ARE THERE SUPERNATURAL "HOTSPOTS"

     The house in St Louis was not the only strange thing happening in that neighborhood.  There were quite a few other "unusual" aspects of the area.  

Starting School

     I started the school year in the local public school.  One of my most vivid memories is the number of days with dense fog.  I have since lived in many places all around the country and have never seen fog like this.  It was so thick and frequent even 43 years later, I still feel the damp of it.  One particular day the fog was so thick and lasted all day into the next morning.  I even wrote a short story for my class about a boy lost in the fog.  

Bullied

     I was never considered a coward or even small.  In this school, there was a boy 2 or 3 grades ahead of me.  He was older and larger than I was and would follow me home from school and beat me up.  He did this not because I had money or even knew him, he just took perverse pleasure in sending me home bloody and crying.  My mother tried to stop it, but the beatings were not on school grounds so the school did nothing.  The boys parents were no help either. After several beatings, I took matters in hand.  He was on top of me, and had broken my nose again.  I grabbed the first thing I could find and hit him, once on the side of the head, and I broke his nose.  His parents were FURIOUS but I was never bothered by him again

Many other examples 

     There were other things and I will tell those in the future

HAUNTED HOUSE

     I was 6 or 7 when we moved into that house in St Louis.  Too young to watch the scary movies or even much television.  I didn't read scary books or even comic books very often.  We weren't poor but we were making every penny count and comics were a not a priority.  So there were no outside influences to prejudice me towards the supernatural.  

Basement or Dungeon?

     Anyone who has live in tornado country knows how important a storm shelter or basement can be.  Getting a house that had a good sized basement area was considered a plus.  This was not a FULL basement.  You could stand up in it but it had not been dug all the way to the exterior walls. In all, it probably was half or less of the footprint of the house.  

     The first time I went into that basement was while we were moving in.  We were storing some things in the crawlspace areas of the basement.  When I first went in, I felt the musty and damp air.  Like most basements, this one was not well lit, only a single bulb hanging down and casting shadows everywhere. I went a little further back and looked over a retaining wall that was just about as tall as I was and saw a single shoe, a loafer, and from the way it was on the dirt it looked like it was LAUGHING at me.  I could almost HEAR the laughter.  I felt that bad things had happened in the basement.  I was not sure WHAT.  The feeling of dread and doom in that basement was so great that I would not go into the basement unless forced to.  My folks seemed to have the same feeling.  Anytime we went in they seemed to talk very soft and hurry out as soon as possible.  I was not a fearful child nor do I have a lot of fears as an adult, but that basement.......

A HAUNTING?

     It was St Louis in the very early 1970's.  I was 6 or 7 years old.   Strange things were happening.  

     I have already told you a little about our house in St Louis,  We Lived in the second floor and rented the first floor out.  Just after we moved in my mother converted the attic to a "play room".  When we took over the house there was some left over "trash' or junk left in the attic.  My step father was working 2 full time jobs and my mother was busy setting up the rest of the house so it was some time before they cleaned out the attic.    The first time I went in the attic I made an "imaginary" friend.  Before that house I had never had an imaginary friend, but my mother came into the attic to see who I was talking to.  

The little blond haired girl in the attic

     I was just talking away and my mother came to see just who I was talking to.  She found me in the attic playing with my toy cars and talking to thin air.  I don't remember what I was saying.  I do remember asking and ANSWERING questions.  When I found out my mother could not see my new friend I was confused, I COULD.  My mother was convinced that I had made up an imaginary friend to deal with the loss of friends that moving causes, but to me this little girl was just as real as you or me.  Some time later as we were cleaning the attic I found an old picture, possibly a school picture of the little girl.  My mother read the date on the back of the picture and was surprised at how old it was.  My "imaginary" friend looked exactly like the girl in that old picture.  My mother thought I must have found the picture earlier and made my friend look like the girl, but I don't think that was the case.

The strangest part of the story is that after I found that picture I NEVER SAW OR SPOKE TO HER AGAIN.

ARE GHOSTS REAL?

     In the early 1970's my family moved into a three story house in a working class neighborhood in St Louis Missouri.  It was my mother, sister, step-father,  and me. Being a large house and needing the money, my folks rented the first floor out and we lived on the second and third floors.  The house also had a basement which was very handy in the mid west when tornado season came around.

     It was in this house and neighborhood that I first became aware of the Supernatural.  Bear in mind I was only six or seven years old at the time and had not been exposed to scary movies or even the odd ghost story told around the campfire. In other words, I had no preconceived notions of ghosts or hauntings. 

Phantom Footsteps

     The first thing I remember happening was hearing some one walk down the hall in what sounded like heavy boots.  I was very happy to hear this as the only person I knew who wore boots was my mothers brother, Uncle Bob and if he was here so were my cousins!!  I got out of bed and ran to my parents room only to find them deep asleep and they told me that No one was coming to visit.  Disappointed and wide awake I went back to the room I shared with my infant sister.

     As I lay there trying to go back to sleep, I heard the footsteps AGAIN.  They started at the kitchen and came all the way down the hall,they paused outside the door then came in the room.  They went to my sisters crib and turned towards my bed.....the light from the hall shone into the room and NO ONE was there.  I began yelling for my folks and they came into the room.  They searched the house and found no one but us in the house at the time.  Needless to say, we all slept together in the living room.