I see dead people.

I see dead people. Not on a daily basis, but it’s happened. And it’s happened enough to freak me out.

I’ve never been a religious person. Even though my family was Evangelical Christian (I think?), I stopped going to church when I was five. So I’m not familiar with the bible or its teachings – and I’m ok with that, but I won’t get into this topic here.

So, I’ve never been a religious person. I don’t believe in the whole Heaven thing, at least not in religious terms. Because I’m very scientific, I believe that we are all energy. When we die, that energy has to go somewhere. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we do live on in some way.

Basically, I believe in ghosts. And maybe reincarnation.

I’ve seen two spirits that I actually acknowledged as such. One was in the rafters at an old theater in Galveston. He was looking down at the stage from up above. A black mass in the shape of a man. My friend saw him, too. It was very moving and confusing for me to see and I didn’t really know what to think of it at the time. The second was in New Orleans. It happened in the middle of the afternoon. I was recovering from a wicked hangover and opened my eyes just in time to see a Confederate soldier with no legs “walk” through my room and through a wall. I saw it as plain as day in that well-lit room near a large open window with the sun beaming through.

My other experience, which I don’t talk about a lot, is that I have sleep paralysis. There are all kinds of explanations for this phenomenon. Some say it’s a brain misfire, or a vivid dream. I’m not sure what it is, but every six months since I was about eight years old, I have awoken in the middle of the night to see a man with a fedora standing at the foot of my bed. I’m paralyzed. I can’t scream. I can’t move. Sometimes I can’t breathe. All I can do is close my eyes and wish him away. The next day, every muscle in my body is sore as though I’ve done some wicked four hour yogathon. It’s made me a bit of an insomniac, too.

I guess what freaks me out the most about all of this is that my dad and I have had no relationship for five years now. It’s a long story, but it is what it is. When I was a senior in high school, we got into a conversation about the after-life. As someone who has been quite ill all of his life, Dad is very afraid of death. So he and I made a pact: whoever goes first will come back to tell the other what it’s like. He’s been sick for many years and I dread the day when I wake up paralyzed in the middle of the night and it’s him standing at the foot of my bed. While I love him and I know he loves me, I don’t quite think he’d be a friendly haunting after all we’ve been through.

And what scares me even more is that I feel that if I open myself up to this even a little bit, I’ll get a lot more than I’m prepared to handle. But a part of me wants to relish in this experience. I want to know more, just on my terms. Something tells me that the spirit world doesn’t give a shit about my terms.

Do any of you have similar experiences? What types of spirits have you seen? Are you frequented by them and can you turn them off? I’m very interested to know.