Many who know me professionally are surprised to learn I’m a paranormal investigator. Those who have known me my whole life aren’t shocked at all. You see, I’ve always been curious about how the world works and what makes people think and behave the way they do. I’ve also had paranormal experiences since I can remember including dreams coming true, precognition, sensing the presence of spirits, and seeing things that I was told couldn’t be real such as a large black cat the size of a panther prowling my childhood neighborhood just outside of Jackson, Mississippi. (I wasn’t the only witness to that one, by the way.)
My interest in the unexplained sprouted from those experiences and led me into the world of literature on the subject. My first favorite book on the unexplained had a yellow cover with a drawing of a man encountering a UFO. I wish I still had that book! I think I was in the third or fourth grade the first time I read it, and I read it over and over. I remember one of its stories was about a man who owned a farm. He was standing in a field in front of his house one afternoon and turned around and waved at his family on the porch. Then he started walking farther into the field. After a few steps, he simply vanished right before their eyes. He was never seen again. How can you not
be curious about that?
I wanted answers, and the more I read about unexplained phenomena, ancient mysteries, ghosts, and UFOs, the more I realized there may not be any answers that we could fully comprehend. Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t ask the questions. We have to keep searching for that little clue, that small piece of evidence, or even that big smoking gun. For people like me, it’s a compulsion – not to be confused with an obsession, though. I can stop any time, and I have at times. Really.
I put the paranormal aside when my focus should be elsewhere. For example, I walled off my sixth sense while I earned my atmospheric science degree at North Carolina State University. Achieving that in three years took all the focus I could muster. It wasn’t until I had moved to Minnesota, started my job as a broadcast meteorologist and began exploring the new geographical area I found myself in that I let those walls back down. I’ll never forget the day I realized I had relaxed into my whole self again…
I was exploring the town of Stillwater on the St Croix River. It’s a cute town with plenty of antique shops, one of which is a converted two-story sawmill. I was there in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week. There was one other lady wandering through the store and one employee who was staying near the cash register by the front door. As I walked through the shop, I kept getting the feeling that someone was following close behind me. At first, I blew it off as being the other customer, but every time I looked up, she was on the other side of the store, or on the other floor. Then, I tried to convince myself that it was just the energy of all the old things surrounding me that I was feeling. Yet, the sensation persisted and I really felt like I was being followed closely by a tall man.
When I had seen enough old oddities to last me a while, I headed back down toward the exit. I paused to look at some old broaches that I hadn’t noticed on my way in, and the employee struck up a conversation with me in an odd way. She started with, “Do you know this place is haunted?”
I paused and took a deep breath, trying to decide how to answer and quickly chose a non-committal, “Really?”
She replied, “Yes, but he’s only around after we close.” I kept my disagreement to myself and asked her to tell me more. She explained that he
liked to play jokes. One night after closing, she couldn’t find the key to the cash register. She tore up the area around the counter looking for it. After about an hour, she was ready to give up and leaned on the counter, letting out a sigh of frustration. Then, right in front of her, the key materialized and dropped onto the counter between her hands.
She never stayed late after that moment.
I thanked her for sharing her story and left. In my mind, all I could think was, “I’ve still got it!” I still had that sixth sense, and I still had “volunteer your strange stories without being prompted” virtually stamped on my forehead.
A couple years later, I had moved back home to North Carolina and found myself in the audience of a presentation by a paranormal investigation group at Haunted Mordecai, an annual event at Mordecai Historic Park in Raleigh. That group was made up of a scientist, a teacher, an IT professional and artists, among others. It was a good mix of interesting, curious, and somewhat skeptical people. The group’s name was the National Society of Paranormal Investigation and Research, Inc. (NSPIR).
I was so impressed by their methodology and sincerity that the minute the presentation was over, I asked how I could join. That was in October of 2009, and the rest is history – much of which will be in the book I’m currently writing about my experiences as a member of NSPIR. My short-term goal is to have the book published before George, NSPIR’s founder, and I give our annual Haunted North Carolina talks at some of the Wake County Public Libraries in October of this year.
My long-term goal is to continue to pursue knowledge in the hope of understanding all things paranormal.