What is the story you tell that no one ever believes?

There is a woman that has followed my family around for years.

It all started when I was younger(12 years old), my family and I went out to an old friend of the family's house for a cook out/ get together thing. The family friend (Joan) was older than my parents, by about 10 years and this property that she now lived on was acquired through a divorce many years earlier. This was the first time my entire family had been to Joan's property. My entire family being my mother, father, older sister, brother in law, niece, myself, my little brother, and my little sister.

We were all hanging out, there were a few other family friends and relatives that joined in on the festivities that night, you know, adults were drinking and all the kids were playing around. Once it had started to get dark we were all packing up and getting ready to leave and my parents told each one of us to use the restroom before we left because we weren't stopping on the way home. (Joan lived almost two hours away.) When I went to use the restroom it was the first, and last time I was ever in Joan's house.

My older sister and I went together because I didn't know where the bathroom was. We were walking down a long hallway that went down one side of Joan's house. It had 4 bathrooms and 5 bedrooms all coming off of this one hallway. I'm not talking about the average sized hallway here either, this woman's house was almost 7,000 square feet, it was absolutely massive. I remember it was dark, there wasn't a lot of light in the hallway and it kinda creeped me out. My sister showed me the restroom we were allowed to use and I went first. I came out of the restroom and then it was her turn. I waited in the hallway and I remember a lot of pictures covering the walls of the hallway. I don't know if something caught my eye or if I just happened to look towards the end of the hallway, but when I did, she was there. This was the first time I had seen The Woman.

I don't even remember what happened next, I remember crying and running outside without my sister and explaining what I saw. I remember my mom laughed at me, she LAUGHED AT ME. That was it, I was laughed at and told to get in the van. So we were on the way home, all the girls in one vehicle and all the guys in another one. My mom was driving and my older sister was in the passenger seat and I was sitting behind my older sister. We were almost home and we came to a stop sign getting ready to turn onto our street, I looked out the window to my right, and there she was. Just standing there, looking into the van. I remember looking away and then looking back as we were turning and she was gone again. This time I didn't say anything, and I had just pretended like it didn't happen.

Fast forward a few months later, it was dinner time. My dad and I were sitting at the table and we were facing our patio and backyard. My little brother and sister were facing the inside of the house and my mom was still in the kitchen and as she was walking to the table she gasped. I looked up, and outside, in my backyard was The Woman. Once again, she was just there. Just standing there. Staring. My dad told my brother and sister to sit still and I remember them trying to get up and look around and my dad slammed his fist on the table to keep them from moving. We all just sat there. My mom, dad and myself just staring back. The Woman then disappeared for a split second and then showed back up on our patio. She was now standing, and staring at us from 8 feet away.

I couldn't do anything but stare back which seemed to last a lifetime. This was the first time I had really gotten a good look at her. She was dressed in clothes that seemed to be from the early 1900's. It was a long sleeve dress, with a sash? around the waist. She is also wearing a big sun hat with a ribbon matching the sash tied into a bow. Her hair, neatly pinned back underneath the hat but framing her face slightly, it wasn't pinned back very tight. She looked neat, and clean, except for her face. Her face had decayed away, and the same with her hands. There was no flesh, it was all skeleton but her face and her hands were dirty. Just like if you were to dig up a casket that was compromised to see that the earth had invaded the coffin. Even though The Woman didn't have eyes, I know she was looking at me. I was terrified, and then she disappeared.

For a very long period of time, no one discussed or brought up the woman. It was my senior year of high school that I decided to ask my mom. Every once and awhile I would think about The Woman and I had always felt like I was crazy, and that I had to have made up the whole thing, until one day I just asked my mom.

Me - "Do you remember that night at Joan's house when we had that cook out?"

Mom - "Yes, why?"

Me - "Is it just me, or did something happen that night?"

Mom - "Oh, you mean that lady that followed us home?"

WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK

I ended up asking my mom what The Woman looked like, and she described her just as I had remembered her. My mother told me that the property that Joan lived on used to belong to a really wealthy man that was in the business of horses, selling or breeding expensive horses, something of that nature. She also told me that he used part of his house as a brothel for the men who would be visiting his ranch.

My mother believes in all of that kind of stuff, so she speculates that The Woman was one of the workers and that she was killed there. Apparently, in 1997 Joan had built a two story barn with an apartment and office upstairs from the stables and stuff so when they were digging up the ground or doing whatever they needed to, idk if they were just leveling things or what, but they found 9 female bodies that were just thrown in the ground, one on top of another. They also found a 2 babies that they believed to have been newborns and two of the women had been pregnant when they died.

So, I wasn't crazy, My mother backed me up, and eventually my father talked to me about it as well.

In 2008, the month I graduated my brother and my father were walking down the street with our three dogs and they were two houses down, in front of a house that was foreclosed on and hadn't been occupied for several years, and she was in the front yard staring at them. Again, just there, just staring. My dad told my brother not to worry about and they headed home. We then shared everything with my brother that we had seen. He thought it was cool.

In 2011, my sister was on her way back from softball practice and at the same stop sign I had seen The Woman, right around the corner from my house, my sister had seen The Woman for the first time.

In 2014, I was on my way to the hospital to see my grandfather with both of my sisters. We were going over a bridge that runs over a shallow waterway with small little island like things when the tide is low, and there she was.

My mother ended up going to several mediums, psychics, or whatever about The Woman and a lot of them said this spirit is attached to our family blah blah whatever. Well, the last person my mother spoke to told her that The Woman is like a warning, not a bad omen so to speak, but she always is there when bad things are about to happen.

In 2002, the first sighting of The Woman, we lost my maternal grandmother the month we first saw her from something completely preventable if she had just gone to the hospital just days earlier than she did.

In 2008, the month I graduated, my mother lost her job that she had for almost 20 years. We lost the house, and a vehicle, and my mother still has not been employed for more than 5 months at a time working dead end jobs.

The summer of 2011 we lost both of my paternal grandparents in a car accident.

In March of 2014, my grandfather died due to complications from a feeding tube. Someone at the hospital accidentally put his feeding tube into his lung, they caught it early, even still it caused complications and that is what he ultimately passed away from.

tl;dr There is a ghost woman that follows my family around and shows up when shitty things are about to happen.

The only people who have seen The Woman are Joan and my family. No one believes me or my family.

/r/AskReddit Thread