June 18, 2008

The Old Lady With a Lantern

Rate this encounter:[an error occurred while processing this directive] [Name Withheld Upon Request], Tampa, Florida, June 11, 1995

It was 12 o'clock in the afternoon when my aunt called and asked me to baby sit my two cousins (who happen to be twins). I got to her house around 8 o'clock and had a friend of mine with me. After we fed the kids, they started playing Crash Bandikoot (a video game). It was getting late so I told the kids it was about time for bed. They both looked at each other and said, "No way. You have to see what happens at 11 o clock!" I looked at my friend wondering what they could be talking about. Not paying attention to the clock, I had forgotten all about what they said. The music from the game was loud and that's all I could concentrate on when all of the sudden the power went out.

My first instinct was to assume it was a storm. The kids corrected me saying, "No, this is it. Come on!" They then dragged my friend and I to the front hall. It was dark so I couldn't see anything and nothing was happening but they kept saying, "No just wait." No sooner had they had said that when we saw a faint light coming down from the furthest hallway. My friend and I looked in disbelief, but the little twins were getting excited. Slowly the light came closer, and just as it got to its brightest, a figure stepped out from the hall holding the light! I could instantly tell it was the figure of an old woman, hunched over carrying a lantern. We were frozen. We could not believe that this was really happening. The old woman stopped dead in her tracks 12 feet in front of us. She turned her head in our direction, put her finger to her mouth, and "hushed" us. She then turned slowly back and headed in the same direction she was going. We watched the light slowly fade and dim away. Another minute went by before the lights came back on. Abruptly the music from the game came back on loud as it was before and scared us. We put the kids to bed and sat terrified in the living room anxiously waiting for my aunt to get home. When she did we of course asked what all of that was about and what she knew about it. She told us that she didn't know who the woman was or how she died, but that same thing happens every night and it terrified her. As far as I know it happened every night at that time for as long as they lived there.