Ghosts, God, Men and Science

I was fourteen when I had my first paranormal experience, while visiting my aunt Cara at her home in Ballinspittle, Ireland. She lived in a three hundred year old farmhouse, which sat on a cliff overlooking the sea, with with the thickest walls I’d ever seen, and a giant fireplace in the kitchen.

It was the perfect setting to meet a ghost, but that hadn’t occurred to me, as at the time I never thought about such things- didn’t consider them to be anything more than characters in funny summer camp stories and dumb horror movies.

What I thought about back then was boys. It’s all I thought about. But there were none in the countryside in Ireland. There were no boys in the pubs, zero on the beach, and definitely not in her home.

Instead, there were old men, accents so thick it seemed impossible they were speaking English. Old women too. There was my aunt, my aunt’s baby, and her husband- another old man. And chickens. And sheep. There were plenty of sheep.

Right away, I noticed strange occu…