Here's one from my Mom, thought you guys might find it as creepy as I did... My Mother lives in an old farmhouse in Waverly NY (Between Elmira and Binghampton, near the PA border) that is 100+ years old. She grew up there, and her siblings all tell relatively vague (though interesting to those of us that lived there later on) tales of ghostly activity. Mom has always been a local history buff, and has done quite a bit of research on the original occupants of the house and property. Most of the earlier families are buried in the cemetary across the road, and some of my earliest memories are of imagining what sort of people the Saunders and Van Ripers were while strolling through said graveyard with my Mom.

I moved to the other side of the state some years ago, my brother got married and moved into his own place, and about two weeks ago, my sister finally found herself an apartment of her very own, making this the first time my parents have been alone in their own home. Basking happily in the silence and calm, my mother was washing the three measly dishes in the sink (and doing a little dance, I'm sure; we always dirtied an obscene amount of dishes when the three of us lived at home:), she felt a cold chill. Unremarkable in an old home, especially in a kitchen with a somewhat imperfectly sealed picture window. However, when she finished her task and turned around, there was a six-year-old girl standing about two feet away from her. At first, Mom was a little confused, but then realized that the child could not possibly be there. She looked solid enough, but several details in her appearance were...well, wierd. The girl had dark hair styled in long ringlets, but slightly messy, not perfect like with a curling iron or anything. She wore a longish off-white dress with a matching pinafore that appeared to have been pressed with a cold iron, so the wrinkles were pressed in, rather than out of the fabric. The girl appeared to be slightly grimy, not perfectly clean, as though she were covered with a film of dust, from her head down to her scuffed leather button-up boots. She stood still and solemn, with her hands at her sides, palms forward, a pleading look in her blue eyes. And, of course, she just appeared there silently. Mom hadn't heard the dor, or footsteps on the steps, and she had never seen this child in her life. She told me that her next thought was that she must be halucinating, and had finally snapped mentally.

Finally finding her voice, she asked the little girl, "What do you want?" Then she felt what she described as a 'soap bubble in my head', like a capsule of foreign thoughts that pushed into her mind, then popped, spilling the words 'My name's Mary, My name's Mary, My name's Mary' into her thoughts.

Then, the girl vanished, from the feet up, as though she were erased from the air.

Now, my mother can certainly be peculiar, but she certainly isn't insane, nor has she ever had vivid hallucinations before. She didn't tell anyone about this event, for fear they might suggest she check herself into the nearest psychiatric hospital. She went about her business the rest of the day, and tried to put it out of her mind.

That evening, her cousin dropped by. It seems a friend of his had bought the house next door to my parent's property, and had found a headstone in the barn behind the house. He assumed that the previous tenants, who were not happy that the house had been sold 'out from under them', had left it there to freak out the friend who had bought the place. The man had asked my mother's cousin to get rid of it, and he had apparently been driving around with the damn thing in the trunk of his car all day. My mother asked him what name was on the headstone. He couldn't recall the name, maybe Jane something? It belonged to a six-year-old girl, and it was really old, he said, and told my mother to come outside and look at it herself. Mom told him she didn't need to. It belonged across the road, at the end of the second row, where the three trees are planted on the grave, she asserted, clueless as to why she 'knew' this, but certain that she was correct. She told him to put it back right now, or he would surely get into some trouble. Spooked, her cousin ran out of the house like his tail was on fire to do as my mother had asked.

The next morning she felt bad about scaring her cousin like that, and called him to apologize and claim temporary insanity. He told her that he put the headstone where she said it should go, and that there was indeed a grave where she had indicated that had been missing a headstone. Shortly a friend of my mother's dropped by for coffee, and Mom told her about the bizarre series of events. They decided it might be a good idea to take a walk to the cemetary.

The grave in question was indeed at the end of the second row, in the Saunders' family plot. The headstone belonged to 'Mary Saunders', who had died at the age of six some seventy or eighty years ago. There was a little poem on it, something about a 'daughter, fair and bright, may God help keep her through the night'. When my mother touched the headstone, she had the overwhelming sense that Mary was content and sleeping, happy that she had back her poem.

Now, I can't say for absolute certain that my Mom hasn't lost her mind, but this is the story she told me yesterday, more or less. She's never been one to tell wild stories, so either that was one heck of a coincidental hallucination, or she really did have an encounter with a ghost. I do know that I have a sudden urge to hang out in her kitchen by myself sometime! Thank you for listening, and take care,

Monelun