Posted on 05/05/2004 4:15:08 PM PDT by CurlyBill
Yeah I remember that. Many thought that he would hide out on an island somewhere and return to the day having faked his death, but he must be dead because he missed his date. lol
When I was about 12 years old, I had the opportunity to travel to the Navajo reservation in Arizona with my Grandparents. Gramps was a preacher, and had many dealings with the Navajos, including building a church in Window Rock, AZ (of which there is an interesting story that he recounted to me on several occassions).
On this trip, my Gramps had been invited to preach at a bruch arbor campmeeting, which lasted a week. The location was out in the middle of nowhere, without electricity. As a matter of fact, the owner of the land we were on had only recently moved into an actual house, and her hogan was still used as storage.
On one of the nights, I was sound asleep in the front upper bunker of my grandparent's RV. In the middle of the night, I woke right up, with the tremendous urge to look out the front window of the RV. Of course, I really didn't expect to see anything, as it was pitch black with only the moon to light the surroundings. It didn't matter, however, as the urge to look was overwhelming.
I pulled the curtain that covered the front windshield of the RV back, and was extremely disconcerted when I could see actual figures walking about the area. I could see children playing, figures carrying things, and figures sitting around what appeared to be a fire. The thing about these figures is that they were all blacker than black, if that makes any sense. The only reason I could make them out is that they seemed to have a ki8nd of 'energy' swirling about inside them. It was almost like looking at profiles behind a curtain.
I immediately closed the curtain again, and made every attempt to fall asleep, which came about an hour later. To this day I cannot get the images I saw out of my head.
About the same time, we were living in a house in California that had to have been 'occupied'. There was nothing notable about the house, but my brother and I would consistently see shadows in front of us while we played inside the house. It was almost as though someone was walking behind us. Every time we turned around, however, there would be noone there.
Later in life, I worked in a pizza parlor that was purported to be 'haunted'. One night, my boss was in the back of the shop, doing dishes. I had just finished putting up all of the chairs & rugs, in preparation for sweeping & mopping. Before I did that, however, I decided to take out the trash.
Upon returning from taking the trash out, I walked into the back room where my boss was. She asked me where I had comoe from, and I told her that I had just taken the trash out. She got this funny look on her face, and proceeded to explain that, just moments before I had entered the back room, she had seen a shadow cross in front of her. She said she thought it was me, trying to sneak up on her and scare her, as we were always trying to 'one-up' the other when it came to scaring each other. I just laughed and said out loud - "Well ghost, if tonite's your nite to haunt us, you're doing a great job!"
I then walked out into the lobby to begin my sweeping & mopping, and immediately noticed that just one chair had been taken off a table and placed back on the floor. I know I had put all of the chairs up, and immediately freaked out when I saw the misplaced chair. I called my boss up to the front to show her, and she was as surprised as I was. I would have known if this was one of her attempts to freak me out, as she would have then cracked a joke about being able to scare me. Instead, we both decided to stick close that nite, get what we needed to get done finished and get the heck out of there.
Since these occurences, I have had the opportunity to participate in several "ghost hunts", the most memorable of which was an old stage stop in upper Colorado. As we approached the front of the stop, we began taking various readings, as well as photographs & video. At the front entrance, we received several strange magnetic readings, but didn't see anything out the ordinary. We continued with the hunt, and departed the area to develop photo's.
When we received our photo's, we were somewhat surprised to see what appeared to be a little girl of 8-10 years of age, standing in the front door of the place. The leader of the hunt still has the photo, and I will have to see if I can get her to send me a copy, so I can post it here.
As someone raised in the church, I was raised to believe there is no such thing as ghosts, but that demons could appear to people as such things. I remain a skeptic, and still enjoy doing the hunts and subsequent research that goes along with a proper "ghost investigation".
A couple of times when I was up late and the rest of the family was in bed I distinctly heard someone walking around, bumping things. When I finally decided that one of my three kids wasn't going to go back to his or her bed on their own I got up to direct them only to find everybody tucked into bed and completely zonked out.
One time my wife and I were in bed and we heard the doorwall door woosh shut. I got up and the door was locked and braced. I dunno if it was ghosts but it was weird.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.