My Personal Experience with the Supernatural

With great reluctance I have decided to share my experiences with the supernatural. As someone who is a skeptic, who only believes through seeing and feeling, it’s difficult for me to type these words out of fear of being labeled “crazy”. However I know, without doubt, that the things I have witnessed are genuine and true and assure I you that there’s no attention grabbing nonsense in this article. Whether or not what I’ve seen is a mental side effect of some kind of magnetically charged atmosphere or manifestation of spirits can be discussed and evaluated elsewhere. The following details are explicitly true and not exaggerated in any way. 

I don’t consider myself a man driven by fiction. Often I need proof of something before I believe it, even mundane things such as winning a prize. Until it’s in my hand, until I’ve witnessed it for myself, I have difficulty believing it. During my life I have been given cause to believe in the fact that we’re not alone on this Earth. Around us are forces we don’t understand and are probably a long way from understanding. Perhaps someday we will move these things from the column of “magic” and “supernatural” and into the realm of science. Until then, I can only categorize what I’ve seen and felt as not of this world.

Since a young age, as many children, I was sure there were things that went bump in the night. In a darkened room a shirt hung on a chair becomes a vicious ghoul. So in my adult life I have dismissed a large number of things that I may have seen as tricks of my imagination. These are visions or movement out of the corner of my eye and though they are numerous, I will not share them here as even I don’t know what I saw.

Growing up my parents owned a dog named GiGi. This Sheltie had grown to become not just an animal, but a true member of the family. She loved especially us children and was fiercely protective. I’d not known my life for very long without GiGi, she had just always been there. Not long after moving from Germany to Oklahoma, GiGi grew ill. Lumps formed on her forehead that the vet determined was cancer, and one that she could not recover from. We fought with treatments from the vet and everything that could be thought of for years. In the end GiGi’s pain was too great and so with a heavy heart my father and mother took her in to the vet so they could be with her during her last moments.

Regardless of what you believe as far as animals souls and their personalities I know that GiGi was akin to one of us. The hole she left, while not as great as perhaps a friend or grandmother, was a hole nonetheless and we all grieved.

On a normal sunny afternoon I was in my backyard at the top of the hill we had looking down towards the bottom field. We had almost an acre in our backyard and GiGi was buried at the very bottom of the sloping hill and small field, underneath a large tree. While I was still mourning GiGi she was not what was on my mind at the time, so when I saw her run across the yard I was in shock.

Honestly at first it was natural and it took a moment to realize that it shouldn’t be happening. I was happy, and as a pre-teen I imagined that somehow what I knew had happened previously somehow hadn’t. Somehow my dog had come back to me and just about the time I called to her she ran through the fence and disappeared behind the tree which she was buried. When I told my mother about what I saw she said I just missed my dog but the look on her face was odd. Later in life I found that my mother had witnessed GiGi as well. This would be the only time I would see my dog again since her death and I don’t know if it was a mixture of sadness that made her appear to me or if it was actually her. To this day though I feel strongly it was GiGi going through the motions of playing in a residual haunting.

While seeing the apparition of a dog may not be the spooky things we’re used to from scary movies; it was nevertheless more real then anything I’d even seen before. I’d witnessed and heard things before that, cold spots, odd feelings and shadows moving at the corner of my eye, but that was the first real in your face experience I’d had. Unfortunately it would not be my last. Though I was not scared of GiGi even a little it opened up the possibility that we were not alone. As a teenager that was a terrifying possibility and kept me up at night.

My uncle Larry was a good man who had served in the military. Through sadness in his life caused by those around him he had turned to drink. One day, while showering, my Uncle Larry fell, bashing his head against the shower and killing him. My mother was more then a little distraught and it was the first and last time I’d ever seen my father cry. My uncle was a man that, before the alcohol, was a good and decent man and an even better soldier. I remember him now as he was then, a fatherly presence that often wore a plain white t-shirt with Marlboro’s rolled up in one sleeve.

Several months after Uncle Larry’s death was the 4th of July. The weekend before, my mother, brothers, two dogs and multiple cats were going about our business in the living room when we heard a knock on the door. Shortly before the dogs went crazy barking, not unusual. From the big windows in the living room you can see the walk in front of our house as well as the porch. It’s obvious when someone is approaching and I had already stood to go answer the door as I saw a flash of a torso clothed in white heading for it.

Upon opening the door nobody was there. Understand we have half an acre in our front yard and aren’t out in a neighborhood. Our closest neighbor is at least another half acre away and there’s no feasible way anybody could knock on the door, run, and not be spotted. Writing it off in whatever way we could, even though we all had our theories of what happened, we continued with our lives.  The next two 4th of July’s in the subsequent years the event repeated with the whole family seeing what I saw. To this day we all believe that it was my Uncle Larry visiting on what was his favorite holiday.

Again, so far the major experiences were not really scary so much as unnerving. I didn’t know at the time that I soon would no longer be able to say that. As a young man I met my future ex-wife. We both were intrigued by the possibility of spirits and had both seen or felt things so we decided, in standard stupid youth, to experiment with a Ouija board. Many theories are there about these devices that some would call “toys”. I understand many of you may be rolling your eyes at this point and perhaps even tempted to click the close button. Please bear with me as do I not only believe what I experienced was genuine but is a warning to never EVER dabble with this dangerous thing.

Outside of a little town called Claremore in Oklahoma there is a road you can take. As you go down the road it turns first to gravel as the trees close tighter around you then it simply ends. Directly in front of you can be seen graves simply interspersed between the trees. This was what was once considered an actual Indian graveyard (are there any other more ominous?). Whether or not it actually was the graves and bodies have since been moved and the land destroyed to build a housing edition. I don’t know if it was truly ever an Indian graveyard or simply a family plot that was illegally used, but either way it was here we first brought the Ouija board.

Not content with doing this experiment in a air conditioned room we went out that night sufficiently bundled and knelt on opposite sides of a gravestone hewn from granite. Placing the Ouija board on top of it and giggling with nervousness we called on a spirit to answer us. At first nothing happened and we had begun to decide we were ignorant and started to fear danger of a more natural psycho killer sort when the planchette began to move. The planchette, in case your unaware, is the piece that outlines the number or letters on the board. Knowing each other was moving the piece we laughed as it stated a simple hello. As is standard when playing with a Ouija board I would think both of us asked the other if we were moving it. We both vehemently denied the fact and I know without a shadow of a doubt neither of us moved it.

Now at this point I will point you here and tell you if you wish to know more about the Ouija board and it’s origins and effects you can do so. For the sake of the article I will let you know the theory that most scientists believe that unconscious movements of those controlling the pointer, a psycho-physiological phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect. While I do not believe that is the case, and will explain why shortly, I wanted you to know so that if you, the reader, would see I approach most things cautiously and not with superstition but with intelligence.

It may warrant noting that before this I had dabbled with Ouija boards and the planchette had never even moved. I’m not sure what was different on that day but we carried on a discussion with whatever was on the other end. The “whatever” claimed to be called “Jim”. According to him he had died of some sort of illness that both he and his girlfriend had. My ex-wife he summarily stated looked very much like his deceased love. We both were thrilled, and a little scared, to speak to this spirit and as the night drew to a close we did not tell the spirit goodbye but simply tossed the board back in the truck and drove to our then separate homes, gabbing about what we had experienced the whole time. We thought that would be the last time that we would have an experience with that particular Ouija board and that particular “entity”. We were wrong.

In the following days I did a lot of research regarding Ouija boards. I read story upon story and balked at the more, shall we say, creative among them. Everything from full on possession to hovering lamps. I did find a few articles that were similar to my experience but at this point I still thought somehow the whole thing was some sort of ideomotor effect. The one article I had read that chilled me a bit though was the one that stated that it was dangerous to not say goodbye on the board to a spirit. Many believe this is leaving a connection open with that entity. At the time I scoffed and closed the net and went on about my life. Oddly I couldn’t stop thinking about the experience and neither could my then fiance.

One night, boredom sinking in, we decided to try again. This time in a less imposing environment then a creepy graveyard, instead in the warmth and comfort of her home. The planchette moved with more fluidity and more quickly this time. Baffled we discovered we again had the curious “Jim” on the line yet again. We asked him numerous questions hoping to somehow use the internet to confirm what he was telling us. All of our investigations were a bust. The one thing he did mention was a town that neither of us had ever heard of that he said he died in. We could not find his name though, or a specific instant of death that matched his story of him and his girlfriend dying of this outbreak; however the town he mentioned was real. Keep in mind neither of  us had ever heard the name before so the theory that somehow we were unconsciously moving this planchette was a little less plausible.

In the days that followed we thought we were a pair of detectives trying to discover things about “Jim’s” life. We became more convinced the Ouija board was not a toy as it was divulging things to us that neither knew. Names of towns, for instance, or individual details that neither of us knew about the other and would never willingly share. Our trips to the Ouija board became more frequent but no matter how many times we tried to get a deceased grandmother or Elvis we continuously got “Jim”. Things began changing with the entity we were speaking to as well. The more we visited with “Jim” the quicker the planchette would move upon using it. It would practically fly around the board our fingers barely touching the planchette and certainly not with enough force to move it. “Jim” quit talking about his girlfriend or his past and instead wanted to know about us. He constantly talked about my ex-wife. It began to talk in more vulgar ways about her and was constantly talking about wanting to touch her. Several times during exchanges such as these my ex said she felt something move her hair or touch her leg at the approximate time that “Jim” said he would. Whether this was her making things up, I cannot say, though in all the time we were together, I could never get her to confess it wasn’t real. At least to me she always maintained that it was and it scared her more then anything else.

Another thing the entity obsessively wanted was for us to invite it to move things. Once a pretty masquerade mask of porcelain fell of my ex-wife’s wall moments after we asked him to prove he was in the room. To do more, he would say, he would need to “use us for a second”. Even then the request sent chills up my spine and we both refused. Usually this would mark the end of our session as “Jim” would become increasingly hostile and just stop speaking. When we tried to convince him to he would say things like “Fuck You” and nothing more.

As the weeks went by several changes started to affect me. Obsessed with the Ouija board, my attention to my job, my family and even my hobby of video games suffered. My ex-wife and I fought more often and when I slept I would have horrible night terrors that would result in me waking up screaming and soaked in sweat. I grew inexplicably angry all the time and my speech began to be filled with curse words and vulgarities even around my parents that I’d never said one bad word around before since being a young man. Once I tried what, according to many, is the most dangerous thing you can do with a Ouija board. Determined to prove myself wrong, to convince myself this all was fake, I called on “Jim” by myself. No sooner had I touched the planchette then it began to move wanting to know “what the fuck I was doing and where the fuck was my ex-wife (though he used her name)”. When I told him she wasn’t there “Jim” told me to die,  to just kill myself right now and that if I would just let him in he would do it himself.

I was terrified and I told him goodbye on the board and in response all it said was H-A-H-A and then the board fell silent. Not being able to get it to move again I grew more scared and took it to my ex-wife leaving it at her house. I told her I couldn’t do it anymore and I was too scared to continue to play with it. She agreed and confided with me since that in the time since it was at her house she had also talked to “Jim” alone with increasingly hostile demands about letting him in.

My life worsened. I’m not saying I was possessed, I wasn’t walking around with all black pupils or anything so dramatic. Sometimes I was even myself though the comments came more frequently from friends and family that I had drastically changed and not for the better. People that once enjoyed my company refused to be around me. One day, not sure where to turn, I did more research online this time not as skeptic. Understand whether or not I believed it completely I knew something was wrong with me. Lo and behold I found a story, though while writing this I could not again, that nearly mirrored my own.

That night I called my ex-wife, then still my girlfriend, and we called on “Jim”. He was more violent and angry then we had ever seen and he immediately began to tell us to die. I do not know your religion and would never force mine on anyone but that day I brought a Bible with me. Reading from it a passage of protection and one that preachers use to cleanse houses we told it goodbye in a very final and succinct matter.

The board went silent and we never heard from “Jim” again. Even so we set the board on fire and watched the plastic and cardboard curl and burn into ash. Once done we buried the ashes. Silly? Perhaps but we were scared and convinced that we were getting rid of something truly evil. Again I do not know your religious views, but I can only say that what we came across I believe was true evil. Not a spirit or even an entity but what is plain to me was a demon. If you do research you’ll find that people that believe in demons and the power of the Ouija board know that some malevolent forces will use it to communicate and attempt to use it to convince you to give up your body to it. All of this strikes far too close to what I experienced and to this day I have never again touched a Ouija board and never will.

I would love to say that this was the last time I encountered anything that felt evil to me besides the deeds of men. Again, unfortunately I cannot. Time goes by and my then girlfriend became my fiance and subsequently my wife and then ex-wife. Life moved on and I met the woman I’m married to today and on December 13th, 2005 she granted me a baby boy named Logan. We brought Logan home to our apartment and he grew up there for the next two years of our life. Shortly after Logan was 2 years old we decided to find a bigger place as our belongings were growing at a substantial rate, his room filled with toys. Finding that houses were expensive and large apartments were at a premium we moved into a fixer upper double wide trailer that was nice, though old. It was huge at nearly 1900 square feet and had three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

The way the trailer was set up one side of the trailer was mine and my wife’s room and all the way on the other side was my son’s. Really it wasn’t that different from the set up we had, Logan’s room had always been away from ours. Connecting our room in the back to the kitchen was a long hallway and the living room was connected to it. Flowing from the opposite end of the living room was another long hallway with a room and bathroom built off to the left side and my son’s room at the very end of the hallway. Logan did then and still does, desperately want to do things on his own. Before moving into the trailer he slept in his own “big boy” bed and strives to be as independent as possible. Logan was scared of nearly nothing and watched zombie movies and ghost movies without fear, or as much as I would let him without blood and such.

Shortly thereafter Logan began to have nightmares. Deciphering my son’s speech at the time was difficult as he was 2 and he was behind due to some hearing problems since birth so I’m not sure what a majority of them were about but I know he was deathly afraid. The nights that me and my wife slept never made it without my son joining  us. Often he would fall asleep on the couch and I would put him in his bed only to find him afraid and standing by my bedside later that night. That behavior is probably standard for a boy of his age so at first I was annoyed even a little angry. I wasn’t getting much sleep because of it and I would try and force him to stay in his bed. We offered everything from candy to toys for him to stay in his bed and nothing worked.

If he didn’t want to disappoint us or still try to earn his toy he would sneak in our room and sleep on the floor unknown to us. We would wake up almost stepping on him a few times and eventually gave up and just let him sleep with us thinking he would grow out of it. As he turned 3 and then 4 still the situation remained the same. The behavior was not restricted to nighttime either as my son refused to go in that side of the house by himself and play during the day and would tag around behind us as we went about our day. Often he would bring all his toys into the living room and play there instead of playing in his room.

Logan was not the only one afraid of that side of the house. From the day I moved in I was creeped out by that end for a reason that was not clear to me then. I dismissed it out of hand because when it comes to a good and cheap place to live you don’t let the creepy crawlies affect you. No sane person moves into a home thinking I hope there aren’t ghosts or something living here so I didn’t think anything else of it. As the year went on though more and more odd things started  happening adding to my son’s refusal to sleep on that side of the house. Noises, footsteps, and often I would catch movement out of the corner of my eyes. At night, sitting in front of the TV screen on my bean bag, I would play video games late into the night. I could see all the way down his hallway and often while watching the screen I would see a black shape go quickly into the bathroom, computer room or his room. Many times I would hear someone coming down the hall, and not paying attention or scared, I would naturally think it was my wife; knowing it was too heavy to be Logan, only to find she was sound asleep all the way on the other end of the house.

People that would occasionally stay over, even those that didn’t believe in anything supernatural, wouldn’t use the bathroom on that side of the house. My brother, sleeping over one night, experienced the same noises and even as a grown man left before the night was up. Interviewing friend’s since, especially the skeptics, they couldn’t rightly define it except to say something was wrong with that side of the house that it made them frightened.  In addition, the few times Logan would sleep in the room we had to pile blankets on him because it was always much colder on that side of the trailer then the rest of the home. We checked the windows for cracks or leaky seals and found nothing.

Again I wrote all of this off as my nerves, the “heebie jeebies” and my mind playing tricks on me. That changed as one day I came home to an empty trailer. Hearing someone in Logan’s room sounding like they were filtering through his things I made my way to the kitchen quietly and grabbed a frying pan. I know cliche, but it was the heaviest thing I could find and like anyone else would I thought someone was in my house stealing my things. The noise continued as I made my way into the living room and the edge of the hallway. Peeking down into his open room I saw no shadows from people and heard no voices. Gathering my bravery I yelled down the hall “I’m calling the cops asshole!” and tensed for what I was sure would be a brutal encounter. Instead the sounds completely stopped. Bravely or foolishly I rushed into the room, frying pan brandished like a shining knight in armor, and attacked…nothing. Nobody was there, the window was locked, the closet was empty and nobody but myself was in the home. I never even shared the story with my wife too scared it would make me seem crazy to her.

Still not sharing the story with my wife life went on and one day hearing noises I screamed at and confronted whatever it was.  Poised at the end of the hall, for what I’m not sure,  I’m positive I would look mad to anyone looking.  I dared whatever it was to show itself or do something if it was going to do it but to leave my family the hell alone. That night I had a night terror as vivid and as bad as the ones I had with the Ouija board. In the dream I rose from my bed needing a glass of water and went into the kitchen. Remember in the kitchen you can see all the way down Logan’s hallway and to his room. I saw a man shaped figure, wisps of black around him, walking down my son’s hallway. Standing paralyzed for just a moment I knew I had to protect my son so I ran into his room. Standing over his bed was the figure and it was leaned over him. I screamed at it that he was mine to get away and it turned as it’s mouth opened impossibly wide, splitting at the sides, and laughed at me; a terrible hissing sound. Then it screamed and I awoke my own scream filling the room and before I could gather myself I ran from my bed and sprinted down the hall to find my son’s bedroom empty.  Still not quite awake I didn’t know why he wasn’t there; had the thing gotten him? I called for him frantically and back in my room discovered him asleep in my own bed.

After this vivid night terror and watching cartoons with my son one weekend, his scary room the furthest from his mind and sunlight streaming through the window, I asked him why he wouldn’t sleep in his room or play back there. His simple four year old answer? “The shadows live back there” he said without much interest, barely taking his eyes from the TV show. Goosebumps covered my flesh as I assured my son there was no such thing even as myself questioned it.

Shortly after that I told my wife everything and she astonishingly believed me and shared stories of her own. We debated on finding a priest that would come and bless the house or cleanse the home, but we didn’t want to be considered crazy by those around us. Instead we focused on buying a house and moving out. Finally closing a house and the day we moved I remember vividly going into the back area and grabbing one last box of toys. Everyone else was waiting in the car as it was the last thing to get. It took every ounce of bravery I could muster not to leave the toys and run from the room. I was overwhelmed by a terrifying feeling that something wanted to hurt me there.  All of this in bright midday sunshine. In spite of my cowardice I grabbed the box and ran from the house, slowing my pace before exiting so as not to appear completely insane.  I have never gone back.

Once we moved my son’s nightmares stopped almost instantly. A boy that wouldn’t even consider sleeping in his own room would go to his bed voluntarily at night time. Logan would play in there fine and never mentioned the shadows to me ever again. Occasionally he still wakes up afraid of something he can’t remember and sometimes says “the scary trailer”. Again I believe I came up against true evil. Not a haunting, not a wayward spirit, but a demon. It felt similar in a way that “Jim” did but never so solid or real. It didn’t affect me personally but then again I wasn’t inviting it into my life like “Jim”.

To this day nothing else has happened of the same level. Sure I’ve heard the normal bumps in the nights and occasional odd whisper sounds, but those can be easily identified of being spooked or maybe some natural house setting; so I won’t mention them here. Even in the trailer or during the “Jim” incident though I’ve never seen some horrifying full bodied entity like I saw in that night terror. Mostly people don’t come face to face like that with whatever it is tormenting them. Often the stories I hear of full bodied apparitions, I have a hard time believing. Like I said I am not someone easily fooled or superstitious. I don’t spend my life looking for ghosts or blaming standard problems on the supernatural. However, I know what I experienced and I cannot believe it was all just in my head.

Someday, hopefully, some scientist will come up with solid and conclusive evidence that there are no such thing as demons or spirits; no such thing as what we think goes bump in the night. Until then I stay away from Ouija boards and don’t play with the supernatural. Perhaps one day what we think of as magic will be, as it often has with other things, proved as science. I wouldn’t bet on it though.

I share these experiences with you today not because I want views on our website (although those are always nice). Not because I have some desire for attention (though if you want to shower me with fame that’s fine). I do it because until this day I haven’t shared these happenings with anyone but my wife and frankly I’m tired of feeling like I’m crazy and feel solid enough in my belief that it’s time to be shared. Also I share these on the off chance that some dumb teenager is playing with the occult thinking it’s just dumb folk stories and is looking through the net to find someone that has seen what they have seen. Mostly because I don’t want to feel so “crazy” and alone in my belief.

Do you have similar experiences or any questions for me? Please share them in the comments below.