Ghost Stories oooOOOOoooOOOooOOOOooo!!!

My best friend Ari called today and revealed to me that recently while he was in the thick of his adventure race ...in the middle of nowhere... He saw a naked man lurking in the woods! Ari wasn't the only person who saw this as others in his group questioned one another later if they'd seen the naked man. Immediately I suspected that it was probably an alien abductee that was dropped off in middle of the woods. Or maybe a hippie guy who decided to drop out of society and live naked in the woods. Ari has another explanation. He thinks that it was either a pervert jacking off in the woods, or maybe it was Matt (just kidding! sorry man couldn't resist!), or just maybe it was the spirit of someone!

I've known Ari over half my life and i've never known him to lie to me about anything. So I know that when he tells me he saw a naked man in the woods, I know he's not bullshitting me. We'll never know what it was.. Maybe.. JUST maybe it was the spirit of a naked man jacking off in the woods while watching the adventure racers! In my world, my sick twisted world, That's what it would've been.

Now I believe in fucking ghosts! I've had many experiences in the past that were too strange to ignore. The first situation I can remember happened when I was aged 9 or 10. My family was living uncomfortably in the barge on Neil street in Champaign. We had a dog named Smokey. Smokey suffered from seizures from time to time and it eventually got very bad. I remember waking up one morning to my Mother and Sister crying and I knew that Smokey had died. Smokey had a collar with a few metal tags which would jingle as he moved. For a long time after Smokey had died I distinctly heard the tags jingling throughout the house at night. Sometimes it would wake me up. Later when we got our new dog, Chuck, the jingling ceased immediately.

Occasionally, my good friend Daniel and I used to ride our bikes out to our friend's house late at night after we both got off work. We both worked at a music store which was near Neil and Springfield in Champaign. Our friend Brian lived way out in Urbana near Airport Road and High Cross Road. For those of you that might read this and not know the specifics... It's a long ass bike ride! We used to cut through a road that passed in front of Woodlawn Cemetery and behind Busey Woods in Urbana. There is arguably no spookier place in Champaign County at night than that stretch of road, Especially on bike! It really freaked Dan out to go that way. I used to intentionally ride through there to test my balls out. I even went and knocked on the huge mausoleum out front at midnight. I never saw shit. Although it always felt like I was being watched. Daniel claimed to have seen numerous ghosts as we rode through. Eventually he just flat out refused to go that way. We were both about 20 at the time and I always assumed he was fucking with me. Recently I asked him if he honestly saw ghosts out there and he reconfirmed that he did. A few people I know have claimed to have seen the "Blue Man Ghost" out there. My old boss at the music store claimed to have seen it up close. Years ago they found a body of a young man in Busey Woods with no apparent cause of death. Could he have seen the Blue Man Ghost and just died of fright after shitting himself? Or visa versa? I dropped acid with my friend Robert and we walked through Busey Woods all night years ago. We walked and talked about crazy nonsense from dusk till dawn. We never saw any ghosts. Although I think that the ghosts were probably a little afraid of Robert. Thats where some people go when they die. They go to a room with no exit and Robert explains the world to them. Welcome to hell.

Then There is my good friend Matt. Matt has been a #1 pimp homey for a long time now. I used to stay the night at his house and drink his Coca Cola all the time. Matt's house is fucking haunted! A friend of ours swears he saw a girls spirit in the bathroom mirror. Matt's house has a family room which used to be an attached garage. We all hung out in there mainly and played music, watched TV or whatever. His bathroom is through the living room and down a hall. Late at night when you had to take a leak there was nothing I dreaded more than making my way to that bathroom. I am sure that I am not alone in this but it felt like a thousand eyes were watching you. It always felt cold, and I don't mean the thermostat was set low, it's a different kind of cold. Matt was into all sorts of strange esoteric religions and the Necronomicon at the time. They did incantations which were supposed to release spirits and shit. One night they were fucking around with an Ouija Board and this plastic light cover came crashing down from the ceiling and smashed up his guitar. Another time they were doing some spells of some kind of strange shadowy figure appeared and kept watching them all night. Eventually it went away or disappeared.

More recently my ex-girlfriend and I were at a abandoned mental institution in Ashmore, Illinois called Ashmore Estates. Ashmore is now an attraction which has a haunted house on Halloween and a few sleep-overs for the brave souls(fucking idiots) a few times per year. The owner decided to cash in on the legends of that place. Tracy and I broke in. This was long before it was open to the public. we explored the place and let me tell you it was fucking scary! Graffiti everywhere, old beds, padded rooms & bed straps were just a small example of the decorations. We went down in to the basement and heard someone footsteps on the main level. My first thought was that it was a cop so we went silent. The footsteps kept shifting from one side of the room to the next and we couldn't tell where they were coming from. Eventually we decided we needed to get out of there. We slipped out and I looked down the hallway and there was nothing there. Anyone who would have been there would've noticed my car parked right out front. I still don't know what it was but I know it scared the shit out of me.

Share your ghost stories if you'd like in the comments.