October is the month for Ghost Stories!

Ok, so its that time of the year ... Halloween time! I love this time of the year ... the leaves changing colors, the temperature and weather, that crisp fall feel to the air .... and ghost stories. Sadly, I am leaving for a month long business trip to Atlanta, GA and will miss a good Pennsylvania October. I missed October last year too due to having to work in Houston. I sure hope Atlanta has an October. I'll be totally bummed if I'm just leaving October to go back to August weather and then it will be November when I come back and I'll be totally screwed out of a fall for the second year in a row!

Anyways, I'm getting off topic. Ghosts: there are a million websites out there dedicated to ghosts, ghost stories, ghost pictures, etc etc. I have found myself becoming addicted to shows like Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Paranormal State, and recently watched this new Ghost Lab show on Discovery Channel. The problem is that after I watch these shows I can't sleep. I'm not scared, shaking in my sheets or anything ... but just thinking about it keeps me up. Ghost Lab was a bit of a disappointment though. The acting was .... well, it was obviously acting, and that just loses all credibility for the show when an actor hears a noise and makes a crazy over dramatic reaction to it.

Ghost Hunters on SyFy is by far my favorite show. The guys (and girls) on that show seem pretty genuine. I also believe it because they don't always find evidence. If they were faking the show for entertainment, don't you think they'd find crazy ghosts all the time? Some episodes are downright boring because nothing happens. Why would SyFy do that if it wasn't legit? Unless they are smarter than me, and know that people like me would question them if things happened all the time so they fake shows without evidence too like as some sort of reverse psychology that has worked on me ... I dunno.

I'll tell you a funny story: A few years ago I tried joining a ghost hunters team here in the Pittsburgh Area. Basically, I got this kind of treatment like I was trying to join some exclusive Yale fraternity where your daddy needs to have been a founding member for you to get in or something like that. And the funny thing is that they were talking about how many years of experience they have and how they want someone with experience. Experience? Experience? For ghost hunting? How about having lived in a haunted house and haunted apartment for the last 7 years for experience? I'm a pretty intelligent guy, and I work in a career where about 40% of my job is investigative work ... but I wasn't invited into their ghost club. So if anyone reading this is in the Pittsburgh area and wants to start a friendly ghost hunting team, hit me up! I got most of the equipment already!

On to the ghost stories:

I bought my house last August. My house was built in 1947, and 3 families have resided here prior to myself. The first family was a couple who had two children grow up here, and lived here till the 80's till they moved into a retirement home. The second owners only lived here a few years and moved out seeking more room for their expanding family. The previous owner to myself was a single woman who lived here alone for 20 years until she married and moved out into a bigger house. I met this woman, and let me tell you ... there is no way this lady would live in a haunted house by herself for 20 years! So that brings up the question, why on earth is my house haunted now? Actually, it isn't haunted RIGHT now, but sometimes it is ... if that makes any sense. Last August and November it was (remember I was gone all October last year). Things went away, and then came back in the spring. Things were quiet again till August, and then a few weeks of strange occurrences took place.

Here's what happened: The first night I slept here, I woke up about 4:00 Am with a light on in my bedroom. The lamp on my nightstand, which has one of those peg switches that is like a peg you push through the socket to turn the light on, was turned on. I know that I did not fall asleep with this light on. I am the type of person who needs total dark to sleep. I figured maybe I inadvertently turned it on in my sleep or something, and thought nothing of it.

The next night, I woke up again around 4:00 or 5:00 AM, and the light was on. This time I was a little freaked out, and actually thought "ghost" rather than "me turning lights on." I figured there was still a rational explanation for it, and the 3rd night I moved the nighstand allllllll the way over away from my bed and against the wall. I moved my light allllllllllllllll the way over to the other side of the nightstand, so I'd have to lean over way far to turn it on. There is no way a sleepy me could lean over that far to turn on the light without falling out of bed and onto my face. Well, of course, I wake up at like 4:00 am with the light on.

So now I'm really thinking ... there must be some rational explanation. I put a different lamp in. A few days go by with nothing. Problem solved? Wrong! Wake up again at 4:00 in the morning one night with the new light on. Tried a different outlet and had the same experiences. Then, just like that .. it stopped happening. Weird huh?

About a month after moving in, I was doing some work in my 2nd bedroom that serves as an office, when I heard someone open a door downstairs. I thought maybe my parents came to visit, as they do have a habit of letting themselves in unannounced. I called down, and nobody answered. I went to the top of the stairs, and heard the door in my kitchen which leads to my basement stairs slam shut, and heavy footsteps ran down the stairs into the basement. I grabbed my glock, grabbed my cell phone, and was ready to call 911. I ran outside the house to across the street where I have a view of all the doors. Nobody could get in or out of the house (unless they were tiny, or would jump out a 2nd floor window) without me seeing them.

A half hour goes by. I check the house out, and find .... nothing! Nobody was there. Everything was secure, the door to the basement was shut and locked, everything is fine. I haven't heard that noise or any noises like them since in the year since it has happened.

Another night I was in bed and heard a hard knock on my closed door from the inside. Pretty creepy eh? I didn't sleep a wink for the rest of the night.

Sometimes at night I'd be laying in bed, JUST as I'm about to fall asleep, and I hear voices talking downstairs. Nice, normal human voices, like a mom and dad talking in the living room after the kids have been put to bed. I can never make out what they are saying, but I hear their voices. I'll get up to investigate, listen outside to make sure the noises aren't coming from my neighbors, and I hear nothing. The second my head hits the pillow, the voices would start up again.

Then, all of the sudden, everything stopped. A few times in the spring I heard footsteps, and again in August, but never the lights or voices again.

Last November I called that local ghost hunting team who stiffed me. They came out, did their thing, and seemed pretty excited about my house as we all heard the voices. I received a phone call about a month later when they told me they had found some evidence but wanted to review it further before going over it with me. They never got back to me with their findings. Either they must have broken up, decided that I'm crazy and are scared of me now, or stole some things from my house and are scared I'll find out ... haha, I don't know, but either way if they could at least tell me what they found, it would be nice.

Here's a creepy fact for ya: My house is built within the grounds of what was a US Army fort after the Revolutionary War. General Mad Anthony Wayne trained the first United States Army here for about 4 years. there is even a cemetery where several soldiers rest, having died here sometime in the 1780's/1790's.

Greetings World!

I don't have a myspace page, I'm not on facebook, and I'm annoyed by people who are (sorry). I have a college degree and my grammar and punctuation aren't perfect, so lets all get over that right now together :)

Basically, I have a lot of ideas and opinions on well ... everything. Soooooooooo I've decided to start a blog to share ideas, fun stories, and all that jazz with the world. My favorite topics will be 1.) behavior of people in general 2.) how the 80's where so much better than today (I know this and I'm only 27!), 3.) ghosts, 4.) traveling (I travel everywhere for my job!), and 5.) Penn State Football (sorry Joe but its time to retire!).

Ground rules:

I know there are a lot of 14 year olds out there full of raging pubescent hormones that they don't know what to do with so they go online and type nasty things in response to other people's blogs, youtube comments, etc.

Rule #1: No personal attacks or nasty comments. We are ALL entitled to our own opinion. You don't know me personally, I don't know you ... if you feel the need to attack me or anyone else personally, there's no place for you here. Feel free to go write nasty comments on youtube videos.

Rule #2: Ok that's about it. On to my first blog: