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Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 16:44:49 -0700 (PDT)
To: guestbook@ghosts.org
address anonymous
I have lived in my house in Peabody, Massachusetts for all of my life and in those 18 years, I have experienced many strange occurances that can only be classified as "ghostly". The first occasion happened when I was about 6 or 7 years old. I was playing in my second story bedroom with a friend of mine one overcast day. All of a sudden, I had this feeling that someone was watching me. I looked up to see the face of a man in the window. I don't remember what he looked like exactly, but I remember that he had dark hair and a big nose. I called to my friend, who looke up and also saw the man. He then turned away from the window and went out of view. We ran to the window to see where he had gone. He was nowhere to be found. It was definately not a dangerous sort of presence, but I know that it frightened me for years to come.
There was also a kind of poltergeist that lived in the wods behind the houses of two of my childhood friends. We would call him, simply, The Guy. The Guy would go into their yards and do many different annoying little things. Things would be moved in a matter of seconds. If you put a drink on the table in the backyard, it would end up on the front steps. The sprinkler would turn on and off. Nothing dangerous or anything, just annoying. Sometimes things would be gone for quite some time until they were returned. None of The Guy's tricks ever seemed to occur in the house, however, which is a little strange.
The fact that there was some kind of presence in the woods is not surprising. Many people have comitted suicide in them and some people just seem to end up dead in there. Never a murder or anything. Except maybe that Peabody is very close to Salem, which is obveously known for the witch trials. The Proctor family has graves in those woods that are very overgrown and no one seems to really know that they are there. This famliy had members involved in these trials and it would not be surprising if they could still be found in these woods, still restless after being murdered so long ago.
The Guy is not the only thing that my friends and I have seen in the woods. There have been times where we would walk in there and hear what sounds like someone following close behind you, but when you turn around, there is no one there. We have heard clearly audible voices talking in the middle of open fields with no one being around. I, personally, cannot go back there anymore by myself, since I have experienced so much strange activity there. None of us like to. Occasionally, I go with a friend, just to show them about the spot, and many times we still see, hear, and feel activity still.
I have actually seen a local spectre only twice in my life; the first time being with the man in my window. The second time happened when I was driving home from work one cold September night. It was about 11:00 and I had heard a good song on the radio, so I decided to go the long way home to hear the whole thing. When I reached a certain point in my street (coincidently, it was a few yards from the aforementioned neighbors), I saw a figure standing right in front of my car. I slammed on the breaks and the car stopped about a foot away from it. The figure was a woman dressed in a sort of gauzy, white nightgown. She was very beautiful, sort of what I envision an angel to look like, but without the wings. She gave off a strange kind of luminescense, like a faint glow. I looked at her for a second, then she slowly started to disappear. When she was finally gone, I flew home and couldn't get out of my car for about 15 minutes.
I was never intimidated by these occurances, but they were far from ordinary and they all made me very nervous when I saw them. This, I guess, is a natural reaction, but I feel that if I never see anything mysterious again, I will not be disappointed.