My most memorable experience with a ghost happened more than ten years ago. At the time my family and I had recently moved to a new house in a rural area. We had barely lived there a month when I saw the resident ghost.

Contrary to most ghost sightings, my incident did not happen at night or even in the dark. It was late in the day on a Friday and the sun was going down. However, I was alone in the house, which is common in most ghost sightings.

Having just gotten off work, I went into my bedroom to change my clothes. Then I went into the two-story family room on my way to the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. On one side of the room were huge floor to ceiling windows and the slanting evening sun shone brightly into the room illuminating a staircase on the opposite wall.

When I first entered the room I did not notice anything unusual. My mind was on that sandwich! But my cat, Buttons, trotting along at my side, began to meow very loudly. I glanced down and saw he was staring intently at the staircase. I looked up and there on the stairs stood a young woman with dark, up-swept hair. She was wearing an old fashioned long white dress.

I stared at her and she smiled back at me as she came down the stairs. I knew she was a ghost because she was transparent and I could see the wall beyond her body. Amazingly, there was a feeling of goodness and love that radiated from this ghostly young woman and I felt no fear. When the apparition reached the bottom of the stairs she promptly vanished.

At first, I didn't know what to make of this incident and told no one. You can imagine my surprise a week later when my oldest daughter spoke of a vivid dream of a young dark-haired woman. The woman wore a white old fashioned dress and she walked through falling snow, smiling and laughing. Then another surprise, a few weeks later, my youngest daughter saw the ghost for herself. There were several more sightings before we moved a year later, and they were always the same. The gentle young woman would glide into a room or walk down the stairs in her white dress and she never frightened anyone. You would always feel her goodness and love.

The house was new and no one had died there, so I speculated maybe this woman died in the vicinity. The land had belonged to a large farm before my house was built.

From my knowledge of fashion history, I recognized the young woman's dress as a style popular in the late 1880's. And the dress was white, another clue to her identity. In those days it was not uncommon for young, newly married women to die in childbirth and in rural areas they were buried in their 'best' dress, which usually was their wedding dress.The ghostly young woman was probably a young bride, wandering the land where she was born, lived and died.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth Carreker.
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