A Ghost Story for Halloween

Since it's Halloween, and after reading an inspirational post by my friend Sarah (and some encouragement on her part via facebook), I have decided to follow in her footsteps and write about some of my own personal experiences with the paranormal.

Some of you may know that I grew up in a very old house...I'm talking 150 years old (pretty sure it was built in 1852?). My family no longer lives there, but the stories we have from the house still get told frequently.

My parents bought the house before I was born for a ridiculously low price. It had been sitting completely empty for almost 20 years, but there was not a single broken window or sign of any vandalism, which they thought was odd. The day they moved in, the neighborhood kids asked my parents if they had seen him yet? The "him" they referred to was the "doctor". My parents thought nothing of it.

My mom had a just a few experiences before she had my sister and I, mostly just odd noises and such, but it wasn't until I was a little bit older that things really started getting spooky. My baby pj's would be laid out after my bath, even though my mom hadn't gotten them out. I would tell her about the man outside my window (on the second story), the man that could climb up our walls (I would see him when I was with her and tell her), and the biggest was my imaginary friend Cumminger.

Cumminger was (as I described him) an old man with a white pony tail, short pants, a ruffly shirt and buckles in his shoes. I would play games with him and have conversations with him. But one day when I was 4, I became scared of him. I'm not sure why, I don't remember much of him, but my mom said suddenly I would refuse to go into my room when he was there, and I didn't want her to leave Erin upstairs when he was there. My mom said that didn't last long, eventually my imaginary friend went away.

My sister also saw him when she was older. She told my dad one night that she was afraid to go to bed because of the man that was always sitting on the end of their bed when she walked past their room. She described my imaginary friend, Cumminger, perfectly. This kind of spooked my mom (ok, so she had been spooked for years by then), so she decided to do some research into our house. She learned that a Quaker doctor used to live in the house (our home town used to have a lot of Quakers) and that his name was...dum dum dum...Dr. Cummings. She also found a picture of him and guess what...his white hair was in a pony tail and he was wearing a ruffly shirt.

There are more stories than I have have enough room to write about...but there's always next year