Entry #1:

I came home from college one weekend and my mom asked me to go with her to an antique store she had seen while driving one day.  The store was in the country inside a lady's old white two-story farmhouse.  On the ground floor was the shop, while the residence was on the second floor.  Mom & I walked up to the large wrap-around front porch and knocked on the front door, since there was a wooden sign that said, "OPEN".  We took a step back and waited for an answer.  Finally, a lady came to the door, opened the inside wooden storm door, but left the outside wood & screen door shut.  She just stared at us for a moment, until my mom said, "Is your shop open today?"  The lady nodded without saying a word then opened the outer screen door.  Being a screen door, there was no suction and should have been no wind disturbance of any kind.  There were no pets or animals of any kind roaming around.  I was standing to the right of my mom, feet firmly planted on the porch.  When the lady opened the screen door, it was like SOMETHING rushed out at me and firmly hit me in the chest.  It hit me so hard, my feet went flying out from under me and my mom grabbed hold of me with two hands, keeping me from flying off the front porch.  We saw nothing, but I definitely felt something hit me.  My mom asked me what I did and if I was ok.  I told her I must have lost my balance.  The lady just stared at me as we walked past her into the shop.  When we were alone, my mom said she knew there was no way I had just lost my balance.  I have no clue what it was.

Entry #2:
I have a 7-year-old daughter.  When she was about 3-years-old she came running into my bedroom yelling for me to come see the little boy.  I asked her WHO the little boy was & she said she didn't know.  I asked her WHERE he was and she said, "In my bathroom, in my bathtub."  I followed her into her bathroom expecting it to be her Diego bath toy.  We rushed in and she abruptly stopped, looked in her bathtub and said in a disappointed tone, "Oh, he's not there anymore."  She saw him four or five times within one year.  At least four or five times that she mentioned him to me.  She said he had dark hair like Diego, but that's all she could tell me about him, other than he was a little boy.  It would send chills up my spine when she talked to him.

Entry #3:
A few years ago, I went on a daytime tour of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia with a friend. The tour was part historical, part ghost tour. The tour guides were two people who had been on so many tours, the museum finally just hired them. They had both had personal experiences on the tour and kept going back for more, so they were great guides. I’ve always been a believer in ghosts, or at least in the idea that there is something inexplicable that happens, and I’ve had a few strange experiences I could never quite explain. On this tour, we entered one space in the asylum. They’re doing their best to keep the asylum standing, but a lot of it is very dilapidated and this one room was huge and very open. All the glass in the windows was gone, so you felt almost like you were outside. Essentially, a room you should NOT feel claustrophobic in. Immediately crossing the threshold of the room, I felt a pressure and like my body wanted me out of that room. I made myself stay, but I felt incredibly uncomfortable the whole time I was in there. We went in a lot of rooms in that asylum and all of them were creepier than this one, darker, smaller, but this is the only one that made me feel like I was in a place I should not be, that I needed to get out. The guide only kept us in that room for a few minutes and said that he couldn’t stand to stay in there. He had the same feeling. I hadn’t said anything about the way I was feeling, so it was so strange to hear someone else say almost word for word what it felt like to be in there!

The 2nd experience I had in the asylum was when I was walking up the stairs. The guides were very good about saying that there are no windows, so it can be difficult to separate a ghostly sound from a normal outside sound. I was walking up the stairs and it was just me and the guide. There was this incredibly strange sound that we both heard. I can’t describe it, only that it was something I had never heard before or since. It was definitely an animal or a person and it was very high pitched and quick. The only thing I could think of to explain it was that it was a bird sound I had never heard before. But I turned around to the guide and she said, “Oh yeah, I heard that too!” Whatever it was, it was a strange strange sound.

Finally, they did the flashlight experiment, which I’m sure you’ve seen on ghost hunter tv shows. This part I’m a little bit more skeptical of, because it could have just been the flashlight, but it really seemed to respond to yes or no questions. After a while of sitting with nothing happening, the flashlight suddenly started turning on and off and seemed to respond. So who knows!

It was a great tour and I really recommend it. You can go for overnight stays (I would be totally terrified), or you can do the hour and a half or so daytime tour like I did. My group wasn’t great – there were a few people who just kept talking, including talking on their cellphones – but it didn’t stop it from being an amazing experience!

Entry #4:

I have had lots of creepy experiences, but perhaps the most chilling was when we lived in an old house where we knew the two previous occupants had died in the house. The old man died in the basement, and the old lady died upstairs in a bedroom. I occupied that bedroom for two years, and always, always felt a presence in there. The kitchen also was very full of presence, and we used to have babysitters who would tell us they had seen things. We just never felt alone in that house. I never actually saw anything, but we lived there for four years and it has stayed with me.

Entry #5:
When I was very small, maybe four, my mom took me to see the movie of Fiddler on the Roof. Well, I didn’t understand the scene with the dream, and just saw all those hands reaching up from the graves. This made me terrified of cemeteries, which intensified when my mom died a few years later. For many many years I would not walk across a grave. I always winced when others did. Then, a few years ago, my son was in a school production of Fiddler. I sat in the audience by myself and almost cried when I realized the whole graveyard scene was not only a dream, but a joke he was playing on his wife! I laughed. Ever since then, I have been enthralled with cemeteries (I know there’s a word for this) and I have been photographing them on every vacation. I’ve got Harper’s Ferry (beautiful), a small part of Gettysburg, and many forgotten old plots. My husband will now actually pull over when I see one I like.

Entry #6
My ghostly encounter occurred 10 years ago when I was about 15 years old, on a family vacation in Savannah, GA.  We went out to eat breakfast at this old building that used to be a factory but had been converted into a restaurant.  Towards the end of the meal, I had to get up to go to the bathroom.  My twin sister came with me.  The bathroom was in the basement down a hallway.  Let me set the scene for you:

Inside the bathroom, there were 2 sinks to the left, then past the sinks there were 2 bathroom stalls, also on the left.  Then there was just a wall.  I took the further stall, against the brick wall.  My sister took the closer stall.

After I was done in the stall, I went to wash my hands.  I'm looking at my hands as I'm washing them, and out of my peripheral vision I see my sister's reflection in the mirror as she walks behind me.  I turn to my left to say something to her at the other sink, and there's no one there.  That's when I realize she's still in the stall, and she's just flushed the toilet.  She comes out and goes to wash her hands, and the hair on the back of my neck just stands on edge.  I then explained to her what had happened.

It's such a random experience that at times I wonder could it have been someone else in the bathroom?  But it couldn't have, they'd have to be in my stall with me.  I clear as day saw someone walk behind me in that mirror.  I get all tingly just thinking about it.