"Follow Me"

I was probably nine years old. Maybe eight. That would mean my sister was 11 or 12 and my little brother was around six. There were a couple of neighbor kids with us as well, two of the four daughters of a family that lived across the street. We had been playing in and around our house while my parents were gone.

I don't recall much from this day, honestly. It's been over 30 years now. I remember we had moved our games inside, and then something drew our attention downstairs. Whenever I think back to this day, I cannot recall what it was. All I know is that suddenly, we were all creeping down the stairs to the basement.

At the bottom of the stairs and to the immediate right, there was a pantry located under the stairwell. It was closed, and my sister was reaching for the door knob to open it. Before she could, we heard a single sharp knock from the other side of the door. We ran from the house screaming.

We went across the street to where our friends lived and told their father what happened. He asked another neighbor for assistance and together, they searched our house while we remained across the street. They didn't find anyone and nothing seemed out of order.

My siblings and I stayed with our friends until our parents got home. Their father explained what had happened to my mom and dad, and predictably, our experience was chalked up to the overactive imaginations of young children. My sister and I would come to accept this explanation as well, especially as we grew older: I worked in childcare and she had a son of her own, and it was easy to see how kids could so easily run with their imaginations, and how real these things seemed to them.

Fast forward to when I was about 24 years old. I met my friend Ashley through a mutual friend and began babysitting her children. We became quite close as friends during this time and in fact, we are still friends to this day. One evening, after we had all watched a scary movie together and her kids had gone to bed, I asked her if she'd ever seen a ghost. She said she believed she had and told me the story:

When she was a small child living in another state, she recalled that whenever she was playing in the living room alone, she would see a "little witch." This witch would always run behind the couch and try to get Ashley to follow her back there. Ashley never did because she felt certain that something bad would happen had she followed her.

I asked her what she meant by "little witch" and she said it was a little woman dressed as a witch and about the size of a garden gnome. She said she saw her many times as a child, but once they moved away, she never saw her again. I'm pretty sure that was the only time we ever spoke about it.

Fast forward again to ten or so years later. Ashley's oldest daughter was grown and her son was approaching 16. She and I were cooking dinner together. I forget how it came up, but I was relating the tail of the knock on the pantry door. She was intrigued and asked, "I wonder if your sister really saw or heard something, or if maybe she was making up a game just to entertain everybody?"

An interesting question, and I found that after all these years, I wanted to know for sure. My sister was older than me when this happened, so I figured she may have had a clearer memory of that day. I called her on speaker phone right there in Ashley's kitchen.

My sister answered and we got all the pleasantries out of the way. Then I asked her if she remembered the day in question. She said she did.

"What was it that made us all go downstairs that day? Did we see some thing? Hear something? Or were we all just scaring ourselves to have some fun?" I asked.

And my sister – who is a very grounded person and skeptical of anyone who says they've seen a ghost, an alien, or Bigfoot – answered quite solemnly, "No, I didn't make it up for fun. I saw a little witch in the living room and when she got my attention, she started going down the stairs."

A little witch.

While I know the human memory can be unreliable (and more so as we age), I believe my friend, and I believe my sister. And I often wonder... what would have happened if Ashley had ever gone behind the couch? What would have happened if my sister had opened the pantry door?