Do you believe in ghosts? I do.
CSU Monterey Bay is probably one of the scariest places I've ever been in my entire life. It's on the old Fort Ord, a military base in the middle of Seaside, California. Military bases are kind of creepy enough as it is, seeing as how they're basically abandoned and only God knows how much death occurred while it was an active base.
My Freshman year, my dorm room was haunted. Tell me you don't believe in ghosts, I don't care. Tell me I was only imagining things and psyching myself, that's fine. Tell me everything was a trick of the light, right on. I won't believe you. You weren't there experiencing anything, so you can't tell me what I saw was only in my head.
It started out as nothing really all that intense. My friend Heather crashed in my room once, and I had left to go to class the next day. When I got back she was kind of freaked out a bit and I asked her what was up, and she said something was calling her name and she heard music playing from my bathroom. I thought that was a bit weird, but figured the music could have been from a nearby dorm or something. She said it was static kind of music, and old, 40s type of stuff. I thought she was just crazy and didn't think much of it.
Not long after that, my bathroom door started to open and shut by itself. A few times my roommate would be out hanging out with his friends, and it would just be me in my room. The door would either slam shut or it would just kind of creek its way shut. I tried to think nothing of it, but it was still really freaky.
I rearranged my room later on in the semester because I didn't like sleeping next to the door. One day I awoke to music playing -- music that was static and sounded like old, 40s type of stuff. That caught my attention, and I swear to this day it was coming from the foot of my bed. As if that wasn't weird enough, later on in the night, there was something in my room.
Once again, my roommate was out hanging out with his friends. I was trying to go to sleep, but I was woken up by a tapping sound coming from my desk (which sat at the foot of my bed.) I opened my eyes and there was a shadowed figure sitting there, in my chair at my desk, tapping its fingers and staring at me.
If you've never had a supernatural experience, consider yourself lucky. I've had a few in my day, and sometimes you really do go towards the noise like the stupid people in the movies, but sometimes you don't. In this particular instance, I didn't. I was scared out of my mind and didn't even want to move to put the covers over my head. All I could do was lay in bed and stare at this thing looking back at me. He eventually got up and disappeared, and somehow I managed to fall asleep (and obviously woke up safely.)
By this point, I was just creeped out. I had talked to my friend Alaina and she had said she could do things like seances and stuff. I had never messed with things like Ouija boards and things like that, so I didn't exactly know what to say. Another friend, Rachel, had said she always wanted to participate in a seance just to see what they were like. Now, I'm a good Christian guy and I felt like that was pushing my limits a little bit. So I originally just said I would think about it and continued on with my life.
Not long after the desk incident, I was woken up by a voice at about 4 in the morning that said "There's someone at the door." My roommate, Michael, had gone home for the weekend, so I still have no idea who could have said anything. After that woke me up, I just laid in bed for a minute, and not long after someone knocked on my door. This is one of those horror movie moments when the audience would have been yelling at me, because my dumb ass decided to get up and go see what it was knocking at 4 in the morning. It ended up just being drunk people who knew me, but it was still weird that I was woken up by a random voice.
A few weeks later, Alaina and I went ghost hunting just for the hell of it. When we found nothing, she asked if I wanted to do the seance. Everyone who we were with said yes, even though I kind of didn't want to. I was sort of outnumbered, and I wasn't about to leave my room unattended for some people to be doing some seance. So, (sorry Mom and Dad) I took part in it.
It was one of the scariest things I've ever done in my entire life.
At first, the room just got really cold. We were all holding hands and they kind of froze together a bit. Alaina, the host or whatever you call it, basically just told the spirit to make itself known or whatever. It made itself known by standing right behind me and pushing me over. That was weird. It was an ice cold hand that just grabbed me by the back of the neck and shoved me down. Weird.
That was the scariest part of the beginning of the seance, and Alaina asked if I had wanted to use her to speak to the ghost. Why the hell not? We'd already come this far. She did some weird stuff, closed her eyes, all that kind of movie stuff.
When she opened her eyes, she wasn't Alaina anymore.
Alaina had become Leo, a veteran who was stationed at Fort Ord in building 201. He had died in his late 30s, and all he said was it was from natural causes. He was from the Bronx ("I'm from the Bronx, what do you think?" were the exact words, in a perfect New York accent.) Now, I hadn't known Alaina that well, but I did know she didn't have a Bronx accent.
Maybe she was making it up, you may be saying to yourself. Well. Here's how I know she wasn't. Alaina/Leo looked me dead in the eye and said, "You pray at night, don't you?"
That kind of caught me off guard. Since I didn't really know Alaina that well, she didn't know I was a Christian. I never gave her my reason for not wanting to do the seance, so I don't know how she could have possibly known. Not knowing what else to do, I said, "Yeah."
"I can hear you when you pray. Your thoughts. I can't hear exactly what you're saying, but it's kind of -- kind of -- oh, fuck, I don't know how to explain it because you're not dead, but it's kind of like a fuzzy noise coming out of your head."
Ok, what the hell? That scared the hell out of me. Again, pardon the French, but it was a direct quote. He ended by saying, "Your prayers are heard. Don't be afraid."
I cried. Seriously. Because the thing I was praying for most was for my dad and his leukemia. For having this weird, supernatural experience, it really re-affirmed my faith. He told me heaven and hell were both very real, and there was a God and there was Satan. We asked him why he didn't go to heaven, and he said he had done some things he was ashamed of and he couldn't face his father (not his Father God, his father from earth).
He asked me if he was freaking me out. Well, no shit. Yeah, he was freaking me out. He apologized, saying the only reason he was in my room was because I was a spiritual person, so I would actually acknowledge his presence and I was good company. He said he had fun sticking around and scaring the delinquents, saying when people went Ording (which is when they go ghost hunting in the abandoned barricks) he liked to give them a run for their money.
Leo kind of disappeared after a while, and I never heard from him since.
At the end of the day, don't go ghost hunting in Fort Ord. And if you do, say hi to Leo for me.