Do you believe in ghosts?

[Carol]

John Gray, For The Saratogian

BOO!


Do you believe in ghosts? I do.

Not the Charles Dickens kind of ghosts who rattle chains and screech in the night. Not the 'Amityville Horror' kind who make the house drip blood and fill with flies. I believe in kinder, friendlier ghosts. And I may have seen one once but I'll get to that in a moment.

I love Halloween. Most people eventually outgrow jack-o-lanterns, witches and any movie made by John Carpenter -- but not me. I love clicking around cable and seeing a guy with a bad overbite chowing down on some woman's neckline. 'Salem's Lot,' 'The Lost Boys,' 'Fright Night'; if I happen upon these movies it doesn't matter that I've seen them 50 times the remote goes down and the popcorn comes out.

Being a TV reporter I made it a point to work every Halloween just so I could go out and do a story on some local ghostly legend. One year I found myself walking around the graves of Graceland Cemetery looking for the mystery hitchhiker.

You've heard this one, haven't you? A man is driving home in the rain and sees a beautiful girl hitchhiking outside the cemetery. Being a gentleman, he drives her home. The next day he returns to that same address to look for the beauty and an older woman answers the door and informs our gentleman that the woman he's describing is her daughter. A daughter who is dead and buried in Graceland Cemetery. The kind woman explains that sometimes she gets lonely and wants to go home so she hitches a ride. Cue scary music.

My favorite is one few people have heard; it's about a ghost who haunts a Catholic Church in Glens Falls. One night a homeless man seeks shelter by sleeping in the back of the church. At the stroke of midnight (why do scary things always happen at midnight?) a man dressed as a priest appears on the altar. He shouts out, 'Is anyone here?' The man is frozen with fear and keeps quiet. The priest disappears.

The next night the same homeless man is in the same church and the priest appears again shouting, 'Is anyone here?' Again he vanishes into thin air. The homeless man decides to go to the priest of the parish and tell him what's been happening. That night they both sit in the back of the church waiting for midnight.

When it arrives so to does our ghostly priest shouting, 'Is anyone here?'

The parish priest yells back, 'Yes, we are here.' The ghost proceeds to say the whole Mass. When he is finished, he is gone.

On more than one occasion, I took a psychic out with me on Halloween night to a supposedly haunted place to see if we could scare up the dead. On cue, she would tell me she felt spirits from another world swirling around us. One time I thought I could hear them. It was my just stomach (dinner at Hot Dog Charlie's).

I promised you at the beginning I'd tell you about my one real experience with a ghost.

My father died unexpectedly more than 10 years ago. We were very close. A few days after the funeral, I was sound asleep when I felt a hand on my shoulder. A person told me to come with them and brought me to a room where my father was sitting quietly. A voice said, 'You have been wishing you could see him one more time. This is your chance.' I reached out and touched his head and my heart ached with joy and sadness.' A moment later I was sitting up in bed, completely awake and aware.

Anyone with half a brain would tell me it was just a dream but I've been dreaming my whole life and this was very different, like nothing I've experienced before or since.

A ghost? A visit from his spirit? Or just a man, grieving so deeply, his mind found a way to give him peace? Think what you wish. But I do believe in the afterlife, and when Dad and I are together again, that ghostly visit will be the second thing I ask him about -- right after he tells me who shot Kennedy.

Happy Halloween.

John Gray is an anchor on WXAA-Fox 23. His column is published on Wednesdays in The Saratogian. E-mail JohnGray@fox23news.com.

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