The Other Family

When I was a child, until the age of 11, I lived in a nice two bedroom apartment complex with my single mother. I have distinct memories of curling up in the lap of an old African-American woman that would sit in the rocking chair in my room. There were little African-American kids that I played with. I called them my second family, my biological mother would become annoyed after the years went by and every time we went somewhere, I had to get permission from the other family. I was taken to counselors and doctors after it became obvious I was dependent on the family that lived in my room. It was written off as possible Schizophrenia and being bipolar. However, today I have no symptoms or diagnosis of Schizophrenia - Bipolar, yes but in today's society who isn't?

Looking back at those years, the "hallucinations" stopped when I was around 9. It was around the same time I met the new family in the complex. The family that would change my life. I told the daughter, who was a bit older than me, about the family. She in turn told her mother and she discussed it with my own mother. There was a cleansing in my apartment and that was the end of the other family. The daughter began to tell me about things that I would never believed in if I were a good little girl like my mother would want me to be. But I wasn't. I began to believe, I began to experiment with witchcraft. In my research, I came to believe that the second family was an entity left behind from before. They weren't just ghosts... but souls imprinted in my home.

The experience with the other family in my home, one that only I could see and communicate with, was the first of many in all of the years I have been aware of the world and all of its little bumps in the night.