Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Is there life after death, I don't know, define life. Is there existence after death, for some that have passed away I truly believe there is. I won't pretend to understand why some people stick around after death and some don't, I don't think we can know that until we are there. Personally, I hope to be one of those that are able to stick around and harass people a little more. These experiences happened when I was married to or dating my ex-wife, Diane.

When we were dating, Diane's family lived in a smaller house. Next door was the old family home that her father was remodeling. It is a gorgeous southern home with a large front porch, I know, in Alabama every old home has a large front porch (maybe I'll tell you why in another post). Diane and I were sitting on the porch swing one Sunday afternoon and we heard footsteps inside the house. Not creeping footsteps but someone running through the house, very distinct. We checked the front door, locked. There are two back doors, both locked. There was no one in the house.

Later she told me about sitting on the porch swing one afternoon reading and hearing a piano playing in the house. Her grandmother had a piano and played piano, but there was no longer a piano inside. Once the remodel was complete and they had moved in I would walk through that house and feel someone watching me, it still raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Very creepy feeling.

Later Diane and I lived in northern Indiana in a haunted house. Not a bad haunting, more like playful. We had lived there a couple of years and we were sitting watching TV when at the same time we both looked up as something crossed the room. She asked "Did you see that too?". We had both been seeing things out of the corner of our eyes for six or eight months but neither had said anything.

Once I was in the garage with our black lab, Bubba (what else would a couple from Alabama call a large dog?). All of a sudden, Bubba looked up at one corner of the garage and followed something as it moved from one side to the other. He went to the door to the breezeway between the garage and house, so I let him out. He followed whatever he was watching to the back door and wanted out, so I let him out. He walked to the back of my Jeep, still following something and looked behind it. Immediately he turned to me and looked like "Where did it go?". Again, very creepy.

I had told my parents about some of these things going on in our house and they had laughed it off. They came to visit once and my mom and I were standing in front of the kitchen sink. There was a glass in the sink with nothing touching it. While we were standing there, the glass crumbled sitting in the sink. Nothing hit it, there was no glass flying in different directions, I just crumbled. There wasn't a piece of glass left larger than a quarter of an inch on any side. Mom was a believer after that.

Diane finally met a lady whose husband had left that house to go to the hospital where he passed away. After a few episodes of the oven or stove top being adjusted to high magically, Diane finally blew up. She yelled at the ghost, she called him by name and told him his wife (and called her by name) didn't live there anymore and told him where she now lived.

Amazingly, all the visions from the corners of our eyes went away. Bubba no longer followed visitors around the garage. Plus the stove no longer got adjusted on it's on, although it didn't stop knowing that dinner was ready when the smoke alarm went off. Hey, Diane was young and still learning.

So I do believe in some kind of existence after death. One thing I wonder about is if we could be sharing the same space, the same environment, and they have just as much trouble seeing us as we do them. Maybe for them we are only seen out of the corners of their eyes.