How it all started...

When I was born, I was brought home to an old farmhouse on Bingamon Holler. It was a wonderful place and I was blessed with loving, caring parents. We had only two bedrooms, and as my brother - who was 15 at the time - had the one, I slept in my crib in my parents room. The first memory I have is of lying in my crib, trying to go to sleep, and waiting...Waiting for the American Indian chief to come into the room and look down on me in my crib. I remember thinking that he wanted to take me and keep me for himself, and that I held onto the bars of my crib until I fell asleep to keep him from picking me up. He wasn't scary or mean, more curious than anything. But he was big and wore his feathered headdress, and that in itself was different and scary to a baby.
I was moved out of my parents room and into my own room when I was about 3 or 4. Daddy had taken the big room of my brother's and divided it so we could both have a room of our own. I never did sleep well. My Mom always had to come in and hold my hand till I fell asleep and then a few hours later I woud wake up and pace the hall, holding my Tony the Tiger and crying. I didn't know why I was crying, but I couldn't sleep and was uncomfortable and didn't know what to do about it. Finally I would go and get my Mom and she would get me back to sleep again.
Mommy tells me I had an imaginary friend during the time we lived in the farmhouse, but I don't remember her. We traded houses with my brother and his wife when she was pregnant with their first child. Moving didn't help me sleep any better. I was always afraid of the dark and always afraid that I had done something bad. So Mom and I would have all kinds of talks. When we put an addition onto the house, I got a new and bigger room. And Mom broke down and bought me a lamp that hung on the wall above my bed. It burned all night, every night. I always felt like someone was watching me, and developed these little subconscious rituals to ward this off.
Daddy was a preacher, and we visited a lot of "fire and brimstone" church services. I saw demons cast out of a man when I was about 6 years old. My grandmother always had a lot of stories about things she had seen at church, but I was raised very strictly that there is "No such thing as ghosts", except for the Holy Ghost. Mommy started working midnight at a nursing home when I was about 12 and Daddy would get me to go to sleep by telling me stories about his childhood. One night when I was around 13 years old, I was lying in bed, reading my Big Joke Book. I looked up and over the end of my bed by the right corner by my feet up about 7 feet in the air were 3 small, black misty shapes. I was scared to death and closed my eyes, and opened them back up and they were still there. I didn't tell anyone, I just prayed and finally went to sleep. I had a very vivid imagination, and was very sensitive. My feeling always ran deep.
Later, my other grandmother came to live with us and Daddy closed in our big porch and made me a new room. I loved that room. I got to pick out my curtains and carpet. There was just one thing. Something watched me all the time. I kept my curtains shut tight unless it was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day. When I went to school, Mom would come in and open my curtains and I would come home and close them. I felt constantly watched, scrutinized even the whoe time I was in that room. That was the last room I had until I got married and moved away.