My Personal Paranormal Experiences

The paranormal world is growing in popularity with more and more people having incidents which cannot be explained. People of many ages are curious as to what we cannot see, and become eager to here eye witness stories. In my lifetime, I have experienced numerous unexplained incidents that could be classified as paranormal. Each and every incident that I experienced still makes the hair on my arm stand on end, each time I think about them.

The first time I recall having a paranormal event was at the age of six. My sister and I shared a bedroom which was located across the hall from our parents. I am not sure how long I had been asleep, but something prompted me to wake in the middle of the night. I sat up in the bed, and looked toward the bedroom door. I saw a pitch black figure standing in the center of the door surrounded by a bright white light. I remember being so scared that I was paralyzed with fear. I could not scream, or move for what seemed like an eternity. When I was finally able to move, I quickly hid under the covers for a few minutes, until I had the nerve to look up once again. As I peered from the comfort of the blanket, to my relief, the figure was gone. I was unsure of what happened, but was the only one who had seen this shadowy figure of a man in my bedroom doorway. Thankfully, he never came back. Later on as an adult, I did some research the Internet on shadowy dark figures, and I learned that I possibly had an encounter with a shadow man.

My next paranormal experience occurred several years later at the age of eight. My parents were out for the night bowling, and my older brother was left in charge of babysitting. While he was studying in the living room, I was in the bathtub washing up before bed. While I was playing with the bubbles, I heard my name being softly spoken. I stopped splashing the water, and yelled out for my brother. He came to the bathroom door and asked what I wanted. I asked him if he yelled my name, he replied "No, now finish up." I could hear the floor creak as he walked down the hall back to the living room. When all was quiet I went back to splashing the water. Perhaps only a minute had passed before I heard my name being shouted out two more times. Again I was paralyzed in fear, only this time I was covered with bubbles from the bath water. There was a brief pause before I heard my name being yelled out, this time, it was as if it were behind me. I quickly jumped from the water, grabbed my robe, and ran into the living room, only to find my brother studying. I asked him why he scared me while I was in the bathtub, but he denied any wrongdoing, that he was on the couch all night. Further, I would have heard him walking down hall. I knew he was correct as the hall creaked when a person walked down it. I do not know who or what was speaking my name. To this day I never did figure it out, but I was scared for the longest time thereafter.

After a lengthy respite, my next paranormal experience happened at the age of 21. I was invited to sleep over my friend's house after a night of celebrating my 21st birthday. It was approximately 3 am and everyone was tired and heading off to bed. I went upstairs to the guest bedroom to go to sleep. I must have been lying on the bed for only a few minutes when I shut my eyes, and rolled over onto my side. The house was quiet and peaceful. A short time later I heard what sounded like a small child or animal jump from the bed and run across the room. I lay silently for several moments, as there were no small children or animals in the house. I took a deep breath and hurried down the stairs to my friend's room where she lay silently sleeping. I gently nudged her awake. Once she sat up I explained to her what had happened and asked if she had heard anything from down stairs. Her reply was that she heard nothing. I spent the rest of the night on the couch in the living room, refusing to go back up the stairs where I heard the running of footsteps. To this day I am not sure what it was that I encountered in the upstairs bedroom.

In the year 1992, I was newly married at the age of 24 when I experienced the paranormal once again. I had just finished moving into my spouse's home, two weeks into our marriage, when I found out I was pregnant. We had to inform his roommate that we needed the extra bedroom for the baby, and that he had to find another place to live. Within a week's time, his roommate had moved out and life carried on as normal as expected. A week later, however, we learned the terrible news that he had committed suicide. It was not long after that I started to see shadows moving along the wall. I first thought it may be a passing car, but the walls and windows were in the rear of the house away from the roadway. Along with this shadowy figure came an unfriendly chilling feeling. It soon passed. Shortly thereafter, there was another time in which we returned home from shopping, only to find the stove burner was on. Needless to say we put the place up for sale and moved.

The last time I encountered the unexplained was when my spouse and I were living at my parents' house. My spouse and I had to make the hard decision of putting our old but beloved pet to sleep. She was eleven years old, in pain, and could not walk any longer, so we thought it to be the right decision. After a two week period, we adopted a puppy from the pound. A weeks time had gone by when in the middle of the night we began to hear what sounded like kibble being moved in the dog food bowl. My spouse rolled over toward the bowl and softly told the dog to go to sleep. The noise would stop briefly, and then pick up again. The third time we heard the kibble noise, we both sat up, looked directly at our new puppies food bowl, which sat feet from our bed, the noise stopped. We remembered that there was no food placed in the bowl prior to us heading to sleep, and that our new pup was nowhere near the bowl at the time of the incident. To this day, we still figure it was our old friend stopping in to say hello, and make sure we were safe.

Each of the aforementioned incidents are true, and for which I have no reasonable explanation. Many of us often hear bumps in the night as we are drifting off to sleep. Sometimes those bumps in the night can be explained, other times they cannot. It is these events for which we have no logical explanation that piques our curiosity and gives each of us, even those who claim not to believe, cause to believe in the paranormal.