I SAW A GHOST!

That got your attention didn’t it?

Yes, like 'Take a Break' and 'Pick Me Up' magazine, I am not averse to using attention grabbing headlines to lure you in.

...and then disappointing you with a story that doesn’t bear much relation to said headline.

Although, unlike them, I’ve made the crucial mistake of admitting this upfront and undermining my blog entry before it has even started.

Darn!

Kudos to you, 'Take a Break' and 'Pick Me Up' magazine – it’s not as easy as it looks!

Well, for those of you who still want to read my ‘ghostly’ yarn, here goes.

Whilst staying with my parents last weekend I was woken up at 3:30am by a very loud hiss in my right ear.

I sat bolt upright, looked in the direction of the hiss, and saw what I took to be a person standing next to my bed.

It looked exactly like the outline of my mum, and my first thought was that she had come into my room to wake me up.

So I said, “Mum, what is it?”

The figure didn’t move and continued to just stand there.

I kept on saying “Mum?...Mum?...Mum?” but nothing. The person just stood there.

Eventually I got exasperated, and figured that my mum must be sleep walking, so I got up to turn on the light and guide her back to bed.

I turned on the light and nobody was there.

Being the rationalist that I am, I promptly ran out of the room and spent the rest of the night in another spare bedroom upstairs (because ghosts can’t climb stairs, obviously)

I was awake for some time afterwards thinking about what had happened.

All those stories you hear, about people waking up to see figures at the end of their bed, I’d laughed at those, but now I had apparently joined their ranks – please God don’t let Joe Power be right!

By morning I was over it and back to the land of logic and reason.

When you have your 3:30am head on, and everything is dark and silent, it’s easy to get freaked out.

But in the cold light of day I decided that the noise must have been either in my dreams or from an external source outside the room. And in my sleepy stupor I had seen a shadow, associated it with the noise, and given it form.

The only thing that I continued to find slightly weird was that by the time I was fully awake and aware the ‘ghost’ was still apparently there, and clear as day, but that’s the power of the mind I guess.

The reason I am recounting this tale of ostensibly nothing, is that the experience gave me an interesting insight.

I can now totally understand how it is that people think they have seen a ghost.

If someone as cynical as me can think they saw one, then someone who is given to believing in the supernatural is going to swear blind they did. Their mind will collude with their tiredness, the shadows in the room and their fear, to create a hallucination, and they, being open to such things, will convince themselves of what they saw.

When it comes to the unexplained, it’s tempting to fill in the gaps with ghosts, God, fate. (Sorry to any Christians I offend by adding God to that list. If it helps I’ll say Allah as well, for balance, and so I don’t get called politically correct)

Although having said all this, I was sleeping in the room where that satanic massacre took place, so you never know.

And so ends my ghostly tale. Don’t have nightmares!