House Guest
By Elisa 


This is a personal experience of mine.

When I was 7 years old, I was afraid of the dark like most
other little kids are. However, I generally felt okay because I
slept with the light on all night in a room with both of my
sisters. One night in the fall of second grade, however, those
things weren't enough to keep me from seeing the unexplainable
things that scare us all.

That night, I woke up having to go pee. Normally, I would've
just run down the hallway to the bathroom and back, but that
night I was particularly scared--maybe because it was around
Halloween and I'd seen too many scary stories. Well, I stood in
front of my closed bedroom door and danced around hoping that
the urge would sort of go away. When it didn't, I opened the
bedroom door so that I could go down the hallway.

I never made it to the bathroom. I was too scared. For when I
opened the door, a shaft of light fell into my parent's bedroom
door and illuminated a man standing there. I knew that he wasn't
human, because he was entirely white.

He looked almost like a plain pencil drawing of a man, but with
dimension. Everything about him, from his eyes to his hair, was
white. He wore a long white robe and appeared lit from within.

Apparently I had surprised the man, who I saw as an angel or a
ghost, for he didn't seem to have been expecting me. However, he
recovered--bending his tall frame under the doorway, he
straightened and, smiling, held out his hand.

I've heard about people who saw an angel and felt peaceful. I, on
the other hand, was scared to pieces. I turned around and ran into
the bedroom, jumping onto my sister's bed. I remember looking at
her ponytail holder--the kind with two round, shiny, plastic balls
on the end--and expecting to see the man reflected in them. He
wasn't. Frightened, I stayed in her bed all night, awake most of
that time.

People have asked if the house we lived in was near a cemetary or
the sight of a death, but I know that my family was the first to
live in that house, and it was not to my knowledge built close to
a cemetary.

After my sighting of the white man, my younger sister saw a woman,
who also held out her hand and smiled. None of us knew about the
other's experiences at the time.

I saw another interesting creature in that house. It was around the
same area of the house. My mother was tucking my sisters and I into
bed when I noticed a shadow flicker. You know when you think you
see a shadow, but when you look nothing is there? That's what I saw,
except in this moment I SAW the shadow--caught it with my eyes and
was too frightened to let go.

I saw a man, but this one was squat and gray. He wasn't so much
short as crouched, and he seemed to move along the walls. When I
saw him, I screamed,"AAAA! Mommy, mommy." My mom turned to me and
said,"WHAT?" Then he turned towards me and smiled with a gleam in
his eye, then darted out the door and down the hallway.

I haven't had as vivid an experience since that time. I think that
I've seen things, but through the filter of adulthood am not willing
to admit them. My family has moved several times since I was a child,
and I usually feel fine in our new houses for a few weeks. After a
while, though, the feeling that something else is there comes around.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but I feel like something is following us--I'm
just not sure if it's good or not.