Volume 3: Ghost Stories from Texas (Joe Kwon's True Ghost Stories from Around the World) (2 page)

The Last Conversation

Garland, Texas

My mother died when I was eight years old. I wasn't prepared for it, even though I should have realized what was coming. I was about as clueless as a kid can possibly be in most aspects of life, and this was no exception.
She had been sick for a long time. So sick, that for the last few years of her life she was completely bed-ridden. The family used a pair of walkie talkies so she could call for help from one room to the next if she needed anything. If she was left at home alone, we'd give one of the walkie talkies to the next-door neighbor. It was just something we came up with as sort of a wireless intercom system.

I remember the day I got called out of class at school to take a phone call. It was a phone call from dad. He said mom was very sick and I should come home. I remember being happy to get out of school early for the day. I remember thinking that mom is always really sick, and then wondering why this day was any different that I should get out of school.

There were a lot of people there when I got home. For some reason I wasn't allowed into mom's room. So, I picked up the walkie talkie off the kitchen table and took it to my room.

I pressed the button. "Mom, what's going on?"

There was no answer.

"Mom?"

Still no answer.

A moment later my oldest brother opened the door to my room and walked over to where I was sitting on my bed with the walkie talkie. He reached down and switched it off and shook his head. Then he turned around and left. That was it. Thinking back, I guess I should have realized at least by then that she was dead. But, I didn't. I didn't even really understand what death was.

A couple of days later we were getting ready for mom's funeral. I remember it being explained to me that mom's body would be there, and there would be music and sort of a church service where we were going.

Back before mom got sick, she'd go to church and she often took her tape recorder and recorded the sermons. I mentioned that I'd like to take mom's tape recorder so I could record this service. The family decided against it, and put the tape recorder away. So, I didn't tell anyone when I took her walkie talkie off her nightstand and slipped it into my pocket to give to her at the funeral.

At the service we each got a moment to go to mom's casket. She looked like she was sleeping very peacefully. I pulled the walkie talkie out of my pocket and tucked it beside her so she could call if she needed anything. No one paid any attention to what I had done. Everyone seemed to just be comforting each other.

When I went to sit down, I pulled my handkerchief from my jacket pocket and handed it to my crying grandmother, just as I had seen adults do in movies I'd watched. I listened to the singing, and to the sermon, and we all went outside for another short service and then we went home.

That night I turned on my walkie talkie and listened for mom in case she needed anything. I fell asleep listening to the intermittent static.

But then her unmistakable voice woke me. I opened my eyes and sat up in my bed. Still gripping the walkie talkie in my hand, I pressed the button. "Mom? You need something?"

Beneath the static, like a distant call, I heard her voice again. As if she were barely within range. "I just need to talk to you about something, honey," she said.

She and I talked for what then seemed like only a few minutes, but looking back I know it must have taken much longer. The exact conversation we had is very personal to me, but suffice it to say that from that night on I understood what it meant when someone dies. For the first time, I realized I wouldn't see her again for the rest of my life. For the first time, I cried in realization that she was really gone. But, I also knew she was no longer sick, and no longer suffering.

I began to fall asleep, so she finally she said goodbye. It's my fault for starting to fall asleep. To this day, when I think about it, I am still so disappointed in myself for getting so tired.

For the next couple of nights I tried to talk to her again on the walkie talkie. "I love you and I miss you," I kept telling her.

After getting home from school the next afternoon I noticed that many of mom's things were gone. Even things I'd put in my room that belonged to her. Her old Sunday-school teaching materials, a blanket that she kept on her lap when she used to get around in a wheel chair, and the walkie talkie were all missing from my room. My grandmother on my dad's side of the family had disposed of these things thinking it would be easier for us to "get on with our lives."

Whether or not the walkie talkie would have ever worked to speak to her again, I'll never know. But, I'll always be thankful for that one last conversation.

The Field

San Antonio, Texas

On a family campout one afternoon I told my family that I was going on a walk around the campsite. I walked behind the camper and onto the dirt road, long worn from feet and cars. I was collecting samples of plants for my biology class, and I saw a huge field full of wildflowers. That's when the noise started. It sounded a little like a prairie dog, until I got closer, then I realized it was an echo.

"Virginia," it was saying. "Virginia."

All I can say is that I must have looked like someone named Virginia, because that's when I saw the woman. She was not familiar to me at all; she was obviously human and looked normal save for her clothes, and her hair; they were so old fashioned.

As I looked at her, she grew older until her skin looked like paper and her hair was just a small bun of white spider silk. I said, "I don't know any Virginias."

I turned curtly and walked to the edge of the field. Then I ran.

Great Grandmother

Austin, Texas

My mother told me the story of how she saw my great grandfather's ghost in the house. My great grandfather died in that house in 1980 or 81.

I was born in 1983. I was about 3 months old when my mother went into the kitchen to make me a bottle. She says that she felt as if someone was watching her. She turned around; there was my great grandfather's ghost. She described him as in his younger years, with his full Marine uniform, but she had no trouble recognizing him.

There are other stories. In my great grandmother's room, she had a lot of paintings on the walls. The paintings were haunted. They would move. Like this painting she had of JFK. My family would say that he would move from side to side in the painting. Also his eyes would actually follow you.

There, too, was the painting of a lady. She had a fan in her hand. Sometimes the fan would be behind her back, other times it would be in front, covering her face, and she would even move!

Funny thing was, the paintings would not move outside of the house, only while in the house. The paintings are at my aunt's house now. They haven't moved since they were taken out of the house 5 years ago.

About 2 or 3 years ago, my aunt placed a tape recorder in the house. She placed it on the floor then left for 2 hours. She came back, heard the tape, and found it now contained hundreds of conversations. Spanish and English! Too much to even focus on one. She even heard my great grandfather's voice on there! Also, there was the sound of someone covering up the tape recorder with a hand. There are plenty more stories, not enough time to tell them all.

My Protector

Lake Jackson, Texas

I am a subtle believer in ghosts, but I have had a few experiences that I cannot explain even to this day. This is one of them.

I had just turned fourteen and me and my mother, stepfather, and two year old sister, and I had just moved into a new house. It was a nice house, fairly new, maybe about eight years old with no history of paranormal activity. Not that I knew of, anyway.

After two weeks of being in the house, there were a few troubling things that occurred. Whenever my parents would be out for the night leaving me to watch my sister, I would hear strange things coming from the office, shuffling papers, the computer shutting itself off and then back on. I would just turn up the television and ignore it.

After going to bed, I would always hear my door open, and feel my blankets being slowly pulled off of my bed.

More annoyed than scared, I would just kick my legs and pull my blankets back up, and then I would hear my door quietly close. I would always look at my clock and it would be the same: 2:04 AM.

But that wasn't the main occurrence. It was about a month into being in the house when one morning I was cleaning the upstairs bathroom. The sink is about five feet long with a mirror just as long that ran up to the ceiling. The bathroom light on the ceiling had a large glass dome, maybe weighing about five or six pounds.

I was cleaning the mirror and was directly under the light. I leaned back to look at the mirror and my eyes were drawn to the dome in the mirror. Suddenly, the dome fell. I watched, frozen, as it fell about six inches when it abruptly flew to the left, silently knocking a picture off of the wall. I stood in shock in the same spot for a good minute before I went to look at the picture and the dome. The glass in the fixture was shattered, but the dome didn't have a crack on it.

I immediately went to my mom in the room next to the bathroom and asked if she had heard anything, but she hadn’t. The noise was definitely loud enough to be heard throughout the house, especially with the bathroom door being wide open. I tried to rationalize it, but couldn't. There were no wires attached to the dome that could have swung it in another direction, believe me, I checked over and over, all that kept it in place were screws.

After a while, it didn't bother me anymore. I could have been hurt, but wasn't. I like to think that maybe there's someone watching out for me, protecting me.