THE HAUNTINGS OF RACHEL

BY PASTOR SWOPE

There are some people who seem to attract the paranormal. They have a lifetime of incidents both intriguing and sometimes terrifying that they can refer to on any given subject of the unexplained. Be it ghostly hauntings, demonic influence or oppression, UFO encounters, or even cryptozoological sightings.

Rachel was that type of girl, and she had a wide variety of experiences with various entities since a young child. I met her last year at a business meeting, when by chance I mentioned my appreciation for unexplained phenomena. She was a waitress who had overheard a conversation between a colleague and myself on the subject of local hauntings. She was serving our lunch and as she laid the last platter on the table she could not help but stand there and listen. After a few moments she weighted in on the subject.

“You know I could tell you so many things.” She said haltingly, "must be because our town is built on an old Indian village or something but there are so many things I’ve seen around here. In fact there’s a ghost of a little girl that is harassing me, she’s been making my life miserable for years.” She was going to explain but as the restaurant was filled, duties called her away. When she came again to fill our coffee I handed her my business card and asked her to write me of her experiences. It took her a few months, but she did finally write and not only was it quite lengthy, the encounters that she related in the e-mail were quite dramatic and terrifying.

Her experiences with the paranormal began when she was a young child. She grew up in an old farmhouse in Elgin Pa. She would often wait for the school bus alone on the dirt road in front of her house, and one early twilight morning as she stood in the sacked snow that had just been plowed to the edge of the road she saw something across the field. At first it was just a dull dark shape that seemed to be shifting in the driven snow, but it grew in density and purpose as it seemed to make its way to her bus stop. As it neared the ridge of snow piled on the opposite side of the road the shape distinctly looked like that of an old lady trudging through the knew deep snow, and young Rachel was just about to run across the street and offer her assistance when the shape just blinked out of existence. But before it did so, the young girl was sure it was an old lady- she even saw the polka dotted scarf that covered her hair and the tattered grey jacket very clearly. She remembers the sight to this day. As the bus came moments later, she sat on a seat facing where she last saw the old woman, but all she saw was flat snow covered farm fields without a person in sight as far as the eye could see.

                                                            


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