TALES OF TERROR

Real Ghost Story: A Visit From The Past

By Derek E. B. Anderson, South Carolina, USAMy name is Derek, and I grew up in rural South Carolina.  My mother comes from a family that has had several experiences with the paranormal, and she would always tell me about her experiences growing up in her mother's house.  For whatever reason, the paranormal experiences didn't stop with my grandmother or my mother, because I too had several run-ins with the paranormal while growing up directly across from my grandmother's house.

When I was around the ages of 3-5, both of my parents worked long hours, so I would have to be babysat by my mom's first cousin, a woman who had been known to be trouble in the family, but my parents reluctantly allowed her to babysit me out of financial convenience.  While she would babysit me along with her own step-daughter, she would abuse me verbally and emotionally.  If I didn't want to eat, she would call me horrible names and make the girl laugh at me and call me names.  As a child, I remember it being traumatizing and I thought she was the meanest person I had ever met.  However, as a small child, I was never able to articulate her actions to my parents to the point where they would understand my fear of her.

During the times that I would be babysat by this woman, things started getting weird.  Several times when I would walk into my dark bedroom or even a dark hallway, a tall, short haired woman with glasses would appear to me out of nowhere.  It was almost like she would rise out of the floor and just stare at me.  I don't think she ever said anything to me, but it was like she wanted to talk to me, but I would always just run out of the room as fast as I could once I got out of my frozen-in-fear state.  The thing is, I would become so paralyzed with fear that I would block it out of my mind almost immediately to try and convince myself that it wasn't real.  These sightings happened numerous times over those few years, and I still remember it vividly.

I never told anyone about this until a few years ago when I told my mom.  I described the woman with enough detail that she said, "that sounds like your great aunt Maddie who passed away before you were born".  It just so happens that Maddie was the mother of the woman who was babysitting me, the woman that many in our family believe that she had something to do with Maddie's death, but that's just speculation.

That Christmas when I was about 20, after I told my mother about this, she told me to tell my aunt about my story.  I began to describe what I saw, the tall woman with short hair and glasses.  My aunt also confirmed that I was seeing my great aunt Maddie.  That night, they showed me old pictures of her for the first time and sure enough, I was looking at old photographs of the woman who used to appear to me as a child, a woman who several other members of my mother's family has reported seeing over the years after her death.  I truly believe that to this day, she was appearing to me to protect me from her daughter.