James Banner Mr. Perrington English 101 9/21/12 Ghosts Are Real! Often when people talk about ghosts or spirit’s they say “if I’ve never seen a ghost, they’re not real” but I’m here to tell you my experiences or “encounters” with ghosts. Over my 19 year life span I’ve had a few encounters with ghosts, that will make you reconsider your position on ghosts not being real. Its kind of hard to explain what you see, they’re not like a big sheet that’s portrayed in movies or very detailed people that you see.

What I can tell you is my experiences with the ghosts and you can decide if you want to believe me or not. The first time I encountered a ghost was when I was around 9 years old making my little brother (that was 3 at the time) a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was late at night, I can’t remember the exact time but I know it wasn’t over 12 am. We were in the kitchen, the lights were on in the kitchen but in the dining and living room the lights were off. Suddenly my brother dashes into the dining room and I’m left in the kitchen wondering why.

Next I go to see what’s wrong with him, so I walk into the dining room to see why he’s huddled over, and then I see it. Around 5’5 I see a white lady with dark brown hair just standing there looking at me, not only could I distinguish that she was a lady, she also was naked! I’m just shocked, so I stand there for around 5 seconds, (felt like 5 hours to me) then I dash into the living room, grab my little brother and ran upstairs. I’m shivering, scared to death and I just look at my little brother and he’s just standing there like nothing happened.

I tell my older brother who was up at the time what happened and he just brushes me off like I made it up. I eventually tell my sister the next day and she tells me that she’s seen her before but only in her dreams, and that frightened me even more. The second time I encountered a ghost was around when I was 17 years old, it was during winter break and I was home alone. This time It was in the day time around 3 o’clock because I was watching Even Stevens. Remind you that its snowing a bit outside, enough were you can see the footprints where people were walking.

I come downstairs, I have my headphones in so its impossible for me to hear anything and I’m fixing me a bowl of cookies and cream ice cream. I look up and see my dog barking and going wild, so I took off my headphones and I hear the alarms going off. I see that both of my front doors were wide open. I know that for sure when I came down stairs that both of the doors were locked and there was no snow prints coming in our out of the house. I’m there just standing disbelief trying to figure out what happened, until the cops called and asked what was going on.

I had to give them the code for the alarm so that everything was okay but I’m still there just wondering how did both of my front doors become wide open, that had double locks on both of them. I looked throughout the house, there was nobody there and I came to the conclusion that it could only be one thing and that thing had to be a ghost. The third time I encountered a ghost was last year when I watching Walking Dead my favorite television show, it was at night time around 10:20. I’m watching Walking Dead, but then it goes on to a commercial break, so I go downstairs to make me a hot pocket.

I reach downstairs and all of a sudden I have to use the bathroom, so while I’m in the bathroom all of a sudden I start to hear a loud smacking sound. The thing I actually hear is the sound of the cabinet doors being closed very hard. This goes on for about 10 seconds, so I rush out of the bathroom to check out who was doing this. Remind you that it’s a school night and everyone is asleep. When I come out of the bathroom I see 4 cabinet doors wide open, I’m already paranoid easily because of past encounters so right now I’m in terror.

The end signal of my hot pocket being finished in the microwave scared me half to death. I eventually get myself together and start to look around to see if anyone was downstairs. I don’t see anyone downstairs, so I grab my hot pocket and head upstairs to hopefully see if someone was awake and was playing around with me, knowing that anything these days at night being alone by myself will scare me. Sadly its to no avail, nobody is awake and I’m stuck there thinking why does the ghost/spirit keep picking on me. Have I disturbed it in someway some how?

My fourth and final encounter with a ghost was this year when I was home alone doing some laundry in the day time. It takes around an hour, hour and a half to finish a load of the laundry from washer to dryer, so when I put in the clothes I went upstairs for a good 20 minutes. I remember this like it was yesterday because it happened the most recently and spooked me a lot. I remember clearly putting in the clothes, putting in the detergent turning it on and then finishing by putting in these small tide scent balls. When I come back downstairs, in my confusion I hear the washer not washing.

Next, I go downstairs, and to my disbelief I see the washer stopped, not only was it stopped but there were clothes hanging out of the washer with the lid standing up. I run upstairs to get my bat and check around the house… And of course there was no one there, it seems all to familiar that these things keep happening to me for no reason. The crazy part about that is my mom told me this happened to her a few times around 15 years ago but my dad did this ritual type of thing and I guess he got the demons out of the house.

Both of my parents then tell me there was a man who died in this house. The former owner until he passed his son the house died in this house when he was 93. Its okay if you still don’t believe in ghosts or spirits, I understand, believing in things like these can have you worrying more than you do now. I’m not trying to force you to believe that ghosts are real, I’m just trying to inform you on my experiences and encounters with these ghosts/spirits. It seems to me like its not trying to harm me or my family, just letting us know that its there.

Its your choice, you can believe me if you want but I just wanted to share my stories. http://ehis. ebscohost. com/ehost/detail? sid=b8aac38f-066c-4df2-96bd-950e48b948f9%40sessionmgr114&vid=3&hid=115&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=70093461 http://find. galegroup. com/gtx/retrieve. do? sgHitCountType=None&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28KE%2CNone%2C18%29ghosts+and+spirits%24&sort=DateDescend&inPS=true&prodId=AONE&userGroupName=monroecc&tabID=T002&searchId=R2&resultListType=RESULT