(CLARKSVILLENOW) CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – Along with his sisters, 19-year-old Omar Gutierrez grew up in the Providence area of Clarksville with another young girl: A ghostly child who appeared to several family members. The hauntings began when Gutierrez was in the fifth or sixth grade in a small house that was built in 1955 on Adkins Street. “I started seeing a little girl in the house,” Gutierrez says. “And she kind of resembled my little sister, Eileen.” The first time Gutierrez saw the ghost he was in his bedroom and was so convinced – at first – that the figure was his sister that he called out, “Eileen!” Then he heard what sounded like “a faint crying noise in the background.” So he screamed the name five or six more times. This woke up his father, who – when Gutierrez described his sighting – told him he was imagining things. Despite the apparition’s face – which Gutierrez says appeared as a “black mask” – he can still clearly describe it today. “The hair was about shoulder length,” he says. “It looked like she was carrying something, like a toy or a baby doll or a teddy bear. It looked like it was a person; it looked three-dimensional, it had a shape to it. And it sounds so basic, but it looked like she had on a pajama dress.” This last detail, he says, is what made him think the apparition was his sister, as she slept in such a dress at the time. “Ever since then, I was kind of scared to sleep in that room,” Gutierrez says. The second time Gutierrez saw the ghostly girl he was walking through the kitchen, just past the microwave, headed toward the laundry room. “It looked like a girl, of the same height, standing by the washer,” he says. “After that, I was terrified.” Gutierrez was so terrified, in fact, that he took to sleeping on the hardwood floor next to his parents’ bed at times. At other times, he snuck into his other sister’s bedroom or slept on the pullout sofa in the living room. A 19-year-old Omar Gutierrez was inspired to draw the ghostly girl he had seen. In Spanish, the writing on the picture says, “My guardian angel, my sweet companion, forsake me not, neither night nor day.” /Photo courtesy of Omar Gutierrez Soon other witnesses joined Gutierrez in these paranormal sightings. He says his sister saw the girlish apparition in the kitchen one night as their mother made hot chocolate at the stove. He explains: “My sister said she got a cup and put it in the microwave … and when she went to close the door, the little girl was standing at the opening between the kitchen and the dining room. She screamed and opened the microwave door again so she couldn’t see it.” That night the siblings told their mother about the situation. Gutierrez says that their mother then confessed: “I didn’t want to scare you guys, but I’ve seen her before.” Like Gutierrez, his mother also thought the ghost was the young sister, Eileen, the first time she saw it while cooking in the kitchen early one morning. Gutierrez says, “She turned around and saw a girl come out of the laundry room and walk toward the living room.” As Gutierrez had done during his first sighting, his mother also screamed, “Eileen!” His mother saw the ghost a second time, in the middle of the night, holding something in her arms and wearing a nightgown. The family decided to move out of the house, Gutierrez says. The ghost was “the primary reason.” But that wasn’t the end of it. During the moving process, yet another sister saw an apparition – which she called a “monster” – in the kitchen. Gutierrez says his mother began to think that they should offer the spirit food, as she so often appeared in the kitchen. Gutierrez remembers his response. “I was like, ‘Hell no! I didn’t want to talk to a spirit of any type. Mom figured it might have been a situation where a little girl starved, because it seemed like a lot of times she was in the kitchen.” Even years after moving to a different house, Gutierrez says he felt the spirit again. During his senior year of high school his AP art teacher assigned him to tell a story in twelve pieces of art. Within the series, Gutierrez drew the ghostly girl standing in a doorway. “While I was working on that piece at 2 a.m. … it sounded like somebody opened up a door in the house and walked toward the kitchen.” Gutierrez pulled out a pocketknife and – just in case it was another paranormal visit – began recording with his cell phone. He never heard any steps of retreat, but the next morning when he listened to the recording, he heard strange sounds. “It was quiet – that empty space sound – and the next thing you know there’s a muffled sound, like outside of a car with the windows rolled down … that muffled wind sound.” Today, Gutierrez wonders if the haunting was tied to one residence, or if the ghost can travel, as it seemed to do when he was drawing it. Regardless, he says, to this day that house on Adkins Street gives him the creeps. Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.