True Ghost Experiences

Whirlwind Girl

OK, completely andtotally non-fiction story here. This is my most extremeexperience to date (mind you I'm only 25 so there's plenty oftime yet!).

When I was at College, both me and my housemate were very intoall things Weird. We wore black, we read ghost stories etc. A biton the pretentious side now I think of it, but it seemed seriouswhen we were 19. A roleplaying friend of mine had a mother whomade her living as a psychic (they were a very _poor_ family!).Her name was Sandra.

Along with a few other friends interested in the occult, we askedSandra if she'd come round one evening as we wanted her opinionon the house that we renting at the time. The house was a 1930'ssemi-detatched. Very boring. But right at the top of the stairs,outside the bathroom door, there was a cold spot. Neither I norAlison could bear to be on our own in the house, and both of ushad, on occasion, sat outside on the doorstep until the other onecame home from a nightclub. It wasn't necessarily an evilfeeling, but definitely... sentient. After we had been there 4 or5 months, it would start to move around the house - like a tinywhirlwind, skipping from one room to another. We were not theonly ones to feel it, certainly, many of our friends refused touse the bathroom in our house because of it, and many friends hadfollowed it around the house in curiousity. It just frightenedthe willies out of me. Having a bath was a very traumaticexperience. Oh yes, and the light-bulb at the top of the stairsused to blow on a regular basis - every week or so, so you'd bein the _dark_ with this cold pillar following you into thebathroom. Oh, ick, it's frightening me now, thinking of it.

Anyway, we asked Sandra to come and see what was what. She was alovely lady, very friendly and chatty. She did some regressionson members of the group which seemed to work on everyone exceptme, and I was a little sceptical by this point.

"What do you think of the house, Sandra?" Alison askedher, having told her nothing of our 'whirlwind'.

"Very transient..." she said. (No mean feat here - itwas a rented house, of course it was going to be transient...)"However, there is something on the landing, isn't there?"My mouth dropped open, maybe there was something in this afterall...

"It's a little girl... and she's very frightened, isn't she,Anne?" Sandra looked straight at me.

I felt as though I'd left my body behind all of a sudden and Iwas on the stairs as a little girl - perhaps 4 or 5 years old. Iwas desperately running up the stairs because I knew that at anymoment... the hand would get me. The stairs ran up the side ofthe house, and the front door was at the bottom of them. As Iwatched, my mouth dry with fear, the letterbox on the door shotopen and a hand reached through. It was brown and leathery andcovered in bumps, cuts and warts. The fingernails were likeclaws, and the arm was impossibly, impossibly long. And it shotup the stairs behind the little girl, trying to grab hold of hernightdress to pull her back down towards whatever was waitingbehind the door. She was screaming and running as fast as shecould, but her little legs wouldn't carry her fast enough. Thehand was just about to grab her nightdress when all of a sudden Iwas back as me, sat on the living room floor surrounded by myfriends. I was hyperventilating badly and Sandra took some timeto calm me down, saying, "You can't hide behind that anymore, breathe slowly." This turned out to be odd, as I hadin fact been using the hyperventilation as a way of getting outfrom awkward situations for years, completely involuntarily. I'vehad no problems since.

I still don't know whether our 'whirlwind' was the ghost of thatlittle girl or the imprint of her childhood fear. I suspect theformer as I detected sentience behind the fear and cold. But I'venever experienced anything so immediate and so totallyfrightening as those few seconds I spent experiencing the fearthat she felt. After this event, we took to talking to the'whirlwind', verbalising our fear to her, and making her realisethat she was frightening us as she had been frightened herself.Although it never stopped, and we were always apprehensive aboutbeing in the house alone, it became better after that day.

I don't have any pat explanations for what happened - I stilldon't know what happened to me, and I doubt I ever will. Butwords can't express the stark fear that little girl had, and it'sfar too easy to forget that the 'ghosts' we fear were once humantoo.