A GHOST/DUPPY STORY!!!

I once had a friend who lived on Long Island, New York, she was Chinese Jamaican who had married an Italian guy and they had two children, we were friends from high school. She invited me over for a weekend and I decided to go along with my three year old daughter and I was also pregnant. The baby father had gone away for a while and so I was lonely and thought why not, and so I went. After all the years I had lived in America, who knew I would see a real duppy/ghost in America. Sure we had glimpses of them when I lived with my parents in an Italian neighborhood in New York, but those flittering ghost would scramble throughout our apartment as soon as they heard our keys turning in the locks signaling our return home. All we saw were shadows running wildly. There was this time when my sisters and I had come home from a party about four in the morning, we had forgotten our keys and so our mother opened the door for us. She always told us that if we came home late we should walk in the house backwards into the house and by doing so ghost could not enter, probably this worked with olden days duppy but these nowadays ghost fear no one. I do not remember if we did this that night or morning I should say but as I settled beside one of the sisters to sleep, I saw a head peeping at me from out in the kitchen, I screamed and it disappeared. On cue my mother came out of her room flashing some kind of liquid and cussing us for bringing ghost into her house by coming home at that hour. It was scary, very scary!..Ghost always fascinated me, and that is a funny thing for me to say since I made it no secret that while growing up I was a coward. It was like the song, I Always Feel Like Someone Is Watching Me, did this guy know me..lol..ok on with the story..So we arrived in Long Island and my friend met us at the train station, little did I know that I would have an experience of a life time…Foreign duppy!!

She had a lovely house, a ranch styled home with plenty yard space, there were five bedrooms of which only three were furnished, they had just bought the house. Her two small children slept in their own room in the pitch dark. I was horrified when I saw her put the baby down, without him being asleep, turn the lights out and close the door. The house had a dark and gloomy feeling about i despite the many windows letting in the sun, and we were to sleep in the den where the television was on the pull out couch. From the first day I arrived I had a creepy feeling, like I was being watched, observed,I said nothing to my friend. I had arrive on a Sunday and that night when everyone went to sleep, I laid there in the dimly lit room with my baby laying beside me and the other one tucked safely in my tummy staring up at the ceiling, feeling like I was not alone. Sunday night came and went, an eerie feeling was present all night, Monday the same, Tuesday nothing changed, Wednesday was nail biting night. I was to leave the next Sunday and each day I prayed for the Sunday to come. I was tired in the days from lack of sleep, because I knew that in the days and at nights someone was watching me, some non physical being. I felt a presence, a dark and sinister presence and I worried for me and my children, and also the poor little babies who were in their darkened room. How could I tell my friend this?..her and her husband would probably say I was mad…so I kept my worries and fears to myself and repeated the 91st psalms nightly and drew my little girl tightly to me on that pull out bed praying for Sunday to come!.

Thursday night came and that son of a bitch decided it was time to show himself to me, and so he did. All those other nights not sleeping finally caught up to me and my body said “you can stay up, but I am sleeping!” and it was not long before I laid down that I was out. I jumped up from my sleep, as if someone had tapped me urgently, startling me.The DVD was right in front of me and the time said 5:08, I squinted as I looked at the blue light which told the time as it became clearer, but I became aware that someone was standing to the left of me, so I turned my head to look. There I saw a white man in a blue Hawaiian looking floral shirt, he only had an upper torso there was no bottom to him, no waist or no legs. He had dark curly hair and a full on black beard, much like Abraham Lincoln, he did not look at me, rather he stared off into space it seemed like. I am Jamaican, I speak English when I am speaking to non patois speaking people or professional Jamaicans, but when I think, I think in my language the ever so colorful, very funny patois, so in my head as I stared at this ghost, unable to move or take my eyes off him, all I heard in my head was JESUS CHRIST AH DUPPY, AH DUPPY!!…IT’S A GHOST, IT’S A GHOST!!..How this must have amused him..lol..then he slowly disappeared. I sat there stunned at what I had just witnessed until nine O’clock when my friend woke up. It was after we had breakfast that I told her what happened. She was worried and said she would check around about the history of the house. Astonishingly I slept like a baby after that, my fear left along with Mr Ghost and when Sunday came we left for home. It was a year after that I received a call from my friend who had now along with her sister met the Long Island Duppy/Ghost…I will tell you this horror tale a next time.

Tí ìtàkùn kò bá já ọwọ́ ò lè ba ọ̀kẹ́rẹ́. / 
If the creeping plant isn’t broken, the squirrel can’t be caught. 

[Cause and effect; one thing ultimately leads to another] Yoruba Proverb