Okay, here goes. First off, a couple of ground rules:
1) Be respectful. What I am about to share are a few experiences I have had. While I am aware that I cannot prove there was any sort of supernatural involvement with them, you cannot prove that there was no supernatural involvement with them. And I think it's a little more realistic that something odd was involved rather than that people (none of whom were familiar to me from my life) would go to such lengths to perpetrate such elaborate hoaxes on little old me.
2) I don't ask you to believe what I say, but I do request that you not belittle those whose opinion is different from yours. Really, this goes back to the first ground rule, but I don't think it's an idea that can be too often stated, particularly in our current society.
The first experience happened about a year ago and it's the one I find the most "questionable", because I was under the influence of pain meds (hydrocodone/acetaminopher 10mg/325mg, which is a pretty decent dose, but not the highest one I've ever taken) while I was in the hospital. In preparation for it, I should tell you that my Dad's parents died a week apart (six days actually) in February of 1987, when I was 10 years old. My mother's father died in 2007 of lung cancer; my mother's mother in October of 2011 after a long battle with dementia and worsening overall health; and my father in September of 2012, all five of them in the town of Tyler, Texas, where I grew up. In December of 2012, 5 days before Christmas, I suffered a severe break to my right ankle that has required four surgeries due to various issues. After the second surgery, the complication of a severe infection in my ankle occurred, said infection finally traveling to my lungs. I was hospitalized for two weeks, the first of which, there was a significant danger of my not surviving. During this time, in addition to my wife and mother being regularly at my bedside, I was also regularly visited by all four of my grandparents and my father, who sometimes spoke to me and other times just held my hand or "sat vigil" with me. As my situation improved, the incidences of their appearances lessened. As I alluded to before, this was not my first experience with surgery or painkillers, particularly Vicodin/Norco (two of the brand names under which hydrocodone are marketed), but I do partially discount this experience due to the pain medications. Still, it was quite comforting and my mother recently told me during a visit that she often felt the presence of others in the room with us during my hospital stay and that she'd seen men outside my room that reminded her of my father and both of my grandfathers as she had known them during their lives.
Between Tyler and Jacksonville, Texas, on U.S. Hwy 69, there is a sign directing you toward a strange memorial called the Killough Monument. The story is that the Killoughs were a settler family in east Texas in the mid-to-late 19th century. Due to a dispute with a local American Indian band (I believe they were supposed to either be Cherokee or Apache, but I'm not sure on that....it's been a while since I did any research on the event), the Indians (yes, I call my people "Indians") approached the settlers and a conflict erupted and ended with most of the Killough family dead and their homestead burned to the ground. A stone obelisk has been constructed there, and some graves have been consecrated, and the site has been dubbed the Killough Monument. I was always oddly drawn to the Monument, which is a usually very quiet and peaceful place which has few visitors. It's just generally a nice, quiet place to reflect (and, I'll even admit, to make out with girls). I went out there alone when I was in college on one occasion. As usual, there was the "somebody's watching" vibe going on that there usually was around the place, but there were no sounds and nobody visibly around. After a while, as I was feeling a little disturbed out there that particular day, I got in my car and started it up to drive away. After I started the car and put it in reverse, I checked my side mirror and there was a person standing there. It didn't look hazy or "ghostly"; just like a real solid person standing there behind my car, a teenage boy. Since I had been the only one out there for the entire 30 minutes I'd been there, it was a little shocking and I had the flash thought that, this time at least, there was someone else out there visiting the Monument. When I turned around to back out, the person was gone. I turned the car off and got out, looking for the kid, and there was nobody around. I was a little spooked when I got back into the car and the same exact kid was standing in front of my car now. I blinked and he was gone. So, I started my car and went to drive away. As I left the little parking area, I saw a group of about six or eight people standing in the parking lot where my car had been, the teenage boy in front of the rest of the group, but, when I stopped and turned to look back without the mirror, the group was gone. I've been back about a dozen times or more since then and, while I often have the "somebody's watching" vibe, I've never seen anything else along those lines.
I was staying in the Crockett Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, across the street from the back part of the Alamo. My girlfriend and I had taken a room on the seventh floor and had, after putting our bags in the room, gone out for dinner. When we returned to the room after dinner to put on our bathing suits and go to the hot tub, there was the smell of vanilla-scented pipe tobacco. Our room was a non-smoking room and, on our way to the hot tub, we went down to the front desk and mentioned it, where we were assured that our room had been nonsmoking for years and that the custodial staff would make a written report when they went into a nonsmoking room and somebody had been smoking and that no such report had been filed in that room in months. After the hot tub, where we had a bit of fun, we returned and the tobacco smell was gone, not that either of us would have noticed for the next bit of time, until we were done with our couple's shower. After we showered, we went to bed, exhausted and smiling, and went to sleep. I woke up about 3 a.m. and saw something across the room near the door (there was a little light as I often leave the bathroom light on in a hotel room with the door cracked, in case I need to visit the bathroom in the middle of the night, but I couldn't make out what I was seeing. I picked up and put on my glasses and looked to the area in question, where a man stood...or at least his top half floated. I couldn't see anything below about the rib cage, but the top part of him, up to and including the hat he was wearing, was clear to me. He was looking directly at me and appeared to be solid. He had a small, pencil-thin mustache and was wearing a gray hat, and he was smoking a pipe. The smell of vanilla-scented pipe tobacco reached my nose as he grinned at me, tipped his hat, then turned and "walked" (he didn't have legs I could see, remember) through the door to the hallway. I jumped out of the bed and rand to the door, where I (in all my naked glory) threw open the door. Luckily (considering how naked I and my girlfriend were), nobody was in the hallway going either direction. Of course, my springing from the bed had woken my girlfriend, who was quite interested in my tale and "rewarded my exploits" with another round of coitus (there were some nice things about being 23). The next morning, I spoke to the girl at the front desk while my girlfriend was finishing her breakfast (I happened to know the girl from our affiliations with a couple of Masonic youth organizations years before) and she shared with me that there had been several guest reports of ghostly experiences from the seventh floor and they all seemed to center around Room 711, the room we had stayed in the night before.
Last one (for now). When I was a kid (from about 7 - 11), my Dad was active with the drill team of the Masonic Knight Templar Commandery (long story), and they practiced on Saturdays at St. Johns Lodge on Front Street in Tyler. The day usually went: men practiced from 10:30 to 12:00 in the parking lot; women took that time for fellowship among themselves and preparing lunch for everybody; kids would play together in the "seating area" on the first floor; nobody went upstairs to the Lodge Room. Random Saturday comes along, I was 8, and I was the only kid who went that day. Men are in the parking lot; women are in the kitchen/dining hall; nobody's around little Wacokid27, who is exploring the building. I went up the stairs to the Lodge Room area on the second floor (one of those spooky, forbidden places that children don't go to on their own, you know) and saw that there was a light on in the Lodge Room. I went in (I mean, the door was open, so....) and saw an old man sitting in a chair near the dais in the east of the room. It was like he was talking to somebody, but there was nobody else in the room. As I walked in, he stopped talking and looked over at me. He was an old man, bald on top, but with long hair around the crown of his head and a beard that reached to his chest. He was heavy and his voice had a Southern accent and sounded, for lack of a better term, "cultured". He waved me over and I talked with the old man for a few minutes when he looked up and told me he thought my Dad was calling me. I told him "Bye!" and walked (you never run in the Lodge Room) out, then ran down the stairs, where I told my Dad about the old man in the Lodge Room. The other men, his fellow Knights Templar, looked at each other and went upstairs (it's a big deal when your eight-year-old son tells you there's an unknown old man sitting up in a room where nobody's known to be at....could be a bad guy) to find him. They looked all around that Lodge Room and the area upstairs only to come up empty. I overheard one of the men tell another that I wasn't the first person to see people up there that weren't there (after I joined that Lodge 13 years later, I would hear about the ghosts of old members that were often seen....and one old Past Master of that Lodge has since told me that he's seen my Dad in the Lodge Room since his death). Anywho, they didn't find anybody and everybody went down and had a quiet lunch. It was about 7 years later that I identified the man I saw that day as Albert Pike, when I saw a bust of General Pike in the San Antonio Scottish Rite Building. Pike, for historical fun, is buried in the House of the Temple in Washington, D.C., and his spirit apparently likes to visit old Masonic Lodge buildings, as there are myriad stories about his ghost being seen even in old buildings that he is not known to have visited (whether or not he was ever in St. Johns Lodge building in Tyler is a matter of some debate).
wk
1) Be respectful. What I am about to share are a few experiences I have had. While I am aware that I cannot prove there was any sort of supernatural involvement with them, you cannot prove that there was no supernatural involvement with them. And I think it's a little more realistic that something odd was involved rather than that people (none of whom were familiar to me from my life) would go to such lengths to perpetrate such elaborate hoaxes on little old me.
2) I don't ask you to believe what I say, but I do request that you not belittle those whose opinion is different from yours. Really, this goes back to the first ground rule, but I don't think it's an idea that can be too often stated, particularly in our current society.
The first experience happened about a year ago and it's the one I find the most "questionable", because I was under the influence of pain meds (hydrocodone/acetaminopher 10mg/325mg, which is a pretty decent dose, but not the highest one I've ever taken) while I was in the hospital. In preparation for it, I should tell you that my Dad's parents died a week apart (six days actually) in February of 1987, when I was 10 years old. My mother's father died in 2007 of lung cancer; my mother's mother in October of 2011 after a long battle with dementia and worsening overall health; and my father in September of 2012, all five of them in the town of Tyler, Texas, where I grew up. In December of 2012, 5 days before Christmas, I suffered a severe break to my right ankle that has required four surgeries due to various issues. After the second surgery, the complication of a severe infection in my ankle occurred, said infection finally traveling to my lungs. I was hospitalized for two weeks, the first of which, there was a significant danger of my not surviving. During this time, in addition to my wife and mother being regularly at my bedside, I was also regularly visited by all four of my grandparents and my father, who sometimes spoke to me and other times just held my hand or "sat vigil" with me. As my situation improved, the incidences of their appearances lessened. As I alluded to before, this was not my first experience with surgery or painkillers, particularly Vicodin/Norco (two of the brand names under which hydrocodone are marketed), but I do partially discount this experience due to the pain medications. Still, it was quite comforting and my mother recently told me during a visit that she often felt the presence of others in the room with us during my hospital stay and that she'd seen men outside my room that reminded her of my father and both of my grandfathers as she had known them during their lives.
Between Tyler and Jacksonville, Texas, on U.S. Hwy 69, there is a sign directing you toward a strange memorial called the Killough Monument. The story is that the Killoughs were a settler family in east Texas in the mid-to-late 19th century. Due to a dispute with a local American Indian band (I believe they were supposed to either be Cherokee or Apache, but I'm not sure on that....it's been a while since I did any research on the event), the Indians (yes, I call my people "Indians") approached the settlers and a conflict erupted and ended with most of the Killough family dead and their homestead burned to the ground. A stone obelisk has been constructed there, and some graves have been consecrated, and the site has been dubbed the Killough Monument. I was always oddly drawn to the Monument, which is a usually very quiet and peaceful place which has few visitors. It's just generally a nice, quiet place to reflect (and, I'll even admit, to make out with girls). I went out there alone when I was in college on one occasion. As usual, there was the "somebody's watching" vibe going on that there usually was around the place, but there were no sounds and nobody visibly around. After a while, as I was feeling a little disturbed out there that particular day, I got in my car and started it up to drive away. After I started the car and put it in reverse, I checked my side mirror and there was a person standing there. It didn't look hazy or "ghostly"; just like a real solid person standing there behind my car, a teenage boy. Since I had been the only one out there for the entire 30 minutes I'd been there, it was a little shocking and I had the flash thought that, this time at least, there was someone else out there visiting the Monument. When I turned around to back out, the person was gone. I turned the car off and got out, looking for the kid, and there was nobody around. I was a little spooked when I got back into the car and the same exact kid was standing in front of my car now. I blinked and he was gone. So, I started my car and went to drive away. As I left the little parking area, I saw a group of about six or eight people standing in the parking lot where my car had been, the teenage boy in front of the rest of the group, but, when I stopped and turned to look back without the mirror, the group was gone. I've been back about a dozen times or more since then and, while I often have the "somebody's watching" vibe, I've never seen anything else along those lines.
I was staying in the Crockett Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, across the street from the back part of the Alamo. My girlfriend and I had taken a room on the seventh floor and had, after putting our bags in the room, gone out for dinner. When we returned to the room after dinner to put on our bathing suits and go to the hot tub, there was the smell of vanilla-scented pipe tobacco. Our room was a non-smoking room and, on our way to the hot tub, we went down to the front desk and mentioned it, where we were assured that our room had been nonsmoking for years and that the custodial staff would make a written report when they went into a nonsmoking room and somebody had been smoking and that no such report had been filed in that room in months. After the hot tub, where we had a bit of fun, we returned and the tobacco smell was gone, not that either of us would have noticed for the next bit of time, until we were done with our couple's shower. After we showered, we went to bed, exhausted and smiling, and went to sleep. I woke up about 3 a.m. and saw something across the room near the door (there was a little light as I often leave the bathroom light on in a hotel room with the door cracked, in case I need to visit the bathroom in the middle of the night, but I couldn't make out what I was seeing. I picked up and put on my glasses and looked to the area in question, where a man stood...or at least his top half floated. I couldn't see anything below about the rib cage, but the top part of him, up to and including the hat he was wearing, was clear to me. He was looking directly at me and appeared to be solid. He had a small, pencil-thin mustache and was wearing a gray hat, and he was smoking a pipe. The smell of vanilla-scented pipe tobacco reached my nose as he grinned at me, tipped his hat, then turned and "walked" (he didn't have legs I could see, remember) through the door to the hallway. I jumped out of the bed and rand to the door, where I (in all my naked glory) threw open the door. Luckily (considering how naked I and my girlfriend were), nobody was in the hallway going either direction. Of course, my springing from the bed had woken my girlfriend, who was quite interested in my tale and "rewarded my exploits" with another round of coitus (there were some nice things about being 23). The next morning, I spoke to the girl at the front desk while my girlfriend was finishing her breakfast (I happened to know the girl from our affiliations with a couple of Masonic youth organizations years before) and she shared with me that there had been several guest reports of ghostly experiences from the seventh floor and they all seemed to center around Room 711, the room we had stayed in the night before.
Last one (for now). When I was a kid (from about 7 - 11), my Dad was active with the drill team of the Masonic Knight Templar Commandery (long story), and they practiced on Saturdays at St. Johns Lodge on Front Street in Tyler. The day usually went: men practiced from 10:30 to 12:00 in the parking lot; women took that time for fellowship among themselves and preparing lunch for everybody; kids would play together in the "seating area" on the first floor; nobody went upstairs to the Lodge Room. Random Saturday comes along, I was 8, and I was the only kid who went that day. Men are in the parking lot; women are in the kitchen/dining hall; nobody's around little Wacokid27, who is exploring the building. I went up the stairs to the Lodge Room area on the second floor (one of those spooky, forbidden places that children don't go to on their own, you know) and saw that there was a light on in the Lodge Room. I went in (I mean, the door was open, so....) and saw an old man sitting in a chair near the dais in the east of the room. It was like he was talking to somebody, but there was nobody else in the room. As I walked in, he stopped talking and looked over at me. He was an old man, bald on top, but with long hair around the crown of his head and a beard that reached to his chest. He was heavy and his voice had a Southern accent and sounded, for lack of a better term, "cultured". He waved me over and I talked with the old man for a few minutes when he looked up and told me he thought my Dad was calling me. I told him "Bye!" and walked (you never run in the Lodge Room) out, then ran down the stairs, where I told my Dad about the old man in the Lodge Room. The other men, his fellow Knights Templar, looked at each other and went upstairs (it's a big deal when your eight-year-old son tells you there's an unknown old man sitting up in a room where nobody's known to be at....could be a bad guy) to find him. They looked all around that Lodge Room and the area upstairs only to come up empty. I overheard one of the men tell another that I wasn't the first person to see people up there that weren't there (after I joined that Lodge 13 years later, I would hear about the ghosts of old members that were often seen....and one old Past Master of that Lodge has since told me that he's seen my Dad in the Lodge Room since his death). Anywho, they didn't find anybody and everybody went down and had a quiet lunch. It was about 7 years later that I identified the man I saw that day as Albert Pike, when I saw a bust of General Pike in the San Antonio Scottish Rite Building. Pike, for historical fun, is buried in the House of the Temple in Washington, D.C., and his spirit apparently likes to visit old Masonic Lodge buildings, as there are myriad stories about his ghost being seen even in old buildings that he is not known to have visited (whether or not he was ever in St. Johns Lodge building in Tyler is a matter of some debate).
wk
