The things that go bump in the night...

For those of you who do not already know this about me... I love ghost hunting!  I have been into ghosts since I was very young and have always felt some sort of connection to the unseen. When I was 3, I knew that my uncle (who I had met only once before) had died before anyone else knew.  That is when I think my awareness of all things creepy developed and since then, things have happened to me that I just can't quite explain. 

I applied for Ghost Hunters Academy on the suggestion of Dustin (from the show... he sent me a Tweet about it) and am a proud Facebook friend of Britt Griffith (also from Ghost Hunters).  Seriously, whenever I comment on something he posts on his wall and he comments back, my face turns red and I jump up and down (and subsequently comment back to him that I am jumping up and down, in which case he replies that I'm a dork and it just goes one and on from there).  Anyway, the show was canceled, so I never really got my shot.

Not to give up after my near brush with televised ghost hunting fame, a few years ago, I started an amateur ghost hunting group.  We were primitive.  I mean we had flashlights that work by crank, a digital voice recorder, a 6-year old digital camera and not much nerve.  I'll never forget my first actual ghost hunting experience.  It was at a place called Devil's Gate, which is ranked within the top 10 haunted places in Illinois, and happens to be in the town where I currently work.  I'll tell you the story about it some other time, but trust me... after listening to the voice recordings we got that night, I didn't sleep for a week!  I love creepy stories, but after I had my own sort of recorded personal encounter, I was shaken! 

Last weekend, while I was staying home alone, I made the misguided decision to skip a wine tasting and met my dear friend, Emery, for coffee around 9 PM.  I'm not sure how it happened, but after catching up about life, the girl he wants to date, and how hard it is to find a job these days we somehow ended up chatting about ghosts.  A mere 5 minutes later, I was slipping out of my 5-inch heels and into cowboy boots (which I just so happened to have handy in the trunk of my car) and we were headed to Devil's Gate for some investigation.  Now that I have my iPhone, I've got all the tools I need to conduct actual investigations.  We wandered around a bit, but the car was illegally parked, so it was the quickest ghost hunt ever!  

Next, we headed to Diamond Lake Cemetery.  It was founded in 1858, which is crazy considering my suburb is essentially in the middle of nowhere (ok, it's 45 minutes North of Chicago,  but still... nearly 200 years ago, there was NOTHING here!).  We were using an app developed by a lovely company called SpudPickles.  The app is called Ghost Radar and when I first discovered it years ago, it terrified me because all the words it would say always had something to do with what was going on at the time I was using it.  This time, the app kept spitting out names, which is creepy since it usually just says random words.  At one point, we found a headstone that had fallen over.  The name on the headstone was "Maria."  About 30 seconds after discovering this, Ghost Radar spat out "Maria," which sent a chill or two up my spine.  It started raining shortly thereafter, so I went home to my big empty house and spent about 4 hours trying to fall asleep.

Today, I figured I may as well head back in the sun for a quick daytime investigation.  The place is super peaceful when it isn't dark out!  There is nothing scary about it at all! 

How is that for Monday Morning Motivation?  Do you have any ghost stories? 

Tank c/o Diane VonFurstenburg

Kimono c/o Forever 21

Booties&Earrings c/o Charlotte Russe

Trousers c/o H&M

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