An unexpected visit

Let me tell you a little bit about an experience I had many years ago. Granted, I was only a child. But this was something that will stay with me until the day I die.

I was 10 years old at the time. It was the 4^th of July and I was visiting my father in his apartment in Queens, New York (my parents divorced when I was four years old and my mother took custody of me). My father had consumed an excessive amount of alcohol and became very violent. He later passed out and was taken into his room by his wife.

That night I tried to sleep in my bed with my stepsister, who was only five years old at the time, but I couldn’t. I remained wide awake with the light on in my room, the door completely open. There wasn’t a sound except for the occasional car passing by far below us, the monotonous tick tock of the clock on the wall.

At around two in the morning, after everybody was fast asleep, including my father, I heard footsteps just outside of the doorway. We were on highest floor of the apartment building, and I knew someone was on their way to visit us. But who would be making their way up the stairs at this time of night?
Suddenly I heard the front door knob being tampered with. Even though the sound was out in the living room, which was pitch dark at the moment, I knew somebody was trying to get inside. I was terrified.

The door popped open.

My father lived in an old apartment building. I heard the long squeak of the front door as it opened, slowly. Small, subtle footsteps became noticeable in the living room. Whoever had been fiddling with the doorknob was now inside. I then heard a voice that I will never forget, a voice that belonged to a baby girl that must have been around three or four years old.
“Daddy, daddy,” she called, sounding like a desperate child in need of her father.
I heard her perfectly.

I clearly remember trying to wake Alison, my stepsister, who slept beside me. “Alison, wake up. There’s somebody in here. Please wake up!” But I was too afraid to speak above a whisper. Maybe whoever was in the living room would hear me and make their way into my room. Alison didn’t wake up.

I cried as silently as possible. I then hid underneath the covers, closed my eyes, and continued crying with my eyes closed as tight as possible.
“Daddy..daddy..daddy…” the little girl in the living room continued, louder each time.
I cried myself to sleep.

The next morning, still traumatized, I told my father about the incident. He was extremely hung over, of course, and didn’t want to speak about anything. What I told him woke him out of his early morning daze. Startled him. It was almost as if my words had struck a chord. He became angry. He told me that I had only had a nightmare. But I knew that wasn’t true. Even though I was only a child, I knew the difference between dreams and reality.

Later that day I called my father’s younger sister, my aunt Vero, who was living in Florida at the time. I told her exactly what had happened to me that night. She couldn’t believe what I was telling her. She almost cried. She then told me a story I will never forget.
Before marrying my mother, my father was married to another woman. He had a daughter who they named Mary. Mary was my father’s pride and joy. His favorite little girl in the entire world.
Towards the end of June, in the summer of 1979, Mary, at the age of three, had been playing in a pool. Her mother thought it would be safe to leave her with another girl, who was a few years older than her, while she went inside for a moment.

Mary drowned. She was in a coma for about a week. She died in the hospital on July 4^th 1979.
Since that day my father became another person. Alcohol ruled his life for the years to come, even after having met my mother who later gave birth to me.

The sound of fireworks every July 4^th would turn him into another human being. On this date, every summer, he would drink himself silly, just as he had done on that night when I was only ten years old.

There is no doubt in my mind that I was visited by my deceased sister whom I have never met.
I consider myself an extremely rational human being. I often try to debunk any possible occurrence which may be misinterpreted as being “paranormal”. But what happened to me on that terrifying July 4^th was no dream, hallucination or misinterpretation of any kind. At the time of the occurrence, I had no idea about my father’s tragic history. I had no idea that there had ever been a little girl named Mary in my father’s turbulent life. Who would want to explain that to a ten year old in the first place?
Since then I have tried to come up with a “reasonable” explanation to the voice I heard on that night, over twenty years ago. After so many years of deep thought, I have come to the same exact conclusion.

My deceased sister visited me that night.
Which brings me back to the same question that’s been ricocheting in my head for a very long time. Is there any way to scientifically explain what took place in that apartment on the night of July 4^th 1990?

Can any religion explain the events that took place that night?

After being dead for so long, where did Mary come from? Is she in heaven? Has she been living in a dimension that is unknown and therefore unperceivable by man?

Is she here with me right now or has she been reborn as another human being on this very planet, or in another world quite different from our own?

What did she want on July 4th 1990?