My family has a history of paranormal experiences. My maternal grandparents house has what I would call a poltergeist, but I'm not really sure. My grandfather calls it Herby, and all it seems to do is like to knock on the walls and the doors on occasion. My paternal grandmother lived in coal mining Kentucky for a while (it's where my Dad was born). They even lived in a company town, which I loved to hear about when I was little. But a friend of my grandparents who worked in a mine with my grandfather when there was a cave in. A few weeks after the funeral, the friend knocked on the door. My grandmother answered the door, and fainted when she saw who it was (being a good, southern lady). Later, in a mass sighting I guess, the friend showed up at a church meeting (where most of the town met), dressed in the torn rags he had been dressed in when the cave collapsed. Also, one of my aunts lived with my grandmother until she died. When she turned the room into her own little library a year or so later, she was reading one night, and she looked up and saw my grandmother sitting in a chair across from her, sewing. She even spoke, says my aunt, saying, "Go on reading, honey." I am 19 years old, and have lived in three houses since I was about 2. The first house we lived in had a ghost cow. (Don't laugh.) We lived next to a dairy farm, and every once in a while, my parents would see a cow out in the yard. At first, they would think that the cow had gotten loose from the farm, and they would go out to chase it back into the pasture, but it wouldn't be there when they got outside, and they would find no hoof-prints. (Cows leave obvious tracks, in case you don't know.) We moved when I was about 4, we moved to a house in a subdivision. Here was my real first encounter with a ghost, only I didn't know it at the time. There was a little girl that I played with, but since my mother never saw her, she thought the girl was my imaginary friend. However, she finally saw her one day when Mom was working in the garden, and I was in the back yard playing with the girl. I went in to get something, Mom says. A couple of seconds later, Mom turned around and the girl wasn't there. Thinking that the girl might have gone next door, where they were building another house, she went looking, but never could find her. When I came back out, Mom said the girl had gone home. Mom says she didn't think about it again until three years later, when she saw the same girl, wearing the same clothes she had been wearing when she played with me playing with my little sister. She went out onto the deck to look at the girl. As she came out the door, the girl looked right at my Mom, and Mom says she could see through the girl. Mom called to April (my sister), and when she did, the girl disappeared. When I was about eleven or twelve, we moved into the house I lived in until I came to school. The first incidence in this house came a couple of days after we had settled in. My Dad, our dog Molly and I were sitting in the basement TV room, watching a baseball game when all our attentions were drawn to something moving past the door in the basement. I didn't know what it was, but I just remember it being big and red, but Dad swears it was some lady wearing a white satin gown. Whatever it was, Molly saw it too, and went out into the basement barking. I went out a couple of seconds later, and like the dog, I couldn't find anything or anybody. Our ghost's) in that house also likes to move things. Food disappears out of the refrigerator and reappears. One time I had lost my keys, where I knew I had put them on the counter (I was home alone for the weekend.) I looked right at the place where they had been, and they weren't there. Five minutes later, I found them, right where I had just looked. Then there's the cat. The room I sleep in at home used to be my sister's room. She had been begging for a trade for a long time, so I finally digressed and let her have my old room. I thought that it had been because she just wanted the bigger room, but every once in a while, I'll wake up in the middle of the night, look up on the bookcase and see a pair of cat eyes looking at me. I sleep with the door and windows closed, so there's no way for a cat to get in, and no light for the eyes to reflect. Plus, if you're in the house alone, you can every once in a while look up from where you are and find the cat (it's a black cat) sitting somewhere staring at you. I'm sure my sister's seen it (although she won't say anything), and my mother's seen it a couple of times and my dog has even taken off chasing it. (That's the strange thing, we have 3 cats (none black) and the dog doesn't chase any of them.) The final occurrence came this past Christmas Break. My parents and sister had gone to relatives' house for New Years, so I was home alone the night before New Years. It was about two in the morning, and I was in my bedroom reading or watching TV, or both, I don't really remember, but I heard somebody coming up the stairs. Caffeine and fear taking hold of my system, the first thought was burglar. I picked up a baseball bat and stood just hidden inside my room, ready to take the head off an un-expecting bad guy. As soon as it got to the top of the stairs (and the steps came up slowly, like somebody sneaking), I heard something run down the stairs, and I mean run: big heavy steps coming in quick succession. When I heard them coming up the stairs again, I went out into the hall, hidden by the darkness. I couldn't see anything. The steps had stopped when I came out the door, but they started up again. I turned on the light, and the steps stopped, and there was nothing there. It was then I decided I'd had enough of ghosts for that night, so I got in the car and drove around for about eight hours (something hard to do in a small town.) The strangest thing, I'd left my TV, lights, hall lights and stuff on (because the chicken in me had taken over) and I'd just left. However, when I got there, everything was off. That night, I went to a New Year's party and stayed the night at my friend's house, even if I wasn't too drunk to drive. Even now, when I go home, I get really weird feelings when I'm in a room, especially the basement, alone at night. I guess that's the way things are for my family. So far, I've not seen any other ghosts here at school, although they say there are a couple. If they're here, I'm pretty sure they'll find me somehow.