I LIKE GHOST STORIES

No, I haven’t met any ghosts, but I’d like to. You could put me in the most haunted place on the planet and all otherworldly spirits would vanish. Immediately.

Actually, thinking back to my college days I did have a close encounter with “something.” Six of us rented the upstairs of a Victorian mansion that once belonged to a iron baron. The elderly lady that owned the home rented out the top eight rooms to supplement her income. I was attending a junior business college and was the only one home at the time. I was getting ready to walk to class when the room grew warm, almost unbearably warm, and the smell of expensive cigar smoke was nearly overwhelming. My first thought was that the old lady’s son had arrived for a visit. I went downstairs to let him know his mother had a doctor’s appointment that morning. No one was around. I went back upstairs and checked the thermostat, it read 70 degrees, as usual, but the room felt like it was a hundred, and the scent of tobacco smoke was still strong. As I grabbed up my bookbag to walk the ten blocks to class, the odd sensation of a heartbeat seemed to fill the room. It should have been scary, but it wasn’t. It almost seemed protective combined with the warmth. And the heartbeat was intangible, it was like I could feel it inside of me and hear it in my head, but I couldn’t distinguish where it was coming from. The experience was so unusual, that I wrote it down in a diary (missing my first class for the day). Somewhere along the line, I’ve lost the diary, but that morning is still vivid in my head. Since then, I’ve had a fascination with paranormal experiences. Friends and I often take trips to visit supposedly haunted places, or areas where strange occurrences are reported to happen. It’s a hobby for me now. This year it will be research for a ghost story I’m working on. I’ve had two romance novels published under a pen name, and have three contracted for 2009 (one of which I have yet to finish), then I’ll be starting on my ghost story. Next month my mom and I are going to spend the weekend hunting ghosts in Moundsville, West Virginia at the old federal penitentiary.