GHOST STORY, Part 1

[Edited into 2 parts due to Journal entry size limitations.]

Recent chat talk turned to cats who can see ghosts and since it is close to Halloween and I have such a story to tell, here goes:

Back in the early 70's when I was just getting out on my own, I moved into a house with my new roommate, Ellen; it had been her grandmother's who had just passed away the month before we moved in. Upstairs was the attic with 2 small rooms under the A-frame of the house. One of the attic rooms was my bedroom and across the hall the other was storage for the remainder of the grandmother's belongings. Ellen and I had different schedules and busy lives so we rarely saw or spoke to each other.

Soon after moving in strange things began to happen. I would go to sleep at night and have disturbing dreams like I was blind; the darkness was terribly dark and in the dream I would try to turn on lights all through the house but I could not because I was non-corporal and my hands passed through the lamps. Yet I would awaken to find my bedroom table lamp on. This happened over and over and I was very unsettled by both the nightmares and finding the lights on.

Then there were a few times when I felt I was being watched from a corner of the room, one time while I was in the shower.

My cats, Herbie and Racoon, were also acting strange; they would paw at the storage room door across the hall and at times look like they were watching something in the room that I could not see. Herbie in particular seemed to be challenged by 'the presence' and would sometimes race up the stairs like he was chasing something.

One summer day I had the unscreened window in my small room open and was lying on my bed reading when Herbie tore up the stairs at full throttle, and, without stopping or slowing jumped up and across my bed and out the open window. What followed was right out of a cartoon as he ran in place for a moment, carried forward by his momentum and then fell to the ground, brushing tree branches on the way down.  I just knew he was chasing the phantom. Since it was such a small house the distance was not that great and he was unharmed.