What I saw
My first paranormal experience spooks me the most and still baffles me after 38 years. I was 12 years old and in an abandoned house by myself. I was upstairs, alone in a bedroom. It was noon time and the room was still dark due to a window shade being drawn. As soon as I entered the room I knew I wasn't alone, yet I was alone in the house. My hair stood on end and I started getting goosebumps, I turned around and there standing outlined by the widow was a large human shaped black mass. I remember a steamer trunk with a case on top being knocked over by "it" as I ran downstairs, out of the house and hopped on my bike.
Where I saw it
The house I was in had been abandoned for years. As a matter of fact my dad still has newspapers and magazines I collected from that house and the most recent date was from 1947. The house was still furnished, had clothes still in closets and old food in cupboards and the ice box. There were still old dirty dishes in the sink. The house had been ransacked by neighborhood kids, but it looked like who ever had lived there had just up and left leaving all their belongings behind. I remember an old army uniform jacket hanging in the closet and trying it on to see if it fit. I went back to the house the next day with my older brother, but we never experienced anything and I never told him about what I saw. The house was torn down a few weeks later and a housing developement was put in with the main street following the long driveway that existed with the house.
Lessons Learned
- I kept this experience to myself for fear of ridicule and skepticism and never told any one until I finally talked to my daughter during a vacation in Gettysburg 2 1/2 years ago. I've had numerous other paranormal experiences after this one, but this instance still spooks me the most. Why did the original homeowners leave? Were they possibly haunted by the apparition that confronted me and left in fear? I'm now a freelance paranormal investigator and constantly think, "Could I have identified what I saw, if I had just told someone of my experience?" Because of that, I do what I do today.
