Paranormal Encounters

by Joanna Kirkwood
(Lincolnshire, England)

This is following the first installment of my ghostly encounters. I have for many years been quite sensitive to the 'other' world. As far back as I can remember, I have had experiences that are very unusual to say the least. Growing up in the family home was always quite volatile, and this may have contributed to the spooky goings on somewhat.

We moved there when I was a year old, in 1975, and my mum lived there up until 2009. It was my childhood home, and I remember it not always being a happy place. I spent alot of time in my room, which is the only place I could get peace from the hustle and aggravation that went on from day to day, in the family.

I don't remember how long after the first meeting with the 'other' world did I have my second encounter, still a child, and very scared. I was only about 8 when I laid in bed one night reading, as I did quite often by this age. I looked up to see a partial formation of a full bodied apparition, appearing about 10 feet away from me. It took me about 30 seconds to focus and see what was materializing in front of me. Fear gripped me intensely, my throat tightened, my tongue went dry, so much so I couldn't make a sound! My body froze, it took me an age for legs to engage with my brain, and manage to move them.

What I did see before I bolted for the door was a young girl, in old clothes, maybe Victorian era, standing in front of me. White outline, with visible features, a very pretty girl not very old, maybe late teens. She never made a move and stood stock still, just looking. I didn't wait around for her to come towards me, I ran out onto the landing and down the stairs. I did not hang about.

My mum did not believe me and my dad just laughed. I was petrified quite rightly, but upon investigation she had vanished, as is the case with many sightings. I knew what I had seen though, and it has left never me.

In years after that, for some reason, we came to the conclusion that the presence that had invaded our lives was attached to the wardrobe which we were given a few years before. The incidents of paranormal events became more frequent after this wardrobe came into our house, maybe some place in memory, transference, whatever it was had come to us with this wardrobe.

Other incidents that occurred after the wardrobe came to us came thick and fast at one point in time, maybe one or two incidents a week. And it wasn't just me, it was the whole family who experienced it. My mum, my brothers, not sure about my dad because I don't think he would have admitted it even if he had experienced it, he is not the man to admit that sort of thing.

A lot of events, such as seeing shadows moving around rooms, even from outside the house, electrical equipment turning itself on and off, at all times of the day and night, pictures on the wall would swing and hang at funny angles, items, like keys, would disappear from one place for days on end then reappear somewhere else! A friend of my mum's swears even to this day that she saw a German shepherd in the bedroom window, standing on its hind legs with it's front paws on the window sill, as children we had dogs but never owned a German shepherd!

A lot of the time we would feel like we were never alone, even when we quite obviously were! The spine tingling, hair on the back of the neck stands up, creeping sensation, that someone would be standing at the back of me when I turned round. But of course there never was anyone there.

One other incident that stands out in my memory, and has never been explained away by anyone in my family. At the top of our stairs, just off the landing, is the bathroom, it can be seen from the bottom of the stairs quite clearly. There used to be a rug outside the bathroom door, which stretched from the top of the stairs to the bathroom door, to the largest bedroom door. My mum had painted the bathroom one day, but had left painting the woodwork and door jamb until we were all in bed to avoid obvious accidents such as it being touched or stepped on. She did the door jamb last of all, washed the brush and went to bed quite late on. In the morning before any of us had risen from bed, I heard my mum talking to my older brother in the next room, asking him if he had been to the bathroom during the night. Then she came to me and asked the same question, I asked why and she said one of us must have been out of bed because on the rug on the landing was a humongous toe print in paint, that came all the way from the wet paint out on to the landing, across the landing fading towards the large bedroom door. I assured her I hadn't been out of bed all night, she said she assumed it wasn't me as my toes were really too small. I looked at this print and measured it against my own and it was massive, even my older brother's toes were not this big! My dad's toes were smaller than my brother's so that ruled him out really!

It puzzled us for a long time, really perplexed us as to how someone's big toe print, just the big toe, could manage to be stained with paint and none of the others! And how come this toe was so massive it ruled anybody in the family out??

We never spoke of it in great depth after it happened, but years later me and my mum had a conversation about it and we must have thought the same thing at the time it happened but never said anything to each other, we both had thought that it was of the paranormal but kept it to ourselves. I convinced myself that it was one of my brothers messing about like they do, but even to this day, they deny all knowledge of it!

I think it is really scary to think that we may have been sharing space with something from the unknown. It had to be the strangest thing that happened in terms of weird stuff. Other things that happened seemed to be paranormal and were filed as such, but this was just freakily weird and just could not be explained in any way. I think that's why we never discussed it, because it was just such a random out-there event!

I will be writing further installments, I do not want to bore you all to death with one lengthy dialogue and as I have not yet finished my telling of my encounters with the paranormal.