Gather around the campfire and pass me the flashlight, I have a few spooky stories to tell. Do you believe in ghosts or the paranormal? Unexplained movements, sounds, sights, that happened with no reasonable explanation?

I’ve already told this story in my name determinism post, but my earliest memory of strange happenings was when I was about three years old. I woke up early in the morning but I remember light filtering through my pink bed canopy. I looked outward towards my open door, wondering if my parents are awake yet. I hear my name being called by a woman’s voice. I answer back with “Mom?”, but no one responds, and no one is there. My mom wasn’t awake yet. I didn’t feel alarmed though, just slightly confused. I stayed in bed and I don’t believe I told anyone or asked my mom about it. Over the years I still occasionally hear my name being called when I am alone, sometimes a female voice, sometimes a male voice, but it hasn’t happened in years.

In my early teenage years I lived in a town home that neighbored an assisted living facility. There was nothing creepy about the neighborhood, just a row of duplexes nestled closely to our schools. For some reason though, odd things happened to me on multiple occasions. There were times that I felt kind of weird, like someone was in the room.

I remember vividly one night I was having trouble falling asleep. Tossing and turning until I was too tired to do anything else and gave up. As I was falling asleep, it was as if someone came up to my ear and blew it super quickly. I sat up, terrified, and looked around, but no one was there. I was afraid to go back to sleep, I laid back down and stared at the wall, afraid to see what had done that, but also afraid to close my eyes and have something happen again without me knowing. Most of my paranormal experiences happened here.

Once I had a friend stay the night, and our brothers were around the same age so both of them came for a joint sleepover. At the time, my desk faced the far wall, with the door behind it. Beside the door were some storage drawers, and on top of it, a spinning top. My friend and I decided to do prank calls and live stream on You Now. This was what we used before TikTok Live or anything like that, people would just go live there and hang out and talk to people, and we loved pranks and messing with people.

Sitting at the desk, we were attempting our calls with little to no answers, we were pretty far into my friend’s call list when we heard something behind us and spun around. The top was spinning. The door was closed, and the top was spinning for a few seconds before it lost balance and rested like it had been the whole night. We were confused, but chalked it up to our brothers pulling a prank on us, and besides, we had the live stream to look back on later and see who the culprit was.

After we got bored of calling, we decided to hang out on the couch in the living room and watch TV, listen to music, and explore who else was streaming that night and mess with them. I decided to look back at our saved stream, the spinning top was still on my mind. Skimming the video, I found the point where we whip around. I pressed play just before that moment.

The first disappointing thing that I noticed- my body was covering both the top and the crack between the door in the frame where the culprits face would be, but I would still be able to see if the door opened. I waited, I saw us turn around, I saw the edge of the top, and the door never opened. There was no way a person could have opened the door, spun the top, and shut it quickly and quietly enough for us to be that confused anyway.

I felt as if I was being haunted by some sort of trickster, but I was not amused. He did many small things that shook me up, but when we eventually moved, everything stopped.

I don’t have many other paranormal experiences, and even after that I am still not sure where I stand on the existence of ghosts. About a year and a half ago I saw people of shadows in a graveyard at night-time, headlights shining onto the stones. One faceless man was facing directly towards me. The hair on my arms raised and I looked away, not acknowledging their existence. I was terrified, but I felt pulled to look once again after what felt like forever, when in reality it was probably less than five minutes. I turned my face towards him, but no one was there, in the corner of my eye, a light misted girl was running along the fence line in a white dress, disappearing before she reached the entrance to the graveyard.

How can I not believe in ghosts after my experiences? I’m not sure, but I still don’t have a solid stance on them. They may be real, or maybe it is all in my head. I have one other strange occurrence, but it is definitely more humorous, so I will end with that.

This takes us back to the night before Easter. I was about 6 or 7 years old. I woke up in my messy room, no idea what time it was. It had to have been very late in the night, and I looked out towards my open door, and I saw something. I saw the Ester bunny. He was not a true bunny, he was the kind you take pictures with at the mall. I only saw the side of him, as if he was hiding behind the door but not well enough. I saw his fuzzy arm and his white cheek. I fully believed this was the Easter bunny. He was taller than my dad, his cheek was very high up, I looked quickly and saw there was no Easter basket yet, so he must have been waiting for me.

I remember so clearly that I sat up, saw him, I let out a gasp, and flopped down and shut my eyes so tight and tried to go back to sleep so I could wake up with a gift. And when I woke up, my basket was there. I swear I am not making this up! My 6 year old self fully has the memory of seeing the Easter bunny, and it is a memory that I still have, one that my dad laughs about. I know there is no way what I saw was real, but what in the world was that?