My first "ghostly encounter"

As a young child, growing up in our Victorian-style house in a small town in Nebraska, I never thought twice about ghosts. They were there, I saw them, but I never thought twice about it. I vividly remember a ghost dog coming and visiting my room when I was young, and my mother told me as a teenager that she thought my "imaginary friend" I had was more than just my imagination. But, I never thought it was a big deal. They were there, I was there, they didn't scare me. On a side note, I *was* scared of vampires!

When we moved to Ohio (in the house before my dad's freakin haunted house) the ghost thing went away for a few years. Perhaps it is normal with children that grow up, that as we grow older we become desensitized to such things. Of course, I still didn't like graveyards. But, I don't have any strong recollection of anything paranormal happening between when I was six to when I was ten. Then we moved to dad's house.

Perhaps I had other "ghostly encounters" before this, but looking back I specifically remember this as the first, and perhaps the only poltergeist account I've ever had in dad's house. It was either a year or two after we had moved in, and I was either in 6th or 7th grade. My friend Tiffany and I had full run of the house while my parents were away, and while we were in charge we had to check in with my autistic brother, Alex, every once in awhile. We were running upstairs, and all of a sudden my bedroom door started shaking violently right in front of us, as if someone was trying to get in or out of the room. I remember my friend Tiffany and I just standing there for a few seconds until it stopped, and of course we thought that maybe my brother was in my room, which he had a tendency to do from time to time. Strange thing was there was a hook and eye lock on the outside of the door, which helped prevent my brother from getting into my room when I wasn't in it. And it was still locked.

So we unlocked the door and sure enough, he wasn't in there. Confused we went looking for Alex, and he was asleep in his room. Weird. So we went back into my bedroom to see if maybe a cat or something was in there, even though the force behind the door seemed pretty strong. There was nothing. We even checked to see if the air conditioner or heater was on, or if there was a draft in the room. Nothing again. It was as if some strange force had shaken the door, almost right off of its hinges. As you can imagine, we freaked. We didn't go back into the room until my parents got home, and they couldn't figure out what it was either. Since then, nothing like that has happened.

Perhaps there still IS some random scientific explanation for it, but I don't know. I think it was some spirit's way of saying "I'm here even if you can't see me" or maybe it was even saying "silly girls, go check on your brother." Either way, it was freaky.

Until next time...