My Haunted Friend

From:  anonymous
Story type: Ghost
Location: Huntsville, Ontario, Canada
Source: Form Submission

While I was in high school I experienced some of the most frightening events I ever care to. None of these events happened while I was alone, but always in the company of my best friend, Ruby.

Never one to have any particular belief or interest in the supernatural, I would roll my eyes whenever someone tried to scare me with ghost stories. When I started to hang out with Ruby all that changed......

Approximately three weeks after I met Ruby, I was invited to stay the night at her house, just outside of town. Being rebels, we decided to sneak out and go for a walk along the lake her house sat beside, so we could smoke our forbidden cigarettes. We had been gone for all of fifteen minutes when we heard the sound of footsteps in the grass behind us. We hurriedly crushed our smokes, thinking that her mother had followed behind to check on what we were doing. However, when we turned around there was noone there. We quickly decided it would be a good idea to go back to the house. As we walked, the sound of the footsteps behind us resumed, and we became frightened, thinking there was someone out there following us. By the time we reached the house we were shaken, and out of breath, as we had run the last 50 yards.

We entered the house, and proceded to act as though nothing had happened. We made ourselves popcorn and hot chocolate and decided to relax in front of the television in the basement rec-room. Ruby's mother called down the stairs to tell us she was going out for an hour, and would we please make sure to let the dog out. Ruby's mother was gone for 20 minutes, when the lights and television all went dead. Given our experience during our walk we were naturally terrified, wondering if someone had cut the wires to the house. Suddenly, a string of pale white light appeared on the wall, directly above the television. As there were no windows in the basement, we saw no explanation for the sudden appearance of the light, which proceeded to elongate until it ran from one side of the wall to the other. Ruby broke the silence and yelled for her dog, although I had no idea what kind of protection she thought he might offer! As soon as the dog barked in response though, the light disappeared, and the television, and "electrical" lights came back on.

As soon as Ruby's mother came back home we related these strange events to her. She of course believed none of it, thinking she was dealing with a typical teen-age prank. The rest of the evening was spent in Ruby's bedroom discussing what had happened, and everything was peaceful.

Four or five days later, we were on our way from school to my house when we heard footsteps behind us once again. We were on my street, which was very quiet, as most of the people who lived on it were retired. We looked behind us thinking it might be my brother also on the way home from school, but there was noone there. We stopped walking, thinking it could be an echo of our own foot steps, but the sound of footsteps continued. When we reached my house, we told my father about what had happened, as well as what had happened at Ruby's the previous week, and in his typically joking manner, he told us we should have a seance or find a Ouija board. We weren't laughing....

The next day, at lunch, Ruby & I went to a store and bought a Ouija board.

I had asked my parents the night before if Ruby could stay the next night, so after school we headed for my place, and all evening we became more and more nervous wondering if we would actually find anything out. At 11:00 we locked ourselves up in my bedroom, and set the board on my bed, our fingers hovering over the planchette, yet before we even asked a question it started to move in an erratic pattern all over the board, finally coming to rest on the letter "F". We asked what the "F" stood for and the planchette spelled out the word "Follow".We asked who it was following. "One". One what? "She". Who is She? "Knows". Both Ruby & myself were confused, as neither one of us knew a thing about any of it, so we asked if it was after one of us. "Yes". For what? "Free". Are you trapped? "Yes". By what? "She".Are you angry with someone? "Yes". Who are you angry with? "All".

At this point the planchette began to race around the board, each time coming to rest on "No". We had become very frightened at this point and decided to say goodbye to whatever we were communicating with. Neither one of us got much sleep that night.

A few days later at school, Ruby ran up to me in the hallway, her face deadly pale, saying "I had a really bad dream last night, and I think it's after me!" She then proceeded to tell me about the dream, in which she and her mother were on a boat and her mother suddenly started to change into a man with slash wounds in his face and throat, saying "Let me go you little sl-t!"

I stayed at Ruby's house again that night, and at 4:00 in the morning I woke to the sound of tapping on the headbord of Ruby's bed. Ruby was also awake, and sweat was running off of her in torrents. The tapping moved up the wall and across the ceiling and down the opposite wall to the window, where it became more violent, until we could actually see the glass moving in the window frame. We heard footsteps coming down the hall, and Ruby's mother threw the door open, whereupon the banging just stopped. Her mother took one look at us on the bed with our arms wrapped around each other, looking terrified, and knew something was VERY wrong.

I would love to be able to say that the situation was resolved and that Ruby never had another experience like that, but I can't. About a month later Ruby and her Mother moved to St. Catherines, Ontario. I recieved one phone call about six months after they moved to tell me that things keep happening and they get progressively worse with time.... I never heard from Ruby again, and she refused to give me her phone number, saying it was her problem, and she couldn't let me be dragged into it anymore. I only hope that wherever she is now she's alright and that there's someone or something watching out for her.