the black lady

When I was young, my family moved to a small house on the outskirts of a small town in Ohio. From the back yard you could see a set of railroad tracks, the same ones that Lincoln's memorial train traveled. The house had only one floor, though my parents planned to turn the attic into a second. That first night I thought I heard someone in the attic above, even though I could see my parents sleeping on a sofa in the living room. After that, things got more than a little strange.
I had a collection of toy animals, and, one night when I was playing with them, the first truly scary thing happened. I had put a toy rabbit about two feet away from me, facing down and away from me. I turned and picked up another toy, and when I looked back at the rabbit, it was almost right up against me, sitting up, looking right at me. That night I threw the rabbit away. My mother never told me this until after we moved away, but whenever she was cooking in the kitchen, she would see something dart across the living room, but when she turned around, nothing was there.
My brother didn't like his room, because the attic doorway was in it, so we switched. This room not only had the attic doorway, but also two pocket doors that opened to the living room. At night I would keep these open so that if I needed something, my parents would hear me. My parents put a rocking chair in my room to make space for a computer. The first night it was in there was the first night I saw the lady.
I was sleeping, but woke up for some reason and looked over at the rocking chair. In it sat the black figure of a woman, like a silhouette, only solid. She was wearing a black dress and hat and she was knitting. Her chin and nose were vrey long. Thinking this was merely a shadow, I leaned closer to it, and, almost giving me a heart attack, it turned and looked at me. I yelled for my dad, who came in and told me that he didn't see it and that it was probably just a shadow. Right.
In my parents' room was the door that led to the basement. When I was little I was afriad of storms and would sleep in my parents' bed with my mother if there was one at night. Many of these nights I would hear someone walking through the kitchen, into the bedroom and down the stairs. I would wake my mom and ask her if she heard it, and the answer was always 'no'. I was thoroughly convinced that the house was haunted, but I don't think anyone believed me. Then one night, my mother said, she woke up and saw a little man who looked like a gremlin, sitting on the edge of her bed, looking at her. By the time she got my father to wake up, it was gone. My father, the skeptic, told her she was dreaming the whole thing.
If my brother ever saw or heard anyhting, he never told us, and if my dad did, he would probably just think it was a shadow or the house settling. Things in my room kept moving unexplainably. Barbie dolls would move by themselves, a container of crayons in the middle of my desk fell off, papers would be in one place one minute and in another the next. The black shadow lady was still knitting every night and footsteps could still be heard in the attic. Finally after seven months of this, we moved across town to a blissfully unhaunted house.
I think my mother still wasn't sure if the house was haunted or not until her friend moved into the house. We never told her or her sons what things happened, my mother only told her friend that the house had something in it. A few months later, my mother asked her friend if she had seen or heard anyhting. Her friend told her that her son had come home from college for the weekend and slept on the sofa. This sofa was facing my old room and the doors were open. He told his mom that he had seen a black lady, shadow like, with a hat, long chin and nose, walking around in that room. The next night they closed the doors, but she was in the living room, outside the doors. Her other son would hear footsteps in the attic and basement. My mother asked her friend if she had seen anyhting and she said that she and her husband saw something white go by the window. They jumped up and looked out, but nothing white was there. She also heard a scratching noise at her bed, but was too afraid to look.
We no longer live in that small town in Ohio. We haven't been there in almost four years, but I know that the black lady is still there, walking around and wondering where her chair is so she can sit and knit in it.