I’ve won radio prizes when the topic is “Tell us your best ghost story.” People want to hear ghost stories when they find out I’m a medium. Like any medium, I have a lot. This one though, is about my first ghost.

I grew up with her. She died in my home before my parents bought it. My relationship to the paranormal and spiritual might have been very different if not for this particular ghost.

I used to see the old lady standing at the end of the hall.

Some of my earliest memories are of this old lady.  She had grey, curly hair and was somewhat short but neither thin nor fat. She often had a frilly apron but I rarely saw her legs. She didn’t wear glasses. I think I was around four or five when I first saw her. I would smile at her, and she would clap her hands, and wave and smile back.

When I talked about her, my family would tell me I couldn’t have seen any old lady, and there was no such thing as ghosts. I believed them.

For a while.

I did what they suggested when I saw things that “weren’t really there.” I closed my eyes and chanted silently that it was just my imagination.

It worked. I didn’t see her and I forgot, mostly. I still sensed “something” at the end of the hall, but…it was “just my imagination.”

Then that whole “just your imagination”-thing, stopped working.

That little old lady was back.  And yeah, it freaked me out.  There was no way to avoid her, I had to walk right past her in that part of the hall. 

When she went from standing in the hall to jumping out at me, intentionally trying to scare – let’s just say, it worked.

Then, she would chase me.

Really! Like it was a game to her.

I could still see her; it didn’t matter that I been told over and over ghosts didn’t exist.  Fine hairs on the back of my neck would tingle and rise. Often, she would just touch me on my back as I raced that looong hallway, causing a chill to tickle down my spine.

Not gonna lie, this went on for years.

I think I was somewhere around thirteen when I got tired of being chased. It just seemed silly to be afraid of someone who always “lost” our little “race.” I also realized she was making goofy, funny faces and waving her arms wildly as she sped after me.

Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, I looked back. She was doubled over, clutching her stomach and laughing hysterically. Didn’t see I’d stopped running.

I could tell that she was truly tickled she could still make me jump and run.

It was a turning point.

I stood my ground.

On the outside she was projecting scary, fearful emotions, but in a carnival “Boo”-sort of manner.  Peering more closely, I could see energetically, inside, she was laughing.

A joke.

She was suddenly not scary at all. We even became friendly, and would talk sometimes.

“You really did look quite funny scampering down the hall.  The look on your face was priceless!”

Interestingly, much later in adult life, my family confessed to experiencing strangeness in that upper hallway.

Funny how our early experiences often get validated much later.