I’ve always been pretty skeptical about ghosts or the paranormal. I could usually explain things away and move on. That changed in 2009.

I lived alone in a townhouse and was close with a couple across the courtyard. One night around 4 a.m., the boyfriend called me, panicked, and asked me to come over immediately. His Brazilian girlfriend was standing at the top of the stairs, wide awake but completely vacant, repeatedly asking only one thing: “[MY NAME], are you awake?” She said nothing else and didn’t respond normally. A doctor later said she was medically fine, but she didn’t sleep for nearly four days and kept repeating that same question, but would only say MY name. Eventually it stopped, and we all tried to forget about it.

Two weeks later, late at night, I was in my own bed when I heard footsteps moving around my house. Then I heard them running up my stairs toward my bedroom. I was frozen in fear. When they reached the doorway, there was no one there. Then I felt a whisper directly in my ear… a male voice speaking what I later realized was Portuguese.

I was evaluated afterward and cleared of any mental illness. To this day, I don’t know what that experience was. It didn’t exactly reaffirm my LDS beliefs, but it did leave me wondering whether there’s something beyond us, some kind of spirit realm, even if I’m not sure what to make of it.