I would like to submit an experience I had as a child. This happened twenty-six years ago in the home of my very close friend. I was nine years old at the time and her and I had become close friends since we both were new to the neighbourhood and starting the new school together.

Her mother lived in a townhouse complex Drive in Clarkson, Ontario.

I lived just down the way from her so we would spend practically all of our time together, joined at the hips so to speak.

Her house was closer to our school so for lunch we would go there during the non winter seasons. What I remember is that we would essentially open the door quickly, run up the stairs to the kitchen, hurriedly make a sandwich, grab a drink and then immediately take these to the front step to eat. We would not spend a great deal of time in the house. There was no noises or anything that would have spooked us , it just seemed that we should not spend time in the house. Oddly enough, we never spoke of it either.

Weekends were normally sleepovers. We never had anything happen before this incident or after it.

Being that we were only nine years old, we did not talk of anything other than current tv crushes and the "yucky" boys at school and normal nine-year-old girl banter. Paranormal things were not on our minds.

That evening, her brother was staying at a friends house and her mother had retired to bed. We were in her room going over all the important worldly things around us such as the raised prices of candy bars and how much we enjoyed the Bob and Doug Mackenzie album, when we decided to go downstairs to the kitchen to get a drink.

The stairs that descended to the kitchen were split in half with a landing , as we were on the landing and me being the first one with my foot on the first or second step to the second set of risers, a gust of cold air seemed to pass through us, I know that I had been frozen to a stop and since Melissa did not bump into me I could only assume the same of her. As soon as the cold gust went through I saw the vague shape, like a mist, run down the stairs in front and then make its way down the next set of stairs leading to the main floor.

Without any words we both turned around and scurried up the stairs into her room, closed the door behind us and jumped into her bed pulling the covers up to our chin. We wound up facing each other and laying there quietly listening for any noise that may suggest that whatever had passed us on the stairs was outside of the room.

Nothing happened after that, and we both must have just drifted off to sleep.

What is most odd is that neither of us talked of the incident. We continued to do sleepovers, although I know that we never left the bedroom at night alone, including bathroom visits.

The first time that we ever talked about it was almost twenty years after it had happened. I had moved to Niagara Falls and she had been in Windsor completing her law degree.

We were on the back deck of my home when she suddenly asked me if I remembered what happened when we were at her house so many years ago. Both of us had some laughs over it, not that we discounted what had happened but mostly because we seemed to have never talked of it. We both came to the conclusion that we must have collectively thought that if we just don't talk about it , it won't happen again.

That was one of the first paranormal experiences I had. It is the one that stands out so clearly even though all of the years passed since that night.