The ghost that pulled me back

“I think my house is haunted. It was built in like the forties. Maybe it’s not fully haunted but definitely a little. One of the reasons I think it’s haunted is because there is a little spot in my parents’ room that you look at and just think to yourself… what is this? My dog will not step foot in that corner. One summer there were a bunch of flies flying around it with zero explanation and my parents had to hire special exterminators to get rid of them.”

“Anyways, unrelated to the corner… one time, I was sleeping in my bed and I awoke to this strange feeling of a hand grabbing my side. So, I get up and I start screaming at the top of my lungs and I tried to run to the light switch to turn them on. But I could only get to the middle of my room because this mysterious hand pulled me back. I tried to get the hand off of me by pulling on it super hard. I was somehow able to get to door but I could not find light switch. Then I tried to open the door but I felt myself being dragged backwards. My parents found me in my room screaming and were like ‘CLAUDIA WHATS GOING ON?’ I was fully in high school like I was not a young kid. I told them I felt a hand grabbing at my side and it felt extremely realistic and weird. They told me not to worry and that it was just my own hand. I told them that I grabbed the hand so hard so if it were my own hand I would have felt the residual gravity. Clearly they didn’t know what to do so they left me alone and I didn’t go to sleep the rest of the night.”

“I know I sound crazy but the hand feeling was so scary and realistic I swear there’s some type of haunted spirit in my house. Also the fact that my dog gets spooked out by a corner with all these flies makes me think so as well. I think there must be some eerie history that makes my house kinda haunted.”

 

My interpretation of the story:

 

Because the storyteller has no knowledge of the history of her home, it is hard to determine a link as to why it would be haunted. What stood out to me in this story, was the actions made by the family dog. Dogs have amazing senses that humans do not, they are able to sense emotions, hear things better, and have a general knowledge of what is going on even though they are unable to communicate with us. I have always thought that dogs have somewhat of a “sixth sense”, that allows them to develop strong relationships with beings of other kinds. The fact that the dog shows caution towards this corner makes me think that there most definitely is a reason for this beyond human knowledge. The dog must sense something that we cannot, making it not want to go in that corner because it knows there is something wrong, although it us unable to communicate that to us. A lot of times, dogs try to communicate with us through their actions, so also, the dog may be trying to tell the family that there is something wrong in that area or in the house as a whole and that they should either move or not be in that area. Another aspect of the story that I found interesting was the tangible physical contact between the teller and the supposed ghost. In many ghost stories, there is no physical contact between the actual person and the ghost. It can be thought that ghosts do not have a real foot in this world and cannot make direct physical contact. Of course, there are other cases of ghost stories that do involve physical contact, but these cases usually have deeper ties than just the random thought of a place being haunted. Indeed, there can be other factors that the teller is unaware of that can support their story, but until more information is discovered, I don’t believe this story can be determined as a true supernatural exchange.