As requested, another ghost story.

Tomorrow marks week 3 of my new job. I get to finally meet the CEO of the company, interview someone that's a potential new hire and prep for representing the company at a health fair on Wednesday. All very exciting, but I'm still left with SO many questions and concerns. To get my mind off all of that, I decided a blog post is in order.

For those of you not glued to the TV right now watching the 49ers game, this is for you.


It’s no longer Halloween, or even close to it, yet I keep getting requests for more haunting stories. I guess people just don’t like reading about me venting.  I don’t have any more personal ghost stories, so I’m going to write about sightings that happened to my friends!

If you have a haunting you want me to write about, let me know. Maybe call me with the story and I’ll blog about it?

So here goes friend ghost account #1:

This is a story that hits somewhat close to home, emotionally and location wise, therefore names as well as minor changes will be made. This is to protect the family involved and will not affect the story-at all.

As I have mentioned in past posts, the town I grew up in, in Connecticut, is a historic town with houses dating back to the first settlers. One such house belonged to a friend from pre-school, let’s call her Susan. Susan’s mom, Mrs. Smith, told me and my mom this story once and it has stuck with me for life.

The Smith’s lived in a large, historic home, with a plaque on the outside stating the date the house built and naming it a historic landmark, therefore alterations could never be made to the home. The Smith’s assumed the house had a great deal of history, but were unsure of previous tenants and/or events in the home. Shortly after moving in, Mrs. Smith gave birth to her first child, Sally. One day, Mrs. Smith was in the kitchen while Sally slept in her crib upstairs. Sally began to cry, which Mrs. Smith heard over the baby monitor. As any new mother would do, she dropped everything and ran upstairs to see what woke young Sally. As she neared the room, the crying stopped.When she walked into the nursery, a woman dressed as though she had just time traveled from 1806 stood over the crib looking fondly down on Sally. Mrs. Smith stopped in her tracks, unsure what to do and questioning her eyesight  The woman glanced at her then turned and disappeared into the wall. Mrs. Smith checked on Sally and she seems happy and safe, so she wrote it off as lack of sleep playing tricks on her mind.

A couple of weeks later she once again found herself in a similar situation, she was downstairs when she heard Sally crying through the baby monitor. This time, when she rushed upstairs, she found the woman cradling the baby, who had since stopped crying. Mrs. Smith was terrified to find the same woman with her hands in the crib comforting Sally. Protection mode set in and Mrs. Smith yelled at the woman to leave. The woman looked up and as her eyes met Mrs. Smith's a feeling of hatred washed over the living woman. She stared with hatred, then again turned and walked into the wall and disappeared.

Mrs. Smith was rattled. She decided to research the house’s history and previous tenants; she was particularly interested in learning about anyone who may have died in her home. After tirelessly searching through records at the local library she found a clipping dating back to the early 1800’s. It was a small blurb about a young woman who lived in the home and died during childbirth. Nothing too newsworthy, especially seeing as deaths during childbirth were common at that time. Convinced this was her ghost, Mrs. Smith returned home and prepared for an encounter every time Sally cried, but the haunt did not return to Sally's bedside.

Now fast forward a couple of years, Mrs. Smith has given birth to her second daughter, Mary. Mrs. Smith had forgotten about the ghostly woman as she ran upstairs to tend her crying baby, but just as before, the crying stopped and the woman was calming the baby; and as before she looked at Mrs. Smith with hatred in her eyes. She appeared more frequently with Mary’s birth, maybe half a dozen times; always appearing to comfort the baby when she needed it the most. She kept to gently "touching" the baby's cheeks or standing and staring down. Just as before, she stopped showing up with time. Mrs. Smith did not like her being there, but felt that as long as the ghost's hatred was directed toward her, her children had a guardian angel watching over them at home.

A couple of years later Mrs. Smith gave birth to her third and final child, Susan. This time around, the ghost made sure her presence was known. She paced the nursery floor as Susan slept and walked the halls at night. Mrs. Smith described dark feelings directed towards her, accompanied by looks filled with rage and pure hatred.  She described a dark feeling in the pit of her stomach, like the ghost would stop at nothing to get rid of her. She remained longer than she had with either of the other children. As Susan began to talk, she even mentioned the lady in black, as if it was a perfectly natural sight.

Eventually, she stopped coming around, but the uneasy feeling accompanied Mrs. Smith every time she was alone in her home; so she tried to limit her time at home. As time went on, she would comment on the feeling of gloom following her from her home to work. She couldn't explain it, but felt like the ghost was with her at all times, angry at her for some odd reason.

If it was the ghost from the article, perhaps she thought Susan was her baby; or felt she was robbed of motherhood. Whatever her reasoning, it did not justify her hatred of Mrs. Smith.

As Susan went off to college, Mrs. Smith hoped the spirit would finally be at peace. She took a business trip with a colleague, the first time she'd been away from home in years. On her last night away, as the ladies drove to the airport to come home, a drunk driver hit them and Mrs. Smith died on the spot.

Maybe it was just a dark coincidence, but she always spoke of this dark cloud following her wherever she went. Many who knew her and had heard her story believe the ghost wouldn't let her come home.

She will always be missed.

Moved for a better view of the West Coast

This about sums up my life right now, in a nutshell: new job, new home, new life, even a new bed.  To quote the MacDonald’s slogan, “I’m loving it”.

"Like:" my new job's Facebook page! Peninsula Wellnesss Center Facebook

It’s about time. I was really starting to hit a slump in San Francisco. I was doing the same thing, day after day. I would wake up late, around 11am, shower, get dressed, brush my teeth and occasionally my hair then head to the corner to catch muni. 80% of the time there was an issue with muni-I don’t mean to sound cruel but I swear that every single time someone decided to traumatize a muni driver and jump in front of a train, it would happen minutes before my commute to work. Therefore, I would leave an hour early to prepare for the possibility of jumpers or “technical difficulties”.

Once I would finally make it downtown, I would grab a bite to eat then head up to H&M. Every time I walked into that store a tiny bit of my soul tried to escape, ultimately failed, and died. My co-workers, for the most part, were fine. There was one who was convinced that because she is black, she can’t be racist, therefore she was evil towards white people, but she was one crappy person out of maybe 50. Not too bad. It was the customers who kicked my butt.  Why do people think it’s OK to treat other human beings like shit? I can deal with people not hanging up their garments after trying them, it’s a pain in ass, but it’s manageable. I can’t deal with assholes coming out and dropping their clothes on the floor or demanding I help them immediately (If another customer got there before you, they get helped first, that’s just human etiquette). I also was over the assholes yelling at me over the state sanctioned $0.10 bag tax. Come on people, if you have such a huge issue with spending 10 cents on a bag, reuse old ones or buy a reusable one, but don’t shoot the fucking messenger. I had nothing to do with the tax. I didn't say, “that girl is ugly, I’m going to charge her 10 cents”, although I thought it; I simply enforced the new law. On that note, if you’re pissed off about a company policy, don’t yell at the employees  call corporate and yell at them. Employees don’t make the fucking rules. We simply enforce them.

I was in Walgreens the other night and watched as a man made an employee cry, because he was too stupid to understand the wording on the sign. It said something about buying two 80 count bottles of Tylenol cold and getting $5 off. He bought regular Tylenol and bitched that the word cold was small and misleading and demanded $5 off. She explained that is was only for that one type of Tylenol.  He proceeded to call her an incompetent bitch and went off on not only how misleading the sign was and how “horrible” walgreens is, he also told her that she was purposely targeting him because he was an attractive male (he was 50-something, balding and had a beer belly-he was dead serious about thinking he was hot shit). He told her to get over not being the “popular” girl in high school. He finished by telling her to look around, that this was the best her life would be; then stormed out of the store. She tried to keep her composure, but seconds later she called for a break and ran to the backroom crying; all because the fat idiot couldn't read the sign properly.

If I had a dollar for all the jerks who spoke to me like that, I’d probably have a few thousand bucks. Nothing too amazing, but enough to buy myself a pretty present. And yes, there were a few that made me cry.

I like to think that Karma will come back and push all of those assholes in front on muni trains, but then again, that would mean someone else would be late for work as a result.

In conclusion, I cannot express how happy I am to no longer have to deal with the low-life customers at H&M. I’m also thrilled to longer have the nickname “clear bitch”. I think this new chapter of my life will be a positive one. More to come as I get used to life away from San Francisco.