Re: Submissions?
From: Sherrill Van Valkenburgh
Date: 06/12/2020 (04:06:34 PM CDT)
To: stories@ghosts.org
Hello there!
I’d like to say that I really enjoy reading your books and how distressing it will be when I have read them all. I heartily encourage you to keep writing and publishing! We wait with bated breath…
Several of the stories brought back memories I had hidden away. I have never SEEN a ghost, however my Poodle came to visit me after she passed, almost 9 years ago. She walked gently over my legs, just as she had in life, after I went to bed. I think she visited me about 8 times. Funny thing, I think if I were to actually SEE a ghost I would be frightened as many of your readers claim to have been. However, I was not frightened. I simply held my breath and dared not move lest I frighten her away. I absolutely know it was she coming to visit- it had been one of those difficult situations where I had to put her sickly body down at 14-and being my first dog, I suffered immense guilt and pain. I believe she was comforting me as I felt only love radiating from her. I have a new dog, and several stories of a divine nature associated with her…but that’s not what we’re talking about today.
I believe I am a spiritual/mystical person, and I have had premonitions since I was about 30, I’m now 62. They come to me as ‘warning feelings’ and even my children will inquire of me if something is ok, do I have any ‘feelings’? Because they believe as well. There have been maybe a dozen times when my ‘feelings’ have protected us, and them, from harm. But once again, I digress. I apologize.
Something happened when I was about 8, I think, during the night alone in my bedroom. I am an only child, and at the time, there was a lot of evil in my house associated with my late mother. To illustrate this, I will only say that she was extremely physically and mentally abusive to me (not sexually), and an adulteress. With my father’s boss. And when I was 13 she inadvertently told me about the affair and subsequently, I became her confidante. Oh joy. So you see, there was a dark cloud of just sickness and deceit and sorrow in my childhood home. The violence I endured surely accounts for the negative energy that must have been seeking me out over a period of time. It was during these years that I would ‘fly’ in my dreams at night. I still fly, and I also experience lucid dreaming-it’s a gas! I have always done these two things at night and I assumed it was ‘normal’. I kept it a secret. It’s never been a scary or bad experience for me. Sometimes frightening things would happen in my flying dreams but I was never scared of the flying.
But this one time…I can’t even find words to describe the feeling I had during one of these flights, maybe it is Dread? I don’t know ‘dread’ and also I have never experienced the feeling of ‘being watched’. In my dream I was flying somewhere but suddenly it became black. A bottomless black, and I wasn’t flying anymore but where I was I cannot say, only that the feeling in my entire being was so disturbed, so shocked, mortally frightened beyond comprehension, that I woke up immediately. It was then I had felt someone touch my hand. I am a side sleeper with my arm dangling over the side of the twin bed. I felt a slim hand with long fingers hold my hand. Just for a split second as I jerked immediately. I’m sure I jumped up and turned on the light; there was nothing there.
My take on this whole event, 54 years later, remains the same. I can still dredge up that awful blackness feeling and the feel of that hand touching me. My personal feelings about this are that the evil that my mother brought into that house tried to get me, too. I think something was trying to ‘drag me to Hell’. It didn’t know I was stronger. I forgot to mention that I began praying very, very hard and loudly after I felt the hand. Nothing like this ever happened to me again.
I do have other stories that I can relate. Many things have occurred in my life that are so similar to those of your readers. This fact alone comforts me. After reading your stories I know that my stories are true, as well. I mean, the things happened not just in my mind but in the present moment I was living in. I did not imagine them. I just love the way your readers relate their stories, and just like them, I will say, “I hope you liked it and it wasn’t too long”.
~sherrill