Now that I think about it, I don't know where my hauntings started. I don't know if I had an overactive imagination when I was younger or if I was really scared for a reason. I know that I have an overactive imagination but the hard part is telling what part was real and which ones wasn't when I was younger as I can't remember everything clearly. It almost seems like my mind has always been opened to ghosts...or at least to the thoughts of ghosts. I remember I was always scared at night when I was younger, thinking that something was always there waiting for me outside of my door. I also remember that after I lived in Compton and moved to Riverside, I wasn't as scared of the dark but then I started to be afraid of the backyard, never wanting to look out the windows towards it. It was the reason why I hardly fed my turtle after dark, which is a horrid thought now that I thought about it because I often forgot to feed him before dark. Everytime my mother forced me to go feed him, I'd run like the wind to the garage, gave him his lettuce and hauled ass back. Yeah, I got my cardio in as a child.
I can only vividly remember my hauntings after I moved from Riverside to Nebraska. Oh boy, what a change. From big, ghetto cities (I've always lived in the hood) to a tiny, mostly white town...and to the countryside nonetheless. We moved there due to family already residing there and an available free house in the country house and job. It all seemed like we were hooked up until we found out that it was really scary living in the countryside where the nearest house was a mile away, completely dark at night, and was completely surrounded by cornfields (thank goodness I never watched Children of the Corn...actually still haven't). Me and my sisters were scared because it was so dark and quiet, something we're not used to.
I'm not sure if the haunting in Nebraska started because of this event or if it was just because it took time for the spirit to start acting up. But, all in all, it seemed more because of this event: my stepdad going under the house. Even though we lived in Nebraska, we didn't really have an underground shelter, we had a basement, but it wasn't a full sized one. To get under there, you have to crawl through a small hole, none of my family really wanted to, especially my sister and I, since we're scared of spiders, the only one who really didn't care was my stepdad. I'm also not sure why he decided to go down there but he did one day and brought up all of this old stuff. Lots of old silverware and china, there were more down there besides the silverware and dishes but he didn't bring it up and I didn't dare go down there to see for myself. Now I wish I did since I'm a bigger history buff but back then, I was scared shitless to go down there.
After a couple of months after he ventured down below, my cousins and uncle moved in with us due to a divorce. They were the family that we moved to Nebraska for. I didn't mind though, even if I had to give up my room and share one with my little sister and female cousin (my room was for my two older male cousins and uncle). It was actually really fun living with them, all three of my cousins are cool. My male cousins were funny as hell and my female cousin became my best friend.
Even though my uncle was going through a divorce, his wife still visited us. She would come over to bring over food or hang out. We all loved the food part of course, she was an ok person but she always brought her crybaby son...not a fun little boy. He cried more than my two little sisters combined...he cried because he spilled milk out of his mouth, I don't know about you, but I would laugh at myself, not cry. Anyways, sometimes she would bring food over a bit later into the night.
One night, we heard a knock on the door. My cousin and I were watching TV in the living room, it was pretty late into the night. We heard a knock on the door. Both of us looked at each other. We didn't know what to think at first and then thought...maybe it was my uncle's wife.
"It's really late into the night, why would she be here this late?" We both thought in silence as we looked at each other in fear. Well, if it was her, it would be best if we let her in, so I went to go see if it was. I peeked through the window of the door. I saw no one. Seeing no one scared me, I even looked out towards the front of the house from the window to see if I could see her car. There wasn't any cars out there.
I was a bit creeped out as I turned around.
"Um...no one's there", I said not sure what to make of the situation.
"Are you sure? Did you check to see if a car's there?", my cousin asking to find any type of rationalization.
"Yeah, I checked...no one...I didn't see a car there or any cars driving away." (Forgot to mention that we lived off the main road and can see anyone driving away or to our house for long distances.)
I just sat down back on the couch and continued to watch tv. We both didn't say more about it, I think we were both trying to just forget about the whole thing.
About half an hour to an hour went by since the mysterious knocking.
KNOCK KNOCK.
Oh my god...
We both jumped and looked at each other. It probably about midnight at this point of time. We were both thinking, after realizing the time, that it probably isn't my uncle's wife...but we were both hopeful that it was this time. My cousin went up to check this time, she walked to the door slowly, peeked her head through the window. She looked back at me...the looked on her face told me that no one was there.
"Is it her?" I asked.
"No....no one's there...", she told me.
"Car?"
"No cars..."
"Maybe it's the dogs?" I asked, hopeful that the dogs are awake and were messing around and ended up accidetnally hitting the door.
"They're all asleep," she said as she walked back to the couch.
She sat back down next to me, for the next few minutes, we watched more tv until he heard another KNOCK. This time, we turned off the tv and booked it to our room.
After awhile, we both got used to the knocking late at night as we watched tv. We stopped questioning it and just lived with it, as we're never going to investigate it, nor tell our parents. It happened a few times, mostly during the weekend. What I realized, was that it always happened before a storm. As I mention this, you might think, "Oh, if it's before a storm, it must be the wind picking something up and hitting the door". Well, if the wind can open the door to our porch and curve it to hit our front door twice, then yeah, it could be the wind. I noticed the "storm knocking" after it happened quite a few times, but each storm that we heard knocking, we always had a tornado warning. I'm thinking that it's a good ghost, one that was trying to warn us of a potentially lethal tornado storm. This helped me ease my fear of the knocking. It will still make us jump whe nwe heard it, but we weren't afraid after I realized this. It did scare my cousin when she went to get a drink of water. I asked her if she wanted me to go with her. She declined my offer and decided to go by herself. A minute later, she ran back in the room with a terrified look.
"What happened?" I asked, concerned about what happened.
"I was at the water dispenser and I heard the knocking on the other door." (We had two doors to enter te house, one through the kitchen and one through the living room with a windowed/walled porch with another door to enter the porch to get to the two doors.)
"Oh...uh...did you check to see if anyone was there?" Knowing damn well that no one was, it was around midnight again and if I were her, I'd be too afraid to check by myself.
"No."
"Oh ok, well, let's just pretend that never happened...but next time, I'll go with you."
"Alright, sounds good." I think it was hard for both of us to sleep that night...and this time...there was no storm approaching.
My family only stayed there for awhile, about half a year before moving back to the big city. This time, Vegas. I asked my mom why we were and she said because my parents were tired of the tornadoes. I think the last straw was when we actually saw one outside of town, a bit too close for comfort. If you can see it, you're too close. Even if it was miles and miles away. So we pretty much high-tailed it out there.
I later got in contact with my uncle's family when one of my male cousins decided to move in with us. My stepdad was getting old so he moved in to start a new life and to help out my family. He was really awesome, I loved him because he was the first person that I could feel that I could open up to and depend on. It actually made me cry when I realized this. Being the oldest out of my blood-related siblings, I didn't have anyone to go to or depend on, just little siblings who depended on me. Anyways, he moved in and after awhile, I asked them about when they moved out of the house, why they did, etc. He told me and that's when I had the idea to ask him if he ever experienced anything odd in that house, without telling him of my stories. (Everything that happened to me and my cousin, a.k.a. the knockings, was when we were both up alone, since my male cousins were in high school, they were always out or asleep). He told me a couple of stories that are quite interesting.
One day, he was alone with his girlfriend in the house. His brother went to some party and was gonna stay over there and his dad went somewhere and wasn't going to be back any time soon. My cousin and his girlfriend decided to take pictures. They took it of them with each other and then of each other seperately. Of course, being teens, they decided to take some "naughty" pics...of the girl with her top off. After a few of those pics, they decided to just take pics to send to their friends, to make it sendable to their friends, they took pictures of only their faces. My cousin took a picture of her face, with her face on the side of the frame, rather than have her face in the middle of the frame. After the shot was taken, he looked back at the photo. There was something odd in the picture beside her face in the thumbnail. He clicked on the picture to select it to view it in fullscreen on the camera. There was a face. It was a man's face right next to hers. He showed it to her. They both got creeped out and decided to go somewhere else, leaving that house behind for the day.
We all get up in the middle of the night sometime to go to the bathroom. Well, this one night, my cousin woke up to go to the bathroom. From his room, he turned out to the hallway and walked towards the bathroom. Atthe end of the hallway, is the kitchen...with the kitchen door directly in sight. He looked at the door and realized that he saw a figure in the door window. He thought that he couldn't see things clearly because he was still half asleep. He continued on to the bathroom and after he was done, came out and looked towards the door again. The figure was still there, in the window. Now that he's fully awake. He can see the figure's face. It was a man behind that door. A man that staring back at him. M cousin was frightened and power walked it back to his room (even during this event, his pride forced him to power walk rather than run).
After that incident, some time later, his brother disappeared in the middle of the night. My cousin woke up and saw that his brother wasn't there, asked his dad if he knew where he went and then after realizing that both of them didn't know where he was, they went to go look for him. They only had two vehicles, one was my cousins and the other was my uncles. My cousin's brother would never drive both of their cars unless he got permission from them so they knew that he didn't go anywhere. This was confirmed when they went outside to check their vehicles. He wasn't in the living room watching tv, nor was he in the bathroom. So where was he? When they went outside to check their vehicles, they noticed a small, dim light inside the garage. The garage was closed and they thought it was weird that the light was on. The garage was used for storage rather than for car parking, so this was strange. They opened the garage to check it out. There he was...my cousin's brother. He was sitting in a recliner, just rocking back and forth, with his eyes closed...like he was asleep but was awake enough to rock himself. They called out to him, he didn't react, so my uncle went and shook him. He's tough man, my uncle, I'm surprised he didn't yell at him and smack him. He then woke up and my uncle and cousin asked him what he was doing there. He said he didn't know. He was surprised that he was in there. They all just went back inside and went to sleep. Til this day, we all don't know if he was sleep walking or...what?
As I said before, my uncle is a tough man. You will almost never see him cry. He has a stern, mean look to him. He pretty much looks like he's from the Japanese Yakuza even though he's from Laos. He has his hair slicked back all the time and wears a long, black trench coat. He doesn't look like one of those weird guys that wear trench coats, he actually looks like that he's from the mob. His voice sounds very frightening too, although he is such a kind man to females...females of the family, I'm not sure how he treats females outside of the family. He'll be kind to the males but be really tough to them. When my male cousins were young, they were trained on how to fight and defend themselves, to always be alert. One day my cousins came home from school and as they opened the door, my uncle punched my little cousin in the face (the one who's telling me these stories). After the punch, he said with a stern face, "Always be alert". My god, this was a tough version of the karate kid. So yeah, he's a very tough man. But after all the incidents, he decided, it was time to pray. The last time my uncle ever prayed was when my female cousin was born. He prayed for her be born healthy because his wife at that time, was drinking and maybe doing drugs. She came out completely fine, but after all those years, he's never prayed. I don't know if it was Buddhist prayers or what (they're generally Buddhist but once foreigners come to America, they end up converting to a different religion due to different reasons), but he got my two cousins together and had all three of them pray for quite some time. They were praying to cleanse the house of any spirits or negative/unknown energies. After this, nothing weird ever happened in that house.
After I heard these stories, it just helped me confirm that my female cousin and I weren't imagining things. We weren't the only ones that experienced weird happenings. I never felt any bad energies, I always thought it was a good ghost, since he always liked to warn us of incoming storms. Maybe there was more than one, or maybe my family moving out affected the ghost in some way to where he was getting stronger. Either way, it was really weird and that changed my world.
