Happy Paranormal Day!  I hope everyone out there is getting a good dose of the supernatural, but in case you’re struggling to find the right way to celebrate, here are my suggestions.

1.  Watch a little Paranormal Activity…with your imagination.  I will defend these movies forever.  Just imagine yourself in those situations.  Would you need crazy CGI to freak out if you were in those characters’ shoes?  No.  You wouldn’t.
2.  Read a good piece of supernatural fiction.  My favorites are the Anita Blake and Hollows series.  They might not be truly scary, but I love the magical worlds Laurell K. Hamilton and Kim Harrison create.
3.  Get lost in the true and not-so-true creepy stories on Reddit on subreddits like NoSleep or Paranormal.  I’d also suggest searching for creepy stories on the AskReddit subreddit.  I love reading about people’s scary experiences.

Now for a true story.  Let me set the stage.

I was a freshman in high school, and my mother, sister, and I had just gotten home after a grocery trip one day after school.  As my mother began to prepare our dinner and my sister started to pass some time on the computer in the dining room, I remembered I had a permission slip that I needed signed for a field trip.  So, I went to my room at the back of the house to search my backpack.

My room was right across from my parents’ bedroom, and at this time my bed was situated where the end of the bed was even with the edge of my door frame about 10 feet across the room.  My mother that day was wearing a cream-colored sweater. This comes into play in a minute.

While I was searching for the permission slip in my backpack at the foot of the bed, I heard my dad come home.  He was talking to my mom and sister, and I could hear them joking around.   I finally found the piece of paper I was looking for, and while I was wrestling it from the other papers in my bag, I saw very clearly with my peripheral vision my mother walk past my doorway and into her bedroom into her closet.

Or so I thought.

I told her to wait one second while I got her to sign the paper, and I heard a very clear, “Hmm?”  I immediately followed her into her room with the paper and a pen and turned into the walk-in closet.

No one was there.

I stood there for a few seconds, really confused because I had JUST SEEN HER WALK IN THERE and she had JUST ANSWERED ME.  I walked back to the kitchen and saw that my mom was exactly where I left her, washing vegetables for dinner.  My sister was still on the computer, and my dad was taking off his work boots.

What. The. Hell.

I walked back to my parents’ room, but – of course – nothing was there.  I didn’t really expect there to be.  I was so weirded out that I didn’t even make a big deal about it, which is pretty strange because I’m all about this stuff normally.  I just couldn’t believe that had just happened.  I ended up telling my mom about it one day, and she said that the house could be creepy sometimes but that it was probably nothing.  My sister thought it was cool and said she felt creepy in the back of the house at times.

I forgot about it for the longest time until one day my family and I were eating dinner at a restaurant in Branson.  We were talking about creepy things, and my dad happened to mention that he thought there was something in our house.  He said he’d seen out of the corner of his eyes a Native American woman in a cream-colored shawl walk around our house at least a few times.

Say what now?

I had a momentary freak-out when I heard this and told him about the woman I had seen go into his bedroom closet.  He just said that he believed it.  My parents’ house is located in Eastern Oklahoma, and there are quite a few Native American burial grounds close to our house.  It’s very possible we have a few ghosts that call our land home.

Each of my family members’ have seen or felt creepy things in the back of our house from time to time.  My sister has even had a few things moved from her shelves and placed on the floor in her room.

Silly ghosts.

So that’s my story.  It’s not flashy, but it’ll do.  Anyone out there have a creepy paranormal encounter?  I’d love to hear it.