The Little Girl

Friday, October 31, 2008

In the spirit of Halloween I offer a true ghost story I wrote for submission to a ghost story site 5 years ago.

Almost every member of our family has had their share of ghostly encounters. This particular incident happened to my aunt about 14 years ago.

She lived with her husband and son in a two story home here in Arkansas. So you can get a complete understanding of the situation I have to describe the house, or more specifically the upstairs open loft area. When you walk in the front door you are in the living room and immediately to your right is a set up stairs leading up. The upstairs is totally open so you can look down over the guard rail into the living room below.

One night my aunt, uncle, and their two year-old son were downstairs in the living room. All the lights in the house were off. The only light they had was coming from the television screen. My uncle was the first one to notice the shadow. He nudged my aunt to look up. There on the wall above the television was the normal shadow of the guard rail from the loft. However, you could also see a shadow of what appeared to be a little girl.

The shadow they were seeing had the outline of a small child, maybe five or six, wearing what appeared to be a ruffled dress. My aunt and uncle freaked out.

They jumped off the couch and turned around to look up at the loft area. There was no one there. When they turned back to the wall where the shadow was cast it was gone as well. My uncle took off up the stairs and my aunt could hear him opening the closet door and the bathroom door. He came back down a few minutes later. There was of course no one up there. They decided that the shadow just looked like a girl in their mind. They knew there was no way anyone could be up there. The only way into the loft was the stairs in the living room. So they blew it off and sat back down to watch television.

Less than five minutes later they both saw the same shadow again. This time it looked like whoever was in the loft was running back and forth behind the guardrail. My uncle took off up the stairs again. But, just like the time before there was no one there. He turned the light on in the loft and came back downstairs to turn on all the lights in the living room. They talked about what had happened, and they both agreed it wasn't a dual hallucination. As they were sitting in the living room discussing it, their two year- old son woke up and my aunt picked him up and held him on her lap as she continued the discussion with her husband.

Of course being a two year-old he was squirming around trying to get their attention. This went on for about few minutes, when he suddenly stopped squirming. My aunt looked down at him to see if maybe he had fallen asleep. He was staring at the top of the stairs. My aunt wouldn't have thought anything about it except for the incident with the shadow that had already occurred twice that night. My uncle turned around to see what they were staring at. Like my aunt he saw nothing. Yet, there was my cousin staring intently at the top of the stairs. My aunt and uncle then watched in horror as he continued watching the stairs, though now he was moving his eyes down the stairs as if he was watching someone walk down them. As his eyes stopped at the bottom of the stairs he crawled down off my aunt’s lap and made his way to the bottom of the stairs. Once there he sat down and preceded to start talking (in his limited two year-old speech) to someone on the stairs. He’s yammering away as my aunt and uncle sit there frozen in fear. By this point he’s laughing and carrying on with an invisible person, who from the way he is slightly looking up is sitting on the second stair from the bottom. His parents are freaking out at this point. My aunt tells him to come back over to the couch. He stands up and starts back, turns around and waves at the stairs. They of course asked him who he was talking to. His reply, “Lisa”. There is no one in our family named Lisa. His parents don't know anyone named Lisa. My aunt is a stay-at-home mom, so it wasn't someone he met in day care. A lot of people have tried to write it off as an imaginary friend. But, no one can explain the shadow my aunt and uncle saw not once, but twice.

After that night my aunt and uncle would find my cousin playing with someone they couldn't see. He would sit and carry on conversations with this person, laughing and playing around. This went on for three whole weeks, until one night when all three of them were in the downstairs bathroom. My uncle was giving my cousin a bath and my aunt came in to talk to them. They laughed and joked around having a good time. My aunt walks out of the bathroom, but is called back in to look at something her son was doing. She sticks her head back in the door and they all laugh at whatever cute thing my cousin was doing. The only problem was they also heard a little girl laughing. They stop laughing and the little girl’s laughter stops a few seconds later. They then hear another noise. This time it sounds like its coming from the hallway, it’s a little girl giggling. My aunt and uncle looked at each other with their eyes wide in fear. My aunt turns to look over her shoulder and sees a little girl standing there. She appeared to be about five or six years old with pale skin, brown eyes and shoulder length dark hair curled into ringlets. She was wearing a light blue ruffled dress. As soon as my aunt laid eyes on her the girl stopped giggling. The little girl then ran straight at my aunt brushing past her as she ran into the room beside the bathroom. My uncle was almost to the doorway of the bathroom when he saw her run past. By the time he came out of the bathroom my aunt had pushed herself flat against the wall with her head turned staring at the doorway of the room the girl had dashed into. My uncle walked into the darkened room (which just so happens to be my cousin’s bedroom) and flipped on the lights. He tore the room apart looking for this girl, but of course there was no one there. When my aunt regained her senses she joined in the search. The only exit from the room other than the door was a window. The window was of course shut and locked with the outside screen still intact. There was no way for this girl to have left the room without them seeing her, not to even mention the short period of time from when she brushed past my aunt to when my uncle entered the room. At this point they finally believed that there was “something” in their house. Upon further questioning of my cousin they determined that the girl they had seen was in fact the girl he had been talking to and playing with for the past three weeks.

The little girl hasn't been seen since that night in the hallway. My cousin no longer played with invisible people. However, the story doesn't end there. One week after they saw the little girl my aunt found out she was two months pregnant. She gave birth to a little girl less than seven months later. The little girl had dark hair and dark eyes. When she was five years old she looked very similar to the little girl they had once seen. My aunt absolutely refused to let her daughter wear anything that resembled a ruffled dress. She also refused to curl her daughter’s hair until she was around nine or ten. We still to this day joke that she should have named her daughter Lisa.