My belief in ghosts is complicated.  My logical side can’t quite grasp why the spirit of a deceased life would linger around here and creep people out or repeatedly do the same tasks over and over.  On the other hand, my willingness to accept that we know very little about the natural world causes me to believe that all that energy a life possesses must go somewhere, so why not retain a consciousness as a “ghost” or something we don’t fully understand?  At the same time I think if my energy, consciousness, or spirit lingered around after I died and could interact with people and my environment I would ABSOLUTELY creep people out, so that’s a double tick next to the “maybe there are ghosts” column.

Even my logical side struggles with some of what I experience and this month, as the far more fetching half of RevPub stated in her last post, I thought I would share some of my more unexplainable experiences.  Starting with one from college.

I lived in an internal, single dorm in college.  Roommate life was definitely not for me so sophomore-senior years I lived in a dorm where I had a room to myself.  Unlike the 1960s-style hotel dorms on campus where all the rooms opened to the outside, this building was a brick structure with offices on the first floor, a keypad (with a 4-digit number to unlock it) that opened to the second floor where all the dorm rooms were.

One night I was carrying groceries in several bags.  I shifted bags when I got to the locked door to the dorms, so I was holding them all in one hand so I could input the unlock code into the number pad.  I glanced over my shoulder and saw another guy behind me.  He had an annoying, hipster-ish Hey, Hey we’re the Monkees Mickey Dolenz haircut and wore a retro orangey striped shirt.

I input the correct number and gently, but firmly, kicked the door open.  I nudged it open with my elbow enough to let the dude behind me get in too.  I hadn’t seen him before and didn’t get a good look at him.  Technically I wasn’t supposed to let a stranger in, but rather than be a jerk I thought I’d just let him tailgate through the door and not have to go through the trouble of entering the entrance number.  I got a little annoyed by how close this guy was behind me up the stairs (which curved twice and had one landing), and I glanced at him again over my shoulder with kind of a “want to give me some space?” look as I heard the door close downstairs.  My room was RIGHT next to the top of the stairs, and as I approached my door and put my bags down, I glanced back at him again and he was gone…  I calmly held my keys quiet and walked to the stairs, looking over the rail and listening for footsteps.  No one was on the stairs.  No one opened the door downstairs.  No one went down the hallway.  My logical side took over and said, “maybe I just missed him…maybe he went back down as soon as I reached my door…maybe I even imagined him.”  But I knew he was there.  I saw him.  Got annoyed at him.  Remembered what he was wearing and how he looked…  And more than anything there was a feeling that someone WAS there and something wasn’t right about the way they just weren’t there anymore…  To this day I can’t say for sure, “I saw a ghost!” but that was a little unusual…

Stay tuned for more personal supernatural stories from both RevPub authors during the whole month of October, leading up to our favorite holiday!  Halloween is the most wonderful time of the year, the only day I can legitimately dress like a killer, monster, or zombie and everyone thinks it’s fun.