been taken away from her, so she's lucky that didn't happen."

I guess I need to think of that precious little guy when I feel guilty, and not the mother. I need to think about how vulnerable he was. I mean, what if I had been a bad guy with bad intentions? THAT'S what I should consider. That she was LUCKY it was me and that I called and protected her child. Instead of one day, her coming back from a shopping spree to find him gone.

And if something happens to me because I came forward, well, then it was meant to be. Let go...let God. I can't worry myself over all of the "what if's."

Needless to say, we bagged school for the rest of the day, rushed through Target, got to the airport safely, then came home to celebrate Amanda's birthday (what a birthday for her, huh?!!)

And then I hugged all of my children closely and counted my blessings, and tonight, I will pray for that mother and that child.

The Day After