Most people go through life and nothing out of the ordinary or strange happens to them. I am not one of those people. I am not a psychic or a medium. I am just a woman who has experienced paranormal activity since the young age of four. My entire life I have wanted to know why this happens to me.

When I was a baby, I was neglected and abused. I had a fractured skull, contusions and stitches in my face, third degree burns on my right wrist, and I almost died when I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my hip and left leg. I was removed from my parents' home when I was two years old and placed with relatives who raised me as their own.

At the age of four, we moved to Orlando, Florida. We lived there for three years and I liked it there, but at night things would happen in my room that I shared with my foster sister. We had twin beds and every night I would wait until she fell asleep and then crawl in bed with her. She hated that. The reason I did this is because I was terrified. There was something in our room that stood in the corner and watched every night. It was a solid black figure and it was always there. I told my mom about it and she just shrugged it off as my imagination. Whatever the thing was, it didn't physically hurt me. It just watched. Was it already in the house before we moved there or did it follow me? I was happy when my foster dad got transferred to Ohio for his job. Once we moved, nothing paranormal happened until I was nine years old.

My foster parents allowed me to go visit my biological parents for two weeks during summer vacation. They lived in an older home in the city of Detroit. I was happy to get to see my family. I missed my older brothers. The first week that I was there, nothing weird happened and I wasn't scared of the house. It was a 1940s home and it had two bedrooms on the right side of the house with the bathroom between them. The family room was on the left side with the kitchen. It had a basement and a full walk in attic with a bedroom in the front part of the house. The attic was empty. The bedroom up there had a bed and a small dresser. One of my brothers slept up there. I only went up there a couple times because it was boring to me. I was a kid. An empty attic didn't entertain me.

The activity started one night while my brother Paul and I were sitting on the couch watching television. We were the only ones awake in the house and nobody was upstairs at the time. All of a sudden we heard these loud repeated bangs on the ceiling above us. It sounded like a dresser falling over repeatedly. We both counted and it happened eight times. Needless to say, we did not go up there that night. It didn't make sense to us that a noise like that happened. We were scared and we both slept on the couch that night.

The next morning I told my mom about the noise and she wasn't surprised. She told me that the house had a ghost. She said that the previous owner used to go up in the attic and paint pictures and sit in his rocking chair and watch the kids play outside. He died in the attic from a massive heart attack. She said that she would hear him on the stairs and the front porch. I was freaked out, but my mom said that he was not mean and didn't want to hurt anyone. He just wanted to stay in his home. The rest of the time that I was there, I didn't have any other experiences. I left that house and I have never been back there, but that experience has stayed with me.

Now fast forward to 1995. This was the year that my brother was killed by a drunk driver. My brother lived with me and we were very close. I was devastated when he died. I had lost my best friend. I cried for months and I think that in my time of grief, I may have unknowingly opened a door to the other side. One night my boyfriend and I were sitting on the couch talking about my brother. I had a cup of coffee sitting on the coffee table directly in front of us. I said out loud, "Dave if you are here with me, please let me know." About a minute went by and my coffee cup slid across the table and fell over. My boyfriend looked at me in shock and said, "You saw that too, right?" At that moment, I was convinced that my brother was there. A few nights later I had a very vivid dream that my brother appeared to me and told me that even though I couldn't see him, he was there with me. He asked me if his friend and her daughter could be there, too. Then it flashed over to this tan car that was smashed in the rear end. Then the lady and her daughter appeared next to my brother. She told me that nobody told her that they were dead. I was so happy to see Dave. I told him that I loved him and that I would always leave an empty spot on the couch for them. To this day, I have kept my word.

A couple years later, we were moving into a duplex. By this time, I had small children and a different fiancé. One evening I put the kids to bed and I was cleaning the kitchen. I started hearing noises in the basement. It sounded like boxes being pushed around. I was scared because I knew that nobody should be down there. I grabbed a knife and I crept slowly down the stairs. When I got to the bottom step, my heart was pounding and I was expecting to find an intruder. I stepped into the basement and flipped on the lights. There was no one there. There wasn't even boxes. I knew right then that there was something in that house. I calmed myself down by remembering what Dave had told me in my dream. The activity continued for the remainder of the time that we lived there. My oldest child saw red eyes in the hallway one night and he was terrified. My fiancé was watching TV one night after work and he saw a little girl looking at him from the hallway. He thought it was our daughter and told her to go back to bed. He got up and went to tuck her back in, but when he entered the bedroom, she was sound asleep. That freaked him out and he came and woke me up. When he described the little girl to me, I got the chills. The description matched that of the little girl that was in my dream. I noticed that my energy was draining and I began having anxiety and panic attacks. I didn't know if this was because of the house or something else.

We moved into my mother in law's house because my husband wasn't working due to an accident he was in. I didn't expect anything strange to happen there. She had lived there for years without any paranormal activity. I was wrong. It started within a year after my kids' grandfather passed away. He had never lived in the home. But we had his ashes at the house. I was the only one that was affected by the phenomena. I started having recurrent dreams of my husband and I buying a big house and the top floor was haunted. It was always the same dream, but it was a different house each time. Then when we would go to bed and my husband would fall asleep, I would be lying there and my bed would move. It was rough. It felt like someone nudging it. This happened every night. I finally just got used to it. Then one day I was taking a nap and I wasn't asleep yet and I heard something hit my bedroom floor. I looked over and my bowl of potpourri was on the floor about five feet from the dresser that it was on. I just said out loud, "Quit messing with me, Mike." I assumed it was my late father in law. I didn't mention these things in front of my kids, because I didn't want them to be scared of their grandma's house. I knew that the activity focused on me. Eventually we moved to a home a couple blocks away. It was a great deal and it was a three story home with plenty of room for us.

We worked on the house for months and made it our home. I started noticing little strange things happening, but I brushed it off. I wasn't ready to admit to myself that my dreams had told the story of this house. My daughter slept in one of the upstairs bedrooms and she told me that she would see a dark figure in her mirror sometimes at night and it scared her. I tried to convince her that it was nothing and our house was not haunted. She didn't believe me. Then we started hearing noises that shouldn't be there. So I decided to leave a digital recorder on while we were asleep at night. We were shocked to hear a girl's voice asking someone if they were OK. It was clear as day. After that, we just lived with it. I knew it had followed me there. One night I went upstairs and just sat in the dark right by my daughter's bedroom door. I was curious to see if anything would happen. Sure enough, within ten minutes, I heard footsteps walk right down the hallway to me. I smudged the house and tried to get whatever was there to leave. Honestly, I don't know if the spirits are still there or not. Shortly after that, I moved out and divorced my husband. I took my daughter with me. My son wanted to stay there. He has never said anything about ghosts being in the house since I left.

Since then, I have moved three times. I have had small paranormal things happen at all three places. The activity continues to this day. I have often wanted an expert to tell me if I am a haunted person. Until that time, I will live with this. Whatever it is.