Okay, this is especially for my class who asked if I believed in ghosts. The answer to that question is very simple… YES! I had one of the most unbelievable, heart pounding, terrifying experiences of my life when I was in college.

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. It’s always fun to think about the make believe world or gouls, goblins, warewolves and other ghastly creatures. It IS all make believe, right? Well, that’s what I thought. So it was getting close to Halloween and some friends and I had been talking about what we wanted to do for Halloween. New horror flicks are always coming out at the theater around this time so we decided to go see one. After the movie we planned to go check out a couple places on the west side of El Paso that were legendary places where ghosts could be found.

My friends were so excited to see these places after the movie finished, but I was a bit skeptical, not quite ready to believe that these places were haunted. I have never been one to believe in the after life having “unfinished business” here on Earth. One of the places we had heard about is an old house in a neighborhood close to UTEP. All the houses in this neighborhood are all very old and have been around El Paso for many, many years. It is said that many of the houses are haunted with the spirits of those who passed away.

There is ONE house in particular that is famous, or shall I say INFAMOUS. The story goes that the ghost of a murdering mother hides out in “her”  old house. When she sees unwanted guests intruding in her territory she races out of the house and rushes towards them like a deranged crazy person. Like most scary stories, they say she wants to kill you.  I’m sure you can see how crazy this sounds right?

We had to drive around the neighborhood for quite a while before we found the right house, but when we did arrive, I found that even though I didn’t believe in ghosts, my hands were a little sweaty on the steering wheel and my heart seemed to have jumped up a little towards my throat. As i inched slowly up the street, all five sets of our eyes were locked on the front door of the house. The street was pitch black and crowded with trees looming over us. Ahead was a dead end. A locked chain fence was all there was, except for a parked car on the curb. The car was facing us, so my headlights shined bright into the front seat. There was no one in the car, so we figured it belonged to the occupant of the house. I had stopped the car so we could look around a bit, but my friend Lori told me to keep going, to get closer. Just as I lightly tapped the gas, the front porch light of the house flipped on suddenly. “Ahhhhh!” Everyone in the car screamed at the top of their lungs, including me. Then, the headlights from the car that was parked in front of us popped on, blinding bright. I was absolutely frozen with fear. We all screamed again; I could not move, paralyzed by the fear within me. Lori hit me several times on my arms, pleading for me to drive away, “GO! GO! GO!” Suddenly, without thinking, I threw the shifter in reverse and slammed the gas pedal to the floor and zoomed backwards. Luckily no one was on the road behind me. I was driving so fast that the car was swerving back and forth and the tires were screeching, almost as if they too were in fear. I stopped and took a left turn down another street and stopped just a few feet away so that I could calm down. My heart was racing, my hands were shaking, and I couldn’t breath because I was trembling so uncontrollably.

Only a few seconds had passed before my other friend Laura was tapping my shoulder rapidly, screaming, “The car is coming, the car is coming, GO, GO, GO!” I shouted back, “No it can’t be, calm down. No one was in the car, You’re just scared.” But, then I looked in my rear view mirror and to my horrific surprise I saw the car, slowly inching around the corner in slow motion, right towards us. It was just like in a horror movie when the stalker walks after you. They don’t run, They walk, because they know they’ll catch you eventually.

I had never been so scared in my entire life. I can’t even explain the chills that crawled up and down throughout my body that night, teasing, taunting, and terrifying me. They played mean, nasty tricks on my mind. Needless to say, I got out of there as quickly as I possibly could. We were all shaking for hours afterwards and could not stop talking about how outrageous and unbelievable that experience was. My friends and I will surely never forget that frightful Halloween night!