Do you believe in ghosts? A recent study on the news indicated about 40% of Americans do. 59% of those claim to have had an 'experience' with the supernatural.
As you know, I believe that I have met the Angel of Death (aka Ray Liotta). I believe in the afterlife though I have no idea what it might entail. Is there a heaven? Hell? I really don't know, I haven't yet made it that far. I do believe there are ghosts and I believe I've experienced one first hand (twice), though I didn't actually see him.
My wife and I moved to the tiny town of Croton (where the hell is Croton), Ohio about 15 years ago. The home we moved into was old. Really old. Easily 125 years old and probably 150+. It was small, relatively plain on the outside and decent enough on the inside. The land it sat on was beautiful. A lake with a dam in the back yard. The lake, as I understand, was used to fill the steam engines of the old locomotives that ran through the area. You could still see old railroad ties in the front yard. I liked living there, but sometimes felt uneasy.
A few years after moving in our twins were born and I guess that's when things started picking up. The first of my two encounters was somewhat indirect. The entire family left the house in the early afternoon. When we came home that night every (and I mean every) light in the house was turned on. It is common for us to leave one or two lights on when we leave but my wife and I know there was no way every one of them was on when we left (including the basement). The first thing we did before walking in was to call my sister-in-law to see if perhaps she had stopped by while we were gone and maybe left some lights on? No, was her response. We then cautiously entered house. We checked all of the doors and windows and there was no indication that anyone had come into the home. Weird.
The next incident came at night. My wife and I had settled into bed for the evening. Our bedroom in this house was huge. As is typical in a master bedroom we had our bed along one wall with side tables on each side and lamps on each of them. Being out in the country there was no outside light coming into the room once all of our lights were turned off. I had just drifted off to sleep when I felt a 'presence' standing over me. I started awake and the lamp on my side of the bed was lit. There was no one else in the room except my sleeping wife. I woke her up and asked her if she had turned on my light. Groggily she said no, turned over and went back to sleep. Needless to say it took me a while to fall back to sleep. Scary.
Now these two incidents might not be enough for the average person to believe. Let me enlighten you about my son. He sees dead people. But it's not like Sixth Sense, they don't ask him for anything and they aren't scary looking. Just normal and honestly (according to him) they don't talk much. The ghost in our house in Croton was named John Thomas. He was kind of tall, had blond hair and wore old clothes.
After several years living there we moved. We wanted something in a better school district and a little closer to work. We found a house in Sunbury and moved in. It was a new build and there were no ghosts, at first. Sadly, my wife's father passed away shortly before we moved out. Sam saw Grandpa Doc a couple of times before we moved.
We moved again, finding something a little less expensive and still in the same great school district. This next house was old, but not nearly as old as the home in Croton (where is that again?). I would guess the old portion was built in the early 1900's and the addition maybe 40 years later. I felt pretty good about this house, after all it was the old parsonage for the church it sits in front of. Grandpa Doc followed us, we found out because he kept moving some of the personal possessions of his that my wife had. She would grill the kids about moving these things and they all insisted that they weren't doing it. She finally just said, "Dad, if you are here please quit moving your stuff. I will keep a close eye on it and make sure it's safe." After she did that, the objects quit being misplaced.
My son informed us shortly after moving in that a little girl lived here. Her name was Courtney. She liked to play tricks on the kids. She would knock on the bathroom door while they were taking showers. One time she scared our son by standing at the foot of his bed wearing a mask.
Now, I personally have never experienced anything directly with Grandpa Doc or Courtney. But here's the one that gets me... My grandfather died a few years back. He lived down in Florida and my children never had an opportunity to meet him. I kept a picture of him and Grandma hanging in my office. Because my children didn't know him we chose not to tell them about his passing, however the day after he passed my son told us that an old man was standing in my office staring at that picture. When we asked him what he looked like, he said he looked like the man in the picture. The funeral was held here in Columbus, the kids did not attend. The following morning we met my parents for breakfast at Bob Evans. All during breakfast my son had an uneasy, funny look on his face. After breakfast we asked him what was wrong. He told us the old guy standing in our house the other day just stood beside Grandpa Tom (my dad, Grandpa's son) the entire time we were there. For several weeks after the funeral my wife and I would detect a hint of cigarette smoke in the house, but it only happened when we were watching Law & Order. That show happened to be my grandfathers favorite show and he was a heavy smoker from the age of 16 until he died. Was he there looking over us? Like I said, my kids didn't know him and we weren't on speaking terms at the time he passed. I honestly don't know.
These incidents viewed individually would not be enough to convince me, but when you put them all together I feel very positive that there is more for us after death. Is there a transition period that we get to hang out and check in on the loved ones we left behind? Play tricks on people we don't know just to get attention? What does the afterlife look like or entail? I don't have these answers but I also don't despair about my demise on this Earth.
