Growing up, I lived in a house that was built around 1910. It was my grandparents' house. They had bought the place from the estate of the original owner when they came back to the states after WWII. The elderly woman that had built the house of her dreams spent her life there, and died there. That was in about 1952. Four generations of my family lived in that house at some point.
As a child, I suffered from terrible nightmares. Horrible nightmares. Realistic, terrifying nightmares. I woke often in the night with cold sweats and a pounding heart.
When I would awaken, the most comforting thing for me was the little woman who would be sitting at the foot of my bed smiling down kindly on me. Reassuring me. She was very small. Her face was quite defined, her hair pulled tightly into a bun on the top of her head. The rest of her, however, was a blue-grey blur. Like a photo that's slightly out of focus.
This was a given for me. Part of my nightly life until I was about 11 or 12. It never even occurred to me to mention it to my mother.
Until I was around 20, that is. When I told my mother about the "woman who watched over me" her response was, "Was she very tiny with her hair pulled tightly into a bun on the top of her head?"
Turns out, she watched over my mother too.
Growing up with a ghost, you might think that my first response to the happenings in my current house would be that there was paranormal activity afoot. But not so. I'm still in denial. Which is part of the reason I've decided to start keeping track of the "instances" that we are experiencing.