I will (apparantly) never learn . . .

. . . You'd think I would have learned this by now, but I should never, ever, EVER watch tv programs about ghosts and the paranormal right before bedtime. Never.

I consider myself a sane person when on my medications, and a reasonable, intelligent person as well. I'm not sure what I believe is true about most paranormal experiences people claim to have. Many of them can be explained by other forces or even by the person's own brain chemistry. Hearing voices, seeing apparitions, and things of the sort can be explained by psychiatric hallucinations, electrical stimulations created by the movement of the earth's crust, and many other earthly phenomena. I've seen convincing documentaries that completely disprove the U.F.O. phenomenon entirely. And I think I was hoping it wouldn't be so convincing . . . But it was.

In the past, I've had what I would consider paranormal experiences. However, I would like to follow that by saying I have begun to doubt the veracity of those experiences simply because I have been diagnosed with psychiatric disorders that, in some cases, can cause mild hallucinations. When I was a pre-teen girl, I had an experience where I saw a toddler girl in my bedroom once I awoke from a dream. My parents liked me to think I was still dreaming, but I am convinced to this day that I was not. I completely believed the girl was there, since at the time I did not believe in ghosts or anything of the sort. I think I told myself that I just missed the doorbell and that my sister was having a surprise sleepover with one of the girls from her daycare class. I mean, there was a girl in the room--what else could it be? She looked as if she had awakened from a nightmare as she stared at me--seeking comfort from another child, I assumed. But as I approached the girl, reached out my hand to her shoulder, she vanished, suddenly and right before my eyes. I was terrified out of my mind, and slept the rest of the night under my blanket.

So, what do I make of this experience now? Not much. Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe I hallucinated. I really don't know. Maybe she was a ghost, but I can never be sure, especially now that I know what I now know about myself. But there are two experiences that I have yet to explain away.

The first was in the same house where I saw the child. My sisters and I were all watching television on a Saturday night, relaxing on the sofa while my parents slept in another room across the house. I don't remember what was happening at the time, but we were suddenly interrupted by the loud thumping sound of footsteps on the roof. We knew the sound well, since my grandfather and my dad frequently worked on the house while we lived there, fixing the tv antenna, installing central air and heat, and other projects. But this was late on a Saturday night, and my parents were asleep. They could not have opened a door without us hearing, since it was one of those old, creaky houses in an aging subdivision. You heard everything.

We stared at the ceiling, all of us, jaws slacked, asking each other if we knew what was happening. We could easily follow the path of the footsteps across the ceiling, heard them stop right above us, and clinking metal sounds like someone had set down a toolbox. I remember being overcome by fear, thinking that maybe someone was putting a bomb on our roof or something--hey, I was just a kid. But then the clinking stopped, and the footsteps resumed, crossing the remainder of the roof to the edge of the house. My sisters and I ran quickly to the window so that we could look upward and try to see if someone was looking over the edge of the roof so we could see who it was, but instead, we just heard a thump, right beneath us, on the grass right outside the window. We sat there in the window, staring at nothing, just a faded sound, on the lawn in front of us on the other side of the glass.

Next came the "did you just hear that?" and "did you hear what I just heard?" from the terrified children in the room, and we huddled on the sofa, frozen in fear for the rest of the night. My parents had no explanation for that one in the morning.

Another experience that I can't explain happened at the house where I used to work as a nanny. During the morning, before I had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism and had my extreme fatigue explained to me, I would nap in the parents bedroom. Often, but not every time I napped in that room, I would feel someone's hand touch my face in a tender and reassuring way. It was soothing, and I would feel like I could drift off to sleep without a care, then I would realize it was very VERY real, and that I wasn't yet sleeping or dreaming. I would sit up with a start, only to realize I was alone in the room. Time and time again this happened, and every time it felt so incredibly real I would think that the father of the kids had come home early and was attempting to wake me, not yet realizing that I hadn't fallen asleep yet. But I hadn't heard a door open, or heard footsteps . . . Then I would jolt upright and notice nothing in the room yet again.

I would discount these incidents entirely, were it not for something my sister said to me about a year after I had left that job. She asked me if I had ever felt like someone's hand touched my face before I fell asleep there . . . I said yes, then said it only happened in that particular bedroom, while she nodded knowingly. "And there was something about his fingertips," I said.

"Yes!" she shouted. "Like his fingers were calloused or something?"

I think I just stared at her for a while, then said, "Yes, or like his fingerprints were especially raised or something . . . I thought maybe it was something about his fingerprints."

"I thought maybe it was callouses," she said. But we had both touched on the same thing.

So, even if it was a vivid, realistic dream that occurs in light sleep, why did we both have the exact same dream? And why did we both have that dream in that one place, and never anywhere else? And then we never had the same dream again, ever, after leaving that job? Does it mean anything?

I don't know. So I'd like to have some paranormal experiences again, as a person who has undergone treatment and medication, just to see what I really believe, now that I consider myself sane. Maybe I should become a ghost hunter or something. It might be overly terrifying for me, but at least I would know it was real, for once. But then I'd never get any sleep . . .

Ever.

R