Hi all,
I think my second daughter can see ghosts. She firstly acted as if she saw something scary when she was like 1.5 yo. She was not well that time because she’d just had a fever, but my husband and I took her to a park in our hometown in Indonesia. The park was famous for its spookiness since Dutch colonialism era, and also for tsunami victim bodies laid there for days when Tsunami attacked the town in 2004. She was just fine when we played there with her older sister (4.5 then). The problem started when we got home, and I started to put her to sleep in her cradle. She looked at the air, with large pupils, at a point around my shoulders, crying. Her cry was not typical because she isn't one who cries easily. She looked terrified and many times try to close her eyes with her hands. I first thought she didn't want me, so I moved and asked her Dad to sit there. She kept acting like that for two nights, being scared all of a sudden, or staring at something that hid behind my shoulder. Someone suggested us to take her to a psychic, an old lady. She gave us something smelled terrible (I don't know what it is called in English) and told us to mix it with water and put it on my child's skin. I remember our room smelled awful that time but our child did not cry so often anymore, and on the next day she was just back like normal.
The second time was when we took her to another spooky place in town (a Tsunami hit our town in 2004), so there were many stories in some places spread after. This time we took her to a local bank when my husband was inside, taking care of a business, I took my children outside to play in the car park area. My second child, she was two that time, stumbled and fell, and hurt her knees. She cried, so I calmed her down by putting her on the ground. Again, she was just fine until we got home when I took her to her cradle. She did not cry, but this time she kept licking the back of her hands like a cat While she was doing that, her eyes kept staring at the ceiling of the room. I asked her why she did that and she said because 'she' did that. I said who? She pointed to the metal spring of her cradle and said 'she'. My child did that many times and sometimes laughed for no reason, and at the other times she cried again and refused to sleep in her cradle. But fortunately, we did not need to take her to psychic as she went back to normal the following day.
Few months after, we moved to England. Again, she reported seeing ‘something’ again in our new place, a two bedroom flat. She said she saw a lady in yellow in the garden through our bedroom window. She also said at the other times that she had seen a lady in white with green eyes, long yellow hair and purple mouth in the main bedroom or sometimes in the other bedroom. This time she could explain it more clearly because she had grown a bit. And she was not that scared anymore I don't know why. One night when we were playing in the main bedroom, she just told us all of a sudden that she spotted the lady in white in the corner behind the door. 'I saw her, I saw her. she's next to the door', but we did not see anyone there. But she would keep playing as normal for hours. When I checked whether the lady was still there, she said yes and said not to worry because she would go home at night. She said the lady in white did not want to play with the lady in yellow outside. She also said she was kind and did nothing harmful but just staring at us.
Years passed and no more ghost stories circulated in our family since my younger daughter seemed to stop seeing things. I felt relieved since I was told that infants’ psychic ability would disappear once they grow older. I was happy for her because it seemed that she then could enjoy life like normal.
But I was wrong, about one year later, when she was four, we visited a friend in Newcastle Upon Tyne. It was winter, and there were many other Indonesian families staying there. One night, when adults were busy chatting in the living room, my second daughter came to me crying and reporting that her big sister did not want to take her with her. I asked, where was her big sister was (who was 7 at that time). She took me to the only stairs of the house that leading to the exit door (the flat was on the first floor). The stairs were being fenced because our friends who occupied the house had two toddlers. My younger daughter told me that her big sister had come down there with another girl and refused to take her with them. When I checked, I saw no one on the stairs. It was dark, and the door was shut. I came back to the main room and called my older daughter. I found her watching the iPad with other girls in one of the bedrooms. She and the other girls look puzzled when I confronted them with my younger daughter’s story. She swore with a bloody serious face, so did the other girls, that they had not left the room since hours ago. Even up to now I still wonder what actually happened to my second daughter that night. Whom did she see on the stairs?
My younger daughter was growing five being always terrified when she’s alone. She would not go to the bathroom alone, would not sleep alone. Sometimes at nights, she would cry out loud if being woken up and found I was not there in bed. She cried hugging her Dad or me and kept hitting her ears and necks as if she heard something. At about this time, she never reported seeing things anymore, but she once said that she would not go to the bathroom alone because there was a creepy voice there whenever she sat on the toilet. On summer holiday when she turned five, we went camping in the countryside and visited a famous haunted mansion located in a very remote place of the place. It is open to the public, so we just went in there, looking around. There were many other visitors when we came. The place has been reported to be really haunted by many people because of many events happened there in the past. My younger daughter was just fine until when we were on the third floor. In the corridor, I looked at her, standing up facing the wall for quite a long time. I did not ask anything until we went down all the way to the basement where we were told to be the most haunted area. My younger daughter obviously did not like it there because she kept begging to go up to the ground floor. And when we were outside, she told us that she heard a dog barking in the house. We definitely heard nothing, and dogs were not permitted to enter.
This is the last creepy story from my second daughter. Few months after, in winter, we moved to a new flat in the same town. The new flat was located on the ground floor, so we had a garden at the back. The kids were so excited about playing there because we did not have one in our old flat. One afternoon, they were playing there under a very cloudy sky. After some time, my big daughter came in first saying she’s done playing leaving my younger daughter outside alone. It was winter, so the sky getting dark really soon. I was baking cakes in the kitchen when my younger daughter came in too in a hurry and said she heard something creepy in the garden. I asked her what it was that she had heard. She said she heard a creepy male voice saying “I was living here when…” she stopped and said she did not hear the saying completely because she was too scared and ran inside. Her big sister laughed at her story, and my younger one became outraged. She yelled at us “ I am not lying!!” and left us all instantly. We bet she was extremely serious.
Today, when I wrote this paragraph, my daughter is already 6 years old. I am glad that it has been about 7 months now since the last strange experience that she had in the garden. She never reported anything strange anymore since then, but was still too afraid to go to the bathroom by herself. She was actually a courageous person for other things, like touching reptiles and bugs, but not for being alone in the dark or in an empty room. My husband and I keep pushing her to be brave and always lesson her regularly with religious education. We try to keep her believing that God is the strongest of all beings, and all ghosts, no matter how good they are at tricking or scaring people.
We believe that Faith is about managing our fear, so we teach our kids not to be scared of anything or any being that is smaller than God. It is only God that they should be scared of. Not because He is scary, but because He is kind but powerful.