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Babysitting Spooks
(NOTE: The following is the second of four tales sent in by latoya. the other 3 are titled Scared Witless, The Graveyard House, and Strange Feelings...)
When I was approximately thirteen or fourteen years old in 1992 in Paulsboro, South (New) Jersey, I started babysitting for a little beauty named Krystal. She wasn’t a difficult child to sit for, she was adorable. It was her mother that I had a problem with. KC was a witch. Literally.
I didn’t think much of her claiming to be a witch. A lot of people claim to be things they aren’t. While babysitting in her apartment however, my hair was always standing on end. I always had the feeling someone was watching me or standing over me. Once I could have sworn someone had tapped me on my shoulder, only to turn and find no one behind me. When I went into certain rooms, particularly K.C.’s bedroom and the basement, I would hear a strange jingling. Like little bells jingling ever so lightly. I tried to ignore it, pretend I didn’t hear it, and as weird as this may sound, I always had the feeling that whatever was doing it could read my mind, and was well aware that I was aware of it.
One day, my boyfriend (who later became my husband) and I were both babysitting together, and we had about seven neighborhood kids in the apartment, playing hide and go seek. J and I were in completely different parts of the apartment and both heard the soft jingle. We discussed it briefly, but let it be at the time.
Another time, while I was upstairs tending to Krystal before her bedtime, I went into K.C.’s room to get some clean pajamas that were in a basket on her bed. J made a comment about a mask K.C. had in her room. I remembered the mask. It had originally belonged to my neighbor, but she had thought it was evil and gave it to K.C. I was terrified of it, I had no idea she still had it. It was from Jamaica, and its eyes seemed to follow a person no matter where you walked in its view. It was said to have been possessed by a protection spirit. We talked about the mask for a few minutes and left the room. J went downstairs, I put Krystal to bed. I went into K.C.’s room to turn off her light, and I noticed that the mask was no longer where I had last seen it, but in a different corner of the bedroom. I knew J had not moved it. I stared at it in horror for a brief moment, and in that moment, the soft jingle sounded. I ran downstairs.
Several times after that, I had strange experiences with the mask; the soft jingle that would sometimes last for a couple of hours, and more than once I heard low murmured voices. I must have had a high tolerance level at that age, because I kept babysitting in the same apartment with that mask.
One summer day, K.C. left me in charge of Krystal once again, but before she left, I had been on the phone with a friend, but I could hear the conversation going on in the other room. K.C. and her boyfriend were talking about some kind of doll. I heard her say “Cool, it can astral project itself!” I was worried, but thought maybe I misheard or misunderstood the whole conversation. I was still on the phone when they left, and Krystal was napping.When I hung up the phone, before going into the living room, I heard paper rustling. If it had been a windy day, if I hadn’t just let the cat out ten minutes before, and if Krystal wasn’t napping, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Right away, I remembered her conversation about a doll. I was terrified. I didn’t want to walk through the living room, and I didn’t want to play detective to find out where the noise was coming from. I then started to hear the ashtray hitting the table, as if someone had picked it up and put it back down. At that moment, I felt as if someone else other than me – and the usual unseen forces – were standing in the kitchen. I ran outside and sat on the steps for almost two hours until I heard Krystal wake up.
Instead of walking through the apartment, I walked around the whole building and went in the front door and straight up the stairs. When Krystal and I got downstairs, I took a deep breath and stepped into the living room. I looked directly at the doll, which looked like something out of a horror movie, but did not go near it. I took Krystal outside to play for the rest of the day until her mother came home.
After about a year of babysitting Krystal, I could no longer stand to do it in K.C.’s apartment. My nerves just couldn’t handle anymore. Fortunately, I had a friend who was just as weird that I could hand the job over to. She was pretty cool with the ghostly happenings there. As for me, I stayed away from that apartment, and from the witch.
-latoya.
