Transient Spirits

From: Lisa Wagner (lwagner@co.riverside.ca.us)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Riverside, California
Source: Form Submission

This is my personal experience with supernatural occurrences in my own house. They are not particulary scary, in fact, I usually enjoy them.

The first occurrance was when I was about 12 until I was about 16 years old. Every night I would see a man peeking into my room. I could see his whole form, although it was composed of a sort of swirling, darting light. This man would peek at me, make a sort of "surprised" look and then leave. He only ever appeared in the hallway of our house and no where else. It scared me at first, but soon I came to feel as though the man cared about me, as if he was just checking in. No one would ever believe that I saw this. I lived with only my dad at that time and he would always joke about Casper the Friendly Ghost when I mentioned "my friend". One night, after this had been going on about 4 years, I looked at the man and said "Do you know that you are dead?" the man put his hand up to his face, made that suprised look, and I never saw him again. At that same time, I could also see the spirit of a small dog in our living room. It would appear right in front of my father"s eyes but he would not see it. Luckily, the one saving grace was that my two dogs Corky and Gigi would see it. They had a habit, whenever a real dog came into the house, of running to their food bowls and guarding them. When this spirit dog came into the room, they did the same thing. I saw them do it, my dad saw them do it, but still HE WOULD NOT BELIEVE that the spirit dog was there. Anyway this all went on for about 4 years and then suddenly stopped.

Although my dad would not believe me then about the other spirits, I have a feeling he believes me now. You see, my dad died of cancer 5 years ago right here in this same house. While he was dying we had some strange conversations and at one point I asked him if he could come back as a ghost, would he do it? He said no, that "he wasn"t going to be no Casper the Friendly Ghost". Apparently, this is the only ghost my father ever heard of. But just before he died I think he started to learn that there is a relationship between the dead and the living. Two days before he died,his youngest sister called "Shoog" also died. We did not tell dad that she had passed on because we though it would upset him. That night, I approached my dad"s bed, thinking that he was asleep. Suddenly, his eyes popped open, he looked at me and said "Shoog!" I said "No pop, it"s me, Lisa". Dad said "I"ll be right there" and went back to sleep. He never regained consciousness and died two days later. Well, my dads death was pretty hard on a lot of us and caused a lot of family turmoil. Because of all the fighting, I did not bury my father"s cremated remains until a year after his death. When I finally did though, strange things started to happen at the house. My dad was retired and had always like to wind up his day about 4:30 pm with a shower and a beer. Soon after his burial, at about 4:30 every afternoon I would start to find the refrigerator door open for no reason. The neatest thing (to me) was that every afternoon I would find what appeared to be wet footprints on the bathmat. I *knew* this was my dad. This went on for about 6 months. My husband and I were just amazed at this phenomena. Unfortunately, I just can"t keep my big mouth shut. One day I came in the kitchen, found the fridge door open and said "Hey Pops! I thought you weren"t going to be no Casper the Friendly Ghost huh?" I never heard from my dad again after that.

I often wonder why it is that I can just point out someones "ghostiness" and they go away?