Ghost in the Closet

        As children, most of us were probably frightened, at one time or another, of the monster lurking under the bed or in the closet. I never dreamed that, as a college student, I would be witness to a string of eerie paranormal disturbances, some of which really did emanate from a bedroom closet.

        As I’ve mentioned before, these strange events took place in the home of one of my friends. The room where the disturbances occurred did have a bit of a history; an older family member had been convinced, years before, that there was a presence in the room. She had never felt at ease there. Years later, when my friend “inherited” the room, and that presence began to make itself very strongly known, I happened to be one of those who experienced it. I heard the eerie rapping on the walls—which would occur in different places in the room—sometimes very close to where one of us was sitting, and sometimes in response to what that person had said. I felt the pervasive, unnatural cold that would settle on our clothes and skin. And I heard the distinct sounds of thumping and banging that sometimes came from the closet. Needless to say, everyone wanted to stay away from that closet—and my friend decided she felt safer with a tall, heavy bureau wedged against the closet door. But: when items began disappearing from all over the house, she developed a sinking feeling about where they might be. And I was with her on two of the occasions when she finally opened the closet.

        I’ll never forget the chilling sense of shock I felt over what we found in the closet. On both occasions, the missing items from the house were indeed there—plus some other things that no one had realized were missing. We found a magazine, a ticket stub, drawings, photos, plaques, and other items, intermixed with the old clothing and books stored in the closet. One item we found, a magazine illustration, didn’t belong to any of us; we never did figure out where it came from. A couple of the paper items we found were actually crumpled. And, on the third occasion when the closet was opened, the items we had so carefully placed on the shelf had been tossed onto the floor of the closet. Very disquieting.

        Was all of this a hoax, or some crazy practical joke? I really don’t think so. I knew everyone who lived in that house; my friend and her brother were genuinely terrified about what was happening there, and I can’t imagine either of them carrying on a hoax that ended up lasting for over a year and a half. Their mother, a no-nonsense sort of woman, certainly wouldn’t have done it. And the other person in the house was too ill to be physically capable of it.

        I also can’t find a rational explanation for the entire range of strange occurrences that took place in that house. Even if some of it was hysteria or exaggeration or a mistake, that certainly wouldn’t explain everything. And: having been there to witness these things first-hand—I could feel, on a deep level, that I was in the midst of something totally beyond normal comprehension. My view of reality was never the same after that.

        I’ve come to believe that our everyday world exists side-by-side with other realities that are largely beyond our perception—and that energies from those unseen realities occasionally seep into our familiar world, producing strange phenomena that we can’t explain. Maybe, sometimes, something in our own consciousness attracts or feeds or stirs these energies; I wondered about that in the case of my friend, who was a brazen experimenter in the paranormal. The presence in her home became much more disruptive after her explorations began. I wonder, too, whether the spirits of deceased people don’t always entirely leave our world, hovering between the seen and unseen, with their presence echoing back to us in what we call “hauntings”. Maybe this was true of the presence in my friend’s house, who apparently lingered for decades before the really severe disturbances began. Or maybe this “presence” was more a trace, an impression of a deceased person’s energy that was left behind. So many intriguing possibilities …

        What do you think?