In the summer of 1986 I got a call from my cousin Jimmy from Bailey North Carolina. The reason for his call was that he was planning on moving back to Cincinnati for awhille and wanted to know if he could stay with us until he got on his feet. No problem I said come on up. When he arrived we got busy fixing up a room for him in the basement and this gave us the time we needed to catch up with eachothers lives. We talked on the phone often but hadn't seen eachother in a few years. To say the least we had a great time fixing up the room just the way he wanted it. Also I talked to a buddy of mine and had him a job all lined up doing construction work. Jimmy's arrival was in perfect time for getting the job and he could start on that following Monday. I guess it took about a week for Jimmy to get settled in good and the house back to it's normal routine. Or so I thought.... I was night manager/bartender and worked four nights a week for a big club in downtown Cincinnati. I would get home around 3:30am in the morning, and when I'd get off work, I'd get a shower, a bite to eat and plop down on the couch and watch TV. Most of the time, I'd often fall asleep there too. One night I came home and found Jimmy asleep on the couch. Hmmm, now you know this kinda messed with my routine a little. After thinking about it, I decided to let him sleep and went on to bed for a change. The next day I told Jimmy how attached I was to the couch and made a little deal with him. I said you can have the couch on the nights I'm off and I get it on the nights I work. Ok no problem he said, so it was all settled. The arrangement worked.
Every once in awhile I'd have to deal with a rough crowd, and this would give me the gitters. Well one Friday night I had one of those nights. I came home and tried to settle down but nothing worked. So I thought I'd go down stairs and see if Jimmy was awake because I wanted somone to talk to. I could hear the radio playing real low so I went over and sat down on the side of his bed real easy. And I softly said Jimmy are you awake? When he didn't respond I thought better if trying to wake him up and decided to go back upstairs. As I started to get up Jimmy opened his eyes and seen me. All of a sudden he started kicking and trying to scream. I took off to the other side of the room cause he was coming outta that bed. So I'm standing there saying "Jimmy, Jimmy it's me" Well by now he was standing up on the other side of the bed with his tighty whites on flexing his muscels and trying his best to scream. This big 6ft 2in muscle bound man was so scared he couldn't hardly make a sound. Something I did just about scared him to death. After screaming his name several times, Jimmy finally stopped long enough to realize it was me, and you could just see the relief wash over his face as he collapsed onto his bed. He said Oh Thank God it's you! I thought you were a ghost and I was getting ready to make you a bigger basement. I got a mental picture of Jimmy trying to run through the basement wall and combined with everthiong else he had done, I started cracking up laughing. I knew he was scared but I couldn't help myself. I laughed so hard I thought I'd pee my pants. Jimmy said " OK OK, you can stop laughing now" but I just couldn't quit and after a bit he started laughing too. "I guess I must have looked pretty silly, didn't I?" he asked. And I said oh man! Did you Ever! Once we were over our little laughing spell I asked him why he thought I was a ghost, thinking to myself that he was dreaming or something. He got real serious and told me what had been going on almost from the first day he arrived. He put a recliner next to his bed when we first fixed up his room but had since moved it. He said the reason he moved the chair was because he felt like there was sothing or someone sitting in it constantly staring at him. The way he described it was was like going to someone's house who had a really mean dog but the dog was under command to stay. Yet the whole time you were there the dog just kept staring at you making you feel like that if his owner would turn his head for one second, the dog would have pounced on you and tore you to pieces. And the night I came home and found him sleeping on the couch, he said he was awakened by what like a woman making a sad moaning, almost a crying sound. He slowly opened his eyes to look at her face, that's when he really got scared because her eyes were black. He shook his head in disbelief like this had been a dream, and when he opened them again she was gone. Well theres just one explanation for what you seen Jimmy, and that's our little mean lady ghost I told him. I could tell he didn't want to believe me, but he couldn't deny the fact that he had seen her with his own two eyes. I also told Jimmy that he was the only one that had actually seen her. Most people coulkd feel her presence and many of us were scared by her, but she had never shown herself to anyone but him. Jimmy continued to stay there at the house but I had to give up my couch for him to sleep on. He no longer wanted any part of the basement, and he soon found a place of his own and moved into it....By Sue Cross
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