Have you ever experienced something eerie? It gave you chills, made you feel uncomfortable, or just seemed like something unearthly. Maybe you have had an encounter with a ghostly presence. If you have, I’d love to hear about it. I, myself, have had unexplainable experiences. The nature of the experience leads me to believe that I have been in the presence of spirits. It has not been just a one time occurrence at one point in my life. When I was younger, both my brother and I recall seeing people that my mother and father neither one had seen. I remember one morning sitting on my mother’s lap eating cereal around the age of 6. I looked over toward the front door and saw a man walk by then right through the door. As a child, I immediately asked my mother who the man in our house was. She was confused as my dad was at work and no other man would be in the house. That was the first of many encounters for me.

My brother, on the other hand, has only had one experience that he has shared. We were at my old house and my mom and I were in the bathroom. He yelled to my mom and told her that there was a man in the living room who was trying to talk to him, but that he disappeared. My mother asked him to describe the man. As he did, my mother had a good feeling she knew who he saw. When we went to my grandfather’s house that weekend my mom showed my brother a picture of her Uncle Sonny that had passed away. Sure enough, my brother agreed that it was the man in the picture that was in the living room earlier that week.

Both my brother and my first encounters happened at a young age. As I grew older though, the supernatural was something that intrigued me. When I was 11 years old, my best friend, her younger sister, her dad and me went to an interesting cemetery. It is known as Buck Cemetery. We went during the day and knew nothing about it other than the gravestones there were very old. Two things happened that day. We were standing examining one of the headstones as the younger sister, age 8, went to walk she fell down. We gave her a look and she asked me “why did you push me?” I was the only one close enough to have done that, but I never would have pushed my best friend’s younger sister down. Being skeptical, we assumed she tripped over her feet and was embarrassed so she just said someone pushed her. About 10 minutes later is when the second thing happened. After getting an eerie feeling, we decided we were going to leave. To get back to the car, it was about a quarter mile walk through a lane in the woods. My friend and I were ahead of the dad and sister. We turned around to make sure they were coming and as we did, we both shouted “did you see that?” Knowing she just saw something, made me feel less insane. We began describing to each other what we saw and in fact, it was definitely the same thing. In the back corner of the cemetery by the woods, there was a woman wearing a black dress. She was smiling, mouth closed, waving at us. It felt like a devious goodbye. It gives me chills to this day thinking about it. Her dad told us in the car that there had been reports of ghostly encounters at the cemetery before, but did not want us to be scared so he did not mention it before we went there. I did research as soon as I got home and found people had sighted experiencing things at Buck Cemetery as well.

After this encounter, I found myself eager to search more and more. My mother and I were intrigued and wondered what else was out there. I began watching Ghost Hunters and other shows that tried to show, explain, and debunk what are claimed to be supernatural experiences. If you want to hear more of my encounters while searching for the supernatural, be on the lookout for my next article “I’ve Had Encounters With Spirits Part 2.” In the meantime, comment or share any places or experiences you have had.