The Lessons Life Teaches, A Collection of Short Stories.

The Apparitions

It seems odd to have a word for something that does not exist. Unless, of course, it does.

First let me say this is a true story. Three times in my life, now 68 years, I have witnessed an apparition - a ghost or ghostlike image of a person. The first two times I was with other people, who also saw it. The third, and last time, I was alone.

The first time I was young boy in the home I grew up in. I suppose I was 8-ish years old. Maybe 10. It was at dinner time, and everyone was at the dining room table eating and visiting. Then through the kitchen and in the back room (den) most all of us, including me, saw a middle-aged man down the hall in the den. My brother and father jumped up and ran toward him thinking he was an intruder. But when they got there, he disappeared – vanished nowhere to be found. It was eerie. Memorable enough that 50-plus years later I still recall the vivid memory and emotions.

Then much later in life, in my 30's, in a company house in the tiny company town of Dunphy, Nevada the second occurrence happened. My wife, daughter and I were sitting at the dinner table when both my wife and I saw a man down the hallway toward the bedrooms. I quickly got up from the table and ran toward the man. As I got closer, he just disappeared. We both commented that it looked like an old friend named Jim whose family had lived in the house before us. Jim and his family had moved from the house a year or so earlier to another operation in Texas or Louisiana. Several days later we found out that Jim had passed about the same time we saw the man in the hallway. This second apparition occurred in the 80's. Now some 30-40 years later it still sends chills down my back and arms.

The third time was several years ago. I was at work about 1 o'clock in the morning. I was checking the doors inside the high school at the training center where I work. Walking down the hallway I would look in each of the windows of the classroom doors to make sure everything was ok. I did this every shift I worked as the shift supervisor, and it was always uneventful. Then on this night, as I walked down the hallway, I looked in classroom 4 there was a young teenager sitting at one of the desks hunched over reading a book. I instantly stopped as there should be no one in the school at that time. I opened the door and looked in and nobody was there. Not even the book. I then closed the door and looked through the window again and did not see the boy. To be honest it is still difficult to look in that window at night.

All the apparitions were full body. The first two were seen by multiple people. Both while eating dinner. The third time was when I was at work on night shift. Could these have been reflections? No. The first two times they seemed to be watching us. The third one, at school, did not seem to know I was there.

I question what would have happened if we had not rushed toward them. Would they have continued to watch us or continued to read? What were these – manifestations or apparitions? Were they just a too vivid imagination, ghosts, spirits, or something else? If they were spirits, what was the purpose of their visits? These are questions for which I have no answer. Did their appearances have something to do with us or were we just witnesses? Have other people had similar experiences? If so, do they care to share their thoughts and memories?