Since I was a child, I have had a sixth sense. I used to play with a little four-year-old girl (I was also four) who had once lived in our house in Massapequa, NY. I never learned her name, but I knew she had died of leukemia four months before we moved in. My bedroom was the one which had been hers.

She had green eyes, long straight brown hair, and an olive complexion. As I am an only child, she provided company for me. She was happy all the time. We would play and sing children's songs together in the play room, sit and have tea with all my stuffed animals around the table. We played hide and seek or sat on the edge of my bed and looked out the window. One of our favorite games was jumping down the spiral stair case together, one step at a time. She would jump next to me, or even through me. One day I wanted to trick her. I pretended I was going to jump to the last step with her, but I stopped and laughed because I had made her jump alone. When I looked at her on the bottom step, she turned and smiled at me.

My mother would ask who I was talking to, and I used to tell her, "My friend." Of course, she assumed I meant an imaginary friend, not a spirit. But this was no imaginary friend. I did not have imaginary friends. I was able to entertain myself and I had peers to play with. Later, when another family member saw her, it helped confirm my story.

My parents had heard about my friend, but they didn't believe it was true. Some months later, my parents left to visit my aunt in Atlantic City for the day, while my grandmother stayed with me in the house on Long Island. At my aunt's house, my cousin Anthony walked downstairs and said to my parents, "I didn't know Dina was here." Both my parents responded, "She isn't. She's on the Island with Nanny." My cousin said, "No, I just saw her upstairs walking out of the bathroom with blue shorts and a blue and white striped shirt."

Many years later, someone told me this story. I reminded my father of the little girl who played with me, and who was dressed in blue shorts and a white and blue striped tee-shirt.

When I was five, I was sitting at the kitchen table looking over at the stove. I had a vision of something that had happened to my little friend. Apparently, she had gone to the stove to pick up a pot of boiling water. She wanted a hotdog, but the pan of boiling water slipped and spilled all over her stomach. Later, when I was an adult, I had to ask my parents if I was the one who got scalded.

In college, I would sometimes see her in the mirror or out of the corner of my eye. When I turned, her foggy image would walk away. She always seemed to be the same age as me, as if she had grown-up developmentally along with me. I haven't seen her since college, but at times I still feel her presence.

Dina Macaluso

dinamac@earthlink.net

Posted April 26, 2004