Up to today, I’m still not sure whether I truly believe in ghosts or not. I do believe in spirits, they flow through me daily, almost constantly. I feel them, I know them, I acknowledge them; they are there. But ghosts – ghosts are something that you would supposedly see, and that somebody’s spirit could be seen, it sounds more possible that it is simply the result of one’s imagination. Imagination has always been one of my strong suits, as I have used it my entire life – especially in childhood – in fun activities such as pretending to be a Pokemon, and once that grew old, creating an entire world of heroes and villains for my friends and I to play in. But still, I can’t help but wonder whether I really saw the things that I indeed saw.

My dad’s house at the time settled on a wayward road in a less city-like area of Brighton, a child-friendly neighborhood with children of all ages except mine. For that reason, a strong majority of my friends were at least three years younger than me. I had a friend over, Dominic, and he and I were in my dad’s basement. When you walked into my dad’s basement, you saw a futon, an entertainment center, and a television. This was my room. Around the corner to the right there was a seemingly misplaced laundry set and such machines as our furnace and other machines I truly can’t put a name to. Two of my three sisters were also down with us, sitting on the futon, anticipating our enticing Pokemon battle. When my friends and I used to battle, we would pretend to be the Pokemon trainer and then be the Pokemon each had just chosen.
It started out as a typical Pokemon battle – first my Blastoise beat his Charizard, which made sense because Water Pokemon obviously extinguish Fire Pokemon. Next, I chose the large snake-like Pokemon made out of a shiny metal named Steelix. He was one of my favorites. He chose Pikachu, a very famous small thing that is known for unleashing electricity. This made sense because my Pokemon was made out of metal. What he did not know was that Steelix has a move that can make electricity useless, but I haven’t done anything associated with Pokemon in so long that I can’t remember what that move was called. But anyway, I used that move. To show that the electricity had been defused, I turned the lights off, but first asked my sisters not to scream. To my surprise, they did not. They were dead silent.
Next, I used Tackle. To tackle Dominic, of course, I had to see him. I used my “night vision”, something I thought I possessed but in retrospect know that there is no way on Earth I could possibly see anything in that windowless basement with the door shut and the lights off. My friend Dominic had a yellow shirt, and I indeed “saw” him. I saw something yellow, about his height, standing about five feet in front of me. So I tackled him. Well, I instead landed on the floor but in the area where I would have swore I saw him laid a folded-up blanket. It helped cushion the fall.
In shock and slightly frightened, I immediately stood up and began searching for the light switch. Panicking, I rubbed my hand along the wall where I knew the light switch was. Chest level, two feet to the right of the door frame. There was no light switch. After ten seconds, I found the light switch and turned the light on. Not a word was uttered the entire time the lights were off.
My friend Dominic was on the other side of the room. I laughed and said “Nice, Dominic. Good dodge right there. With the lights off, too.”
He replied in his squeakiness, as he was only 10 at the time, “What are you talking about? I’ve been standing here since you turned the light off. I knew you wouldn’t come way back here.”
My franticness returned, and I decided to leave the lights on. Actually, I also decided we should all go back upstairs.
A few weeks later my two best friends in the neighborhood and some girl I hadn’t known much and I were all talking about ghosts. Foley, actually, was skateboarding, but us other three were talking. I had not told my story yet when Jack had pointed to the girl and said “Her sister actually has seen a ghost in her closet. It’s like, this yellow girl that every time she opens the closet the girl is standing in her kitchen set and yells at her to get out. Now she won’t even go into the closet.”
Realizing the connection of the yellow figure in her story to mine, I told them my story which I had soon before dismissed as an irrelevant figment of my imagination. We were all immediately scared and decided to investigate.
Nothing else suspicious occurred. The girl’s sister never went back in her closet; anything that was needed out of it was expected to be retrieved by their mother. And, I left the lights on in my basement.
Maybe they are real. Maybe they aren’t. All I can tell you is what I saw and heard.
You decide.