My spiritual experiences- Why i believe in ghosts. Part 1.

When i was 15 years old, i lost interest in school, to the point where i was 'wagging' 4 days out of five a week. I got away with it because my parent's both went to work during the day, not getting home till 5-6pm, they were none the wiser. Until my school started calling them, but that's another story. So i would sit at home all day, watching T.V and going on the Internet. As you could imagine, i got bored after a while.

Being young and silly, lonely, and bored out of my mind, i took up a new interest- talking to the dead. You might be thinking that this is a strange interest for a teenage girl... well the idea was influenced, unbeknown to her at the time, by my mother. My mum does tarot card's and has always visited clairvoyants, so it' not like the idea just popped into my head from out of nowhere.

After doing a lot of research on the Internet about spirits and such like, i decided to make an Ouija board. I made the board from a flat, square piece of ply wood, and on it i wrote in vivid the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 1-10, and the words Yes, No, and Goodbye. I used a small glass turned upside down as the 'pointer.' - To spell out words and numbers.

I would sit at the kitchen table with my finger on top of the glass, and ask, 'Is there anyone here?' 'If anyone is here, i invite you to talk to me.' More often than not, nothing happened, or so i thought. I tried this once in the day, everyday, until things did start happening. 3-4 Times when i did this, the glass would tremble, and move around very slowly without any real direction, moving to a series of letters that made no sense to me. They were not words being spelt out, unless it was in a different language. That confused me, but now i think there was definitely something there those times, and it either didn't know how to communicate, or it didn't want to, perhaps it just wanted to scare me.

There is only one time i remember, when my Ouija board worked successfully. One time i was asking the 'opening questions', and the glass moved directly to Yes. I then asked, 'Who are you?' I almost jumped out of my skin when this name was spelt out, C-O-L-E. Cole was a cousin of mine, who had died when he was a teenager. Cole was 16-17 when he died, and i was about 10-11 at the time of his death. Apparently, he died due to falling/slipping off the edge of a cliff, because he was chasing a goat. That is the story i got told. Personally, i'm not sure if i believe that..

Just for the record, I'm not sure if what or who i was communicating with was actually my cousin. It is commonly known amongst people who have experiences with Ouija boards, that there are good and bad spirits, just like people. The bad ones might lie to get you to talk to them, so they get to you, or get you to do things for them.

Anyway, the next question i asked was, 'How did you die?' The answer i got was, s-u-i-c-i-d-e. To be honest, i can't remember what was said and spelt after that, until the end. But i do remember feeling both scared, and excited, a feeling much like anxiety.

When i tried to 'close' the board, i said goodbye, and the glass moved to the word No. That is when i started freaking out. I persisted saying 'You have to go now, bye.' The glass kept moving to No. So i took the glass, and i smashed it. I took the board and i destroyed it. I took the board into my dad's workshop, cut it up with a saw, and threw it in with a pile of old junky wood that was lying around my dad's shed.

After this, strange and scary things started happening, to the point where i believe i was being haunted.

The first strange thing that i noticed happening, was ticking in the walls. I would be in bed at night, trying to sleep, and a ticking noise would begin. It sounded like long fingernails being tapped on a solid surface, like a table. I would get out of my bed, and search my bedroom, trying to determine where the ticking noise was coming from. Every time i got closer to where i thought the noise was coming from, it would get louder as i got closer, and when i got too close, where the noise was coming from would change to another area in my room. Months later, i swapped room's with one of my sisters, and then she complained to me about the ticking noise. I still heard the ticking noise in my new bedroom, but not often. I did often hear if coming from my sisters room, my old bedroom, as our bedrooms were side by side. My other sister, was scared in her bedroom too, claiming that she could hear footsteps at night, and it sounded like someone had walked up to be standing next to her bed.

One day not long after doing the Ouija board, weeks later, i was sitting at the computer, and i turned around, out of instinct, as i felt like something was there. What i saw, horrified me. I saw a thick black orb of smoke, or fog, about 2 meters away from me. It looked like a floating cloud at first, but quickly changed so that it looked like, what i describe as a black hole. It formed into a sucking motion, looking like a ring of black, sucking inwards in the middle.

I sat petrified for a few seconds, before leaving what i was doing, and running. I left the computer, bolted out of the house without locking it, and got in my car to drive to my mum's work. Driving down the main street of town, where there were people around, i was very scared and couldn't get to my mum fast enough. I could hear heavy breathing next to me, coming from the passengers seat. When i got to my mum's work, i didn't tell her what had happened, because i knew that she would go nut's at me, had she known that i had been using an Ouija board. I just told her that i was scared and lonely at home by myself, and she didn't pick up on what had been happening, as she was more concerned as to why i wasn't at school.

My sister had an electric guitar, and when the amplifier was in my bedroom, a few times my sister and i heard voices coming from it. There were about 3 voices at one time, and they were all talking at once, it sounded like arguing, so it was difficult to make out the actual words and sentences. The voices sounded very old fashioned, like that of the sound of voices from a 1960's film.

One time when the voices started coming from the amp, i ran to get my dad. My dad is a huge skeptic, he's also an atheist, so i was trying to prove to him that ghosts exist, and they were in our house. When my dad got to my room, the voices had stopped, and wouldn't start again. My dad said that the amp is like a radio receiver, and it was probably picking up a radio station. But like i said, the sounds and voices sounded very old fashioned, and like they were arguing.

Another thing that i occasionally saw in my bedroom, were orbs, circles of light.

The scariest thing of all that happened in that house, and what i consider to be the greatest evidence of seeing is believing proof, happened quite some time later. About a year later, my boyfriend and i were in my bedroom, he was sitting in front of me and it was quite dark. Suddenly, i noticed an arm wrapped around his stomach, in the way that you hold your stomach sometimes when you feel sick, or have cramps in your tummy. I said to him, 'I can see an arm around you're stomach.' As i said that, the arm reached out with a pointed finger at me, coming close to touching me. As this happened, i began saying, 'Oh my god, it just tried to tou... Aaaaaargggghhhhh!!!!' I screamed a horrific scream, as i was saying that it pointed out at me, looking like it was going to touch me, the hand reached out again as i was speaking. When it reached out the second time, it's fingers looked spastic, like how you move you're fingers to tickle torture someone, and with these fingers, i felt it, and saw it grabbing at my stomach.

I vividly remember this episode, and my scream was one of sheer terror. My boyfriend jumped on me and held me down to try to calm me. I scared the crap out of him, and he doesn't know what to believe. My boyfriend is a skeptic also, he doesn't know what to believe because he didn't see anything, but he remembers my scream, and believes that my fear was very real.

We moved into another house not long after this, by this time my parents were divorced. Dad had moved out, and mum was looking for a new home for us so that mum and dad could split the money from the sale of the house. But the haunting didn't end there...