Thanks to everyone who submitted stories for the recent giveaway! So far, I’ve collected around 30 spooky tales. Here’s the first of the batch. 

“I was 15 years old when I had my very first encounter with a ghost! It was on a late spring morning. My parents were at work, and my brothers and sister were either off with their friends or running errands.

One of my chores for the day was to vacuum the living room. I love the smells of spring and the sound of birds chirping so I opened the windows and front door to air out the house. I started vacuuming, and about two minutes into the job I caught a glance of a rather tall man standing in the doorway. He was balding on top, with white hair on the sides, wearing a red shirt with pearl buttons.

I turned off the vacuum cleaner off and started towards the door when I noticed there was no one there! Panic set in when I thought, ‘He came into the house!’ I was all alone and there was a strange man in the house. Being a 15-year-old female, we tend to be dramatic. I screamed at the top of my lungs! A neighbor who was outside sweeping his sidewalk came running over to see what was going on. I asked ‘Mr. Vaughn’ if he had seen the man who came into my house. Mr. Vaughn said he had been outside for a while and didn’t see anyone come up to our door. I told him that the man must be in the house. Mr. Vaughn and I went from room to room to see if we could find the man. There was no one in the house. When my parents came home, I told them what happened and they went over to the neighbor’s house to talk with him about the incident.

Later that evening, when my mother and I were cooking dinner, my mother told me she had seen the man several times before and that he was a ghost! I didn’t say anything. I just stayed quiet because I didn’t know which one of us was crazy or if we both were.

Seven years later, my parents decided to tear down an old building that had been on the property since 1910. Under the floorboards they found a skeleton, some pearl buttons, and old coins. They had to call the police who then got the coroner’s office involved. They discovered that the skeleton was that of a man who was probably a homesteader before New Mexico was a state!

My dad reminded me of what happened when I was 15. He said: ‘I guess you saw this man’s ghost!’”

Have a true ghost story of your own? Share that spookiness here!

Photos: morgueFile