During The Late 1940's

This happened to me when I was about eight years old. 

It was during the late 1940's and I was staying with my grandfather at his home on 
west 50th street in NYC. He lived in an apartment house that was five stories tall 
and had about ten apartments. He was the custodian of the building. In the back of 
the house was an enclosed yard with a short stairway the entered onto it from the 
basement of the building. 

Directly behind the yard was a factory building that was about 20 feet high and had 
a low wall around the edge of the roof. I used to climb onto that roof and lie there 
watching the clouds drift overhead and feel the warmth of the tar surface under me. 

One evening during the summer I was doing just this when I decided it was time to 
climb down and go into the house for dinner. As I raised my head up over the wall I 
looked into the basement doorway of the apartment house. Standing in the doorway was 
a wispy figure that seemed to hang suspended against the dark basement. 

Startled, I quickly ducked down. It was beginning to get dark and the whole yard was 
in shadow. After a few minutes I peered over the wall again and the figure was still 
there but seemed much brighter, almost glowing. I could almost make out facial 
features. I ducked down again, even more alarmed. After about 10 minutes I peeked 
again but the wispy outline was gone. I had to go through that doorway to get out of 
the yard. 

So I decided to make a quick run for it. I climbed down from the roof of the factory 
and headed for the doorway. As I reached the middle of the yard I suddenly felt as 
if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water over my head. I was stunned and looked 
up at the building to see who had done it but I saw no one. I touched my hair 
expecting it to be sopping wet as I could feel the water running down my face and 
back. It was completely dry as were my clothes. 

This really freaked me out and I ran headlong into the basement, which had no 
working lights and up the dark staircase to the first floor. My grandfather was 
sitting on the front steps of the apartment with some of his friends, chatting away 
as they did almost every evening. I said nothing to him about the incident fearing 
he wouldn't believe me. 

About two weeks later I was walking through the basement again heading for the yard, 
the previous incident almost forgotten when suddenly I heard a noise as though 
something had fallen behind me. I turned and peered into the darkness of the 
basement. There was a pathway with boxes and other stored items on either side of it 
stacked almost to the ceiling. In the middle of the pathway was a large paper bag 
just sitting there. It was not there a second earlier for I would have tripped over 
it. 

I mustered the courage to go over and look into it and to my surprise it was full of 
metal toy soldiers of a type popular in the early 1920's with WW1 uniforms and tin 
hats. I carried the bag out to the yard with much excitement for I had been looking 
for those toy soldiers for quite awhile. 

An old lady lived by herself on top floor of the apartment and had become friendly 
with me as I ran errands for her almost daily. One day she asked me if I liked 
playing with toy soldiers and I told her yes indeed that I did. She told me that her 
son had a lot of them stored in the basement and I could have them if I found them. 
She said he was grown up and no longer had a use for them. 

I spent the next few weeks climbing over and looking into every box in the basement 
with a flashlight to no avail and I finally gave up looking. One day as I was coming 
home I saw and ambulance in front of the apartment house. Two men were carrying a 
stretcher with a white sheet covering a body out of the building. It was the old 
lady. I was shocked and saddened. 

She was a good friend. To this day I believe the spirit of the old lady was what I 
saw in that doorway and it was she who somehow placed that bag in the basement so I 
would find it. 

Half a century has gone by and the house is no longer in existence but I still get a 
chill when I think of the incident and my encounter with the ghostly apparition.

True story submitted by Ted