This happened about 15 years ago. My husband was away with the navy and I was alone with our four children. My story starts with me being asleep in bed one night. I was woken up by a loud, eerie wailing noise. At first, in my half asleep state, I thought it may have been a neighbourhood cat but it was so loud that it sounded like it was outside my bedroom door, so I got out of bed and walked towards the hallway in the dark. For some reason I wasn't scared. The wailing now sounded as though it was in the direction of the lounge, so I followed it (just like in the movies) down the hall and through the dining room and into the lounge, still in the dark. It was still very loud as if it was just in front of me but it kept moving as if I was to follow it, so I did. It was a very sad sound. Once I was in the lounge, it sounded like it was coming from outside, so I drew back the curtains and over the road from my house was something I d never seen or heard of before. It was the head of a lady with hair that was about six feet or more across. She was white with a tinge of blue and her hair was blowing slowly about, even though it didn't seem to be windy outside. Her hair looked like it would be if she was floating on water. Her face was the saddest face I've ever seen. She was an old lady and I could see her wrinkles clearly even from the distance I was from her. It was pitch black outside but she shone, in amongst the trees, as though she had a spot light on her. She wailed so sadly, like she was crying for a long lost family member. I pulled up a chair to the window and watched her for a good ten minutes and she slowly faded and disappeared.
I had no idea at all of what I had seen, so the next day I had a look through my ghostie books. I found a picture of what I d seen the night before. I thought it was funny that I d never seen the picture in the book before but didn't give it much thought. She was called a Banshee. Apparently, these apparitions appear to you when someone close is going to die. I'm not a superstitious person but I got scared and was so protective of my children that they got really sick of me.
Three weeks later our extremely healthy family Labrador died from a heart attack for no apparent reason.
I didn't tell my children what I had seen in case it frightened any of them and they were all still very young. Eventually, I forgot about it and about 10 years later my daughter was telling me she had seen a thing just over the road from where we lived, in a different house this time and during the day. When she described it to me, I knew she was talking about a Banshee. Her very favourite cat died not long after she'd seen it!"