When my grandfather entered my dimly lit room, he moved toward my bed saying in his low jittery voice, "Now I'm going to tell you a story I heard when I was about your age." I was seven at the time and believed everything he told me because I thought he was the smartest and wisest person of all. I was getting excited because he had told me the best stories about little children and Christmas adventures. I always believed the stories because they seemed so true. Even if I told him that I thought that he was lying, he would suddenly add details to make me believe him. Now I still can't say they were a complete fraud because I heard the same things on the news once in a while. So he began to tell the story, "I have always loved this story for some odd reason and now that you're becoming a man, I would like to share it with you." And he continued, "Once upon a time there was a little boy who loved going outside to play with his friends. He was outside from the time he got home from school until dinner, which was usually around 6: 30." I thought this was going to be the worst story he had ever told because he usually gets into the action right away. Even my dad told better stories than this. The only way I could avoid this was to try to go to sleep.

I guess I did doze off, because the next thing I knew he was getting into the action. "Since he had heard almost that same story, he cautiously approached the closet to get his shoes, and then it happened. He was being sucked into the closet and he screamed for help. This boy was never seen again." Then he stood up quietly and left my room with his slight limp, leaving me with only my fright. I threw my pillows at the crack under the door to protect myself from the demons in the closet.

Every day I avoided the closet by jumping from two feet in front of the door to the bed, or climbing up onto the bookcase to get to the drawers where my clothes were.

This continued for awhile until my mom caught me doing it. I think she called my grandfather to help with my problem.The next time he came to see us, he took me upstairs and told me, "I knew you were going to have a problem with this, so I brought you this to put on the handle of the door inside the closet." It was a silver bracelet from Egypt. It looked very jagged and had a little dangling statue on it. He told me it had powers to rid whatever was in the closet. Though, even after he put it on the door, I remained frightened and barely ever used the closet.

Then one day I saw a newscaster say, "If you want your child to believe that there are no such things as ghosts and that he shouldn't be afraid of the dark, you should get this book and read it to him or her..." and I realized that the story was not true. I wondered why my own grandfather, who had never lied to me before, had apparently done so this time. Maybe every story he told me was untrue. But now I look back and think about what happened and laugh about it. It's one of the most memorable things that ever happened to me. n