While in my creative nonfiction class today, we had a writing prompt in honor of Halloween. We were asked to write about a personal ghost story, or something that just really scared the crap out of us. I decided to write about one of the first ghosts I ever interacted with... and I thought I would share it here.
My Grandma was not your typical grandmother. She didn't knit sweaters or bake cookies... she cussed you and out and threw knives at you. So, you can imagine my anxiety when I was told that we were going to live at Grandma's house when I was in middle school.
One night, when both of my parents were working, I started to feel very ill. I decided to go to bed and piled tons of blankets on top of myself. I remember wondering how it was possible to shiver with cold, and be sweating profusely at the same time.
At some point in the night, my grandma came into the room. She sat at the foot of my bed and looked at me. I smiled inwardly when I heard her mumble "Anuk". She leaned over and put her cool hand on my forehead. That had was so soothing, so refreshing, that it could only be likened to a cool drink of water in the summer time. She left the room, but returned momentarily with a cool wet wash cloth. She placed it on my forehead, and stayed with me until dawn when my fever broke. I fell asleep, and I slept hard for a few more hours.
When I woke up, I went upstairs to get a drink. Grandma was sitting at the head of the table, like she always did, I kissed her on the cheek and thanked her.
"For what?"
"For taking care of me last night."
"What are you talking about? I just got home!" (She was still working at the 4 Queens at the time)
She sat there at the table, eyes wide and face pale, as I recounted the night to her. She got up and went into her room, and came back with an old photograph of herself in a silver frame.
"Is this who was in your room last night?"
"Yes, Grandma, that is you."
"No," she whispered, "that's my mother. You sleep in her room!"
I went downstairs a short time later to get dressed. My heart skipped a beat when I looked and saw the wet washcloth folded next to my pillow.
Hey look at that, the hair on the back of my neck is standing at attention.
ReplyDeleteI remember the first year I was living in the house I spent most of my life in, I was falling asleep in my bed. I laid on my side so I could look into the hallway, from there I could see the door ways to the living room, the bathroom, my sister's room and my parent's room. Well, my dad walked into his room and was in there for a while. Suddenly he came running out of the room with a real angry look on his face and came charging at me. Right as he got past the bathroom door he turned to his left and ran into some storage cabinets, right as he made contact with them he exploded into a bunch of papers and fell to the ground. I could still see the papers when both of my parents came to me wondering what was wrong with me as I was screaming my fool head off. They couldn't see them but I still remember like it was yesterday that they were standing on them. I eventually settled down enough to sleep and never saw anything quite like that again.