I was born and raised in central California. My family moved four times, each time to a bigger house. I then moved five times during college years, another five times as a young adult, and finally twice more to my current home. Luckily the last move has lasted twenty-five years. I am considering one more move in the next few years to be closer to the coast. I really REALLY dislike moving...
I was a year and a half when my parents purchased our first house – and it was haunted! Maybe it didn't start out that way, but once they put in a pool, weird stuff started happening. I remember many unexplained events in that house, including my mom and I seeing a ghost of my pet cat walk through the room when I was about four or five years old. We were watching night time TV while my dad was away at work. I noticed the cat walk from the kitchen, through the room, into the hall and back to my brother's room where he was sleeping in his crib. Shocked, I glanced at my mom who was staring wide-eyed toward the hall. We both jumped up and ran back to make sure my brother was ok and noticed his closet door was open. We NEVER left it open because it scared him to sleep without it being closed. Oh, and by the way, his closet has the only access panel to the crawlspace under the house, which was actually moved and slightly open that night. Yeah, explain all that. Luckily, my brother was still fine and asleep in his crib.
There were also "little people" that resembled three to four inch tall, muted-color, fuzzy, flat gingerbread shaped men (and a few females!) who would silently watch me from my closet, my window shutters, and the bookcases in the TV room... ugh. They never did anything to me nor were they threatening in any way, but it was weird. Even more skin-crawling was the time in college when my cousin visited me and we were talking about that house. She asked if I ever saw anything weird and between the two of us, we described those "little people." She had seen them, too! While I am glad we moved from that house, I also admit I'd love to be able to go explore it again.
I was nine years old when we moved again. Our second move was quite a transition. The new house was being built and our haunted house was sold before the new house was finished. We lived in our motorhome parked at my grandparent's house for a little over six months. THAT was awful: too cramped, no place to play, and we didn't have all our stuff! Once we were finally able to move into the new house life improved for our family. My brother and I didn’t have neighborhood friends since most of the neighbors around us were adults with no kids. We went to school in another city that was a 40 minute drive away, so for us to see school friends required sleep-overs and that didn’t happen often.
My family moved again when I was thirteen. Since we moved during my high school years, it resulted in my attendance at three different high schools in two different cities. Given that experience, I vowed if I ever had kids, I would make it my life's goal to give them a stable home to enable them the chance to experience uninterrupted high school years. Just one shining example of how your childhood shapes your standards. This move was the last time I lived with my family since it was from this home that I left for college at seventeen.
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