The other day in the ShoutBox, Punkinhead was telling about going to the cemetery at night to rescue a young lady who had gone into the cemetery and had gotten lost.
The chat turned to ghosts, and she asked me if I believed in ghosts.
I told her I believed in "something', from previous experiences, but didn't really know.

Here's my story.

We lived in a church parsonage in the early 90's for about 5 years. The driveway came in from a side street (on a corner lot) so we always came in and out the back door.

When you come in the back door, the "open" kitchen is on your right, the large living room on the left, the front door entry area directly across the room, and off to the left of the living room was a hallway that went to the master bedroom and guest room. If you went through the kitchen to the right, you'd be in the dining room, and a hallway that led to my youngest daughter's room. Jay (her nickname) was finishing high school back then, getting ready for college)

On more than a few occasions, as I came in the back door, I would THINK I saw a man standing at the entrance to the hallway at the far end of the living room - a tall thin man, kinda bent over slightly, and as soon as I saw him, he would turn and disappear down the hallway. It would be one of those things where I THOUGHT I saw him, but couldn't say for sure. It was "out of the corner of my eye", and when I looked to actually SEE him, he'd be gone. I never mentioned it to my wife or youngest daughter.

One day I got home, my daughter had been in her room, and was coming to the kitchen to greet me. I saw the man at the entrance to the hallway, but he disappeared as usual. My daughter obviously saw my reaction, subtle though I thought it was, and when I turned to hug her, she stepped back and said, quite calmly, "you saw him too". She caught me off guard, and I didn't immediately respond, but she said, "I've seen him probably a dozen times, and he always just disappears down the hallway, but he never makes you feel afraid".

Yeah, that! I never had a sense that he was "trouble", and he always seemed "shy", never any sound, never anything more than a "glimpse", and never enough "visual" to be able to say exactly what I saw. Jay (my daughter) and I compared notes, and we pretty much agreed we had been seeing the very same thing.

After we'd lived there for about three years, I met the older woman who had sold the house to the Church. She sold the house because it was a fairly large 3 bedroom home, and her husband had passed away and she was all alone. She didn't need that much house, so she moved to efficiency apartment. And, yeah, her husband had been a tall thin man, and had apparently died in the house.

That's my first ghost story. I have another.