I am 33 now. This happened when I was 11. In the fall of 77, we moved suddenly hundreds of miles from where we used to live. The first time I walked in the new house (new to us, was really much older) I felt the ghost. I told my sister the house was haunted and she said cool we should try to find it. Little kids have big imaginations and we wondered around the very old house and told each other stories about the ghosts of the people who had lived there before. Several days later our furniture arrived and we got to pick our room. The house was very large and the children had their own "suite of rooms". I picked the one I liked best and that night lay among my things in boxes, my bed not yet set up and slept soundlessly, until 3:03 a.m. That was when my nightmares started. The dream was always the same. I am in my bed (actually much bigger and fluffier than my bed) sitting up. I can smell smoke. I call to my mother and very suddenly fire shots up all around me. I feel the heat and start screaming for my mother. I get out of my bed and realize that the door is blocked with flames.
I woke up. I swear I could still smell that smoke and thought the house had caught fire. I screamed for my mom and she came and assured me that everything was fine.
I was not fine. I was terrified. Everything about the dream seemed so real. I have had psychic premonitions all my life and I assumed this was one of them, because I usually have them in my dreams. As the fall wore into winter the dreams continued. I became convinced that this dream was a premonition and the reason it kept coming back was because it was ME who was going to die. I became obsessed with things that could cause a fire and would often stay awake until I heard my mother go to bed and then search the house, unplugg things, check the stove. Christmas was a nightmare because of all the lights and tree and stuff. I watered the tree everyday. The dream was always the same and happened at the same time every night. Around Christmas time, I fell asleep downstairs and awoke the next morning and I realized that I had not had the dream. I thought that somehow disaster had been averted and I was safe. I remember feeling great that day. That night asleep in my own room, the dream came back. Then I thought that if I didn't sleep in that room I wouldn't die in the fire, so I kept trying to sneek downstairs to sleep. Sometime it worked and I would not have the dream. I became terrified to sleep in my room and beg my mother to switch rooms. I told her about the dreams and she knew that I was psychic so she agreed to let me switch room. The dream stopped. All was well.
In the spring we were sitting out on the backporch and the mailman came by. He introduced himself and said he knew someone was living in this house, because he delivered mail, but had not met us yet. My mom started chatting with him and all of a sudden he looked up to the door to my old room. (I forgot to mention that the reason I initially picked this room was because it had a door in it that led onto a little balcony and I thought it was cool to have a door to the outside in your room). He said he always thought of the little girl who died in the house when he saw that door up there. Immediately my attention was focused on him and I asked him how she died. There was a fire in that house and that part of the house had been destroyed. The girl had died in that room. The door and balcony was added because the father felt if she would have had another way out she could have lived. The never let any of their other children live in that room. The family had moved away about six months before we moved in.
Wow, was I relived I could move back into my room. It was not a premonition it was a ghost. Somehow my 11 year old brain reasoned that if I could talk to her she wouldn't scare me anymore. That night I moved back into the room. My mother was freaking out because she was convinced now that it was haunted and didn't want me to be in there. I insisted and she gave in. I set my alarm to wake me up at 2:55 a.m. I forgot at the time why I had done that but as I came awake I remembered my plan. AT 3:03 a.m. I talked to her. I told her the mailman had told me what happened and I was very sorry that she had died, but that I didn't need to see how she died anymore. I told her I was going to go to sleep and if she wanted to show me a dream. She could show me how she lived. That night I had no dreams and we moved out of this house a few months later. I don't know what happened to the energy of that room, but somehow I was no longer connected to it. I never told my mom I talked to the ghost. I didn't think she would believe me.
