I've long given up on trying to deny the fact that my family seems to be haunted. Not our houses, not the cities in which we live, us. But this was the worst thing I had ever encountered. Back in fall 2001, my sister, mother, father, and I had just moved to Cumberland Gap in Tennessee. We lived in this really old white house. It had plants growing all over the place and the paint was all chipping, but aside from that it was a beautiful house. It was old fashioned and had two stories. There was a door coming out of the upstairs hallway that you could open and go out onto the hill outside. The house was completely infested with fleas, but we needed a place to live and we could afford it, so we just kept the air conditioner running as high as it could get and they didn't seem to bite as much. The first day my sister and I were there, we had just come back from vacation with my grandparents, and our cat had had kittens. They had all died, but we just figured they crawled a bit and just didn't make it after that. It didn't seem odd at all that they were spread out across the house, but thinking about it now it kind of is. We were there a couple of days and my sister and I started school. It was a very small school, but our cousins went there too, so it didn't seem as hard. When I say small, I don't mean only a few teachers. There weren't classrooms. You know those wall type thingy pieces that are on wheels and you move around? The walls of "classrooms" were those. I could not find my way around at all unless I followed my classmates closely. Again, I didn't think much at first that kids started whispering when the bus stopped at our house and it's probably nothing, but if they knew how creepy this place was, it would have been nice for a warning. My sister and I slept in our room a total of five nights in that house. Our room had a very creepy feeling to it and I just didn't like it at all. My sister, who is one of the bravest people I know, didn't like it either. We started sleeping in the living room, her on the couch and me on the floor. I had horrible nightmares every night in that house. There was a hole in the living room floor big enough for you to sink into if you stepped in it. I remember one night I was so scared, for some reason I can't remember, that I ran to my parents room and didn't even ask before I climbed into bed with them. I noticed that their room felt weird too. Have you ever been in a very dark room and after a while, it looks like television fuzz looking at the wall or ceiling? I'm hoping it was that, but that night I could have sworn I saw little people crawling around. I absolutely hate that house. We moved fairly quickly because my parents were getting bad feelings, too, and my dad is not the kind of person to believe in anything remotely ghost-like. Do you think it was haunted or are we just paranoid?

Now that I got the old apartment out of the way, it's time for the events in my current apartment. Just under 2 years ago, we moved from the old building to another old building less than a mile away (same zip code). My end of town is old as I somewhat explained before; the Oceanview section of Norfolk, VA. Many places down here are 50-100+ years old (or older), the area is full of history, some of it dark and unsettling. From the very first second I walked into the new place, I knew it was an old school. It's a solid concrete and brick structure that you can tell the original building had been added to at some later date, increasing it to 3 floors. Later I found out, yes in fact is was the Old Oceanview Elementary that had been replaced sometime in the 1940's with a new building a mile down the street. Since the beginning, I knew something "else" was in the building. Living in so many paranormally enhanced places makes you attuned to the stuff after awhile. Within the first week of moving in, I sat alone in the living room and heard the sound of children laughing. Not normally am alarming thing, but it came from directly in front of me, in the middle of my living room. I still am not sure if it was from outside, upstairs or what, but it was slightly disturbing. A friend who visited shortly after also reported she felt a hand grab her hand as she walked into the apt, she said it felt small, like a child's. A few months later, I was home alone again, but getting ready to head out. Allow me to give you a bit of a layout. The apt is laid out in an H shape, with a long living room space, which leads through an archway into the kitchen-hallway area. That narrows down to a hallway with a pantry on the left and the bathroom on the right just before the bedroom door. The bedroom, 12x14, is isolated from the rest of the place. You cannot hear anyone knocking on the front door from the bedroom. The building is made of brick, concrete, with plaster walls and a wooden raised floor. Technically the ground floor is below ground level. I was in the bathroom, just getting out of the shower. I had the bathroom door wide open, it blocks the hallway otherwise, and in the kitchen-hall section was a large dresser with a 45 gallon fish tank. In the reflection of the tank you could see into the kitchen. As I flipped my head down to wrap my hair, I looked into the fish tank and saw a tall male standing in the kitchen. I quickly stood up and ran out, checking the kitchen, but no one but the cat and myself in the apartment. I went back to the bathroom to see if I could figure it out, but I never could and never again saw the figure standing in the kitchen like that. Several more months later, my boyfriend, myself and the cat were in the living area end of the apt. All the lights were off in the other end and everybody, including the cat, was off the floor, sitting down. Suddenly I heard a noise from the other end of the apt like the sound of a foot dragging across the carpeted floor. Very recognizable. I looked at my boyfriend who was looking at me - neither of us knew what made that sound. The cat acted off all evening, following us closely and refusing to stay in a room by herself. Two days later, the sound repeated but this time we; BF, myself and cat, were in the bedroom and off the floor and the other end of the apt was dark and sealed up. Again the foot scraping the carpet sound, as clear as day. We haven't heard this sound again and never found a explanation for it. About this time we started leaving a light on in the front part of the apt at night (we are both grown adults, 27 and 31) but something gave us the creeps: the archway leading between the two sections of the apt. If you sat in the bedroom and the living room was dark, you will get completely un-nerved looking into the darkness of the archway. My boyfriend, several friends, and myself all felt this. If you sat in the living room and looked into the darkened hallway-bedroom, you don't feel anything. Also at this time, my boyfriend and myself started getting strange "I'm not alone" feelings if you were in the bedroom, but alone in the house. Several times I would get up and go looking into the living room to see if my boyfriend had come home, only to find the place locked up and empty. I swore it felt like another person had come into the house and as you can't hear the front room from the bedroom, I really did think he had. He later told me he had the same experiences if he was home alone. A few more major creepy events. First, as I explained before, if the bathroom door is open, but not wide open, it blocks the hallway. One night my boyfriend was using the loo and I was in the bedroom with my cat, watching TV. I got up, turned off the TV and left the room, closing the bathroom door just enough to get by. My cat was right on my heels (Yes, she often follows me just like a dog would). We sat down and started watching TV in the living room. A few minutes later my boyfriend joins us and asked me if I passed by twice. "No, why?" He stated that just before I walked by the door, out of the corner of his eye he saw a pale female leg pass by the door. I told him that I would have had to move the door to pass, plus the cat was with me and if I passed twice, he would have seen me 3 times, not just twice. He doesn't know what he saw that night. The very next night, he was in the bathroom shaving and I was standing the in the hallway, with the door open, blocking the hallway. I was talking to him and out of the corner of the my eye, I saw a pale white, sharp clawed female hand wrap around the doorknob then pull back around. I stopped in mid-word and the boyfriend asked what I saw. I told him and he looked past the door - nothing there. The last straw was the dreams I started having of a young male, white between 20-23, dressed in military fatigues, who was fighting with a woman in the apt. Something happened and he ended up hanging himself on the steam pipe (8" pipe that runs through the entire apt) in the bathtub. I started seeing a green military style belt hanging off the pipe in the bathroom, out of the corner of my eye. It upset me greatly and did start affecting my mental health. Finally one last violent dream promoted me into doing a full-blown ritual cleansing on the apt. Afterwards, the place felt better and most of the major weirdness stopped: no sounds, no shadows or shapes, no dreams of that man, and no major creepy feeling from the archway. BUT... Within the last few months has some strange things have started up again. Mainly misty or white shapes out of the corner of my eyes (my boyfriend has told me he swore he saw someone walk through the living room while home alone one morning recently), but also the uneasiness from the archway again. I guess it's time for another cleansing.

I have gotten sleep paralysis on various occasions since I've been at college, but the one experience I'm going to write about is the one that confuses me the most. I had stayed up all night to do a paper or something, but from 9 to 9:30 in the morning I took a nap on my bed face down. I had my arms above my head with my hands face down. All of a sudden I felt the sleep paralysis starting, and since I had read about it online a few times by then, I decided to just relax and see if it just ended by itself. Well by then it felt like I was moving backwards towards the foot of the bed. I could distinctly feel my comforter moving underneath my hands. It was like I was on a treadmill, because even though I was moving backwards, I was actually not moving at all, the bed was moving. Then when it wasn't stopping, I just tried to move my fingers until it finally stopped. Then I sensed something over my right shoulder but far away in the upper corner of the room, but when I looked there was nothing there. Can anyone help explain this? It's probably the weirdest/scariest experience I've had relating to sleep paralysis or OBE. I think the next time I had something weird like this happen to me I was just floating above my bed near the ceiling, which wasn't scary at all. Oh yeah, and the first time I ever had something like this happen to me was my freshman year. There was a scary evil man or something else laying next to me in my bed. I saw his face though and it wasn't a human face. But that was a different dorm room, and it was the only time I ever saw something. That first experience could have been a dream, I have no idea.

I tried to do what my Mom calls an over view on the last story, but I missed a lot of stuff that happened in that house. I told you about the boy who would come out of my closet, but I only just started to tell you about the woman who looked like a man trying to dress up like a woman. On the first floor of the house was a woman who usually stayed between Papa's bedroom, the bathroom (two doors lead to the bathroom, one in Papa's room and one through the kitchen). Whenever I did something wrong I would have to sit on the couch in the living room until I was ready to say sorry. After a while of doing this a woman started to sit with me. I can't really describe her face, because it was strange. She looked like a man dressed up with make-up on. She even had a small mustache. She was kind to start, except for her creepy smile. She never said anything, just sat there with me. I started saying sorry pretty fast after that because I couldn't figure out her at all. We had some people over for a cookout and were in the living room eating when my Aunt kept looking at the t.v. when it was off. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was trying to figure out who's reflection she kept seeing walk in front of the couch. Everyone was sitting down. When I was taking showers or baths I could see the mirror on the back of one of the bathroom doors. She wasn't there all the time, but she would visit me in the mirror. One day in the fog of the window it said hi. I though Mom was playing with me and told her to quit when I got out. She didn't do it. Mom is pretty big on not lying, so I know she didn't. After a few times of this I said hi. And finished my shower. The mirror then said "you can see me". I tried to just look out the corner of my eye while getting ready by the sink, so all I said was "yes, but I don't like to". I told my Mom and she stormed into the bathroom. She ran the shower for a while and sat on the toilet to wait. The toilet was directly across from the mirror. The mirror told her to leave. We couldn't see it write, just saw the writing when it was done. We do not know how this was done. My Mom's friend Brenda from work told Mom to give me a pen and a paper and I sat at the dining room table while Mom asked questions and Brenda watched. I got lots of scary answers. The thing did not like either Brenda or Mom and swore at them. Mom and Brenda tried lots of things to get rid of her, but it wasn't until Mom decided to let Brenda and her friends do a house blessing that things got weird. I had to help with the blessing because I could see the things. We used holy water, salt, burning sage and chanted while walking all through the house. In my room, the boy just hid. He just felt sad. We told the things in the house that if it was good it could stay, if it was bad it had to leave. When we got to Papa's room a scream started and did not end until we got into the basement. It sounded like we were killing someone. My Dad had to find something upstairs in a hurry for Brenda and he said that someone real strong pushed him up the stairs. When he got a couple steps from the top something yanked his leg out from under him. When Mom ran up to see what happened he was knocked out. In the basement, the ladies said it was like a meeting place. I forget the word but a place where ghosts can come and go as they pleased. They thought this was how the lady got there. They burned my letter from the man/lady in a crack in the floor and closed that door. Things stopped for a while after that, but didn't all the way end. Three years after we left that house it is still up for sale. People come and go, but no one stays.

My grandparents told me this story. There was a girl who checked in a hotel in california, Salvang, with her parents, this wasn't any ordinary hotel, it was a tower hotel. Well they walked up a couple stair cases because it was the tippy top, when they arrived The parents said "Uhh... We have to go get dinner!" so they ran out of the room leaving the girl standing there crying. They went through a drive-through and went back to the road, there was a man who was driving a car, but he wasn't young, he looked like he was in his 90's and well, the lady totally LOST control and took the wheel from her husband and crashed into his car, they both died, including the old man, but that is just life, you live and die, but this occasion wasn't, she meant to crash in the car damaging the right front car door. Anyway, you ask about the girl? She was waiting and waiting for her parents to return but they hadn't because they died and they say the girl died of a broken heart, and from now on you can see her looking out the window waiting for her parents to return, of course that is in the suite she stayed in. Time you can see her: Around 12:00a.m.-2:00 a.m. I know this because my parents checked in that certain hotel and got teased because these teenagers checked into that room, they were telling them, "Watch out! The ghost will get you!" as they walked up the stair cases and they say they were so scared they ran out of that room and demanded a refund, they had never returned. They said the girl looked like a shadow moving in slow motion with sound effects: Crying, moaning, and screams. This is a warning to all of you, don't check in the top of a tower hotel in california, Salvang, there might be an unexpected guess.