I haven’t been adding real ghost stories to this website for awhile … mainly due to a personal experience that still bothers me. I won’t be writing about it any time soon. I don’t know about you, but there are times a paranormal experience does scare you so seriously that you have to take a break for awhile. That is the reason for my absence …
Since it has been raining, I thought the atmosphere was right to once again tell you a real ghost story. This one happened to me when I was young visiting my great-aunt.
I remember reading a fictional story about a fireplace that was haunted. Then I saw this really great Halloween project of a skeleton in a fireplace.
Then I remembered my own personal experience about seeing the ghost of a woman standing near the fireplace from many years ago.
I love sitting near a roaring fire, listening to music or reading a good book. It’s fun to sit by the fire with family and friends and tell ghost stories, too . . . or just chat.
I suppose the most memorial experiences are those that happen to us as children. That seems true for me.
I was at my great aunt’s house and it was really cold in the house. The heat was on, but the living room seemed uncommonly cold. My father suggested making a fire in the fireplace, but she adamantly refused.
We were bundled up in blankets and drinking hot chocolate.
I looked longingly at the fireplace and the stack of wood logs that set outside and a few inside that were waiting to be lit. Then, out of my peripheral vision a ghostly apparition of a young girl, no older than me, floated to the fireplace. She was wearing a nightgown from an era gone by. I watched silently.
When she turned around, I screamed.
The front of her nightgown was gone and her face and body had been burned. The flesh was red and raw hanging onto her bones.
It took awhile for my parents to calm me down. My great aunt may have seen her, too. She calmly explained it all to us.
“I’ve been having dreams since Martin and I first moved in here,” she began. “It was a little girl who was playing in the living room with her dolls.”
That’s how the dreams always began. Some would continue with her playing. As the months and years of having this same dream, the scene changed with a man walking in and throwing one of her dolls in the fireplace.
My great aunt could feel the sadness in the child upon being scolded and losing one of her cherished dolls.
More time passed, but the dreams continued and were expanded.
When the man left, the little girl went to the fireplace to retrieve her beloved doll.
I remember my great aunt telling us she awoke screaming, “No, don’t!”
From what I saw, the little girl, evidently, did retrieve her doll, but caught herself on fire in the process.
My great aunt was so disturbed by this that she never lit a fire in the fireplace since. It was a warning to her that she took to heart.
I remember my grandmother scoffing at her sister by saying, “You aren’t playing with dolls, my dear. There’s no reason for all of us to be freezing because of some silly dream about a child who once lived here.”
She walked over to the fireplace, lit a match and it went out. She lit another with the same result. I don’t know how many she lit before she gave up.
I didn’t see the ghostly child blow out the matches, but there was a part of me that was relieved my grandmother didn’t succeed in lighting the logs in the fireplace.
Thanks for stopping by!
Sharon
