The Stairway

For the first five years of my life I lived a considerably happy one, 
despite my parents just barley making ends meet, in a small Michigan town. 
In order to pay the bills my parents purchased a large old fashioned farm 
house complete with barn, etc., in which upon signing the paperwork for 
it, they did discovered it had been semi-rebuilt in the late 1900's after 
a large fire claimed much of the North side of it.

I was born in the house and never really thought anything of the 
occasional "strange feelings/sensations" I had around certain areas of it; 
I didn't know anything about paranormal activity and things like that...I 
just wanted to play & have fun.

The place that I would begin having unignorable problems with, however, 
was the large "L shaped" stairway that led to the bedrooms from the living 
room. Because it was an "L shape" it had a landing (a small rectangle 
where both portions of the stairway met). I always felt many strange 
feelings throughout the South side of the house (the original part of it) 
and the stairway was always the strongest of them.

I had three separate instances in which I fell down the stairs while no 
one was around, none seriously injuring me, but after the 3rd one, at age 
4, I refused 2 go up them anymore because crazy as it may sound, I knew I 
was sent down them by some force. The bad feeling I had about that landing 
area had seemed to have forced me down the steps. For real!

I had bedroom experiences that were so terrifying that I just like to tell 
myself they were nightmares, though deep down I know they can't be, but 
the worst experience I ever had came while my parents had moved into a 
downstairs bedroom while their room was being remodeled and I had to go to 
the bathroom during the night, which was downstairs as well. This left me 
with no one to walk me down the stairs, but I knew if I ran fast enough 
nothing bad would happen so I remember bits of pieces of going alone, 
returning, and seeing it floating there on the landing, a big white blob 
with maybe a head-shaped mist formation on it's top, but it wasn't very 
clear at all.

That was the only time in my life besides a few of the bad "nightmares" 
that I was paralyzed with fear...it's the worst feeling in the world, you 
have no control. I wanted to talk to it but couldn't and at the same time 
I wanted my Mom & Dad but couldn't do anything, not even breath. I must 
have stood there for 10 seconds, it looking at me, me looking at it, and 
then it was gone, I don't remember how it disappeared.

At the age of 5, needless to say, we moved out of that home, and built a 
new one where I have not had one experience, or one "nightmare." I tried 
putting my experiences in the past, not wanting to feel that I was 
crazy...until my teens, at a family gathering, I was reminded of it all 
again when the topic of paranormal activity came up.

My mother told me the story of the fire, and that neighbors had told them 
of the deaths that resulted in it, and that she, too, had seen a woman 
floating about the landing, while going to the bathroom ON A HAND-FULL of 
occasions, during the night (I don't remember it being a woman, just a 
white mist/ghost w/a semi-head). 

She said when I came screaming to them describing the same thing she'd 
seen, they had had just about enough of the house and were financially 
stable by then, as well, to move out. I will never forgive her for taking 
that long to tell me, and making me feel crazy all those years, but I will 
never ever live in a home someone else has lived in.