Are Your Really Alone?

Do you ever have a feeling that you are not alone when you are? Or that you are being observed? What about seeing that image flash before you, as if someone, or something, ran from one room in your home to another? Do you set something down on a table, and a moment later it is missing, only to be found after you have given up looking? How about hearing distinct noises that upon investigation do not exist, and could not exist? Have you felt a touch, or a tickle on your neck or hair? What about unusual odors when the source cannot be located? Does your furniture move without you moving it, such as a rocking chair rocking, or a toilet seat in the up position when it was purposefully closed? Do your pets react to something that you cannot see or hear?

My name is Matthew Miller. I am sixteen years old and the foregoing events reflect unexplained conditions that I experience regularly in my home. I am uncomfortable living with these experiences. The night sounds, and physical contact with my body, haunts my sleep on a regular basis. At times, I have been startled awake, believing that I had just been kissed, or my face, or hair, softly touched. When I look around, I see nothing but my room.

It is my desire to understand how, and why, these experiences occur. What I do understand is that the experiences are inconsistent and unpredictable. At night, I silently watch for shadows and movement, and listen for unusual sounds that might invade my bedroom and my sleep. What I have seen, and heard, lacks a logical explanation and results in my loss of sleep and personal comfort. My parents believe that I am dreaming without being aware that I am asleep. They have no explanation as to why my sister, Keri, experiences similar events in her bedroom. One evening, my sister woke me up and let me know that she had been touched and the touch startled her awake. She refused to say where she was touched.

I personally do not believe in spirits, guides, ghosts, orbs, apparitions or the sinister world of the undead. I abhor listening to people that claim to talk with the departed, or have visions of things yet to come. I am a pragmatist, and a realist. What I have experienced is real, and I cannot accept any explanation that suggests that it is all in my imagination, or arises in the spirit world. Neither explanation is acceptable to me, or my sister Keri.

My home is not old, or unusual. It is not located near a cemetery, and I don't have neighborhood vandals, or pranksters, interfering with my life. The house next door has been vacant for some time, but has no bearing on my life. My family consists of my father, Joseph Miller, my mother, Carolyn Miller and my fifteen year old sister, Keri Miller. We are just ordinary people who occasionally attend church and try to live honest and godly lives. I would suggest that we are a close and loving family. We are so ordinary that I wonder what, or maybe who, might be interested in our lives.

Many of the events that I have experienced have also been experienced by my sister at one time or another. Like me, my sister is tired of not understanding who, or what, is entering her dreams and touching her body as she sleeps. At one point, Keri blamed me for trying to scare her. That night, she woke up after being touched and grabbed for me – but I wasn't there. Keri checked and I was asleep in my bedroom. Keri reported the incident to me and said, "I went back to my bed and was trying to get back to sleep when I felt something brush through my hair. When I reached for my hair, I felt something touch my lips. I heard a sound, but couldn't understand the sound, or find the source of the sound. It almost seemed like laughter."

Rarely do I see, or feel, something happen to me when it can also be observed by my sister, or one of my parents. I often wonder why my sister and I experience events, independently of one another, when very little has happened to our parents. My parents are forever saying, "Matthew, leave it alone. It's your imagination playing tricks on you." They tell Keri the same thing when she experiences unexplained events.

I am in tenth grade in high school and Keri is in the ninth grade. We attend the same high school. I turned sixteen and obtained my driver's license, along with the use of one of the family cars to drive me and Keri to school. The very first time we drove to school, I told Keri to fasten her seat belt. She pulled over the belt, but refused to fasten it because it would wrinkle her new dress. I was upset, but told Keri to sit still so I wouldn't get a ticket. About half way to school, the belt was pulled out of Keri's hand and the buckle clicked locking her into her seat. Keri screamed and told me what happened. I could see in her face that she was scared.

I replied, "Good. It should be buckled." At the time, I wasn't hearing what Keri was telling me. When I finally thought about it, I felt around the seats to see if I could feel anything.

Keri replied, "I was just sitting and holding the belt buckle in my hand when something held my arm and yanked the buckle out of my hand. I felt the buckle lock, but I saw nothing unusual. Did you buckle my belt?"

I replied, "I didn't touch your belt. Maybe next time you will listen to me and buckle your belt."

Keri left me a note on my locker, which read, "Matt, I am going home on the bus tonight. That was just too creepy this morning." On my way home, I held my seat belt to see if the same would happen to me, but nothing happened.

I sat with Keri that night and discussed the events haunting our lives and affecting our sleep.

Keri said, "You and I need to figure this out because mom and dad do not believe these things are happening to us."

I mentioned that whatever was haunting us seemed to be benevolent and not harmful in any way. I use the word `haunting' for lack of a better descriptive word for the happenings that we have experienced. I remembered a quotation from Arthur Conan Doyle said that,

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth".

Keri then asked, "What is truth when it comes to what is happening to you and me?"

I replied, "I have a quote for `truth'".

"[T]ruth' is that fleeting moment in time when an event first appears and can be explained satisfactorily. Truth, being a simple construct, or moment in time, means that it is perceived by different people having a different perspective in time of the same event. As such, what is truth for one may be a falsehood to another." J.A. Gauthier

Keri and I were determined to find the truth behind the events that so devilishly interfered in our daily lives.. We recognized that there were different forces acting upon us and our home environment and we needed to isolate the forces by logical groupings for our planned investigative purposes. I wanted my `truth' to be consistent with Keri's truth; whatever the truth may be.

In the first group, we listed the physical realm, which included objects that move without our assistance. A good example would be car keys that we would hang on a hook by the entry door. When we returned to get the same keys, the keys are no longer hanging in place and could not be found. However, the following morning, the keys would be hanging on the wall where we had left them. No one in the family would admit to re-hanging the keys.

The...