Grandma’s Ghost
Reddit user WallyPlumstead missed their grandma, who had passed away in her sleep. But when her ghostly shadow started haunting them, nostalgia turned to paralyzing fear.
“When I was 13 I experienced the ghost of my grandmother. She died in her sleep while taking a nap on the living-room couch. Afterwards according to my father and grandfather, every now and then they could hear her make the trip from the bedroom to the kitchen and open the refrigerator door. A trip she made many times when she was alive.
At first I thought my father and grandfather were making this up, having fun at my expense. A couple years after she passed away, my father and I went to spend the weekend with my grandfather. My father and I slept on the living room couch (it opened into a double bed). The same couch my grandmother died on. My grandfather left the house to go to a next-door neighbor’s house to play poker. My father and I went to bed in the living room. My father went right to sleep. I laid awake, reading a magazine. After a while I heard the noise of the back bedroom door being pulled open. I heard the sound of shuffling feet. I heard the creak in the floor directly in front of the bathroom doorway. I heard more shuffling feet. Then I heard the fridge door being pulled open and I heard the sound of glass bottles in the fridge door clinking against each other (back then they were still putting soft drinks in glass bottles). Feeling thirsty, I decided to get out of bed and go join my grandfather in the kitchen for a cold drink. I go into the kitchen, only to find myself all alone.
I was puzzled. I could’ve sworn I heard my Grandfather walk from the bedroom into the kitchen and open the fridge. Then I remembered that my grandfather wasn’t home. He was over the neighbors’ house and he hadn’t come back yet. Then I remembered my grandfather’s and father’s ghost stories. Then I got scared. I raced from the kitchen, into the living room, and leaped over my sleeping father into my side of the bed. Then I went to sleep. I don’t know how long I slept before I woke up with a start, a feeling of paralyzing fear in my body.
I was frozen. I was lying on my right side. It took a while for me to work up the courage to turn my head to the left. My head was covered by my blanket. There was a shadow being cast onto my blanket. The shadow was the outline of a head and shoulders of a woman with a beehive hairdo. My grandmother used to always have a beehive hairdo even years after it went out of style, up until she died. I heard heavy breathing coming from the shadow. I had to work up the courage to move one of my hands to remove the blanket off of my face.
When I did, in an instant, the paralyzing fear I felt was gone. The shadow was gone. The sound of heavy breathing was gone. My father was still sleeping. I pulled the blanket back over my head and went back to sleep. Only to wake up again on my right side, the paralyzing fear was back. Forcing myself to turn my head. The shadow was back. The heavy breathing was back. Again I had to summon up all my courage to move my hand to take my blanket off my face, only to find nothing there and the paralyzing fear gone.
I went through this same routine the entire night. I lost count of how many times this happened through the night. Maybe a dozen. Maybe more. But it happened a lot. The next morning I told my father what happened to me throughout the entire night while he slept. The sounds of the bedroom door opening. The shuffling feet. The fridge door opening. Nobody in the kitchen. Being awakened with a paralyzing fear. The shadow. The heavy breathing. The repeat performances throughout the night. I kind of expected him to tell me that I was just seeing and hearing things. But instead he smiled and exclaimed, ‘that was grandma!’”