Admittedly, I am notthebravest chick in the coop. In fact, I’m kind of a full-on weinie when it comes to anything paranormal. Need proof? Read this. I kind of have this syndrome, if you will, that stems from watching “ghosty” storiescausing me to imagine hearing all kinds of spooky sounds at nightresulting in me forcing my hubby to sleep on top of me (and not in the good kind of way) in bed. I figure, if he’s on top of me than any “ghosty/ghoul” type will have to get through his body to get to mine, possibly buying me some time to plan an escape. Trust me. It all makes sense…in my head.

All that being said, I wanted to take a stab at telling a real-life ghost story. How do I know it’s real life? Because…it happened to me about 13 years ago. What I experienced was so terrifying I can say with the utmost of certainty that it changed my life. Here it goes…

My friend Sara(who now happens to be my sister-in-law) and her family lived outside of town on a little spread tucked inside a small grove of trees. There was one main road to get out to their place and as a young, single girl always looking for something to occupy my time I traveled that road often. One late eveninganother friend, Amy, and I decided to make the trip out to Sara’s to do some visiting.

That particular night there was a slight fog whichhad settled onto the road, making it a little difficult tonavigate.We both were concentrating on the road aheadof us watching out for deer or any other animal brave enough to attempt crossing in front of us.

I looked at Amy and said, “This is a crazy night. I’ve never seen it so foggy out here before.”

She answered, “I know. It’s like something out of a horror movie.”

We both laughed, albeit a little nervously.

Amy said, “Maybe we should turn down the radio a little bit. I don’t want you getting distracted at all.”

“Good idea, Amy,” I said as I looked down and reached for the knob.

Suddenly I heard, “MINDY!” screamed into my ear. I looked over at Amy who was pointing at the road ahead of us.

I peered out the windshield and screamed, quickly slamming on my breaks. There was a figure crossing the road right in front of us and I was about to hit it!

We screeched to a halt and quickly collected ourselves, staring out the windows to survey any damage.

“Where is it?” Amy asked, looking out the front, back and sides of the car.

“I-I-I don’t know. What happened?” I asked.

“Mindy, it’s gone. There’s nobody out there.”

“But there was. I saw it. We almost hit it. It was there, wasn’t it? You saw it, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Yeah, I definitely saw something. It was a person. They were right in front of us. Where’d they go?” She continued to search around all sides of the car, her confusion growing.

At this point in time we were stillsitting in the car, parked in the middle of the road.

“Amy, I think we should get going. There’s nobody out there. What if someone drives up behind us?”

She agreed and I quickly accelerated, anxious to be away from the spooky scene. Neither of us attempted to speak for the rest of the trip, both deep in our thoughts of what we swore we had seen.

After that night I purposed to never travel that road again after dark. Even in broad daylight I rarely passed that section of road without feeling shivers down my spine. And I stuck true to my word for about a year. One night I decided enough time had passed and agreed to drive with Sara out to her family’s house. As we approached that dreaded section I couldn’t help but remember that fateful night. I started to say something to Sara when all of a sudden my headlights shut off. I quickly worked at the knob, attempting to revive the lights so we wouldn’t careen into a ditch. Fortunately, Sara had traveled that road so often she knew that there was a driveway just up the road and was able to guide me to it, all the while engulfed in total darkness.

I slowly pulled off the road and parked working out a plan in my head.

“What happened?” Sara asked.

“I’m not sure. The lights just turned off on their own. I wonder if we blew a fuse or something?” I said. And then, for some reason, I decided to try the lights again.

They worked. The headlights worked.They had darkened out as soon as we crossed that section of road but now they worked.

We took off and quickly made our way to Sara’s house in case the lights decided to fail again. They didn’t. In fact, after that night I never had a problem with my headlights again.

So, there it is, folks. My real-life ghost story. Spooks me out all over again. I can say I have traveled that road many, many times after these incidents happened and I haven’t seen the figure or experienced failed headlights again. I choose to believe that whatever was haunting that section of road has sinced moved on.

Nevertheless, that was a terrifying experience and one that I’m sure has shaped the way I feel about the “paranormal”. I imagine it also has something to do with my preferred position of sleep…directly underneath the hubby (again, not in thatway.) Gosh, get your head out of the gutter, people!

Happy Halloween!

Love to all, Mindy