Are Ghosts Real?

This is all true, I'll let you be the judge of what you believe and don't believe.

All of my life I have been searching for answers about different things. Never really sure what was true and false about the world, I sought answers from books, true, life events, and the stories of others. At a certain point hunting for answers becomes less about finding them and more about seeing what is right in front of your eyes and trying to understand.

Let me say, by the time of the events I'm telling you about, I already was a believer.

My son Christian and I were sitting in the living room of our home one night. This was during the summer of 2010. I wasn't myself that summer and not particularly fatherly. The truth was, none of us were particularly ourselves after a tragic loss. At first, I would consider that I was imagining things, partly because I wanted to and partly because I could imagine someone looking in on us. As we were sitting there, the only two at home, I thought I saw someone going into the bathroom. It took me by surprise. I shrugged off the sensation even though it sent a chill down my spine. I honestly hadn't been sleeping well lately so my eyes could have played tricks on me.

My son, who was eighteen at the time and had just finished high school tapped me on my hand. "Dad, are you awake?" he asked.

I looked over at him and he was ghost white.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I swear I just saw someone come out of my room," he answered, a frightened look on his face.

My eighteen-year-old son was unmistakably brave for his age. Nothing really rattled him. Instinctively, since he saw my delusion, I went to the bathroom and flipped on the light. There was nothing there, just an empty room, typical in every respect, except needing a thorough cleaning. I pushed his door open, the teenage bedroom smell washed over me. Teenagers' rooms smell like a mix of death and chemicals. Like the bathroom I was behind on, my son desperately needed to clean his room. Nevertheless, there was nothing there that was out of the ordinary.

I shrugged it off, expecting that it was just the late hour and our mutual appreciation for the bizarre affecting our imaginations. It was nearly two o'clock and as I had just done the fatherly search for the boogie man, my son tells me good night. I would at least try to go to bed, even though sleep would evade me.

The next night, it all came to be more apparent. I still wondered if the events were what I thought or just random. Our lives were under a dark cloud lasting nearly three full years, my time swallowed by the darkness, much longer than his. It was Sunday afternoon, around five o'clock p.m. I was preparing to get food ready for an event at home. A couple of my sons' friends and my brother were going to be there.

Everybody was outside as I came in to use the restroom and check on items in the house. From my living room, I could see the apparition, the shadowy apparition that I saw the night before. It was six foot and change in height. Slender, like a slim man. It walked from my bedroom, across the hall and into my sons' room. I looked into my sons' room and saw nothing anywhere. Jesus, I thought to myself. I really began to believe I was having a breakdown.

The gang was all there. It was the first event of this type since a tragedy befell our family. I insisted, out of respect for the man that brought the event into my life, that we continue the event. It made me feel closer to him, which, after watching the heroic fight he put up against the cancer that took him from us, I desperately needed to feel closer.

The first match of the night, a John Cena match, started on the television and we were all sitting around in the living room. It was my brother, my son, a kid named Murphy and I all ready to eat traditional summer fare of brats, burgers, chips and potato salad. There was beer but we hadn't really started yet. Right then, it happened.

One of my father's favorite things to do, besides watching wrestling, was to listen to music. After my father passed, I had given his stereo to my son. They both loved music. It seemed a fitting place and person to have it. As the get together really began to get interesting we were all blown away as the stereo kicked on. It kicked on loudly, over powering the rest of the house.

My son and I looked at each other and he asked, "How the hell did the stereo turn on?"

It wasn't the type that had a remote and turned on. It was a smaller, older unit, my dad owned for years. I sat there, my son turning it off before coming back. All he said was his room was cold, too cold for it being late June. It had been eighty-five degrees all day. Was it the temperature? Was it the chill from the frightening experience? I couldn't tell. What I did realize, was that somehow, my dad was there, probably looking in on us guys.

Believe it, or don't. It depends on what people chose to believe about the world around us. There are many unexplained things in our world and we see them all the time. We chose what to believe. When we are children we are open, sponges, without predisposed ideas or beliefs and everything is something to believe. We grow up being told this doesn't exist, that doesn't happen, and our brains decide at a point, to believe it or not to. I was an open believer and received a message from the other side.