[PINeely]

Let me preface these stories by saying that I still do not believe in ghosts. As far as I'm concerned these are events for which I have no explanation.

I live close to one of the most allegedly haunted places in America (Chapel of the Cross in Madison, MS). It's an old church with Gothic architecture and a nearby cemetery. We used to take girls there in high school to try to scare them, drink some beer, get some action, whatever. One night we were running our racket on this couple of girls and sitting on the steps of the church telling stories to get them worked up. We started hearing strange noises from inside the doors, and then the creepiest feeling came over my entire body. It felt like someone freezing cold was hugging me from behind. Nobody else described feeling this sensation. After about 10 seconds it went away and we got the hell out of there.

Fast-forward to my first job out of college. I was working as a community outreach organizer in Mississippi State Hospital, a severely underfunded and understaffed psychiatric facility. The creep factor was immense. I'm talking withering red-brick buildings with rusty bars on the windows and shit. It's basically straight out of the 40's because the funding is so poor.

Anywho, all kinds of creepy goings-on all the time in that place. People complaining constantly about sheets being ripped off them in the middle of the night, lightbulbs blowing out (we chalked it up to old buildings with shoddy wiring), glass panes breaking inexplicably and of course all manner of noises which shouldn't have been. The strangest thing was that multiple orderlies said that their vision had gone to black and white for a few seconds in one particular hall in one of the buildings. I always felt uneasy going into that building.

And now today. I have a china cabinet with glass display doors and one of those lighting systems where you knock on a part of the door and the light gets brighter as you knock. I always knock to turn off the light before bed, and probably 1/10 mornings I will go down there and the light will be back on. It was my grandfather's cabinet and it only started happening after he passed away. Again, could be something completely explainable but the timing of it all is just odd.