My First Ghost Experience

I've had a bunch of weird experiences I'd consider paranormal, but this is the earliest I remember.

When I was very small, around the age of three, my mother, father and I moved into a house in Homestead, Florida. This would have been about 1973 or so that the incident I describe occurred. At the time, it was a pretty rural area, south of Miami- it's more developed now.

Behind the house we lived in was an old, dilapidated abandoned house, just a few yards around the new (habitable) home we lived in.

When we first moved there, I didn't know from ghosts. I may or may not have ever seen "Casper the Friendly Ghost" at that point. If anything, my idea of a ghost was a big, puffy, happy thing that looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy, and appeared in comic books - but I don't think I even knew that much.

In any case, I was curious about the old building behind our house. mostly, it was used to store all kinds of various junk, my dad's tools and workshop stuff, etc.

We had a white german shepherd, named Heidi, who was a constant companion to me - more like an aunt or babysitter. I used to wander off with her all the time, apparently without my parent's knowledge. I didn't know any better, and always felt safe with her.

One day, I decided to wander into the old house to look around and play. I'd been told to stay away from it, because it was in ill repair, but I figured Heidi was a grownup, and that as long as she went with me, it was okay.

The two of us went into the house, and walked through the old living room into a back room that I think might have been a kitchen or something at one point. Mostly, it was cluttered with a bunch of stuff of my dad's, including a tall pole-rack with wire baskets hanging from it, containing a bunch of odds and ends like light bulbs and bits of electrical or plumbing connectors.

Heidi and I were standing in there, looking around, when she began to growl. As I looked to see what she was growling at, there was a loud "pop!" by my feet. One of the light bulbs had fallen out of the basket hanging near me. As I watched, another one rolled up over the edge of the basket, and also popped on the floor by my feet.

As I stepped away from that, kind of scared, because I didn't know why that would happen, a hammer hanging up on the far wall lifted up off the hook holding it and also fell onto the floor.

That scared me, so I ran for the door.

When I did, there was this strange old african lady standing right outside it. She was wearing all white, including a white head scarf. For a second, I thought she looked a little like "Aunt Jemima" (the lady from the waffle syrup bottles... at least the way the labels looked before they became politically correct).

Except that Aunt Jemima wasn't scary.

I froze.

I remember the woman looked perfectly solid, but at the same time there was something not right. Like she looked like she was there, but wasn't there. When I was very small, I used to call images seen in a mirror, or on a television, or through glass as being "not in real." This woman was somehow "not in real."

She said something to me - I don't really remember what precisely, except that it scared me - and about that point, Heidi attacked her.

As soon as Heidi leaped at the old woman, she seemed to disappear - but a whole bunch of noise and rattling began right behind me. I didn't turn to look, I just ran through where the woman had been, and it felt like there was something there, very cold.

I ran back to the house crying, with Heidi loping along with me. I ran to my mother and babbled at her what I'd seen.

My mother told me I was making up stories and had scared myself and to "stop fibbing" or I'd be given something to cry about. My dad later told me not to play in the old house with his things, and that there was no such thing as ghosts, and that I had messed with his stuff and then made up the story.

Honestly, the thought of doing such a thing would never have occurred to me at the time - what I was describing surely sounded like a ghost story to an adult, but I didn't know from that sort of thing. I was very little.

After that, I used to have really freaky nightmares, where this weird lady I'd seen showed up to "get me."

Sometimes, there'd be all these other black people, most of who seemed really nice, and most of whom seemed to be frightened of the lady in white. I remember she smoked a pipe, which I thought was weird, because I thought only men smoked pipes at the time.

During one of these dreams, I remember having fun talking to and meeting the "normal" people, but then the scary lady appeared. When I tried to run away, she kept being in front of me, and told me "You no go home." and grinned evilly.

I'd wake up crying from those dreams, and for years had anxieties that I'd be taken away from my family by this woman. It was a really hard time, because I wasn't allowed to say it was the ghosts (I got accused of fibbing, or was told there was no such thing), but I was still afraid of being kidnapped by them.

While Heidi was still alive, I wasn't bothered too much, because it was apparent that she could make the scary lady disappear. But after she died, I got really neurotic about it. I had these fears of being abducted, but I wasn't allowed to say that I'd seen the lady (i.e. making up stories), so when asked what was bothering me, I couldn't say. I ended up being taken to a child psychologist over it.

Okay... that's the description, as best I can recall.

Now... I don't know really if this is connected - but at some point around then, my parents either got, or took out of storage, these creepy ornamental sculptures of heads, that came from Haiti. I remember that I was always simultaneously fascinated by them and repulsed. They seemed somehow scary, but I couldn't leave them alone, either. Those things always kind of creeped me out, but I also couldn't stop playing with them.

Note: At age three (barely three) I didn't know what the heck Haiti was.

But as an adult, I recognize that the way the "Scary lady" ghost was dressed was reminiscent of the way someone might dress for a Voudon ceremony.