One night, I went to my bedroom (for some reason that I can't recall now), and gradually I began to hear a weird, buzzing-like noise. It was coming from the living room. I listened intently, wondering if perhaps it could be something wrong, like an electrical problem or whatnot. But then I realized that it was a group of people talking.
The television was not on. My stereo was in the bedroom; it was off, too. There was no reason for me to be hearing voices.
I couldn't make out what they said; it was like a den of voices - ten? twelve? - that overlapped each other. And there was an unnerving hush about it, as though they traded secrets.
I eased out of my bedroom. When I stood still in the hall, almost at the threshold of the living room, the voices stopped. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if I was going crazy, but I figured that, if I were crazy, the voices would be inside my head. These were clearly outside, like coming upon a group of gossipers that don't want you to hear what they're saying. Thinking thus, I went back to the bedroom. The voices started again. When I again stood near the threshold of the living room, they stopped.
The temperature of the living room, as I noticed when I crept back into it, had dropped quite noticeably. That, however, had little to do with the gooseflesh crawling over me.
My mom, sitting on the couch reading the newspaper, was oblivious to it all. And now, years later, she seems disbelieving of it.
Another night, I was watching a pro wrestling match. My dog, Princess, was lying in the floor, taking it easy. Then suddenly, she jerked upright, a low growl beginning deep in her throat. Shooting to her feet, she turned and looked straight at a spot in the kitchen. Her bristles stood. The growl became louder. She started barking, showing her teeth.
Princess is half Australian Shepard; if she'd been a strange dog, I would've been scared to death of her at that moment. She looked and acted as if she was about to jump; if she did, she would be smashing into the kitchen table, or atop it.
I said a few words to try to calm her, wondering what was going on. The slight motion of her ears told me that she was still listening to me; she wouldn't fly into a blind rage.
Yet I knew what it was. A shiver went through me, as it always does when these “encounters,” or whatever you would call them, happen.
I could feel, as though I were a magnet, a strange pull from the area Princess was alerting me to. I spoke a few more words to calm her, and after a few minutes, that strange “pull” faded away to nothing. Then she plopped back down, apparently satisfied that the threat was gone. I rose, a bit wary, to get a glass of soda; walking through the spot by the table, I felt a chill. The heater was on and working fine, yet that one spot was cold.
The two instances I've described are true, and they happen irregularly but frequently. The first “encounter,” with the strange voices, has happened at various times of my life, but only in the places I've lived; it has never happened to me when visiting a friend, for example.
I rarely see them, but I feel them, the same way you can detect the presence of another person who is physically near. It's a tingling sensation that I feel mentally and physically, though it's difficult to explain. When a family member or a friend has visited for a while, and then they finally leave, there is a sensation left over from the space they occupied while there. That's how it feels to me when the ghosts fade away. It's as if they're physically present for a while.
Who these ghosts are, I don't know. The nature of those voices boggles my mind.
And to anyone out there who is sensitive to the paranormal - especially those who aren't believed - and for those who write this off as craziness, consider this: The old adage “the truth is stranger than fiction” has stayed alive for a reason.
