The Ghost Who Shares His Pain

I live in an apartment complex with lots of other people. Over the time I've lived here a few of my neighbors have died. But none that I've felt so closely. Now I wasn't close to the person who died, in fact I hardly knew the man. He was just someone my mom would talk to in passing every once in a while.

I had been having some weird problems with my heart a while ago. It was probably just 3 days ago that I started feeling it. Now I'm a pretty healthy girl and had never had any heart problems. What I was feeling was just unreasonable.

My heart would fluctuate; there would be strong beats, quick beats, and even a few skip of beats. To me it seemed like my heart was going to fail on me. I'm only 19! I shouldn't be having heart problems. Along with my heart playing tricks on me was the eerie feeling of foreboding and not being alone.

I always had the thought in the back of my head that some ghost was causing it and laughing at me. I've gotten so used to the thought of ghosts in my house that I'm never really scared anymore, just more like nervous and paranoid.

So on the first few days I started feeling the heart problems, it was like a constant burning. It was just always there. Morning, afternoon, nighttime, the burning wouldn't go away.

Then the worst came when I was trying to go to sleep. I would start to lie down but then my heart would act up. It was like my heart was on full throttle just trying to keep itself beating. It's hard to describe the feeling exactly, but I couldn't shake the feeling that if I actually fell asleep, I would be taken over by something. So naturally I didn't fall asleep until the sun had just risen.

I was confused and frustrated about my heart acting up. It was like at random times my heart would fluctuate again and I would stop what I was doing to try and get it back under control. I had actually taken the time to wonder if this was a sign that I was going to die. I had always kind of had the feeling or fear that I would die young, but when this started happening I just felt hopeless. It was like my fears had been confirmed. And that was something I didn't want.

This had been going on and off the past few days. I would be doing something, minding my own business and then I would get the heart problems. It would just overwhelm me. And then there was last night.

I had been feeling okay. I was going to go to sleep. My mom was in the bed next to me. To me, my mom is my safety pillow. She's the person who helps me ward off things so I can sleep peacefully. She's closer to God then I ever was and I would use her presence, her aura I guess you could say, to help me sleep. But it wasn't helping me this night.

Even though she was right there, I knew it wasn't just her and me in the room. Whenever I would lie down and try to sleep, my heart would start acting up. So I would sit up and just listen for a while. Maybe after ten minutes I would lie down and try to sleep again, but then it would come back. It was like someone had their hand on my heart and was playing with it. So I was up just sitting in bed from 2 am to 6 am. In that time it was like I was battling to stay awake. I was tired yes, but whenever I would lie down, my heart would beat irregularly and I was overcome by this thought that it wanted me to fall asleep so it could take control. And whenever I would sit awake just staring at nothing I would sometimes see shadows move in the corner of my eyes. And I had the light on, it's hard to mistake moving shadows with it on.

I remember waking my mom up a few times just so I could talk to her and remember telling her that I just felt like something bad was going to happened or had happened. She's the kind of person who can sleep easily and she went back to bed. I was scared so I stayed awake.

I didn't fall asleep until the sun was already up and shining.

Today was starting normally like every other day. But then my mom said that she had heard labored breathing by the bed she was taking a nap on. When she heard it both her and the cats sleeping next to her and jumped in alarm. It reminded her of one of her neighbors that she had seen coughing really badly a couple of days ago, so she went to go check on him and his wife.

She found out he had died just a few days ago. Apparently it had to do with his heart. And you know what my mom did before she had found this out? Well she had seen them getting rid of some of their things like furniture and pillows. She's the kind of person who, if she sees it about to be thrown out, she takes it and makes it hers. She had taken an old pillow that the lady had already left by the trash. I wouldn't be surprised if that pillow had belonged to the old man.

I twitch with the possibilities of him being attached to it.

So I started connecting two and two together. I had always had empathetic tendencies, but never this strong. But recently, well, I had had an awakening you can say. I was feeling lost and trapped in my haunted apartment and had thought, 'Hey, I'll try reading the bible and maybe I'll get some guidance'. I had heard that Psalms in the bible was big with these kind of things so I had read through that looking for guidance from someone or something.

And you know what happened? I was blubbering and crying reading the whole way through Psalms. The whole time I was reading it, I felt like I myself was crying out the words with my soul, hoping for someone to respond to it. I still tear up every now and then when I think of it. But when I was reading that, when I was sincerely wishing that someone would come down and respond, I felt overwhelmed. For some reason, my shoulders were getting warm. And then I just thought, 'Oh those feel like hands on my shoulders'. And I had this picture in my head of someone standing behind me, their hands on my shoulders as if in reassurance. Like someone was saying 'I'm here if you need me. All you have to do is call'. My father had died before I was born and in a way I think it crossed my mind that I could consider God my father now. If I needed reassurance I could look to him for it.

And well, after I had stopped crying and calmed down, I felt light and reassured. My problems weren't worrying me anymore.

So I had thought this 'awakening' I had might be why I was having stronger... Connections with ghosts now. This man had just died and for all I know he was somehow drawn here. And I'm feeling what he most likely felt. Hopefully he'll move on soon.