A Couple of Strange Experiences
Chad Peters, Georgia, USA
September 2003
I don't really know how to begin this. Perhaps I should start with the oldest of the experiences I had over the past few years. Hopefully someone can explain these to me.
The first experience took place in Toccoa Georgia, in a park known as Henderson Falls Park. I say this so others may visit the area and perhaps investigate further.
In this park, there is a long hiking trail that heads into the woods and then doubles back on itself before terminating about 20 ft from where it starts. Total distance it covers is around 1 mile, give or take. At the highest point in the trail, there is a Y that leads off down the hill and to what looks to have been a sand pit. It's this pit where I first noticed something wrong. Walking through the stunted pine trees, I would often feel like I was being watched. The hairs on the back of my neck standing on end and sometimes I'd even see something ghost (pardon the pun) past me just out of the corner of my eye. In that old sand pit, it wasn't hard to feel claustrophobic in the area, and the walls often returned y our voice in a strange echo. At times though, I (and later other friends) would hear talking. Not anything you could make out though, just mumbling like someone behind you was talking softly. All the time though, it felt as though someone was there, watching and angry at you. Needless to say, I didn't ever go there alone again.
I didn't have any real experiences for a couple years after that. Though, there was once incident of someone banging on my basement door from the outside. The problem is, looking through the glass as this went on, I couldn't see anyone and was terribly afraid. In fact, that whole basement gave me the willies, even though I lived in it. I get cold chills thinking about it.
After we moved to south Georgia, I didn't have any experiences for a long time. Then, strange things began to occur at my workplace.
It all started innocently enough, with me working late at the store I was Jr. Assistant Manager for. Late one night, as I went about my rounds of picking up tills and closing registers, I noticed that one of our dressing room doors was closed.
I need to pause here to give a visual description of the store. basically if a person was standing in the exact center of the store, you could see every single dressing room door by just looking left and right.
Well, I went to the offending door and proceeded to unlock it and push it open. At first it didn't unlock and I instantly thought a customer was still in the store...or worse, a robber. Thinking quick I said. "Listen, if you're here to rob me, I'll give you all the cash in the safe and not call the cops for ten minutes. Just don't hurt me." Turning the key again, the door swung open to reveal no one inside. Relieved I turned and started to walk off only to have the door swing slowly shut again. Thinking this was the natural action of the door, I propped it open with a chair and left to finish my work.
About thirty minutes later, with all the lights off, the deposit locked in the safe and my keys in hand, I started to walk out of the store. I made it about halfway, when I noticed that not only was the door I had propped open closed, every single door in the store was shut, Including the office door I had just exited. I left post haste and never turned the lights off again until I was ready to leave for the night.
The problems didn't stop there though. In fact, they got stranger.
Sometimes, when we (myself or the other assistant) were sitting in the office at night doing paperwork; we'd see a young child shape (I think a girl, he said his was a boy) run past the office door like they were hiding from someone. Upon inspection, you'd not find anyone. Other times I had incidents where I'd hear a little girl laughing in the children's section, but no one there as I looked that way.
The last incident I had there occured one night as I closed. I can't explain it but the sound in the store was like someone throwing dozens of shoe boxes around the store. The problem is, there was no damage done so we never figured that one out. My father heard what was going on over the phone though, since I called him as soon as it started. The sounds lasted for about 15 to 20 min.
The last story I have isn't exactly credible, because of the place it occured in. I worked in a correctional institution for young boys. A couple times, the boys would report seeing a person in a white shirt walk down the hall. Sometimes, this person was witnessed (always a white shirt but no other details) walking outside the building or standing in the door way watching the boys. Now, we don't know where the spirit came from, but it always seemed benevolent to the boys. The staff however, it tended to do strange things to. Like one man saw an orb head out of a door and float down and out the back door a couple times. Other staff had stuff moved, and one got attacked. Myself, I kept seeing the guy in white walking down the hall and through the closed door.