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Don't be afraid. He just wants to look at you. (Great Ghost Story W/O)Oct 03 '06 (Updated Mar 28 '07) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line My dad said "Don't be afraid; he never met you and he just wants to look at you".
I’ve always loved a good ghost story and I’m a Halloween fiend, so what better topic for my first W/O than a true ghost story submitted to JPS246’s Great Ghost Story Write-Off? I swear that these two stories are completely true. They both happened to me and one was also experienced by my dad. The first occurred when I was a small child, the second when I was in my late 20s. Detroit, 1974 I never met my grandfather. He died of cancer in 1969, not long after Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I was born about 5 months later. My brother and our cousins called him Big Grampa to differentiate him from our other grandfathers. He was a very large man, hence the nickname. It was a dark and stormy Friday night. No really, it was. Detroit in February is horrible. Cold, blustery, the kind of night where, no matter what you try, you just can’t get warm. Chilled to the very bone. The only thing that might help, temporarily anyway, was a hot bath, flannel jammies and having someone else to snuggle with for shared body heat. Unfortunately I was just a kid so I had only the hot bath, the flannel jammies, and Poohbear to snuggle with. It was a very restless night of trying to fall asleep and trying to get and stay warm. At some point in the night I was awakened by a noise. I opened my eyes and saw a sight that I could barely comprehend. I jumped out of bed and ran, screaming, down the hallway to my parents’ room. It was late; really late. Like three in the morning. I was only a small child but I found it odd that my parents were awake. Sure, I startled them with my scream, but their bedroom door was open, the light was on, and they looked as if they were already wide awake before I got there. I leapt onto their bed in a fit of hysterics and explained what I had seen. I had been awakened by the sound of a hacking cough and when I opened my eyes, there was a very large man standing at the foot of my bed looking at me. It was a ghost. He was smiling at me and then he waved and blew me a kiss which totally freaked me out so I took off screaming. I told my dad that it was Big Grampa. Dad’s face turned white as the t-shirt he was wearing. Turns out that about 15 minutes before my episode, my dad had also been awakened by the sound of a cough. Thinking I was sick, he got out of bed to check on me but when he opened his eyes, Big Grampa was standing right there in front of him, smiling. He had been in their room just minutes before I had seen him in my room. January, 1997, Harrisburg, PA My dear Gramma had died and my husband and I traveled home to Detroit to lay her to rest just two weeks ago. She was my favorite grandmother. My maternal grandmother, she was the glue that held that entire side of the family together. She was always there for me. Whenever something was bothering me or I was not getting along with my parents, she was always there taking my side or comforting me somehow. She was a tough old bird who fought for her life with everything she had until the very end. She once claimed that Jesus came for her a month prior but she told him she couldn’t go yet. She was the kind of lady that could say “Not yet, Jesus” and He’d listen and hold off for a while. She was the wife of Big Grampa. She was the one person who understood and related to my dark side; the part of me that loves The Twilight Zone, Carrie, and Vincent Price. I was often ill as a small child and it was Gramma who always stayed with me when I had to miss school or if my parents went out in the evening. We were very close. I think of her whenever I walk down the makeup aisle at the drugstore and get a whiff of Coty Airspun face powder which has a very distinct scent that always brings back memories of her. I think of her nearly every day and sometimes find myself lying in bed talking to her. Strange, I know, but that’s just me. While I was home for the funeral, I caught a cold that I just couldn’t shake and that kept getting nastier with every passing day. I have asthma so a simple cold usually goes right down into my chest and stays there. By the end of the week I had bronchitis that didn’t respond to any of the medications my doctor prescribed. By the end of the next week it was pneumonia. Thankfully I went back to the doc when I didn’t start to feel better and before it developed to an advanced stage because I was a day from being hospitalized. I was sent home with orders to take the week off of work, a big ‘ol pile of meds, and some menthol for my vaporizer to help clear my lungs. Unfortunately my husband was traveling on business that week and wasn’t around to care for me so I had to tough it out on my own. I called my manager and told her I would be back in a week or so and headed for bed. The pneumonia got worse before it got better. That night I remember lying in bed feeling just horrible. My head was killing me, my chest felt like 50 bricks were piled on top of it, and my fever was raging. I was bundled up tightly listening to the hum and spit of the vaporizer. I couldn’t breathe. Try as I may I couldn’t completely fill my lungs and I started to panic, but my fever was so high and I was so weak I could do nothing about it. Something was going wrong with the vaporizer. It was malfunctioning and creating far too much steam. The room was steamy and stifling. I felt like I was drowning but I couldn’t drag myself out from under the layers of blankets I had piled upon myself. “Gramma, can you hear me? Please help me”, I whispered into the darkness. “I’m drowning. Oh Gramma, something’s wrong here but I can’t move. I’m dying, I’m drowning, I can’t breathe…………..help me”……. The steam began to dissipate as if someone had opened the bedroom door or window. I was quickly able to breathe more easily, to completely fill my lungs with fresh air. I was no longer drowning. And then suddenly I smelled it. The scent of the menthol in the vaporizer was gone – replaced by the scent of Coty Airspun powder. I suddenly felt deeply relaxed and comfortable. Within a minute or two, the steam had virtually stopped and I quickly fell into a deep, long slumber. When I awoke the next morning, I found that the vaporizer had stopped running. It must have run dry in the night sometime after I fell asleep. But then I noticed that it had been unplugged. That’s easy to explain. I must have gotten up in the night and unplugged it. But when I reached down to pick it up so I could rinse it out I noticed some residue on the plug. It was Coty Airspun powder.  |
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