sometimes, you can see a woman out there, when the night has fallen and thrown shadow over the slumbering world, which the generous moon gently illuminates.

she'll be roaming the fields, maybe; a white dot slowly wading through thigh-length grass, one pale arm out to guide eyes blinded by darkness. or maybe she's shuffling along the road, tattered snow gown dragging across the asphalt. but she'll be there.

allegedly, long ago, a woman's body, headless and deflowered, was left among the tall grass of old stage road, and her spectre still wanders the premises of that road.

maybe you'll see her walking along it, one day, as you're driving home from work. but because it's so dark. maybe you'll pity her, and ask if she needs a ride home. but you probably won't notice it at first, until you get close enough, or until the headlights of your vehicle shine upon her. hopefully, when you do see it, you'll speed along that long stretch of road, and hopefully you won't look back.

after all, it isn't normal to be cradling your own head in your arms, is it?

One kid. Poor farmer. He was so devastated. His wife had 6 kids. They lived on a farm. No ghosts, no monsters, just a nice peaceful farm. Him and his wife shared a house together, and for each of his 6 kids, he built a mini barn for them.

A nice father. He cared about his family. I don’t know why you’d want 6 kids, but anyway...

Soon his wife was going to have a 7th child. Seriously? a 7th? *eh am* My bad...moving on.

The farmer decided to continue his tradition of building a mini barn for his kids. It took a while, and a lot of hard work, but he finished it before the baby was born.

One the day of the child’s birth, things didn’t go well. The child had died, and seemed to take the mother down with 'em. The farmer was in such pain. His son was dead, and so now was his wife.

He went to the barn for the 7th child, and burnt it. He made sure every bit of wood fell to ashes. His kids saw this. they came up to him and asked what was going on.

Poor psycho father killed them all. Throwing them into the fire. No...that can’t be right. Did he kill them? That’s just stereotypical. Is this really how it goes? It is? Oh...well ok.

So he killed his family and then killed himself. The end.

“Some ending there, Voidkin.”

“I didn’t make the story up...”

To be totally forthcoming from the very start let me say that this is a true story. It is not so much a story as it is the re-telling of events. And the best part is that I was not alone but with another person who was side-by-side with me, saw the exact same events, and will corroborate the details precisely as I describe them.

It occurred on a summer’s evening in the early 1970s in the house where I grew up with my family in suburban Philadelphia. The house was a duplex built in the 1920s and located on a tree-lined street in a quiet neighborhood. My close friend, Rich, who was with me at the time, is my same age and we were enjoying a late-night snack in the kitchen. Rich and I had grown up together in the neighborhood but had gone off to different colleges and we were catching up during our summer vacations.

It was about 11 o’clock at night and my parents had already gone off to bed. No others were in the house. A summer storm was beginning to develop, and thunder was rumbling. Rich and I decided to move from the kitchen table, turn off the lights in the room, and stand by the windows over the kitchen sink that looked out on our back yard to observe the storm as lightning was starting to occur.

At this juncture I need to digress for a moment and give a description of the house’s layout so that the reader can picture the precise scene of the location. The first floor of the house consists only of three rooms: a living room, a dinning room, and a kitchen, laid out in a straight sequence one after the other, with each room separated by an arch opening. You can walk in the front door of the house and walk in a straight line through each room directly to the back door of house. At the time of this story’s events, the only light that was on in the first floor was from a single table lamp situated in the living room. The dinning room was totally dark as was the kitchen.

Rich and I watched as the storm began to intensify with rain and bolts of lightning streaking in the sky. It was an exciting and somewhat scary scene as nature put on a dramatic show. Then something totally incredulous occurred. As the two of us were standing there in silence watching the storm unfold, the window in front of us flashed the reflection of a man’s silhouette standing in the archway behind us. And at that simultaneous instant the unmistakable creak of a floorboard was heard by the both of us. Unmistakable because for years whenever someone walked through that archway between dinning room and kitchen that floorboard would creak with that identical sound.

The two of us spun around in unison at the sound without saying a word. I looked at Rich and he looked at me in stunned silence. Excitedly I said, “Tell me what you saw!” Without pause Rich replied, “I saw a man’s reflection in the window.” “And you heard that floorboard creak, right?”, I said. “You bet I did,” Rich replied, continuing, “What the hell was that?” I asked Rich again what he saw. He said he saw reflected in the window in front of us the distinct dark silhouette of a man bordered by the archway, backlit by the illumination from the table lamp a room beyond.

Fright overcame the two of us, but the incident was over. Still we were literally shaking. Together we nervously surveyed the first floor, holding our breath as we opened a coat closet in the living room only to find our aged vacuum cleaner and a jumble of hanging coats and sweaters. We talked for another half hour convincing ourselves that we both saw and heard the exact same thing, trying to understand the incomprehensible. Finally we decided it was time to get to bed. Rich who lived about two blocks away told me the next day that he believed he covered the distance home in about three steps. I knew what he meant.

Afterward I spent some more time thinking about the bizarre experience trying to find any practical or pragmatic explanations. My parents had purchased the house in 1950 so there had been previous owners. I inquired if it was possible that a previous owner or occupant had died inside the property, but there wasn’t enough data available to determine that. I did some research regarding ghostly phenomenon and discovered two pertinent findings. In instances where ghosts were supposedly observed it was not unusual to also find the presence of a highly charged electrical manifestation (such as lightning). And secondly, many ghost-hunters will tell you that you can only truly observe a ghost if it is seen through a reverse image (such as a mirror or a reflection).

In all the years since that astonishing summer night I have never seen anything else that I would call paranormal. But I will carry to my grave the knowledge that my friend and I indeed had a first-hand encounter a with a ghostly spirit.