Ghostly Experience to Make Me Question

From about third grade up until high school, I've had the fortune to travel to different countries outside the United States. By the time I was able to drive I had visited almost every country in Europe and could talk a couple of words in each country's language. What can I say? Being the youngest kid by eleven years has its benefits sometimes.

There was one time in particular though that has really stuck with me since it happened when I was in high school. My parents has sent me on a tour visiting different religious sites in Yugoslavia, Italy and England. I wasn't really that big on the religious aspect being a stereotypical questioning teenager, but hey, I was getting to see the world so it was no big thing. During a bus ride through Yugoslavia, the members on the bus were going ahead and reciting the Rosary. For you non-Catholics, the Rosary is a series of beads that one uses to keep track of how many 'Haily Marys', 'Our Fathers', and 'Glory Be To The Fathers' you recite. The reason for the recitation is to allow you to contemplate on the different aspects of what Jesus had gone through.

So, after reciting the first two sets, or decades, of the rosary, everyone on the bus began to notice the faint smell of roses that was growing stronger. We checked with all the women on the bus, and none of them were wearing any rose scented perfume. The windows on the bus weren't open, and there were no rose fields or roses on the bus.

There was no normal explanation of why the scent of roses was present. We then began to talk about how the scent of roses meant that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the declared mother of Jesus, was present. So we continued praying and the scent of roses continued. Shortly after we finished all five decades, the scent of roses disappeared.

Would I say that I became a religious person over night because of this experience? No. Am I still the questioning teenager that I was back then? Sometimes. But whenever a philosophical mood strikes me, I focus back on that bus ride in Yugoslavia and still try to explain away what happened without any success.