Call it a mild fascination. I am a 3rd generation minister and being a minister and having been raised in a Christian home my whole life, you would think I would have no interest at all in the subject of ghosts, however, something happened when I was in the 3rd grade at a time when our family was financially and geographically displaced that would stay with me until, well, until now. This was the year 1966 and my parents just lost the nice ranch-style home they were building for us because the State of Missouri decided to build a highway through the middle of it instead.
Needless to say, this really turned things upside down for our family so my parents decided to move us away from that area and it would take a couple of moves before we would finally settle down. The first place we moved to was in the town of Merriam, Kansas where we rented an old 3 story stone home. I don't remember a lot about this house except, looking back, I remember it didn't feel anything like a home. Being three stories high of old native stone, it looked more like a castle than it did a home. It was big and old, and it never seemed to have enough light on the inside.
At the top of this house was an attic which looked more like a belfry. It was just one small room, yet instead of bells, it had an assortment of bats and pigeons living inside of it. It was just the sort of place a young boy could use his imagination in yet I could sense that something was just not right about this place and it wasn't until several years later after we moved away, that my parents finally told us about an experience they had one particular night, well past midnight, in that old stone house.
They said they were lying in bed one night, tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable so they could get to sleep when something in an otherwise quiet night caught their attention. They both looked toward their bedroom door and they saw what looked like a young boy in PJs, walking, almost gliding down the hallway. My parents, somewhat startled, and thinking that all three of their boys had been fast asleep since they last checked and remembering their oldest son was having trouble lately walking in his sleep, and then worrying that he might fall down the stairs, they quickly but very quietly got up to see what in the world was going on.
As they made their way to the door, they came to realize this was not their oldest for the figure of this boy was much smaller. Still, they both just stood there and watched as he turned and entered into my younger brother's room. As he went in he stopped at the foot of the bed as if to stare at whoever was sleeping there then he turned around and he went back out into the hallway and then he disappeared into the wall.
Back in the sixties, we had no idea what a full-bodied apparition was and up until the disappearing act into the wall, my parents just thought somebody else's child must have found their way into our home. But did this make them believers in ghosts? You would think so but it didn't stop them from going on with life. It just became a story they would tell friends or family when someone brought up the subject of ghosts or other un-explainable things in life.
