True Ghost Experiences

Watchful Figure

It all started whenI was about eight. Or maybe I was nine. I don't remember. I wasin third grade, and I was walking home from school. And I sawsomething, out of the corner of my eye, like a blur, and then itwas gone. But it felt like it had followed me home from school orsomething, though I don't know why. No incidents at school, justone -- I was playing by a tree, a fruit fell, and a rabbit ranaway. I don't even know why that stands out in my mind.

Anyway, I told my mom and she laughed, and told me "Yeah, itprobably followed you home from school." I thought aboutthis for a while, mulled it overin my eight-year-old mind, anddecided it made sense, satisfied, I fell asleep.

The next few weeks were normal. No incidents, nothing -- justthat one silver flashj, when I was walking home, and that was it.Then one day, when my friend and I were sitting beneath aworktable at school, trying to do our homework and hide frombullies at the same time, and all of the sudden all the hairs onthe back of my neck stood on end, and I felt really cold, and theradio that was playing on the table above us subsided intostatic, and my friend said maybe we should ask the teacher toturn the air conditioning down because it was really cold inthere. And then he got up and started to walk, and stopped, andsaid "huh. It's not cold anymore, and then he came and satdown next to me and said,"I'm cold again". We decidedthat we didn't want to be cold, (plus I was nervous), so we movedto an area of the room I was more comfortable in. About tenminutes later, while some teachers were wheeling the piano intothe room (it was one of those cheap ones -- they used it ! ! forsing-a-longs), one of the wheels stuck and the end veered intoithe table, knocking it over. I thanked God that we had not beensitting beneath the table.

That's when it got wierd. I felt it more often, like it waswatching me intently, or tagging behind me. I would see silverblurs, which would subside, and I'd start to panic and feel likeI was suffocating, and run out of the room. Mom just thought itwas a "phase" I was going through, though it must haveunnerved her when I darted suddenly out of a room where I seemedperfectly fine before.

I nicknamed it "rabbit", mostly because I was afraid ofit and wanted to give it a name that at least seemed harmless,partly because the apparition had two spikes on its head thatresembled rabbit ears. And it got worse. Mom enrolled me in aprivate Christian school because she thought that the bullies atschool were the ones messing me up. It always appeared beforesomething bad happened, and my reaction was to always run awayfrom it, so naturally when a heavy shelf tipped over orsomething, I wasn't standing beneath it as I had a few secondsbefore. Or sometimes the reaaction would be delayed -- afterseeing it in a certain place I would be terrified and not returnfor maybe a week, to learn that something had happened there,like when I saw it near our car when we were going to go watchthe car races, and Mom asked me if I wanted to come with her toget gas before we went, and I said no, so my little brother (wholoved me to death) didn't want to go either. Mom walk! ! ed backin the door an hour later, covered with grease and grime, to tellus that he car had burst into flames right next to a gas pump.

My fingers are shaking, so I'll finish. Mom took me to see somepsychiatrists after I burst into tears in class after seeing itnext to my teacher. I stopped seeing it for a while, just felt itwatching me intently, then it was gone. Sometimes, if I wake upfor no reason late at night, I'll see a figure like a man in aleather jacket leaning against the door frame, and I'll rub myeyes and it's gone, but I can still feel it watching me, and thebutterflies in my stomach keep me awake for the rest of the night.