Growing Up with a Ghost

Although I haven't always believed in ghosts, I've accepted the fact that I have grown up living with ghosts. It all started when I was just under two years old, I would sit in the corner of the room talking to "Manny" yet no one else could see Manny. Right now you're probably thinking, "So what, lots of kids have imaginary friends," right? I've discussed this with many psychological professors who have all agreed that at that age, I wouldn't have had the cognitive ability to create an imaginary friend.

My mother spent hours trying to figure out what I was talking to, looking for flies or bugs to explain my strange behavior. According to her I wasn't having one sided conversations either, it seemed as though I was responding to direct questions that no one else was hearing, yet I insisted Manny was there.

I outgrew this behavior and everyone put it in the back of their mind until I was seven years old. My grandmother gave me a "magic hairbrush" because I hated having my hair brushed and this was supposed to take away the pain and at that age, of course I believed it. One day it just vanished, my mother and I searched my bedroom, the bathroom and everywhere else we could think of. After weeks of not finding it, my mother walked into the laundry room, which she does on a regular basis, and my brush was laying in the middle of the floor in plain sight. It couldn't have been there all along but there it was.

Needless to say we were a little freaked out by this incident but didn't put too much thought into it and just brushed it off. Everything remained calm and normal until high school when I was getting ready to go to my homecoming dance. I was all ready and just had to slip on my dress so I went to the closet to get it but didn't see it so I asked my mother if she had seen it, her response was that she put it in my closet. After looking again, I asked her to look for it and my friend looked as well. We went piece by piece through my closet, it wasn't there. After wasting twenty minutes looking for my dress I decided to just wear another one or else I was going to be late. When I got home from the dance I opened my closet door and the dress I had been looking for, was hanging in front of all my other clothes, my mother insisting she hadn't been in my closet.

Although these instances would have been great practical jokes, they weren't. No one was involved in these happenings and I have finally come to accept that. The proof was when I went away to college; my roommate woke up in the middle of the night because "someone" was sitting on the edge of her bed but when she sat up there was no one there. She woke me up and we both looked around the room, the door and windows were locked from the inside, there was no one in our room.

I never did explain to my roommate that this may have been my childhood ghost that followed me to school but I doubt she would have believed me anyways. I know this whole thing sounds crazy and even being the one to experience this, I don't always believe in ghosts but I do believe that there is something out there.