A few weeks back I spent my Sunday afternoon painting more of our apartment, relishing a few pints of Guinness and listening to the Astonishing Legends podcast. The color I applied to my walls is called Cracked Pepper, and closely resembled the stout in my Mets pint glass. I yearn to live in an entirely black house. One day, perhaps. I’m working on it. I listened to both parts of “Your True Halloween Stories” during the process. Let the record state that I fucking love all things Halloween, something we celebrate year round, and I’m a sucker for anything paranormal or supernatural. I felt inspired by Scott and Forrest, dare I say possessed to share my own stories.

Nothing like a good ghost story to make the hair on the back of your neck stand at attention. I was the kid who wanted to be locked in the cloak room so I could see the specter revisiting the scene of the crime. Though I love the stories I am a logical man, and sure, I certainly want ghosts to exist, but it is hard to refute some of the experiences I had when I feel like I’ve seen and heard some unexplainable things. Let’s dive in.

I was residing in a house where I was never comfortable. It wasn’t our home. My step father’s house was only really haunted when we were present. Most ghouls are human. My mother, step father and my little sister Megan had left for Atlantic City for the weekend. The most peaceful moments were when I was left alone. I preferred to be left alone and away from my parents. I was in 11th grade at the time and I had a girl over on this particular night.

It was late, definitely after midnight, and we watched the television in my bedroom, which was one section of the unfinished basement. My room was open walled, unpainted Sheetrock, strip lighting dangled from the ceiling with my bed thrown on a shaggy area rug. I had a bucket seat removed from a tow truck as a couch. I want to say that ECW wrestling was on my rabbit eared 27 inched Zenith television, not that I was an avid wrestling fan, but without cable the selection was limited. You got what you got.

There was a noise above us followed by the sounds of someone or something walking across the house, starting from my mom’s room then into the hallway and down into the living room. I wasn’t the only one who heard it, so it wasn’t something I imagined. We looked at each other, startled. “Maybe it was the dog,” she said.

“Baby is on the floor beside the bed,” I said.

Baby, was my idiotic but adorable German Shepard-Chow mix, who toggled my allergies daily but I didn’t care because I loved the mutt. I fought with my mother, who named the dog, a name I hated and thought was downright lazy. In retrospect, there wasn’t much of a reaction from my dog but maybe she was freaked out too. I figured someone had broken into the house, not an unrealistic occurrence, so I grabbed a trusty Louisville Slugger baseball bat and ran upstairs with my heart beating through my chest to confront the intruder.

I checked every room, in every closet and every inch of that house. I double checked every door and each window, and all were locked. I found nothing. There was no one inside the house besides us. The emptiness made the sounds we heard all the more frightening and the rest of the night until morning, was a bit unnerving, but no other oddities were reported. I know houses settles and pipes clang but there was no way those explanations applied to what we heard.

I’ve lived in a lot of places and I’ve had weird experiences in a few of them. I’ve seen and heard some things in the house I currently live in. It’s not so much fearful but there are moments when my family is away, and something weird happens, or I have this overwhelming feeling that I’m not quite alone and I just acknowledge it and keep it moving.

There was another bizarre encounter when I was small, maybe around 10 or 11 years old, in an chaotic apartment when my parents were still married, though it would be the last one they would live in together. Megan and I shared a room, we had bunk beds but that night I was asleep on a navy blue chair, that folded out as a floor mattress. I have vivid memories of that room. The walls were lined with pictures of my favorite band, Metallica, and I spent hours playing Blades of Steel on NES and I can specifically recall watching the movie Pumpkinhead on Cinemax, with all the lights off and being properly scared shit of the old witch, Haggis.

I was woken up by a dark figure standing over me, it seemed like a shadow, a dark void, though the room was softly lit by a small light on a desk, and I watched this thing, raise a hard cover children’s book up and then it brought it down on my face. I cried out, sitting up with bloody nose, and nothing was there and the book was on the floor beside me. Megan was asleep in the bottom bunk and all was still. I pretty certain it was a Twiddlebugs book. Maybe my sister had exacted some revenge for something was only pretended to be asleep. If so, well played, Meg. Props.

Of course, I probably dreamt it all but it felt so real. I like to think the same type of forms that dragged Prospect Place Willie to hell for merking P. Swayze busted my nose with a Sesame Street book, then laughed all the way back to the underworld.

What do you think? Humans are far scarier than ghosts, right? What were the ghosts you met like? It could all be a momentary detachment from reality, some hallucination, but what if it’s not. It’s a big what if, but fun to debate. Sweet dreams.