My mother and father had gone to sleep in their separate rooms on the other side of the house, and I had stayed up late in my room to study for an upcoming college exam. The wind outside was rattling the windows, but no storm was brewing and the sea outside my window was relatively calm. I had no thoughts of ghosts or the "Screeching Lady"-only the exam was on my mind. I snapped off the light in my room at about 11:30 p.m. and immediately fell asleep.

The sound of sleigh bells ringing louder and louder woke me. In fact, I could see the bells in my dream. I opened my eyes, thinking possibly the telephone was ringing in the next room. Then I heard someone approaching and assumed it was my mother. The bedroom door was closed, but there, standing in the doorway at the head of my bed, was an old woman wearing a long, white gown. Her ghostly face was cracked and wrinkled, her yellow hair flowed over her shoulders, down to her waist. She did not look at me, but stared straight ahead as if in a trance. I was so frightened that I could not move; when I opened my mouth to yell, nothing came out.

She entered into my room walking straight ahead along the length of my bed. When she reached the foot of the bed, she turned and faced me, but still did not look down at me. Her face seemed troubled, as I recall the apparition, and, like myself, she seemed to want to speak-but she did not utter a sound. She stood by my bed-a transparent old woman with long, stringy hair - as I, in numbed silence, stared up in terror. Finally, my voice returned and I roared defiantly at my intruder. She appeared startled and quickly turned to leave my room. I laid in bed, motionless for a few seconds. I was convinced that I had seen a ghost-possibly the notorious "Screeching Lady". Since my eyes had been open all the time, I therefore concluded it had not been a nightmare. I got out of bed, grabbed one of the knives from a collection I kept displayed on a nearby bookcase, and gingerly opened my bedroom door. What a knife would do against a ghost, I have no idea, but this was my first reaction-I wanted a weapon in my hand. When I entered the living room I saw nothing unusual. I walked through the house, only to find the old lady was nowhere in sight. Looking outside, I noticed there was a full moon.

At this point, you might conclude that the apparition was probably caused by my own mind working overtime, fatigued at studying for the exam; however, the story does not end her.

While searching the house for my ghostly visitor, now more angry than fearful at her intrusion, I heard my mother calling my name from her bedroom. I opened the door and found her sound asleep. I shook her awake and asked her why she was calling for me. She answered that she was dreaming and did not know why she was calling me. I then sat on the edge of her bed and told her of my experience. "That is very strange," she said, "for it was nineteen years ago this very day that your grandmother died. I was pregnant with you at the time," said my mother, "and your father's mother was an old woman who knew she was soon going to die. Her last wish was that she would see you before she died, but you were born six months later."

Was this a visit from my paternal grandmother? Or was it the "Screeching Lady" of Marblehead, who had experienced a horrible death on a nearby beach some 300 years earlier? I don't know the answer, but whoever she was, she thoroughly frightened me-and apparently I frightened her, too, for she has never returned.