This story a part of the True Ghost Stories page on Obiwan's UFO-Free Paranormal Page. Please do not copy or distribute without permission from Obiwan and/or the original author!
From: DLVILES@aol.com
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 22:31:16 EDT
Subject: My Story, Moving Shapes on your web site
To: obiwan@ghosts.org
Arkansas Farm House
COPYRIGHT © SEPTEMBER 1994
December, 1970.
I was still young and naive when I moved from the city of Los Angles, California, to a very small town in Arkansas, to live on my grandmother's farm. It was quite a change from an environment of gang warfare and leaving school early to show up as an extra on a movie set, to a sleepy little town called Van Buren that had a population of 5000 at the time. To make matters worse, was the fact that the farm was situated several miles from town, in the middle of several other large farms.
The farm house was built at the turn of the century and surrounded by enormous Oak trees that five men, touching fingertips, could barley reach around. There was a couple of out-buildings, one of which was the root cellar, where grandma kept her canned goods and the salt cured hams hung from the rafters. In the barn lot was an old watering trough, rectangular in shape, made of concrete with the date 1915 written on the end of it while the concrete was still soft.
Gone were the familiar sounds of traffic roaring by outside the house. The only gun-fire was that of someone hunting rabbits or quail on the lower forty acres along the creek. Even the sound of jets flying to the airport was missing, although it was replaced by the crop duster that flew over the fields, coming dangerously close to the trees and electric lines along the dirt road.
The quite caused an eerie feeling in me, and the noises I did hear were from strange animals I was not used to being around. The house had large picture windows in the kitchen, and a sun-room that was connected to the kitchen contained two of those same large windows and a sliding glass door. At night the darkness crept into the house through the windows even though the lights were burning in the house. We spent most all of our time at the kitchen table. After the chores were done and the sun had set, we would have supper and then talk or play cards, and I would stare back at the darkness that intruded in on me. Occasionally I would catch some movement out of the corner of my eye and would stare fixedly at the windows, trying with all my might to see what was in the darkness. But, there was nothing to see, only the darkness and the strange noises.
The family was comprised of my grandma, an Uncle about twice my age, my twin brother and myself. There were two bedrooms, one of which was occupied by my grandmother, and the other by my Uncle Jimmy. My brother Darrell and I slept on two couches in the sun-room, surrounded by the large windows. I always felt that something was watching me at night, but I managed to convince myself that the flashes I saw from the other side of the windows was just my imagination or some animal running through the yard. In fact I had actually seen coyotes, skunks, opossums, and other such animals prowling around outside. For that reason, we kept a rifle next to the back door, so we could go out and kill any predators that were disturbing the livestock. There were many times though, that I aimed the flashlight out the windows but never saw a thing, and very often I was grateful there was not a pair of eyes staring back at me, for that was my worst fear.
One night, I was sitting at the table with my Uncle Jimmy. He was busy reading a book and I was doing my homework for school the next day. My brother Darrell had gone to town with my Grandmother. At one end of the kitchen was the sun-room and the sliding glass back door, at the other end was a short hall which had a bathroom on one side and the living room on the opposite side. The front door was in the living room.
I saw a flash of movement from the hallway and looked up in time to see something walk out of the bathroom, pause in the hall, look straight at me, and then continue into the living room. I told my Uncle Jimmy that Grandma was home, he looked up from his book and said that couldn't be since the front door was locked and she obviously didn't come through the back door, which was within eyesight of the kitchen table, where we were sitting. I got up from the table and walked down the hall, sure enough there was no one in the bathroom or the living-room and the front door was still locked. I hurried back to the table and told Jimmy he was right but I had seen someone or something cross the hallway to the living room.
Now, I knew there were ghosts around, and I was scared. I then told Uncle Jimmy about the images I saw through the window. He said he sometimes saw something go by the windows at night, but the dogs didn't bark and nothing was bothered, so it was nothing to worry about. Well, I was bothered, it bothered me a lot, and of course that made me worry.
Thinking back on the sighting in the house, there wasn't any true form to the legs and feet, and although I did get a good look at the apparition, I can't put any concrete features to the face, but I know that the person was female and she was kind. There is nothing to explain how or why I know this but I do, and I never saw her again. The only reason I said it was Grandma is because that was the only logical person it could have been. But logic didn't work into this equation.
After seeing the ghost inside the house, I started seeing the ghost or ghosts outside the house. But, only when I was inside. I know that one was an older man with white hair and a white beard, and I believe there was another that I could never see clearly. I learned to live around them without fear when I realized that they never tried to harm any of us. I think they just wanted to be near the material world. Maybe they were lonely or they were looking for someone or something.
I saw them several times in a two year period, and then I never saw them again. Perhaps they found what they were looking for, or maybe they grew tired of us, but in any event they left us alone after that period. It has been twenty-two years since that time, I still go visit my grandmother and Uncle Jimmy at the farm. They are the only ones left there, and they need a little help and company. Grandma is in her eighties now and Jimmy is retired. We don't expect grandma to live much longer, her health has deteriorated drastically and she prays for death to take her so she won't have to deal with the pains and incapacity's that old age has dealt her. I have often wondered, when the end of her days comes and she passes away, if she will go straight to heaven or will she linger for awhile on this world with the other spirits that are bound to the earth. Maybe at night, when I go to visit Uncle Jimmy, I'll still be able to see her in the house or looking at me through the large, picture windows.
David L. Viles