A few years ago, when I still had my office in our walk-up attic, I had a very interesting experience that led me to learn something new about ghosts. I often wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and go to my office and write. (The advantage of having your office at home.) This was one of those nights. I got up at about 1 a.m. and had continued writing for several hours. Riley, my extra-large Bernese Mountain dog, was my companion, sprawled out on the couch in front of my desk, snoozing. It was about 4:30 in the morning when I noticed Riley lift his head and look over to the attic staircase, which was to the right of me, and then wag his tail in greeting.
I was completing a paragraph, so I didn’t look over. I thought it was my husband checking on me. I finished the final taps on my keyboard when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a large man standing halfway up the staircase. He was over six feet tall and more than 250 pounds, wearing a buffalo-plaid flannel shirt and worn denim overalls. I gasped and turned in my chair, and he was gone. Taking a deep breath, I reminded myself that I was writing a ghost story and perhaps my imagination had conjured him up. Then I remembered that Riley had seen him before I had. Hmmmm.
As luck would have it, several weeks later I found myself speaking at the Love Is Murder Conference in Chicago and I sat in on a lecture by Dale Kaczmarek, the president of the Ghost Research Society. He has more than two decades of experience in paranormal research. After his lecture, I got to speak with him and told him about my experience. He explained the scientific research has shown that the corners of our eyes consist of rods that are more sensitive to seeing in the “paranormal” spectrum of our visual ability. So, when we turn to view something with our full eyesight, we often lose it because our front vision isn’t as sensitive.
It slightly worried me that the ghost I saw could have still been on the stairs, looking at me but, because I turned toward him I blinded myself. Hmmmm, again.
I still see things out of the corner of my eye and I haven’t trained myself to keep looking at them that way, instead of turning to get “a better look.” As a matter of fact, yesterday, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man waving at me on the highway near my home. Of course, when I turned, he was no longer there.
Do you have any “corner of your eye” experiences? Feel free to share!
For more information about Dale, you can go to http://www.ghostresearch.org
Wonderful experience. My dogs have always greeted spirits and I do see them “corner of the eye”. Never seen full face but that doesn’t matter. Always makes me feel loved except for on time about 20 years ago when my dog growled and his hair stood up. Then I ordered the thing away…..and surprise…..it left. Amazing. Love your stories, Terri.
I once woke up and thought I saw a blurry “entity” of some sort hovering over my husband. It exuded hostility and malice. I immediately prayed for it to go away. When I turned and looked there was nothing there, so I thought I’d dreamed it. But my husband then woke up and told me he’d had horrible dreams which had abruptly ended – and he woke up.
All the time. I remember doing laundry, one day, and going to the back of the house to put clothes away. When I came back out to the living room, I heard my Maine Coon cat purring (she was loud), as if someone were petting her. My Siamese mix was at the other end of the couch talking to me. I could sense someone was there, so I turned just slightly to see a man sitting on the couch petting my Maine Coon. Both of them were at ease, so I just said hello as I walked past on my way to the laundry room. I heard a “hello” as I rounded the corner into the dining room. When I came back through a few minutes later, Muffin was snuggled up with the other cat, so I knew he was gone. He’s been back a few times, but less now that the cats are gone.
We had only been in our house for a few weeks and had no furniture in our front room. So we would sit on our fireplace. I was alone one night and was going over to sit down when I saw out of the corner of my eye and older man. He had green bibs and a plaid shirt with a painters hat on. When I turned to look he was gone. I could tell he was from a different time period. I didn’t feel frightened, but more like protected.
One day as I walked into my bedroom/office, I caught a flash out of the corner of my eye, og my cat, Gunny, dash across my desk, the top of the bed and straight to his food dish on the nightstand. My dog, Buster, spotted him, too, and ran around the bed to catch Gunny at the food dish. But Gunny had died about 9 months earlier. When I had turned to look straight at Gunny, I didn’t see anything. Just Buster running around the bed straight to where the food bowl had been kept.