How Para is Your Normal?

Picture of clouds in our backyard. UFO cover?

Personally, I've never experienced anything strange that could be explained only as a paranormal encounter (if you don't count the weirdness brought on by a bunch of teenaged girls with a Ouija board in junior high or the really strange clouds that once hung over our backyard). Yet one friend told me that she always saw her grandmother's ghost after she moved into her house, while another swears she saw some crazy lights that could only be UFOs. A few of my Twitter friends recently shared very detailed stories of some pretty creepy things that happened to them that really don't have any other logical explanation.

House I grew up in. Haunted?

Last weekend I met a man who lived in the same house as I did growing up. It was a rather large old house, built in the late 1800s. There were servant stairways, old-fashioned radiators for heat and stained glass windows throughout. This 50-something-year-old man looked me in the eye and said he knew there were ghosts in that house. Whatever wisdom he held in those eyes actually gave me the shivers. All I kept thinking was how happy I was that I didn't know this 20 years ago.

Still, I remain a skeptic. We live in a time where just about everyone knows how to photoshop images. Old houses have old boilers and really creaky doors that don't stay closed. How much of paranormal stuff is a result of imagines fueled by television shows and scary stories? If you see a shift in shadows, it could just be your overactive imagination telling you that you saw a ghost. If you ever watch the ghost hunter reality shows, you know how those guys are good at scaring the crap out of themselves just by walking through these old buildings more than anything. And I always get a good laugh out of the "voices" they "translate". How they ever get actual words out of those noises, I'll never understand.

Relax, I found this one on the internet.

If there really are ghosts among us, I would think that every single person would have experienced an encounter of sorts. If there really are aliens that come and experiment on people in the night, I doubt the government would be able to keep a total lid on that kind of information.

I would love to tour a well-known haunted site (it's on my bucket list) or see strange lights floating in the sky. The very thought of it is exciting (did I mention I'm a big X-Files fan?). But I think the only reason I can get excited about these things is because in my heart I don't think it's real. Therefore, it's just fun entertainment. Or so I tell myself.

What do you think? Have you ever experienced anything that couldn't be explained by plain logic? I'd love to hear your stories!