A Study Guide To Hauntings

Experiencing The Paranormal

            The squeaking sound had been going on for some time. I heard it almost every night for months ... “squeak, squeak, squeak.” All night long, night after night, the squeaking continued. I had mentioned it to my mother on a few occasions but she told me it was just my sister’s bed making the ominous noise. I believed her. After all, I had no reason not to. Some things bothered me though. To me, the sound seemed to be coming from the corner of the room beyond my sister’s bed. In addition, I wondered how the bed could squeak even while my sister was lying still. There was another thought too; I always had a weird feeling whenever I heard that noise. I sometimes felt as though I was not alone, or that I was being watched. Still, what does a ten-year-old know?

It was another sleepless night; the noises were becoming common, though no less frightening. My mother always said it was because I thought too much when I went to bed. She told me that the best thing to do was to keep my mind blank when it was time to go to sleep. (I still cannot do that.) She also pointed out that I could not “will” or “force” sleep to come; it had to happen naturally. She would tell me that the harder I tried to sleep, the longer I would find myself awake. Of course, she was right. I really did try to do what she said; it just did not seem to work. I was thinking about that when I heard the old, familiar: “squeak, squeak, squeak.” That annoying sound heard, again and again and again. I had finally reached the point where I could not stand it anymore A few weeks earlier I had started keeping a flashlight on the floor next to my bed. That uneasy sense I felt at night was getting stronger. I began to feel the need to keep a light on at night, although I had never been afraid of the dark before. Since I shared a room with my older brother, keeping a light on was not possible. He hated lights on at night; he said that he could not sleep that way. My father, in order to keep us both happy went out and bought me a flashlight to keep by my bed. I have to admit it did make me feel better.

            I got out of bed, trusty flashlight in hand and walked into my sister’s room. We lived in a railroad apartment, meaning that to get to any room in the house; you had to walk through another one. Well, I walked into her room and shone my light around. “Squeak, squeak, squeak;” the sound seemed to be coming from the far corner of the room where my sister kept her baby stroller, not from her bed. For some reason I could not understand this. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Frightened, I pointed the light to that corner of the room and froze. The squeaking noise was coming from the stroller, which was rocking back and forth!  “Squeak, squeak, squeak.”

That experience and other similarly unusual experiences in my life and those of others spurred my interest in learning more about the unseen world of the paranormal. It is not always unseen.

Investigating The Paranormal

            I have spent just about all of my life studying the “paranormal,” which means, literally, that which is beyond normal. I say that because as a child, I heard many stories about ghosts, seances, and Ouija boards. Seances and Ouija boards are both vehicles for contacting ghosts, or spirits, as they are called. During a seance, you try to contact the spirits directly. The Ouija board has letters and numbers printed on it. Those present place one or two fingers on a pointer, or planchette as it is called, and in theory, the spirit guides the pointer to spell out words. Some of those stories were funny; others were scary. My mother and grandmother believed in those things so I believed at an early age that such things existed. My father said that he did not believe in "all that nonsense." I am not sure if he said that because he really did not believe in it or if that was his way of dealing with something he did not understand. I know that some people say they do not believe in spirits because they are actually afraid of them. I cannot say this was true of my father because, frankly, I do not think he was afraid of anything.

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