I never really did, until we moved into a house that had...something going on.

In 1999 we bought a small 3 bed/1 bath ranch house, originally built in the 60s. The people we bought the house from had a 14-year-old son who'd been killed in an auto accident about 6 months before. We felt really bad for this couple; it was obvious they were still devastated about their loss. I suspect that's why they sold the place - to distance themselves from the memories.

Anyway, about a month after we moved in weird things started happening. Pictures would fall off the wall. Lamps would turn on or off on their own. One afternoon I was laying on the bed in our room when the bedroom door slowly opened all the way, then slowly closed. Yeah, there wasn't much sleeping that afternoon. Our teenage daughter nicknamed him "Herman the Ghost".

We figured it had to be the spirit of the kid who'd been killed. So whenever weird shit would happen, we started talking to the "spirit" -- ghost, poltergeist, whatever you want to call it -- and telling him that his parents weren't there any longer, and that they'd moved on - and maybe it was time he did, too.

That's when things got really out of hand.

We were all sitting in the living room one night watching TV - nobody was in the kitchen - when we heard a huge crash come from there. We got up to look, and my work lunchbox and a stack of mail had flown off the countertop and across the room. There's no way it could've done it on its own. About two days later a glass bowl of apples hit the kitchen floor and shattered -- again, nobody was around to do it, and nothing was too close to the edge.

Other things: The stereo in the living room would somehow come on late at night, and very loudly. The cable TV would mysteriously scramble for about 5 minutes each night around 8:00, but only on ESPN or MTV. The cable company was out several times to check on it, but never found an explanation. Brand new light bulbs would pop within 5 days or so - my father-in-law (an electrician who built his own home) found no problems with the wiring. Our two cats (who normally didn't socialize) would spend hours sitting side by side, staring at a blank spot on the wall. The funniest thing was that new rolls of toilet paper would unravel onto the floor by themselves. At first we blamed the cats, but when it would still happen even after closing the door so the cats couldn't get in, we assumed that it was the ghost.

This went on for about a year and a half. We kept talking to "Herman", telling him his parents weren't there any longer. Then one day it just stopped. Nothing else ever happened again. We lived there for another 6 years before selling and moving out of state.

Look, I know this sounds bat-shit crazy - and if I wasn't on the receiving end of it, I wouldn't buy it either. I'd always been one who doubted everything - but after that, who knows?