Projected Fear

From: Bill Sheridan (sheridw@aol.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: NJ
Source: Form Submission

Although this story involves me directly, I was unconscious during the entire event. So, I have to tell the accounts of the evening second hand. The house I currently own is the same house that I grew up in. So, by now I have been living in my house long enough to have witnessed enough strange occurrences to write a novel. However, everybody thinks their house has a ghost and I've been slowly writing off my scary stories over the years. That is, all except for one.

One night, when I was about four years old, I was sleeping downstairs in my bedroom while my parents were upstairs watching TV in the family room. All of a sudden, my parents heard footsteps running up the stairs and when they looked past the railing of the staircase, they saw me clamoring hysterically up the steps towards the hallway that led into the kitchen. As I turned and headed toward the kitchen, they had a chance to witness the expression on my face. My eyes were wide opened and I appeared wild and frightened. My mother asked me what was wrong, but I ignored her as I ran past the family room and into the dark kitchen. This in itself was unusual since I never turned on the light as I entered the room, and I was completely terrified of the dark as a child. My parents just sort of gave each other a puzzled look and got out of their easy chairs to investigate. They called my name as they approached the kitchen, but I didn't answer. "Maybe, he had a nightmare." My father offered with a shrug. When they entered the room and turned on the light, they expected to see me standing there, but the room was empty. "He's probably hiding under the dining room table." My father said, still unconvinced that anything unusual was going on. He went ahead of my mother into the dining room, bent over, and lifted the tablecloth to find nothing. By now, both my parents remember looking at each other and seeing paleness in one another's face.

My mother quietly turned around and led the way back downstairs to my bedroom where my parents, both of whom to this day agree to having seen me come up the stairs, found me fast asleep. What made this even more bizarre was the fact that given the layout of the house, it would have been physically impossible for me to pull this off, even if I was a prankster, which I wasn't. There is only one staircase in the house and only one way to get to the staircase from the kitchen. The way I came. To this day, neither one of my parents have a clue as to what happened that night. However, to all the fear freaks out there, I offer up the possibility that my dream may have been so intense that I projected it to my parents in seek of their help.