No Need to Believe

"Believe" implies doubt.

I was born in a house. Go figure. My mom and dad were still married at the time -until I was four and they got a divorce. I can remember things going missing in that house -not very often, but it is in my memory. Especially on Christmas when I got a cool Barbie Seahorse that got misplaced minutes after I opened it. My mom looked around for it, but couldn't find it. Years later my mom told me the house, which had a cemetery behind the backyard, was haunted by a poltergeist (a ghost sometimes created by people's stresses that makes things go missing, moves things around, can make things fly across the room if extreme). Mom told me she came home one day and all the cabinets in the kitchen were open and the dishwasher door was down. She said the remote on the living room table would g missing and she would tear the house apart looking for it and it would show back up on the table 3 days later.

Now my mom tends to exaggerate things... a lot. So I took what she said with a grain of salt. But my dad on the other hand, who is an engineer (about as logical/ practical thinking as it gets), said that his tools use to go missing in that house. Once he was sitting at his work bench and he turned to grab a tool, and it wasn't there. He yelled, "Put it back!". Then 5 minutes later when he went to grab the tool again, it was there. He also said the fan would turn on every once in a while, even though it wasn't plugged in. He told me, "As an engineer and a handyman -I honestly can't explain that. It doesn't make any sense".

After the divorce my parents moved a lot from house to house. Lots of moving, lots of new homes. I'd say on average they moved every 5 years or so until they came to a place that hey "settled into". My mom moved into the 2 storied house in the country she lives in now when I was 12. At the time my dad was living in a small house in the suburbs of San Jose 2 hours away and had been living there for about 4 years. It wasn't until he remarried when I was 16 that he moved into the old house he grew up in,which is the one he currently lives at.

Mom's Country House: I shared the upstairs with my step-sister Sarah. My room was pretty big, had 2 windows -one outlooking the pasture to the right of the house and the other outlooking a tree that was in front of the house. My walls have pastel floral designs and my mom got me a big Elvis poster (I was a big fan) to hang on my wall. I then later added my own Nsync posters (I was a bigger fan). I had a closet, a dresser with a t.v. facing my bed, 2 nightstands on either side of my bed, a drawing desk facing away from the entry door and against/ facing the wall the with window outlooking the pasture.  Sarah's room was similar. You go up the stairs, turn left, look down a hallway. My room is the first on the left. Sarah's is the second on the left. At the end of the hallway there's a bathroom and a closet on the right.

The first thing I complained abut when we moved into that house were the sounds I would hear at night. My mom told me it was just the house settling, so I genuinely ignored the sounds that I heard after that. I kept my nightlight on as I always had. But at my dad's house around the age of 13 I got rid of mine -it made me looked like a little kid. But at my mom's house I kept my night light and honestly couldn't sleep without it. I got made fun of for it, but by the time I was 18, my family got bored of commenting on it.

It's hard to explain what it was like. It wasn't like in the movies where lights would flicker and things happened all the time and you would see shadows or whatever. It was subtle, consistent, and isolated. I remember coming home from school, doing my homework downstars, then going up to my room to draw on my desk. My back was to the door. Around 3 in the afternoon I would be drawing and lost in my dream/artworld when something would snap me back and I would become very alert that someone was behind me. I just assumeit was my sister and I turned around but no one was there. This would happen, maybe once a month. I got paranoid, so I started turning my radio on to play music to feel better. But sometimes that didn't help and I still felt like i wasn't alone upstairs. So then  started turning the T.V. on to fill the room with noise and light.

Night was worse. My room was like my sanctuary from the tension between my mom and I. But at night, around 7pm to 9pm before bedtime, I would sit on my bed watching t.v. but keep glancing at the door to my room thinking someone was there about to walk in. I didn't like the hallway being dark. I felt better when Sarah was there. A lot of times Sarah would shut the door to her room an the hallway would still be dark and I would still get an unnerving feeling someone was there. I just tried to ignore it. This went on for years.

I rarely felt afraid at night. He never came into my room at night when I was living there. If I heard a sound I could quickly look around the room to make sure no one was there thanks to my night light. I still hid under the covers though (as I got older I upgraded to face masks to help cover my eyes). A couple nights the power went off and I had to sleep without a night light. I didn't sleep much. I kept hearing noises. It was hard to discern whether it was my imagination or not.

The bathroom at the end of the hallway was troublesome. There was a mirror that showed the hallway behind me and I kept getting this strange feeling that if I glanced away from the mirror and looked back I would see someone standing there behind me -whether it was morning or night. I started shutting the bathroom door behind me when I went to brush my teeth and hair. Sarah would get annoyed at me for doing this since we shared the bathroom. Sarah would also get annoyed when she got home at night and I would sometimes leave the bathroom light on to illuminate the hallway when she was working late on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I also did laundry by putting all my clothes in a basket an carrying them downstairs. Every once in a while I would get a strong feeling that someone was going to push me from behind as I walked down. It wasn't every time, just sometimes. We had a banister installed on the right side of the stairway. That helped. My dad had at this point moved into his 2 storied house he lives in now, which also has stairs. I never get the sense that someone behind me is going to push me and I never felt afraid to sleep at night at my dad's houses.

When I was 17 i asked Sarah if she thought the house was haunted. Being a practical Capricorn, she of course said no. She rarely hungout upstairs and would actually fall asleep with her T.V. on.

Then some bad sh*t happened September 2005. I was still 17. I experienced the first of several major episodes of sleep paralysis. I didn't know it was sleep paralysis at the time until my friend Chelsie had it for 4 nights in a row and we learned about it online. Sleep paralysis is when you hit a state of awake and sleep. In sleep you are paralysed and can't move around. In this in-between state, you 1. get the sense that you can't move, 2. feel a "dark presence" or "negative entity" in the room, and 3. feel like someone is pushing you down or pressing down on your chest -maybe trying to choke you. Then you wake up. Hallucinations often occur during these episodes and many people who claim they have been attacked by demons o r abducted by aliens have actually just suffered from this. When it happened to me I was under the covers in a hazy-out of it- state and I felt a presence and something forcing me down ad pinning me on the bed. Then after a minute it was gone, and I was wide awake and freaked out. I ran to Sarah's room and spent the st of the night in there. I had 2 other major episodes in that house. Then many minor episodes throughout my life since then -though the ones after included me actually seeing things -A dark hand trying to grab me or a man in a skull mask trying to stab me. I can control them now and stop the episodes midway by overpowering them with my own sense of strength.

I moved out when I was 18 and Sarah moved out a year later. After that when I came back to visit my mom's house I couldn't sleep upstairs alone. I kept making up excuses to sleep in the guest bedroom downstairs. If t was winter I said I wanted to be downstairs near the fireplace; if it was summer I said the upstairs was too hot. Eventually my mom caught on. She called me a scaredy cat for not wanting to stay upstairs alone. At that point I said flat out, "Fine, I don't care if you make fun of me. It's haunted up there and I'm not sleeping up there anymore."

I had been sleeping in the downstairs guest room -a.k.a the computer room- whenever I would visited for about a year. I was 19. I was visiting for 2 days. It was night time. I had been sleeping without a night light or anything in the room -why would I need it? It was around 3 or 4am in the morning when I awoke and sensed my mom standing in the doorway to the room checking in on me. It was pitch black and I didn't want to say anything to her, so I just rolled over and faced the wall, my back to the door. But she still stood there. I was confused and thought that maybe I was mistaken in thinking she was still there, so I lay silent listening. The sense of a presence washed over me and I kept thinking, What the heck is mom doing there still? She's definitely there, what is she doing? I finally turned over towards the doorway and said, "Mom?" No answer. Dead silence followed by the feeling of someones presence. I freaked. I rushed out of bed and turned the nearby touch lamp on. No one was there.

After that I tried a few more times to sleep without the touch lamp on, but the same thing kept happening. So then touch lamp being on became a regular thing. I got made fun of for it again, but it was the only way I could sleep.

The next experience I had was when I was home alone watching the house. I was 19 or 20. It was around 1pm in the afternoon and I was watching T.V. downstairs in the living room. I started hearing something so i muted the TV. I heard nothing, so I turned the TV back on. Then 5 minutes later I heard something again so I turned the TV off. Then I heard it. Someone was walking back and forth in the upstairs hallway. I know the sounds that house makes. I know when trees are rustling against the house or wen birds are pecking at it's walls. That was clear as day the sound of footsteps. I was like, Oh crap. Someone's broken into my home. And I'm alone. Then my dog Chica came into the room. I was like, Thank God! Chica jut sat down beside me. I was wondering why she wasn't freaking out like I was or if she could even hear what I was hearing. I looked at her and her ears were perked up like she was hearing it too, but she wasn't worried about it. I figured if she wasn't worried, then I shouldn't be either. I did grab the nearest potential weapon though and told myself if anyone walked downstairs into the living room I would attack him with the remote. The walking stopped. About an hour later my mom came home. I told her nothing of what happened. There was no burglar.

The next time it happened it was afternoon again a couple months later and my sister Emily, my mom, and I were in the living room watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It started happening again -the cat and mouse sounds where we would turn the t.v. off and on trying to catch the noise. Then we heard it. My mom said, "Who's that walking upstairs". I said, "No one. We're the only ones here and we're all here in the same room." My mom was like, "Oh..." And I was like, "Told you it was haunted."

Then my mom believed me. She also started watching Ghost Hunters pretty frequently and became a full believer in all thing supernatural. After I moved into my mom's house I started going out of my way to read about ghosts and watch shows about them to find out as much as I could. Some books just told entertaining stories. Others were just bull (one actually said ghosts were afraid f silk). But over the years I did see a pattern in the families who experienced ghostly activity. I'll address these cases in my next blog.

Starting at the age of 21, things started to go downhill again. I would sleep in the downstairs room and this started happening almost every night of every visit: I would wake up around 3am. The stupid touch lamp would still be on. No one was in my room. I would turn over, back to the doorway to try and go back to sleep. Only a few times I would actually succeed. My feet would get caught in the blankets on the side of my bed -as if someone was sitting on the edge. I would freak out. Silent, panicking, grasping to rationality. I would turn over, under covers, and face towards the doorway. Then this thing would happen which is really hard to explain. I would start to feel lethargic, like was fading away, not falling asleep -but being drained of energy. I was wide awake and alert, but I felt powerless and weak. After about 10 minute the feeling would fade and I would regain myself. Then the "presence" would go away. I hate him.

I finally told my mom about it one night after it happened. It was 4am and I had just used the restroom and was hesitating going back to the guest room after what had happened. My mom came out and asked if I was ok. I told her the ghost had visited my room. She told me to tell it to go away. She wanted me to yell at it. I said, sure. I knew that would never happen. I don't want to talk to it. You couldn't pay me to try to talk to it. I'm not opening up any line of communication with it.

I went into Emily's room a couple times to sleep in there so I wouldn't be alone. A couple times I woke in the middle of the night and felt the presence in the doorway. Only a few times though. Emily started sharing er experiences with me. She said sometimes she would feel like someone was standing over her bed looking down on her at night.

Emily brought her boyfriend at the time, Stuart, to the house. He thought it was weird that I was sleeping in the guest bedroom and he was sleeping in my old room. We didn't tell him anything about the ghost because we honestly didn't think he would experience anything. He didn't say anything about it until the 3rd day when we were officially in the car heading back to San Jose. "You're house is haunted. I'm not even joking". He said he heard growling while he was walking past the downstairs bathroom. H heard footsteps in the hallway at night. He had seen a black shadow move from Sarah's room to the bathroom. He felt someone sitting on the edge of his bed one night. He was freaked. We told him the ghost must not have liked him. He said you couldn't pay him to sleep upstairs at night again.

Things got worse for a while. I sort of started hearing breathing sounds here and there. Emily said she heard a growl one night. Then I reached a point while I was laying in bed where I decided: F*ck This. Whenever I would started to feel anything, I would try to resist. I kept thinking, This is my energy, this is my soul, I am strong, you can't hurt me. I would purposely try and visualize my energy being tight and compacted within me, unable to be drained. It didn't work at first. In fact one night I tried ignoring the him, I had my back to the doorway and the sound of papers falling on the floor was followed by dead silence. Then the computer turned on. I got out of bed and left the room. It was around 3am. Stupid ghost. You have to push the power button in the make the computer turn on and ram up like it did. I checked the room in the morning, but couldn't find any papers on the floor. It was weird.

Last September my mom and step-dad took a 3 day ride down to Street Vibrations in Nevada. I was left in charge of babysitting the house. I was nervous, but our new dog Riley was there and she was as alert and protective as ever. It was annoying at first because she would run to the front door and growl at any car that drove by. Then at 10pm the first nigh our stupid cat started meowing weird in the backyard and that was driving Riley up the walls. That cat is asking for it. I had the overhead light set to dim, one lamp in the living room on, and one lamp in the entry-way on. I decided not to seep in the guest bedroom -an enclosed room. The living room was nice and open, and the couch that I slept on was a fair distance from the entryway. I figured since no one was around there was no shame in having most of the lights set to my preference.

The fist night it was hard to fall asleep. Riley slept at the end of the couch though, and it made me feel safe knowing she was around. Nothing happened during the day. Then on the morning of that Sunday, I woke up at 6am. I turned to face the entryway and there was a man standing there. He was tall, looked like he was in his early 40s, he was wearing pants and a long-sleeve shirt. I squinted and thought, Who the hell...? Then Riley dashed from the couch and ran right up to where he was standing and started barking. Then he was gone.The whole thing took place in less than 30 seconds. I just layed there like, What the f*ck???! After her charge, Riley just turned around, pranced back on the couch, rolled up in a ball, and was like There I took care of it. I waited a good 30 minutes before I started venturing around. No one was there.

Around March 2011, the "visitations" in my guest room started happening less and less during visits. I just ignored the ghost. It's been months since I last experienced anything. I hope this is the end of it.

At my dad's house I never experienced anything until a year after my grandmother passed away. I was visiting my sister Emily,who lives there now, and I was walking down the hallway to her room. I reached the end of the hallway and the scent of my grandmother's perfume hit me. Channel Number 5. No one else I knew wore that particular cologne. I thought it might have been coming from the vents for some reason, but there were none in the area. I was confused, so I walked to Em's room and told her to come out to the spot. The scent was gone and she smelled nothing. This happened one more time, a couple weeks later. Then a about a month after that Em text me an said, "I smelled grandma's perfume today. I was getting ready for school and I walked out of my room and I was like, whoa Grandma. It was definitely her perfume. It's sad for me. One of the things that got me through her funeral was thinking she had moved on and was in some better place. It brings me no peace that she might still be here watching over us. I want her to move forward to heaven.

My dad told me after grandpa died about 12 years ago, he started experiencing things at the house for a little while. He said his tools would be moved, and he couldn't explain why since he wa the only one who worked in the toolshed. He said one day while he was out on a ladder -And I don't like him doing this and I've told him several times to just hire a gardener, but he won't listen to me- he was out on a ladder on a hill trying to trim some high hedges. He was at the top of the ladder, when he fell backwards with shears in his hands. He said he didn't fall on his back. He can't explain it, but he landed standing strait up from a backward fall with the shears still in his hands and the ladder tipped over. He sayd, "Grandpa was watching out for me that day. I can't explain what happened. I just know it was him".