The wind howls again making every board in the dusty old trailer house creak yet again. While the storm rages outside stirring up terrible sounds, inside the house is dead silent. Everyone is sleeping peacefully through another round of Midwestern Great Plains thunderstorms. That is except for one troubled soul who was woken up by an unseen force calling to her.
I was 11 years old. I walked down the hallway from my bedroom towards the empty living room while my family slept in their beds, oblivious to the whispers calling to me. Hanging there on the wall just before I entered the safety of the living room, my comfort zone, was this painting. It was an old painting. Some western scene. A borded up old rustic house in the middle of the dessert. I never asked my parents where it came from or who painted it. I just knew there was something living inside it;.
I would be lying if I said I could picture the entire painting vividly in my aging mind. What I do remember is a foggy image of that rustic house in the dessert, in the yard next to the house was a small pond and in the dead center of the pond was an old timey wagon wheel. I do remember the wagon wheel was faded. I know this to be the case because my sisters and I talked about that faded wheel on many occassions. I wasn’t the only one who claimed to see a faded, foggy figure hiding in that rustic old western house from time to time. It never took a solid, recognizable shape. Just a faint pair of eyes hiding behind these dark, brown bangs.
I never saw a fully defined face in that painting. Just a faint outline of the shape of a face in the shadows. It wasn’t visible during the day. My sisters each claimed to have seen it at least once in their lives. This particular night was different. It was the same as always, faint barely visible outline of a face hiding in the window of the house. But where normally the eyes were just a barely visible shadow, tonight they were glowing dark red. Not bright, blood red you see in the movies when filmmakers try to depict demonic forces, it was a dark red more akin to the color of a dusty brick wall. At least that is sorta how I remember it.
What made this night different wasn’t just the eyes being more clearly visible, but the shadowy face was also more defined than I had ever seen it before. It was clearly a little girl wearing overalls and an old straw hat. She had the same dark bangs as always but this time I could see her hair draping down the side of her face. I knew this was very definitively my first verifiable solid encoutner with a ghost or spirit.
I knew it was real because it was whispering to me. It wasn’t using my deadname, nor was it saying the name I had internalized for myself. It was more an impression of myself. I can’t really explain how I knew it was calling specifically to me other than a very strong feeling. I stared deep into it’s evil looking red eyes as the intangible whispers continued. It’s, or maybe her, mouth, never moved. It wasn’t audible in my ears the way a person’s whisper would be either just a faint impression in my mind. I didn’t say a word. I just stared at it, frozen in fear. I wasn’t able to bring myself to ask the spirit what it wanted. I just mustered my own audible whisper. “Leave me alone, go away.”
That was the last time I ever saw any anomolies in that haunted painting. I am certain I was awake because I remember stubbing my toe on a toy truck I hadf left in the hall on my way back to my bedroom. That night I had dreams of ghosts. I knew it was whoever she was not consiously, or rather subconciously, but again just an impression in my soul. She lifted my spirit out of my body and took me into the clouds. She showed me visions I couldn’t make sense of at the time. Looking back on it over the years, I don’t honestly think I ever could make sense of them. Not even today as I sit here recalling the images. What I do remember is the rest of the dream.
She took me back down from the clouds and into this video arcade that was nearby where we lived. Inside the arcade the machines were playing themselves. Not in their default attract mode as was their programming, but it was like invisible players were playing every game simultaneously. Slowly a song began to play on the jukebox in the game room. I can still hear that haunting melody in my mind from time to time. As the song began to increase in volume so did the appearances of the ghosts that were in the room playign the different video games. There was a couple playing pool. There were a coule of kid ghosts running around the adjacent laundrymat next door. What scared me the most were the formless ghosts flying around the room humming along to the tune of that song that was now overpowering my senses.
I remember waking up the next morning from that nightmare not screaming from the frightening images I had seen but crying. I was sad because the song playing in the air was sad and I could tell those ghosts were also sad. To this day I never really told anyone else this story. It was a haunting night I remember in my own faded memories. I want to be clear this is not a story of fiction from a horror writer. This is an absolutely true event that I never knew how to unpack until tonight. I still don’t know what that little girl ghost was trying to tell me. The only thing I remember for certain from her was the image she showed me as a girl myself. I had known I was trans long before this night but it was the first time I ever felt any hope in my heart that I could some day live my life as the girl I was born to be. I don’t know if that was what her intention was or even who she was but I will never forget her. Whoever she is, I hope she has found peace in the afterlife by now. At the very least I wish to honor her for showing me things that, while terrifying, I think I needed to see.
Stephanie Bri 