What if I told you that I see/feel ghosts?  What would you say?  What would you think…that I am crazy, or would you keep an open mind?

I would be happy if I didn’t have this ability.  I am contradicting myself in wishing that I’m not weird but there you have it.  I am also a contradiction!  Would I have been ‘normal’, I would feel no need to sit here, tap, tapping away my discomfort, my ghosts.

I do not really see my ghosts.  I cannot describe them.  Rather I sense them.  My first experience was when I was a child, many years ago in China.  I ‘saw’ them when I was playing on our rooftop.  My mother told me that they were our ancestors and not to be afraid of them.  The second time came shortly after that.  I ‘saw’ someone standing in front of my bed.  I felt, ‘saw’ the shadow.  I cannot remember other incidences from my childhood.

I became afraid of my ghosts when I was a young adult.  I would cross my slippers by my bed to ward off their visits.  I came to no harm, but it was frightening for me to wake up with something sitting on me, holding me inert and helpless.  I could not move.  I could not scream until ‘it’ left.

To reassure myself of my sanity, I decided that the next time the ghost visits, I would test myself.  How did I do this?  I opened my eyes, blinked and say to myself:  I’m awake.  I’m awake.  The pressure was great.  I could not move but I reached and reached to turn the lamp on.  I knew the light would dispel it.  I stretched and stretched.  The lamp toppled, the shade falling off.  My cat jumped off the bed.  The pressure lifted.  But when I ‘came to’, all was calm.  The lamp was still upright, where it had been but the cat was gone.

I kept my slippers crossed by my bed for quite a few years.  Those incidents have stopped but I have had encounters of a different kind.  Am I crazy?  Do you believe me?  What do you think?