Hello, everyone. Here is my first contribution to ghost-stories, but certainly not my last!

This is a story that is well known in my family, and is just accepted as true. Considering the character of the people involved (my aunt -the wife of my father's brother-and her parents and grandparents), no one has ever thought to question otherwise.

About twenty-five years ago (my aunt would have been around 37 years old), my aunt's grandmother died, leaving only her grandfather and mother alive. For a while, both the grandfather and the mother moved in with Aunt Mary and Uncle Donald (fyi: names have been changed).

Aunt Mary's grandfather and grandmother had been married for 50 years, and had moved to America together from Poland. They were extremely close, to say the least, and it was a great loss to the grandfather.

Ok, enough background.

One night, about a month after the funeral, Aunt Mary was sitting in her breakfast room. Her grandfather came down the back steps into the room and said that he had had a bad dream. He said, "I had a dream that Pauline was speaking to me. She kept saying, I'm cold, I'm cold, over and over." My aunt said that he was a very practical man, and not prone to histrionics, and that it was kind of strange that he would even mention such a dream, let alone get out of bed at 1 a.m. and tell anyone about it.

Grandmother Pauline returned to her husband's dream every night for the next two weeks. Every night, the same thing over and over: "I'm cold. I'm cold."

In the middle of the night after two weeks of the same dream, the grandfather woke up and got dressed. He woke up my aunt and uncle and said, "I'm going to check on Pauline. I can't take it anymore." The cemetery where Pauline had been interred had a groundskeeper living right on the propery. The grandfather woke the guy up in the middle of the night because he could not find his way in the dark (he was awful spry for an older gentleman, that's for sure!). He just pounded on the groundskeeper's door or something until he came out.

The groundskeeper grabbed a flashlight, and they headed to her burial site. The headstone had not arrived yet, so there was only loose dirt and the moldering flowers from the funeral covering the grave. Well, not exactly. Some vandals had dug out all the dirt covering the grave, and the top of Grandmother Pauline's coffin was completely exposed! (To this day I can't imagine how this could be considered a fun thing to do by the vandals). Anyway, the groundskeeper ran back and got a shovel, and they re-covered the coffin. The grandfather told Pauline he was sorry for not listening to her sooner, and that he hoped she felt warmer now.

After that night, the dreams stopped.

Should this be considered a ghost story? I don't know. But it is still one of the creepiest things I've ever heard. I make my aunt tell me the story every once in a while, and I get watery eyes and goosebumps every time.

I hope this didn't bore everyone. I look forward to your stories in the future!!!