Your
True Tales
September 2005 – Page
12
Vanishing
Parishioner
by Bill J.
When I was a kid growing up in western Maryland, my mother who was a devout Christian made us go to church regularly. And this is where I had my first and only paranormal experience as probably have others.
One Sunday – I was about 14 at the time – we went to church as usual and sat generally where we usually would (center aisle). About halfway into the sermon, which usually lasted about 90 minutes or more, I smelled something putrid, like a dead animal or something. I looked around and there on a far bench was a small wrinkled old man, his face sooty and dirty, and his clothes were like something from the nineteenth century – a woolen, dark gray suit and a greenish, buttoned, dirty vest. He just seemed to stare out the window more than paying attention. I faced forward for a second and then wanting to do a double-take at the older man, curious about what he was wearing, which struck me as odd. I turned around and he was absolutely gone, like he was never there at all, no trace. The old man just completely vanished. I looked up and down the aisles and he was no where to be found at all.
This church has a little bit of history, as I found out several years later. The original church was built in the late 1880s and burned to the ground in the 1990s. It was in August when I saw this man (I can remember that I had started school again there very soon after). The date of the fire was August 17, 1894. One person was killed in the fire – the pastor (age seventy-three), who was asleep in the living quarters that used to be on the property (as the story goes).
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