8 Reasons Why I Believe in Ghosts

I believe that when we die we go to Heaven or Hell. I also believe in ghosts. Perhaps Hell is not a physical place but a simple separation from God and the ones we love, wherever that may be geographically and dimensionally, those there doomed to an eternity of desperation for acknowledgment.

Here are 8 reasons why I believe in ghosts.

• When I was very little I shared a room with my brother. I have distinct memories of seeing a woman in a white dress come in our room and sit on the edge of his bed for a few moments and then leave. She never seemed to notice that I was there - she was only concerned with my brother. Many years later my brother told us all that he used to have dreams about a woman in a white dress coming into the bedroom, sitting on the bed and doing something nurturing such as smooth his covers with her hands or stroke his forehead before getting up and leaving. When I told him I remembered her too, he looked a little paler. He dismissed it by saying it must have been Mom. But I remember her. She didn't look like Mom.
• When I moved to my own room, I would sometimes wake up at night hearing a gentle but insistent tapping outside and underneath my window, as if someone were trying to get my attention. I never looked outside as I was afraid of what I might see (I had a wild imagination as a child and often scared myself with it). I told my folks and they assured me I must have imagined it. Later, as we discussed things as adults, my Dad told me he'd hear those taps as well. My room was located on the inside of an "L" in the floorplan of the house. He'd look out the window of the adjacent wing of the "L" when he'd hear them. No one was there.
• Several times there would be a noise at the front of the house which sounded as if a child were running along a picket fence, holding a stick against it. It would travel from one end of the front to the other. We would look outside as it happened. There was nothing there.
• My family had a border collie as I was growing up. He was the most loving, gentle, unthreatening animal I have ever known. One evening as we all watched television, the dog startled. He got up and moved in a slow, protective stance toward the front of the room. He looked down the hallway with great intent. His hackles raised and he emitted a low, guttural growl as we'd never heard from him. He held this position and body language for a good minute, and then relaxed. He turned around, tail wagging as if to say, "Okay, we're all safe now!" The light was on. Whatever he saw, we did not.
• When I was a teenager, I was home alone one afternoon and was doing something in the kitchen. The basement steps came up into the kitchen and the door was slightly ajar. As I was doing whatever it was I was doing, I noticed what sounded like faint shuffling in the basement. I froze and listened. The shuffling became light footsteps ascending the stairs. As the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, the door gently opened as if someone were walking through. Yet I was still alone.
• When I was in college I lived in a duplex with 2 other fellow students. My bedroom was upstairs at the end of the hallway, by the bathroom. One night I was up late reading in bed, and was in the house alone as my roommates were both out. The sound of footsteps coming down the hall towards my room caught my attention. I figured one of my roommates must have come home and I hadn't noticed. I looked at the door as the footsteps approached and stopped in front of my doorway. No one was there. I wondered if I was simply hearing traffic through the floor from next door but the other side of the duplex had been empty for a few months and I doubt if the landlord was showing it to someone at 2 in the morning.
• In this same house about a year later, I was watching TV with my boyfriend. He had his arm draped over me and it lay casually next to mine, spoon style. I was distracted by what felt like a feather being run across the top of my forearm. I glanced down, moving only my eyes, and saw nothing. I casually blew it off to imagination, and then my boyfriend said, "Did you feel that?" No more than a beat later, footsteps with no visible owner gently passed between us and the television.
• My husband’s and my first home had a lovely finished basement – beautiful plush carpet, tongue-and-groove honey wood walls, entire space open. We spent a lot of time down there, entertaining as well as just hanging out – it was our main living area. We would often get up in the morning to find the overhead lights on downstairs. My husband accused me of not turning the lights off when we came up the previous night, even if he was the last one to come up. I accused him of sleepwalking. It was amusing at first but it went on and became a little annoying. Sometimes we’d even notice them on when we’d swore we turned them off earlier in the same evening. One night we were downstairs watching television. Out of nowhere, the overhead lights came on. The switches were on the other side of the basement. We were alone and all the doors and windows were locked. Incidentally, it never happened again after that.