My Halloween stories: Ghosts I have seen or heard.
I started when I was four or five. Many nights my parents would go out and leave me home with grandma. We’d be sitting in the living room. Grandma would be knitting and I would be next to her playing with my toys. I recall looking toward the empty rocking chair near the door and seeing it rock. I didn’t think much of it, but one night the rocking just got harder and harder. There was no wind and grandma just kept on knitting. Finally I asked her why the rocking chair was rocking. She just looked up, smiled and let me know that was her uncle Alberto. “He died when I was a girl, and he comes around every now and then, He was always a joker.” And grandma just continued knitting.
In the mid 1970s I was with a friend in Guanajuato, Mexico. We were staying in a very old house up on a hill. There were vaulted ceilings, and our bedroom window had bars from floor to ceiling. Looking through them you could see the abyss with a brook a few hundred feet below. One night while we were sleeping I heard my friend singing in the shower. A little while later I turned in bed and felt her hair. It was dry. Me doing so woke her up. “What are you doing?” she asked. I was feeling your hair because I heard you singing in the shower. “I haven’t been in the shower. Go back to sleep” she said as she turned her back. A little while later I saw a most beautiful woman enter our bedroom. With long black hair, and a white gown, she stood at the foot of the bed and stared at me. It was all very peaceful. I stared back at her as she made her way to the window and vanish. I didn’t think much of it. Next morning I told my friend who made sure I would tell the story when we got back to San Antonio to give the keys back to the woman who rented the house to us. As we made our way across the lawn to her house my friend insisted I tell the story. The woman who was standing at the door heard our little argument, and as we approached she said, “You saw her too.” It turns out many people who go to that house have seen that woman in white. She herself had never seen her.
My dad died in 1981 at 2AM. We got the call from the hospital and drove down to make arrangements. As a kid my dad would always call me with a very specific whistle call. I could hear dad from blocks way. As we drove back home in Yonkers, it was early in the morning. As we got out of the car I heard my dad’s whistle. I paused and asked my friend “did you hear that”? She paused and the whistle came again. “Oh, that’s a mockingbird.” Being from Texas she knew more about birds than me. “They just mock the songs of other birds.” Well, that bird was just mocking my dad.
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