I have often heard people say they don't believe in ghosts because they have never seen one themselves, well, I have. I have also had first hand experience with a harbringer phenominon, the sound of a breaking object that heralded the death of family members, as well as having animals that knew of death in the family.

First, let me explain that my mother married my stepfather in 1965. We moved to his home and I quickly learned that ghosts and hauntings were not unknown in my stepfathers family. His first wife had died of cancer and he attributed his marriage to my mother to a visit paid to him by his deceased wife in which he felt her touch him in the night, waking him from sleep, to hear her tell him that the woman he was dating at the time was not the one he should marry but her neighbor. My mother was the neighbor in question and my stepfather did indeed start dating her and eventually married her. My stepfather also reported one other ghostly visitor to his home, his father. He told us that one evening, this was before he married my mother, he came home from work late and sat down to rest in the chair by the fireplace in the living room. While sitting there resting, he suddenly became aware that his father, who had been dead for only a short time at this time, had walked into the room and over to the fireplace. It is neccessary to explain here that the fireplace was closed off with a metal sheet and an electric heater had been placed in front of it. My stepfather said his dad then looked over at him and said quite clearly "You know, it is not so bad here son" to him. Then he reached down and picked up a poker and went to stir up the fire, at which time my stepfather reached out to touch him and he vanished. I myself often experienced sightings in this house. There is a hallway leading from the living room to the upstairs rooms. The doorway to my bedroom opened onto this hallway. I have seen a white, translucent figure that is human in form and size that comes down this hall from the direction of the upstairs bedrooms and vanishes when it reaches the living room. I have sen this figure from both the living room and my bedroom, at night and in the daytime. I never heard the appirition speak to me however.

After my stepfather's mother died, in her room off the hallway aforementioned, I was visited one morning by a figure much like the one I had seen previously, but this one actually entered my room and stood by my bed like it was looking at me. Again I neither felt or heard anything however.

Sound did play a part in my next report though. Before my stepfather's mother moved into the house where we lived, she lived in her own house, right down the road from ours. One evening as we were visiting her, and some other relatives who had come to see her, I and everyone else in her living room heard a sound like a big glass jar of some sort being smashed underneath the house. I had no idea of what had happened and asked what had broken. My stepfather then said that someone in the family had died or was soon to die. My mother and I asked him what he meant and he told us that whenever someone in his family died or sometimes before, a sound like a jar breaking had been heard at his mother's house. He said he had heard it before his father's death and also at the death of his uncle and several of his cousins. This particular time it turned out that one of his aunts had died that very evening. The next day my stepfather, one of his cousins and myself went under the house and searched for any sign of broken glass or pottery, but found none at all.

Animals are often credited in stories with having closer ties to the paranormal than humans, and while I don't know that this is strictly true, I do know that I have experienced first hand an incident, involving a cat and a dog I owned, that proved to my stepfather, my mother and myself that animals do indeed sometimes know things that they have no way of knowing without some connection with the supernatural existing. My experience was as follows. One evening as my stepfather, my mother and I were returning from a shopping trip we came in sight of our house only to see my dog and my cat sitting side by side in the driveway like they were waiting on us. I will never forget my stepfather saying to my mother "Something has happened, they are waiting to tell us that something has happended." Once we had parked and gotten out of the car, both the dog and the cat began to walk up to my stepfather and then move towards the house of my stepbrother who lived next door to us. "They want us to go with them" my stepfather said, so as my mother carried groceries into the house he and I went to my stepbrothers house only to find that they had been trying to find us all evening. It turned out that my aunt Thedna and her husband had been involved in an auto accident that day and he was dead and they did not know if she was going to live. My stepfather told his son that my animals had known about this because they had waited to lead us to his house so we could find out what had happened.

One last mention of my stepfather's home, we had a poltergeist in the house for a while. It liked to steal things. We often found small objects missing in the house and like most families we would fuss at each other and blame each other for misplacing stuff. However, when my stepfather had to replace the water heater in the house we found a 'stash' of our belongings behind it. What surprised us most about this was the fact that some of the items were large enough that we could not see how they had gotten where they were because there was just not enough room between the walls and the sides of the waterheater for them to have been pushed behind it.

I still have a spirit or poltergeist living with me to this day. It is a benign presence that shows itself by the occasional sound of footsteps and by the rather annoying habit of unlocking my back doors. I have had this problem in four seperate homes at this point and have gotten used to never taking on faith the back door being locked or closed. My current residence is a mobile home. I found the rear door open or unlocked at least six times in the period just before and after we moved in. I even placed a chain on the door, to no avail. I found it unlatched soon after installing it, so moved it to the top of the door and placed it so that the door does not open at all if the chain is on. I thought this would stop the door opening but no, this was not to be. Imagine my surprise the day I found the rear door standing wide open and the chain hanging down from the slide with the screws still in the attachment plate. It was pulled right out of the door. I then tried supergluing it in place using a superglue gel that I have found holds everything I have ever used it on, even going so far as to fill the screw holes with it and beading it along the edge of the attachment plate, except for the chain on my back door. This was found once more hanging as before, completly pulled out of the door.

So, I am here to tell you that ghosts and spirits do exist and that yes, real live ordinary people do come in contact with them all the time. Now if I can just find a way to contact my ghost and let it know I like my back door locked!