My First Experience with Ghosts

The reality of spirits or ghosts is a difficult thing for many people to swallow. It is hard to scientifically prove that spirits or ghosts exist and so many people would rather pretend that they don't exist. Of course now with the popular show Ghost Hunter's on the Sci-fi Channel, and fiction shows based on reality such as Ghost Whisperer, and Medium, ghosts are starting to become main stream. Of course there will always be those who are skeptics, but I'm certainly not one of them. I had my first real experience with some ghosts when I was eleven years old.

The strange thing about this experience was that it was in broad daylight in what should have been full view of at least a hundred people. I never did find out if anyone else could see what I was seeing as I never told anyone until I was much older what I had seen. In typical kid fashion I was pretty sure no one, least of all my parents were going to believe me so I kept the story to myself until I was grown, and in fact forgot about the incident for many years until another incident made me remember.

It was a bright sunny day in 1978 in Albany, Oregon. I would be entering the sixth grade in the Fall. It was Summer and my family was at the annual picnic for the company my dad was employed with. The park was huge with a lake that had ducks, and lots of equipment for us kids to play on, including my favorite the swings. I no longer remember the name of the park. It was mid- afternoon and I was by myself sitting on a swing on one of the larger swingsets. I wasn't really trying very hard to swing, just sitting there and sort of pushing off a bit with my feet when I happened to look up. Now directly across from the swingset I was on, was another swingset just as large, and shaded by a large tree. I noticed a group of children that looked very different from any kids my own age or generation. I knew instinctively that these kids were very different. They were dressed like something out of one of my history texts for one thing. They had very old fashioned clothing that reminded me of pictures I'd seen of children around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century. There was one girl who was obviously the eldest with long brown hair. She had a large floppy bow that someone had tied on top of head. She looked to me to be about 13 or 14 years of age and her dress was green and offwhite, and she had white stockings with some sort of black flats for shoes that reminded me more of ballet shoes than anything children were wearing in the 1970's. Strangely I knew she was very very sad, horribly sad in fact. I can't say how I knew, but I did. She paid little attention to anything and I don't even think she was aware of me. She was pushing a small boy who looked as if he were 3 or 4 on one of the swings. The boy was wearing a light blue suit complete with short pants, a short-sleeved white shirt, and matching blue vest and cap. He reminded me of Spanky from the Little Rascals, with the way he was dressed. There was another small boy, maybe the first one's twin who was identically dressed, trying to get on one of the rocking horses, but he couldn't seem to figure out how to work it, and so the oldest girl came and lifted him onto it and showed him how.

As I look back on this incident now I find it strange that the boy didn't know how to ride the rocking horses. Most children from the modern era needed no instruction on them, and could figure them out immediately, but this little boy clearly had no idea what they were. I remember as I was watching them having the fear that if I looked away they would disappear. I was even afraid to blink. I really wanted to go find my mom and ask her if she could see them too, but I knew, I just knew if I looked away or got up, they would be gone. So, I sat there for I don't know how long watching them, and that was when I began paying attention to the other girl with them who was swinging on one of the swings next to the one the older girl had been pushing the little boy on. This girl looked to be about my age, or perhaps a year older, and I knew she was very angry, and that she knew I could see them. I actually made eye contact with her, and I'd been considering going over to them and talking to them, but as I made eye contact with this girl I knew if I did she would hurt me. Again I can't explain how I knew what these children were feeling, or the thoughts that were going through my mind about them, I just knew. So, I sat there for the longest time and soaked in as many details as I could. Such as the fact that they all had very pale skin that looked as though it had never been touched by the sun, and that they were always covered by a shadow, the sun never once touched them as I watched. While the tree was there and shading the swingset they were on, the shadow over these children reminded me of an overcast day.

I don't know how long I sat there watching them, probably only a few minutes in reality, but then something happened, I blinked, or looked away because when I looked back at the swingset, or brought my attention back to it, the children were gone as though they'd never been there. I even spent some time looking for them around the park but I never found them. I decided for some reason not to tell my parents about these strange children I'd seen, and in fact completely forgot about the incident until I was in my 30's and having an online discussion with some friends about paranormal experiences we'd had as children. It was at that time that I remembered seeing the ghost children, and shared the story with others for the first time.

I figured with Halloween coming up, it was an appropriate time to once again share my experience with seeing ghosts for the first time.