Eighteen percent of people claim that they have seen a ghost, according to Pew Research Center. This poll was taken in 2015, but “The New York Times” reported that paranormal sightings were on the rise during quarantine. A paranormal experience is a phenomenon that is beyond scientific explanation. Since it’s now the season of haunting and spooky energy due to Halloween coming soon, students wanted to share their own eye-witness stories.

Lukas Barajas
The boy on the bed
It was a normal fall morning when six year old Lukas Barajas was helping his family get his sister to school. His older sister asked him to get her charger from her room and young Barajas agreed to do so. His sister and mother, the only two in the house at this time, went into another room to continue getting ready.

He walked into the pitch black room, where the only source of light was a faint glow from the closed curtains of his window. As he shifted his body to turn on the light switch, he saw a figure, a small silhouette of a child was jumping on his sisters’ bed. Once Barajas realized what he was seeing, the figure jumped off the bed to disappear in the darkness of the room, but their small footsteps still lingered and seemed to be walking toward him. Barajas screamed and ran out of the room to tell his family what he witnessed.

“Nobody believed me. The only person who did was my mom. My brother and sister said I was lying the entire time, but I know what I saw,” Barajas said. Years later, he revisited his experience with his mom.

She revealed two nights before this happened, his siblings had been using a Ouija board in the house and trying to get in touch with spirits. This could be the reason that the little spirit visited Barajas’ household. After what Barajas told his mom, she never allowed them to use the Ouija board in the house again.

“Don’t mess with Ouija boards,” advised Barajas. His family learned their lesson about trying to get in touch with spirits after his experience.

Jaylyn Walker
A real nightmare
Freshman year began as any other year for fifteen year old Jaylyn Walker. She had never had any paranormal experiences or even partaken in trying to connect with spirits. She knew from a young age that tampering with things like Ouija boards or spiritual practices could open up dark things if an individual does not use them correctly. Despite her caution, she began to have terrible night terrors every night. The same dream would occur without fail. In her nightmare, there was a little girl in a hospital gown, long black hair and no face. After a month, things like locations of where the dream was based at and the amount of little girls would change in the dream. Walker would wake up terrified for five months. Eventually, she refused to sleep with the lights off and would even try to avoid the night terrors by sleeping in the same room as her aunt. Walker finally decided to talk to her aunt about her dream that was keeping her up all night. Her aunt was surprised to find out that Walker was experiencing the same night terrors that she experienced when she slept in that same room. Without hesitation, they saged and cleansed the room of negative energy. They also made protection spells and rosaries to ward off evil spirits. “I personally am not a religious person, but I was trying to do anything I could to get the presence away because it was so terrifying for me,” Walker said. Walker and her aunt speculate that it was a negative spirit harassing them both. Since taking those measures, Walker has not had any other paranormal experiences or disturbances.

Haley Berlient
The haunted house
Haley Berliant was five years old when she moved into a townhome with her mom and brother.

Throughout their time there, they had multiple incidents occur that were hard to explain.
The townhome held strong energy, and Berliant noticed that light switches would flip on and off throughout the house. She also noticed that she would place her toys in a certain place, go with her family in another room, and they would all collectively come back to the toy down another hall of the house.

The scariest instance she had was when her mom was on a lower level of the house and saw something written on a chalkboard they had. It was a child’s handwriting that was not the work of Berliant’s brother’s. Her mom assumed it was a little girl’s writing and called her down to see if she had possibly written it. Berlient was confused, as she had never written anything down. At this point in time, she was not the strongest writer and it would have been unlikely that she correctly wrote the words. The chalkboard read “this is my house, get out”.

“I don’t think the ghost liked me very much because I was another little girl in her space,” Berliant said.
Being so young, Berlient did not think much of this. However, she was getting annoyed that her toys were always being rearranged. Her mother decided to do further research on their townhome, because she also felt strange about all the things happening around her family. She decided to dig up the history of the townhomes and the families that had previously lived in them. She found that a little girl inhabited one of the homes, but tragically died young. This could explain the dainty handwriting and how Berlient’s toys were always being moved.

“I think she was a spirit that hadn’t moved on yet and was just living in that house,” Berliant said.
Berliant’s mom decided to move out of the townhome because of the negative energy surrounding it, despite the fact that their family had only lived there for a few months. Just a few years after they moved out, the townhomes ended up being demolished due to nobody wanting to live in them. The townhomes received many complaints from people about the strange occurrences, and it’s possible that there is a paranormal explanation for its demise.