I am telling you that if stories of the supernatural creep you out, don’t read this post.

Really. I’m going to divulge a part of my past that I reflect on every year about this time. If spooky stuff gives you the heebie-jeebies, turn back now. Read about my wedding outfit or about the random Dubya quote. Better yet, read something edifying and go to Alan’s blog.

You have now been warned.

When I studied the Bible(TM), I got to that part that really determines if you trust the people leading the studies or not. You tell them about all your past.

The trouble was, I didn’t have the sexual sins they wanted me to have. I was hammered for lying because all guys have either had premarital sex or masturbated. I have done neither. This infuriated them and sent them for a real loop. They had to settle for heavy petting in High School – they were really disappointed, I think.

The two big sins I had to deal with were lying and witchcraft. When I say witchcraft, I do not mean pot, cigarettes, or alcohol. I mean honest-to-goodness witchcraft. It’s not that I was a serious student, but I dabbled in it and was gratified by the power I thought I had.

It started when I was 10 or 11. I became fascinated with ghost stories. They had to be somewhat verifiable to really spook me. I had pictures of ghostly figures on stairs, phantom faces in the window of a lighthouse (the top windows), and more. As much as these stories scared me, a part of me wanted to investigate the truth about these ghosts. The fact that they were dead, but somehow still connected to earth really fascinated me. I also wondered how all this meshed with the Bible and Christianity.

That got me to poltergeists. I had heard some talk about casting out demons and whether Jesus cast out real demons or metaphorical ones. At the time, I believed the movies, The Exorcist and the Amytiville Horror as mostly true stories. Still, the demons in these stories did not act like the ones in the Bible. I figured that there had to be something else to this.

When I was 12, I went to see my cousins and we got around to playing with a Ouija board. We noticed that if either me or my cousing were one of the people touching the pointer, that it moved faster. We decided that both of us should, and I kid you not, the pointer took off. We spelled words as fast as we could read them out.

So I thought that she was pushing it, so I pushed back. She did the same. We decided that we would just put our tips straight up-and-down on the pointer so that there was no way either or us could be pushing it.

The spirit spelled out “It is not you, it is me.”