Then they saw her

Author’s note: This is the second of a two-part series about the Torres family who, after moving into their new home, discovered something was already there.

Poring through the stacks of memories her home’s previous occupants left behind, Sammy Torres unmasked the spirit of a young Hispanic girl that sits on her son’s bed.

“One day as I was looking through the photo albums left by the previous owners I saw a newspaper clipping about a car accident,” she said. “It told about a Hispanic family who had been in an accident in which the father and the 12-year-old daughter had been killed.”

A memorial card, Torres presumed had been passed out at a funeral, showed a picture of the girl with long braided hair.

“There were also several pictures of her at different times in her life,” she said. “There were school pictures, pictures from birthday parties and Christmas and pictures of a laughing young girl splashing in a swimming pool and many family photos.”

It was the same girl she had seen that first day in the home, and the same girl who sat on her son’s bed. And, she later found, the spirit of the little girl wasn’t alone.

“Recently, I was awakened by the feeling of someone staring at me and when I opened my eyes there standing beside the bed was an old woman,” Sammy said. “She was wearing a dress that looked like it was from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.”

The dress was long and black with a high collar and puffy sleeves. The top of the dress had buttons on the front and the apparition wore a cameo brooch at the throat of her dress. It’s hair was gray and pulled into a bun.

“She looked very stern,” Sammy said. “I lay there looking at her for a few seconds and then she was gone. She just disappeared. We have seen her several times since then and always in the bedroom. And we always smell stale cigarette smoke right before she appears.”

But the apparitions don’t appear singularly. Sammy has at least felt them both in the room at the same time. Sammy was lying in bed one day when they visited her.

“I could feel them leaning on the bed and then they touched the top of my head and stroked my hair,” Sammy said. “At first I thought it was my husband as this is the way he does when I’m not feeling well, but he never said anything so I turned to look at him but he wasn’t there.”

When her husband eventually came into the room, Sammy told of her visitors.

“He then asked me, ‘why is your head wet on top?’” Sammy said. “I told him I didn’t know my head was wet. I told him about the spirit or whatever it was touching the top of my head.”

When Sammy reached to touch the spot where her visitor touched her, her husband was right. It was wet.

“I can only say that that was one of creepiest things I have experienced here,” she said.

Sammy has also felt an unseen force tugging her hair and one night woke because she was choking.

“I tried to sit up but couldn’t as something or someone had wrapped my long braid around one of the little wood bars in the head board of my bed,” she said. “Not long after that I cut my hair.”

Balls of light, globs of mist and an ominous black mass often float around their house and hangers rattle in the closets, but have not driven the Torres family from their home.

“We are not frightened by them,” Sammy said. “I think we have gotten used to them being here.”