"WHAT ARE YOU SO SCARED OF?"

Having a newborn, I knew my sleep was going to be jeopardized. I was definitely prepared for little McCrea to get up several times during the night. However, McCrea is sleeping a continuous 6 to 7 hours and like clockwork wakes up around 5:00 a.m. I have been so happy and feel lucky that he is sleeping so well.

Lorelei, on the other hand, has been getting up several times a night. She comes into our room climbs into our bed and complains of how scared she is. So instead of a newborn waking me up, I get my four-year-old waking me up instead. She is even scared in the daytime, too. She doesn't want to go into her room unless I go with her. She is also very concerned about whether the doors are locked in our house. I always tell her that they are and that she has nothing to be afraid of because mommy, daddy and even Uncle Steve are here to protect her.

After days and days of trying to come up with solutions, like leaving the lights on all night, leaving the music on, putting her stuffed animals all over her bed to protect her and praying for the bad dreams and nightmares to go away, we decided to start punishing her for coming into our bed every night. We thought if she loses privileges she would stop. We would give consequences, like no TV, no movies, no play dates, no dessert. Nothing seemed to work.

I finally asked, "What are you SO scared of?" She went into a long, detailed, explanation about the "shadows" that she keeps seeing at night. It was a little creepy and scary as she told this story. She talked about these shadows in such vivid detail. They had no eyes, they were small like her and they were grey. She described them like a ghost from a Halloween costume. She went on to explain that they looked like the shadows from your body cast by the sun on the ground. She even showed me as she walked by the light and pointed to her own shadow on the ground. However, these types of "shadows" float in the air. She said there were sometimes two, sometimes three of them. Sometimes they stayed in the hall watching her or sometimes they would come into her room at night. Okay, I was scared for her too! I had no idea where this was coming from.

She has never seen anything scary besides Disney movies, like Nemo or Monsters Inc. But this was nothing like her nightmares about "Bruce the Shark." This was serious! She was talking about ghosts! Where does a four-year-old come up with a story like this? How are we to protect her against ghosts? It was a little freaky hearing my little girl explain about these shadows. I guess I won't be punishing my little girl anymore. What do we do in this situation? How do we get rid of ghosts? What can we do to make her feel safe and sleep in her room again? I don't know where she could come up with such a story if it wasn't true. But I wasn't completely convinced about it either and didn't believe it could be ghosts. I knew she wasn't lying, but thought these shadows were something cast by the nightlights in our house.

Well, two or three nights later she came into our room around 2:00 a.m. She was so scared, she said, "Mom, the shadows are in your room." I asked, "Where are they?" She said, "Over by the closets." I looked but couldn't see anything, but decided while I'm up I'm going to go to the bathroom, so she followed me in there. As I was sitting down to go to the bathroom, she hid herself in my shirt. Right then I saw the "shadows" too. I couldn't believe my eyes. It came towards me and then disappeared. It was a good thing I was already sitting on the toilet, I probably would have peed my pants. Was I going crazy? I know I was wide awake at that point and blinked many times to make sure this was true. I saw a ghost! It was exactly how she explained it, no joke. It was the consistency of Jello and kind of transparent. It was a strange feeling. Although it startled me at first, I was grateful I had the experience to see it. My daughter was being haunted by ghosts and I didn't believe her, UNTIL NOW!

We then went back to our bed and said a prayer. After that she said she didn't see them anymore and fell fast asleep. I finally went back to bed too. I didn't wake Chad up yet. I waited until 5:00 a.m when McCrea woke up for his next feeding. He couldn't believe it and couldn't go back to bed after that. We were all very disturbed. Chad called our church leaders and discussed with them what we needed to do. Chad blessed and dedicated our home and then gave each one of us a Priesthood blessing. We finally felt at peace. It has been about a week now and Lorelei came to me yesterday and said, "Mom, I don't see the shadows anymore." What a blessing it is to have the Priesthood in our lives. I hope we will not have any more encounters with spirits or ghosts, but if we do, we know we have the power to overcome it.

Every night during our prayers, we pray to have the spirit and to have the Holy Ghost with us in our home. Lorelei objects to us saying this now. She does not want spirits or any ghosts in our home. Although I've explained to her about the Holy Ghost and the good spirit, I completely understand her protesting to this. I will have to rephrase that from now on!