should we talk about ghosts?

in honor of halloween, and because everyone else and their mother are talking about ghosts, i am jumping all over that bandwagon. none of my "hauntings" are recent- or even in my adulthood, but they still freak me the fuck out.

when i was a kid, my mom and i lived with my grandparents, until i was about 7, in a big old house in milwaukee's north shore. one of those dreamy tudors, that were built sometime in the '30s and oozed with dreamy woodwork. the woman that owned the house, before my grandparents bought it in the mid-1960's, had died in her sleep in one of the back bedrooms. that bedroom... became my bedroom. thanks mom. great idea. let your kid sleep in the dead lady's room.

when i was still a baby, my mom would often sleep in my room with me. she said that she'd often wake up with the feeling that someone was staring at her, and when she'd open her eyes, nobody would be there. she'd also feel the sensation of someone sitting on the side of her bed, someone rubbing up and down her legs (over the blankets) while she slept, and sometimes even feeling the blankets slowly being pulled off her from the foot of the bed. i asked why she didn't just sleep in her room, and she said that even though she felt a presence, she never felt threatened in any way, and that she liked sleeping in the same room as me.

i'm pretty sure, that if i had been in her shoes, i would have snatched up my kid and absolutly found somewhere else (uh... there were 5 other bedrooms) to sleep.

the first "experience" i remember, took place when i was about 5. i was sitting in my bed (the same bed my mom used to sleep in), at night (when i probably should have been asleep), reading a book... when, i felt a hand (palm and all five fingers) press against my back. i can still vividly remember the feeling. i remember leaning over the side of my bed, lifting up the dust ruffle, seeing nothing, and getting back to my book... why i wasn't screaming in terror, i don't know. i was 5. the hand pressed my back again. i remember the second time being a little harder than the first. still... for some reason, i wasn't scared. the hand pressed against my back a few more times, but i just kept on reading. eventually, my mom noticed that i was still up and came in to yell at me. she asked what i was doing... and i replied that i was reading my book and that mrs. harriet kept tapping me on the back, and that i thought she wanted me to go to bed too. i'm pretty sure at that moment- my mother looked at me like i was the little girl from poltergiest (hell, i looked enough like her) and snatched me out of bed to sleep in her room.

mrs. harriet was the woman who had died- and, according to my mom, nobody had ever told me about her, for fear that i'd be scared to sleep in my room. of course, she didn't tell me that until many years later, when we were sitting around the dining room table at my grandparents new house, sharing stories of creepy things that had happened in the old house. just about everyone who had slept in that room, and it had been just about everyone in the family's room at some point (my mom is one of 5 kids), had some type of experience that couldn't be logically explained. the thing that i still find to be the most creepy, and still sends a shiver down my spine, even though my grandparents haven't lived in that house for almost 20 years, was that none of the three dogs or two cats that my grandparents had throughout their time living there, would set foot in that bedroom. even if the only person home at the time was sleeping in there, they woudln't come in. they'd sleep in the hall, right on the other side of the door, but never IN that room.