The Story of My Life :P

George

Hmmm....what should my next event be? Oh! I know. I saw a ghost, once. Actually, I've seen a lot, but one time stands above the rest because I had another witness.

It was at a dress rehearsal for A Midsummer Night's Dream (woot Shakespeare!). I played one of the minor fairies with no name and no lines. That was fine by me, since I was one of two freshmen in the entire show. It was my first high school play, and the first play of the year, I was well pleased with the part I got, even though it was the smallest part there was.

My fairy counterpart was a junior named Nora. She could be a bit controlling at times, but she was usually nice and lots of fun to hang around with. We had to be on the far side of the stage for a scene, and the only way to get there was behind a curtain at the back of the stage. There was a door at the far end of the curtain, lighting up the path just barely enough for us to get by without tripping over anything. I was about thirty seconds ahead of Nora, and I walked behind the curtain alone.

Not alone, exactly, because there was someone blocking the light near the end of the path. The person was crouching against the wall, half in shadow with his hands covering his head. He looked upset or depressed, so when I walked toward the end, I reached out to put my hand on them and console them. As I did that, I realized that the person was no longer visible. All my hand felt was a cold spot.

I immediately recognized this as a paranormal encounter. The blackbox theatre we were performing in was said to have its own ghost named George. Apparently someone named George had died there of electricution a while back and his spirit still haunted the building. My drama teacher (the director of the show) had told us about this ghost only a few weeks beforehand, so the story was still fresh in my memory.

I bolted past the ghost and to the wings, eyes nearly popping out of my head and my heart racing so fast I worried that it might break out of my chest. About forty-five seconds later, Nora came through the same way, practically sprinting, her face reading of fear.

"Natalie, I think I just saw George!" She cried out in a whisper.

I quickly told her of my recent experience. She and I were both afraid and excited. We decided to go back and see if George was still there. Unfortunately, he was. We could both see him in the same place he had been last time. I knew it was a very bad idea to be near a ghost (it's true. Stay away from them), but both of us decided to put our hands where George was to see if we could feel a cold spot.

I stuck my hand there, and sure enough, the area was a good deal colder than the rest of the room. My hand started to feel prickly before it went completely dead. Nora and I retracted our hands and shared our findings. They were exactly the same. Our hands went prickly again and regained feeling. We walked away, and then realized that they had been near the door. That might have accounted for the cold, but we went back to the door and put our hands there to see if we could debunk the experience. The cold spot had gone, and the area around the door was no different than the rest of the room. We went back to the other wing to look again, but George wasn't there. Then we each took turns in the same place and position that he had been in. We both agreed that it was exactly the same thing we had seen before when George was there.

Since we had no luck debunking, we decided that the experience had been completely genuine. We told a few other members of the cast, but they proved to be very skeptical.

Nora and I were in no mood to continue with rehearsal that day. That didn't matter, though, because we had made a promise to be there. Theatre is theatre, after all, and show business is not for the faint of heart, so we had to continue. We still had the scene to do on the other side of the stage.

When we got halfway through the walkway, Nora and I froze.

George had materialized directly in front of us, blocking our path. He was a black hole, looming threateningly before us. I was in front of Nora, so I couldn't turn back. The walkway was far too narrow for me to walk around George.

"Just walk past it," Nora told me.

Easy for you to say, I thought. You're not the one in front. 

Taking a deep breath, I pushed forward and walked right through the cold figure of the ghost.

We had to go on stage only moments after that, so I didn't have any time to recooperate. She and I put on a brave face and acted out the scene.

We told other members of the cast about our encounter later. Only four or five out of about twenty-five people believed us. Nora and I were getting frustrated about that. We saw it and felt it happen. How could they not trust us? How could they call us liars?

During the second act, Nora and I were on the side of the stage farthest from the spot where we encountered George. The main group of skeptics were standing on the wing closest to the incident, a few steps away from the door. We were all waiting for our sign to go on. A bright light flooded the theatre from their side of the stage. That, accompanied by a loud clanking noise, drew everyone's attention. Everyone except me. I knew what it was, but I wanted to watch the reactions of the skeptics.

They were in a horrified shock. Their jaws were dropped. I couldn't blamed them, though. It was how you would expect them to react to a ghost.

Nora and I were the brave ones. We ran back through the walkway and shut the door that George had opened. We had to fight to shut it. I thought it might have been the wind holding it open at first, but there was none. Nothing was blocking it, either, so the only explaination was George. With a lot of effort, we managed to shut the door. We sprinted back onto the other side of the stage to make it for our scene.

They definitely believed us after that :)

Thanks for reading! I hope you liked one of the scariest moments of my life! XD