Is There A Ghost In My House?

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• October 30, 2023

I have no proof. I have nothing but a weird happening. But my siblings and I all had weird occurrences in the house we grew up in. I am not saying it’s ghosts. I’m saying, it’s weird and I don’t know what it is.

Kids say weird shit and they have crazy brains. So all of this must come into the factor of what happened, which is unknown. But understand the dynamic between me and my sister. We shared a room. It became an odd couple situation. Lisa and I were and are opposites. Lisa is two years older and was (is?) easily annoyed by sounds. At one point in time, we had bunk beds. But at this point, we had beds at opposite sides of the room. I am a middle child and as middle children do, I liked to keep peace. Our kid brother sometimes antagonized Lisa, and visa versa, but I would often try to stop this.

One night, I suppose we were both in middle school, my sister and I went to bed. We didn’t have TV’s in our rooms. My parents had a strict ‘no TVs’ in kids rooms, which I think is a solid rule to this day. I was a reader, Lisa is not. Sometimes I would read books with a light on. This annoyed Lisa (haha). Any light, or even the sound of a page flipping perturbed her being able to sleep (eventually, my parents would convert the downstairs space/apartment into a room to separate us, which should have been done sooner, we needed our own space).

I recall it quite clearly, laying in bed with my stuffed animals, in floral linens, in the dark, hearing whispering over and over. I had thought that Lisa was in some sort of a ‘bitchy’ mood and trying to annoy me, as siblings do to each other. But I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of telling her to shut up, basically. This is when, suddenly, I heard Lisa say, “God Lori, shut up, why are you being so weird whispering to yourself.”

The whispers continued.

My heart skipped a beat. And I said. “Lisa, that’s not me, I thought you were doing it.”

And then the whispers stopped.

Lisa and I sprung from our beds and ran upstairs to mom and dads room. Mitch too, at the sound of us running up the stairs, ran from his room up the stairs as well. Dad was always quick to write it off as kids imaginations. Mom believed it could be a ghost.

Strange happenings recurred. My mom one time woke up and heard little girls talking and thought Lisa and I were up when we weren’t supposed to. She went to our room to find us asleep. Another time, I heard someone talking in my closet and I told “it” to be quiet and then it was.

For half of my childhood, we rented a basement apartment to Cathy, who I consider an Aunt and angel in my life. When Cathy moved and got married, my parents decided to extend the house, making a living room and a den. (Our original living room was turned into a dining room.)  Lisa would have a couple of weird happenings in the basement room. Later, Mitch would take the basement room and he had a weird occurrence we can not decipher if it was sleep paralysis or reality.

Even my Dad, the most cynical of us, which is strange because he is very religious, had an odd experience. When we were converting the basement into our space and it was under construction, my Dad and sister witnessed a light ball float from light to light in a circle, really fast. To this day, no explanation, and two witnesses. It’s comforting to witness something strange in the presence of another, just so you have that, “you saw that too” or “you heard that too” moment, where it’s not just my brain playing tricks on me. Something unexplained, could be supernatural, scientific, aliens, a glitch in the matrix… who knows.

I’ve only actually lived in two places, which is pretty crazy. My childhood home, and my apartment here in Astoria. It’s nice to not have to move a lot, especially when you travel as much as I do for both work and pleasure. But I did have an occurrence here too, more than once, that gave me pause.

Years ago, I woke up and there was like a black smoke thing over me. I was scared and jumped and the black smoke thing folded into itself like an octopus and vanished. This was not a dream. I never woke up from this, sure as I am writing this, and you are reading this, it happened when I was awake.

At first, I coughed this up to my brain still being in some sleep state as I woke, and therefore I was hallucinating. I have had sleep paralysis episodes. This was not that. Kind of the opposite. But I figured, my creative brain was transitioning. It’s important for me to include that I was not on drugs during this, because, yes, I have done a bunch of psychedelics, but no, there were no drugs involved. Drugs would have offered an easy and logical solution.

It gets stranger… this happening, it’s happened to me several times now. Only in the following times, I was less scared. I woke with this mysterious translucent black thing over me, but instead of freaking out, I watched it. And it was almost like it was afraid of me. It moved around my ceiling, fast, but slower these times since I was not ‘chasing’ it out in my fear, eventually folding into itself and vanishing. I’ve been unafraid the last couple times it happened. More fascinated. Curious. It posed no danger. Is this real? Is this, thing, here or am I hallucinating? This is the first I’ve written about it, or even told people because I was so fearful I was going mad. Am I just a crazy person? Well, yes. But I’m not lying to you. I don’t what what I saw. Could be a minds trick. But this thing was very real to me.

Because I’m me, I did tons of research and could scarcely find anyone on the internet who experienced such a thing. I couldn’t find scientific explanations either. I simply do not know. However, the below screenshot was an image caught in Australia, and I nearly jumped for joy because I can tell you this is what it looked like. Something akin to this “black smoke thing” has been in my apartment, hovering over me as I sleep–  several times. I’ve seen it. And I don’t know if it’s real. I don’t know if I’m projecting it. Or it’s visiting me. Haunted, I am. By something. Or someone. Perhaps, even, myself. My past self and future self, communicating through dreams.