Ghosts and Such

   I was watching some Youtube vids about creepy ghosts caught on film. Some looked legit, some badly Photoshopped. It reminded me how much I like creepy stuff and got me thinking about my few brushes with ghosts.

   As a young child, I would hear counts of hauntings and I would always end up shrugging it off as a load of crap. Ghosts weren't real. As much as I liked to read about them and think up scary stories about them, they just weren't real.

   In middle school, I spent the night with a friend and we sat down to watch a movie on one of those TVs that has a VHS player in it. A few minutes in, the TV cut off. I look at her questioningly and she just rolls her eyes. "Oh yeah, the television is haunted."
   Of course, I think she's joking, teasing me. She just said it so nonchalantly! But she cuts the TV back on, puts the remote on the dresser in front of the TV and we continue to watch. Later, the movie stops itself and starts rewinding. Now, for you young people, VHS players used to do this at the end of a tape. We were nowhere near the end. 
   It continued like that throughout the movie: the TV cutting on and off, the movie rewinding, fast forwarding, that sort of stuff all while the remote control is in plain sight. Though slightly freaked, I was mostly full of wonder. Was this really a haunted television or some weird electrical screw up in the wiring?

   Not long afterwards, during a party at my house in a very rural area, I was dared to run inside this creepy one-bedroom house that was abandoned and now used by farmers to store tobacco. It was empty this time of year and though I had no idea how old the house actually was or who had lived in it before, I was only a little frightened of it. My brothers and I were pretty adventurous children and we often explored old barns and abandoned buildings without fear.
Never at night, though.
   My friends stayed near the barn we played in while I walked the dirt road up to the house that summer night. I went inside with no fuss, sure I would win the bet and laugh in their faces. I saw this light in the middle of the room. It looked like the flame of a candle. Now, from the windows, all manner of lights were shining in from distant houses and trailers across the fields. 
   But this light wasn't coming from outside. It wasn't a reflection on the glass either. It was just floating in the middle of the room. Needless to say, I hauled ass.

   My last real experience with a ghost was more up close and personal. When my mother-in-law's husband died, she moved out of their old bedroom. She claimed that she just couldn't sleep in there anymore. She left the bed, dressers, and rocking chair and just relocated to a room closer to the front of her huge house. Their old bedroom became the guest room.
   When her son, his wife, and their son would come to visit, they would usually stay the night because they lived over three hours away. My sister-in-law started claiming the room was haunted. She said she saw mom-in-law's dead husband in their sometimes, often sitting in the rocking chair. We kind of blew her off about it. I recall her spinning the tale, my husband and I rolling our eyes at each other. Mom-in-law, who is hard of hearing, said she never heard or saw anything, though she rarely went to that part of the house anymore.

   A couple of years ago, we hit on hard times and moved into my mom-in-law's house with our three girls. Hubby and I took her old bedroom and the kids took the room next to us. It was supposed to be temporary until we found a good place. We stayed for over a year. 
   During that time, I became pretty well acquainted with the ghost. I am a very light sleeper, unfortunately, which is probably why I was the only one having ghost issues. Late at night, I would feel a pressure on the end of the bed, like someone was sitting on it. We have three cats but we always locked them in another room at night so they wouldn't run around keeping me awake. I would sit up, thinking my husband went to smoke and accidentally let one of the little furry fucktards out. Nothing was there. No cat. So I would roll over and go back to sleep. 
    Some nights I'd sleep on my side and feel a tap on my shoulder. Thinking it was one of the kids needing something, I'd wake and look but no one was there. Just my husband sleeping soundly, snoring, on the other side of the bed. This happened a handful of times while we lived there. Instead of scaring me, it mostly annoyed me. Momma does not like it when someone messes with her sleep schedule, whether you are living or dead!
   It went on like that, me feeling things in the night, no one awake to confirm it. Sometimes at odd times of the day, I would see movement out of the corner of my eye but I always just chocked it up to cats. I might hear sounds like someone moving around at night, again attributing it to the cats in the next room.

   The most memorable night was the night I felt someone whisper in my ear, very low but clearly, "Hey." I woke immediately, again thinking it was a kid having a nightmare and wanting to crawl into bed. No one was there. My husband comes in from a smoke a few minutes later and I asked if it was him just messing with me. The man cannot lie to me. He tries but I can always see it in his face. He swore he had no idea what I was talking about. 
   A few weeks before we moved out, I was sitting on the bed in broad daylight, reading, when the TV across the room turned on. I didn't even know where the hell the remote was. Now that did creep me out because it was the middle of the day! "Stop this bullshit!" I cried out, hopping up and fast walking it to the kitchen where I knew mom-in-law would be.
"It's official, you're haunted." I told her. 
   I knew she didn't believe me. She would just smile when I would mention the ghost. Like she was humoring a child. I might have an overactive imagination but someone or something disturbing my sleep on random nights was not my idea of a good time!

   A few weeks after we moved out and her house became much quieter without kids and cats running around and raising hell, she informed me that she thought she had a ghost. She said she would hear things at night when it was especially quiet. Noises from that room. 
Ha! I'm not crazy!

   Those are my experiences with ghosts so far. I have always wanted to visit known haunted places at night and get real peeks at paranormal activity. I guess I'm more open to them than some people, or maybe my super hearing and hyperosmia just detect crap that other people can't. Like those damn voices in the baby monitor. It's like twenty people having different conversations at once. Shut the hell up, I'm trying to sleep!