My Haunted Life, pt. 1

Throughout the centuries, people have reported seeing the spirits of the deceased. Ghosts haunt places all over the world. The Sci Fi Channel even has a hit show about the search for evidence of hauntings, Ghost Hunters. Most people seem to have a story about their own run in with the paranormal or have heard of someone who has. It just so happens I have one of those tales. More than one as it would so happen to be.

The first incident in my life that I believe I had a run in with something paranormal happened when I was about ten years old. For many years, I didn't even consider it as a potential haunting. But it was always odd enough that it stuck out in my memory. Only when I grew older and really thought back to it did I begin to think I may have seen a ghost.

At that time, we were living in a small house in Colona, Illinois. It was a weekend afternoon and my dad was down in the basement watching football. My mom and sister had gone into my parents' room for a nap. I was doing something in the living room, thought what it was that I was doing escapes me. What I remember is that there was something I wanted to ask my mom. After awhile of sitting there, I saw what I took to be my mom walk down the hallway to the kitchen. In those days, my mom wore gray sweat pants and shirts a lot and what I had seen was a gray figure in my peripheral vision walk into the kitchen. Having that question I wanted answered, I got up and followed into the kitchen.

Except, no one was there.

Knowing I had seen someone walk in there, I assumed at that point that she must have gone down into the basement with my dad. Wanting my question answered, I too went downstairs only to find my father alone and watching football. I asked him where mom went and he said she was upstairs taking a nap. But I knew I had seen her go downstairs. My dad said I was wrong, so I went back upstairs to check for myself.

Sure enough, my mom and sister were asleep in the bedroom. Yet, something had walked down the hallway. I brushed it off to my imagination, though I always remembered it, because I didn't really believe imagined it.

Years later, I would find out that while we lived in that house my dad would occasionally see gray figures walking around, particularly in the back half of the house. Oddly enough, growing up my sister and I never liked the back half of the basement, in the area my dad saw the figures. Now, all these years later, I tend to think that all three were connected and that I may have encountered that day what my dad had seen a couple of times. Still, it would be years later before I really had any sort of experience that I knew instantly as being something unusual.