Weird West Coast: California Ghost Stories

David had always been a perceptive child; ghosts, ‘shadow people’, and strange occurrences were something he grew accustomed to as the years passed. His great grandparents before him had professed to having similar abilities and it was believed to run in the family. As a child David had felt sensitive to the energy of the people that surrounded him, and of the places he found himself in. All places held the energy of the people who had lived there before, and their stories echoed through the walls, audible only to those who knew how to really listen. But of all David’s strange experiences there was one that stuck in his mind, and often, in moments the brain seeks to fill with words, he would find his thoughts slipping back to it.

It had been a normal week, normal enough anyway, nothing abnormal had happened, and yet David felt bothered by something. In the quietness of his bedroom he could feel a presence, as if there were someone else there with him, something that wasn’t normally there. At first he thought nothing of it, but as the days slipped by it seemed to him to be growing stronger and stronger and he began to feel the first inklings of fear. At night he slept with the hallway light on and his door ajar, the small tv at the end of his bed playing the late night shows at a volume too low to hear yet loud enough to give him a sense of comfort. The late night mischief of his hamster helped to calm his fears too, as she determinedly climbed the bars of her cage and ran in her hamster wheel. She was normal, not loud or obtrusive, just a normal creature doing a normal thing and a reminder that everything was alright.
But David’s sense of comfort was not to last.