Do you believe that ghosts are real? Have you ever had a paranormal experience?

I'm a scientist by training and am very skeptical of things for which there is no proof. However, I also know that our knowledge of science and the way the universe works is incomplete. There are things that seem to be paranormal to us now, but may be explained by science a hundred years from now.

Before I talk about my paranormal experiences, I just want to say that some people are just "into" paranormal stuff, and I think those are the people who are most likely to have paranormal experiences (maybe they're just always on the lookout for them). That said, I'm not "into" paranormal stuff. I don't like reading it, I don't like watching it, and frankly, it scares the bejesus out of me.

I've lived in many homes growing up because we moved a lot. I was never afraid of the basement of any house we lived in... except one. Our basement in Englewood, Colorado gave me bad vibes since the first time I set foot in it. It was unfinished, dark, made a lot of weird noises, and the previous owner left a bunch of weird equipment down there, which I'm guessing might have been ham radio stuff? Dunno.

My dad promptly finished the basement and added carpet and it became quite cozy. It no longer looked creepy, but I continued to feel uneasy in the basement. There was this crawl space that went under the house that you could access from the basement. My dad had installed some shutters to cover it up. But it seemed like every time I came home from school and went down to the basement to watch TV, the crawl space shutters were open. Maybe it was just airflow out of the crawl space, but creepy nonetheless.

I was really into building model ships when I was a kid. On this particular day, I was building a Revell model of the USS Missouri on the carpeted floor of the basement. One detail I need to mention is that my dad also built a little workroom in the basement with a door that we always kept closed. I sat on the floor and painted four missiles to be glued onto the ship. Then I put the missiles on the table of the workroom to dry and closed the door, then went back to work on other parts of the model. A few minutes later, I went back to the workroom to get the now-dry missiles, but I couldn't find them. I went back and sat down on the floor confused. As I sat there thinking about where I might have misplaced the missiles, one suddenly fell on my lap. Then one fell on the floor next to me. Then another on my head. Then I was like, "Oh shit, what the hell is going on?" and ran back upstairs spooked.

Another time I came home from school and went to the basement to watch TV. As soon as I turned on the TV, a female voice came from right behind my right ear. It said, "Thank you!" I immediately turned off the TV and ran back upstairs as fast as I could. You might say the voice came from the TV, but it didn't. It was clearly from behind me, and it was enough to make me drop everything and run for my life. I never went to the basement alone again after that.

We only lived in that house in Colorado for one year. For the most part, my family didn't believe my stories about the basement. My brother did believe a little bit, because he also noticed that the crawl space door would always open on its own. But when we were cleaning up the house to move out, my mom and my brother were inside the crawl space to tidy up and get our stuff out of storage. At the far corner of the crawl space, they found something weird. It was lots of chicken feathers and a stone with the image of a chicken burned onto it. I never saw this, as I was too scared of the basement at this point to check it out for myself, but at least now my mom and brother also believed something was very strange about that basement.

One time we were up in Michigan visiting relatives on their farm. The TV was on the news and they reported on some recent cattle mutilations and flying saucers seen over Lake Michigan. Okay, that's neat, and a bit creepy. A few days later, while everyone was inside chatting after dinner, I took my dog out to do his business. My dog suddenly started growling and and pulling me towards the corn field. My eyesight was very poor at that time and I didn't wear glasses, so I couldn't see what my dog was growling at. All I saw was what looked like a fog and twinkling multicolored lights over the corn field. I decided to go back in the house and tell people. The grownups were all busy chatting and kind of dismissed me. But my younger brother came outside with me (he was probably about 7 years old at the time). He took one look and ran back inside. To this day, he tells me the same thing about what he saw that night. He said it was a bunch of lights hovering over the field, and it wasn't supposed to be there.

The morning after I saw those weird lights, it was a sunny day and me and my brother decided to go check out the area where we saw the lights (it was bright and sunny, and it didn't look like there was anything to be afraid of). We walked up the path to the area of the lights, and there were some wooden structures there. It looked like empty stalls where my uncle used to keep cows.

My mom's side of the family are from Taiwan. Back in 2002, we took a family trip to visit Taiwan again. I was 22 years old at the time. We stayed with my great uncle and his wife. They had just gotten married a few years before, and the tradition in Taiwan is to have a large wedding photo taken that you can hang up on your wall. However, we noticed that their wedding photo was not hung up on the wall. Instead, it was on the ground leaning backward against the wall so you couldn't see the photo. We asked about this and my aunt and uncle showed us why they took down their wedding photo. He turned it around and told us to look at the photo. Then he turned out the lights. You could clearly see a ghostly face of a woman screaming, glowing in the dark. My uncle said after they hung it up in their bedroom, they noticed the scary face every time they turned out the lights, and they were so scared they couldn't sleep at night. So now it sits in their room on the floor facing backwards so nobody can see their wedding photo.