A flurry of activity after a long hiatus

The past week has had a lot of stuff happening. It started early in the week of the girls complaining that they are seeing lots of shadows out of the corner of their eyes. They've been used to this stuff for so long now it no longer scares them - it just bothers them. So when they see this stuff they report it to me. I've not seen any shadows though.

Sarah has seen the girl outside, peeking at her from the porch as she is swinging on the swing.

Then three nights ago, it was late and Holly and I were retired to our bedroom for the night. The girls had watched just finished watching a movie in one of their bedrooms and were getting ready for bed, going in and out of various bedrooms and the bathroom. At one point, there was silence in the hall outside Holly and my bedroom - all the girls must have been in their own rooms.

There was a knock on the door - three distinct raps.

"Yes?" I asked, thinking it was one of the girls.

No reply.

"Yes??" I asked again, a little annoyed now.

No answer.

I realized that it wasn't the girls that had knocked, but something else. Holly was already asleep so didn't hear it.

The next night (two nights ago), the knock happened again. This time, Holly was a awake and asked the same question I did the previous night. "Yes?" thinking it was one of the girls knocking.

I told her don't bother, no one was there.

This got her a little upset. "This stuff is not supposed to be happening any more." She was referring to the fact that the house had been blessed. I didn't know what to tell her.

And finally, this morning something new happened. Ok, some background: we have a chihuahua, who, we discovered, likes to howl if prodded. So on many occasion one of us will hold him, and howl into the air. It only takes a few tries of this to get him to start howling. It's very cute. Shelby does it the most often - to the point where I have to say, "Ok, enough!"

This morning, I was downstairs in the basement, looking something up on the computer. Holly was upstairs in the kitchen.

I heard someone howl - a child. It came from above my head in the living room where the dogs were. It was a howl in the exact same way that Shelby howls to get Ignacio (the chihuahua) to howl.

I heard Holly say, "What was that?" from above. I went upstairs and told her that I heard it too. I asked where the girls were, and she said that all the girls were on the top floor in their bedrooms.

So we sort of looked at each other and realized that it had to be the child, girl spirit that we see most often. We had just heard her howl at 'Nacio, playing with him and trying to get him to start howling.

*That* is weird.

I see a shadowy figure "fly" up the hill

Ok, so all married couples fight, Holly and I included. And one night a few months ago we were fighting. I needed to get away from the situation so we could both cool off, but I didn't want to drive anywhere.

So I sat in my truck in the driveway and listened to some gaming podcasts. It was just past twilight, almost completely dark. It was to the point that if I were inside the house with the lights on, it would look like it was completely dark outside.

At one point I looked to my left up the hill towards the neighbor’s house behind us, and saw what I can only describe as someone wearing a black cape “floating” very fast up the hill. The “cape” was billowing behind the figure. I thought it was a kid in a Dracula cape running up the hill but it was moving WAY too fast, and there were no legs visible.

In a few seconds in was gone and I knew it was an apparition I just saw, outside of the house.

It made me remember a year prior when Holly said she thought she saw a shadowy dog or something run up the hill towards our house when my headlights splashed across the yard. She was positive she saw something then. Maybe I has just seen something similar?

Which then begs the question: is there some sort of "highway" that goes across my property? Is my house smack dab in the middle of ghost expressway? Is the shit I keep hearing at night now just wayward spirits stopping temporarily on their journey?

The Shadow Person strolls by

I think the first "encounter" that happened in our house after we moved in happened to Shelby and Sophia. But they never even told us about it until a few months ago! I'm guessing it happened some time in 2005. Shelby would have been 7, and Sophia, 6.

At that time on the weekends, Holly and I used to sleep in an extra hour or two in the morning. Shelby was an early riser then, and would wake up about 6am to 7am. She'd wake Sophia up and they would play on the 2nd floor landing just outside our bedroom door. I'd tell them to close my door because they would break out the Littlest Pet Shop and play for a few hours until Holly and I woke up.

As it was told to me by the both of them, one weekend morning a shadow person walked through my bedroom door out onto the 2nd floor landing. It stepped over their toys and passed by them within in inches. It then walked into what was then my office, right across the landing.

They recall craning their necks to look up at the figure as it walked by them. They described it as tall, all black, and with a featureless face.

What freaks me out is how close it was to them.

"Weren't you scared?" I asked them. They both told me no, they weren't.

To be honest I'm not certain why they weren't scared, or why they didn't run immediately into my room after it happened. And I'm not sure why it took them almost a year to tell me. It's possible that because it was morning, i.e daytime, that the environment was not as threatening compared to if it happened during the night.

So the big question is: who is the shadow? Is it a civil war soldier?