10/30/04- The First Visit
This night was the first time our ghost visited us. My wife and I had watched the movie Enemy of the State starring Will Smith and had gone to bed around 11:00 PM (not a bad movie, and thankfully the sound track does not star Will Smith). Around 1:30 AM, my wife awakened me. “Wake up, there is someone downstairs.” I listened, and heard loud crashing and screeching noises. With my spidey senses on super alert, I slipped on some clothing so our intruder would not be too distracted by the sight of my hideous body, and grabbed the closest weapon I could find, which turned out to be a golf putter. Having my courage boosted not at all by my excellent weapon selection, I prepared to open the door. I threw the door open, and switched on the lights in the hallway which bathed our living room in light. I saw no one. At this point I still thought we were dealing with a human intruder, and just to reiterate, I WAS ARMED WITH A GOLF PUTTER.

I walked downstairs and realized that the noise was coming from our entertainment system. By entertainment system I mean a six year old 19 inch television, a six year old VCR, an eight year old hand me down surround sound system, and a one year old DVD player. As you can see on the picture, this system is less than advanced. The sound from the DVD player is wired straight into the sound system and bypasses the TV. So, here is what I discovered. The movie from the night before was playing in the DVD player. Keep in mind this is not like a VCR which rewinds a tape and starts playing them again once rewound. This is a DVD player. Every electronics experts I have consulted with have told me that even if there was a power surge, the player beginning to play a movie, though technically not impossible, it is unheard of. However, beginning to play a movie in the middle of the movie is impossible. Plus, no other electronics in the house indicated a power surge had taken place.

I have tried to rationalize this, thinking that maybe it had started playing at the beginning of the movie. This is not possible for two reasons. First, my wife is a very light sleeper, and the movie sound was even more amplified due to the baby monitor right next to my wife’s side of the bed. Secondly, we had the volume quite loud on the surround sound, so no matter what, if the movie had begun from the beginning, my wife would have heard it.

I spent about an hour on the couch with my golf club with my skin literally tingling. I slept very little that night.