Have You Ever Seen A Ghost?

Time Magazine's September 21, 2015 issue features questions with celebrity answers.  Some of the responders are really famous like George Takai.  Others are scientists who want infallible proof for things.  I scanned through part of this section and zeroed in on the question about ghosts.  Mr. Takai was quite certain there are.  He said he sees them everywhere when he goes back to someplace he has been in the past.  His description is of memories rather than ghosts  --  ghost memories, perhaps? 


The scientific dude says ghosts have never been scientifically proven, ergo they do not exist.  I don't blame him for being a disbeliever.  I was, too, for most of my life.  There is nothing like seeing your first ghost to know that they are very, very real.  It's most amusing when others you have known to be disbelievers see ghosts, also. 


For instance, some friends of mine were moving into a new home.  They were almost at the point of rage that anyone could believe there was such a thing.  By the time they had spent twenty years there, they were singing a different tune.  The previous homeowners had been dancers.  My friends had looked up to see a man dressed in a Spanish dancer's costume checking out his outfit in a mirror.  They said they sometimes heard people in the home talking.  They couldn't hear and understand the words, just hear the voices.


I had seen my first ghost once before, but I didn't realize he was a ghost.  I did wonder why the neighbor's who were doing their lawn work didn't acknowledge him when he was running around in glee and approaching them over and over.  I shrugged and thought well, whatever.


Then one night I was home alone and came streaking out of a steamy bathroom.  There he stood again, all smiley and friendly.  I rushed into my bedroom and closed the door.  Once I was dressed, I searched the apartment.  All the locks and chains were in place.  I was so sure there was no such thing as ghosts that I searched for days for some kind of secret entrance.  I never found one. 


I will have to say that he looked like a full color hologram that night, thus reinforcing the scary suspicion that I was seeing a spirit and not a live person.


Fifteen or more years later and in another apartment complex, I had another shock.  There was a man I had seen visiting a neighbor on several occasions.  That same man walked right through my upstairs hallway.  He was carrying and reading some kind of paper.  While I stared with open mouth and stunned silence, he glanced my way.  He was every bit as startled to see me as I was to see him.  It read all over his face.  Then he just walked through the wall to the next apartment.  He, too, looked like a full color hologram.


Both times I said approximately the same thing to these ghosts.  "I know you are here, because I have seen you.  I guess you mean me no harm or I would be harmed already.  So, I assume we can peacefully coexist.  Just don't let me ever see you again".  I've never seen them again.


I have enough of a scientific bent not to want to believe there are ghosts, but I have seen the "living, breathing" evidence that there are.  Well, in a ghostly way at least. 


But, then, who cares what I know or think?  I'm not a celebrity or a scientist.