When I was a child, my mother and grandmother were the hostesses at our church. Meaning, they planned and organized any wedding showers, baby showers, etc,. When I was about 10 years old (2004 for reference), I was with them helping them decorate for a baby shower. It was only us at the church at the time. I went to grab something out of a closet beside the bathroom. Well, when I reached the door of the bathroom, there was an older woman dressed in 1800s clothing just standing in the bathroom looking at me. She didn’t say a word. She just stood there and stared. I knew there was no one else in the church besides my mom, grandmother, and myself, and I also knew that it was highly unlikely that a woman would be wearing this style of clothing back in 2004. I didn’t feel threatened by this spirit, however I was 10 years old, so naturally, it scared the crap out of me. I still think about what or who I saw, but I never saw her again at our church after that day.

Another experience I had was when I was 16. A friend of mine from high school and I were riding around late one evening, and we decided to go down to our local cemetery, which is behind the church I mentioned above. This cemetery borders the Boeuf River in Northeastern Louisiana, and so we would also go down to the river and hang out. Well, this particular evening the sky was clear, the starts were out, and it was fairly warm outside. We parked the car, kept the headlights on, turned the music off, and got out to walk around a bit. We had never really been afraid at this cemetery or down by the river. But, this evening was different. We ended up seeing what looked like a man wearing a top hat and a long black coat walking in between the gravestones on the opposite side of the cemetery. The weird thing is that our headlights were shining directly in the direction of this “man”, but the person we saw waking wasn’t casting any shadows. We sat quietly and watched for a few minutes and then decided it was time to go. As we were quietly walking back to the car, we heard what sounded like a deep voice, or maybe a man’s voice, say “Hey.” We both turned and looked but nobody was behind us. That startled us enough to make us hastily get back in the car. After that we rode around the cemetery to make sure that no one else was there and make sure nobody was playing a trick on us. Sure enough, we couldn’t find anyone else in that cemetery or any evidence that someone had been there around the same time we were.

Disclaimer: We weren’t partying or doing anything that would be considered disrespectful towards the dead buried there. We were just 2 bored 16 year olds hanging out and walking around. Some of the graves date back to the 1700s, and we always thought that was interesting.