My Ghost Hero

Oregon note: The following story has been edited for correctness and clarity.

This is a reader contribution from our reader, Patricia, who can be reached at orchidance3@aol.com

This is an interesting account of how a voice warned Patricia of an hostile intruder. Was it divine intervention or help from the nether world?

I am now 55 years old, mother of 4, and this is an absolutely true story of an event that happened to me fifty years ago at age 15. Due to family problems, I was forced to run away from home and moved from place to place, wherever I could find shelter in my hometown. I did volunteer work for a local community program who eventually purchased an old house for the purpose of making a new community center and health clinic.

Prior to the work being done to renovate it, I was secretly given permission to stay there at night. It was an old house, formerly the home of a man and woman who owned a liquor store on the property next door. The wife of liquor store owner had been killed in a home invasion robbery and consequently the husband sold the property and store as a result. I was too young to know of the incident, or when it occurred, I simply learned of this through rumors.

So each night I would go to the property to sleep, as it had a furnished bedroom and oddly enough i seemed to feel comfortable there. One thing I did notice is that my bedroom always seemed warm and cozy even though it was the dead of winter and the home did not have any heat. The electricity was working because work was about to be started on the building but I also noticed that my bedroom seemed highly illuminated, overly bright.

One night I arrived to bed down accompanied by a friend who offered to stay with me until I was ready to go to sleep. After a short while, my friend left and I started to go to sleep. All of a sudden I heard a frantic voice say "get up and check the door". Being rather sleepy, I dismissed it at the time thinking it was my imagination. I do not know if I heard it with my ears, or in my mind. At which point, the voice became more frantic saying "hurry, hurry, he's getting in, hurry check the doors". This time I sprung from the bed without much thought of where the voice came from and ran down the staircase in total panic and fear.

As if being lead by someone, I ran straight into the kitchen, and to my horror, I saw a hand reaching through a broken window pane, attempting to undo a chain latch lock on the inside. Without thinking I reached down on the floor and picked up a piece of metal piping that was left there from renovations being done on the room, and proceeded to beat the hand that was reaching in. I hit it several times before the person managed to pull it out because the window pane was very small and he had difficulty in his panic, removing his hand. I heard the person yell and run off.

As the person passed by a floodlight in the rear parking lot, I recognized him as the only known heroin addict in our town. I had difficulty sleeping that night but eventually I was overcome by the warmth of my room and a feeling of comfort and safety and drifted off to sleep. I did not believe in ghosts but I have no other explanation for the woman's voice that franticly urged me on. I think she it was the wife of the liquor store owner and did not want what happened to her to happen to me. I just know that I will be forever grateful to whoever or whatever it was.