Halloween or not, ain’t afraid of no ghost

A new online survey I ran across recently indicates one person in six thinks his or her home is haunted and more than two in five have experienced unexplained occurrences inside their house. And as we arrive at Halloween, this has given me pause.

I’ve always been willing to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to unsolved mysteries (cue that eerie TV theme music) such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs and even the second gunman on the Grassy Knoll. I’ve always felt it would be a great story if any of them were ever proven to be real, but until first-hand experience changes my mind, consider me a doubter.

Not unlike the Lagina brothers of “The Curse of Oak Island” fame and their Readers’ Digest story experience, I remember getting interested in such things after reading about the Abominable Snowman, or Yeti, in my dad’s True magazine back when I was about 10.

Now you’ll notice my list omits the Goat Man for the obvious reason of a former Madison Township neighbor claiming responsibility for the late 1980s local phenomenon. Meanwhile, ET’s have been off my radar since a Crawfordsville woman confided to me during a MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) program at our library that she’s been visited by eight-foot-tall cockroach creatures in her bedroom at night.

But then there’s ghosts. Admittedly, I don’t know boo about ghosts. But also -- as “The Ghostbusters” musical theme notes -- “I ain’t afraid of no ghost.”

Twice in the last few years, I have had an unusual ghostly experience for which I have no other reasonable explanation.

And while the same online survey about haunted houses notes that 42 percent of homeowners have felt the presence of something or someone they couldn’t see, 37 percent have heard unexplained sounds such as footsteps or voices and 19 percent have seen apparitions of ghostly figures, count me among that first 42 percent.

Bedrooms (49 percent) and living rooms (26 percent) account for the two most common locations for strange occurrences. The average age of the homes in which such occurrences have been reported is 88 years, which coincides with my experiences since my little house on Highwood Avenue was built in 1930 and the house on Seminary Street was constructed in 1908.

The first encounter occurred while lying in bed in an upstairs bedroom, the most beautiful woman in the world sleeping on my arm, when something suddenly startled me. Now awake, I remember asking, “Did you feel that?” I described it as a wave of contentment -- the only way I could possibly explain it later -- that wafted over me, creating a ghostly presence and something I had never experienced to that point in my life.

Now previously I had stayed at a supposedly haunted bed and breakfast at Corydon on a state-sponsored tourism trip across southern Indiana that the journalists involved labeled “Eating Our Way Across Southern Indiana” instead of the “Ghosts, Goblins and Good Grub” idea the state had fostered. During that visit, I intentionally asked for one of the haunted rooms but spent the night there without incident except for sharing the hot tub on the balcony with a scary would-be witch from New York.

Meanwhile, back in Greencastle, turns out the Seminary Street haunting has been attributed to a local businessman who took his own life there in the early 2000s after his company and marriage unraveled. That didn’t seem to fit with my experience but not every ghost is Casper or that slimy green guy from “Ghostbusters.”

That brings us to my house, where late one night I was comfortably content in my Lay-Z-Boy in front of the TV in the living room of my humble little abode on Highwood. But that night, a hint of movement in the mirror above the fireplace on the north wall caught my eye. There was an obvious glint of light, which I first attributed to midnight traffic along the street in front of my house. But from the way my home sits on the terraced lawn, there is no way light can shine onto the mirror. Yet an image seemed to snake its way across the mirror from left to right, although no one and no other living, breathing entity was in the place at the time.

And as I pondered the impossible science of all that like some half-crazed Mr. Wizard, I sensed the unmistakable smell of oranges -- a fruit that to that point I’d had never yet welcomed into my home.

Can’t explain it. I know I’m not crazy. And it’s never occurred again over the past five or six years.

So what does it all mean?

I’m not sure but it seemed like something fun to share for Halloween.

Cuz we know in Indiana, the goblins’ll get you if you don’t watch out.

Happy Halloween!