From Bonni:

I am not a particularly superstitious person. I do tend to be open minded about supernatural things, but I don't generally just believe something based upon someone else's claims.

I do, however, believe in ghosts. I've lived in a haunted building and encountered ghosts in other places from time to time. I know they exist. I do not claim to know what they actually are but I do know there is definitely something to ghost stories, because I've lived it myself.

My first clear encounter with a ghost was in the apartment building in which we lived in Germany. We moved when I was eleven years old. The building was military housing, owned by the United States military, but at one time it had been officer's quarters for the Third Reich. That, in itself, didn't bother me. Lots of places in Germany have unfortunate ties to the Third Reich and are now used for other purposes.

This building had two stairwells, with six apartments in each, two on each floor. The stairs went all the way to the basement, where there was a small storage room for each apartment - a large open room which people frequently used for hanging clothes to dry, and the laundry room. The laundry room was equipped with three washing machines, three dryers and the usual assortment of sump pumps and sinks one finds in a utility basement.

The top floor had a large room (usually used for parties and the like), a small bathroom with a toilet, sink, and bathtub, and six small "garret" rooms, each with a small closet and a window, almost certainly intended for servants. At the end of the corridor was a locked door that led to the top floor of the other stairwell.

The basement of this building really used to spook me. If I had to go down there to do laundry, I would whistle loudly as I went. For some reason, I felt that whistling (especially since I always whistled whatever hymn popped into my head) would protect me or keep whatever it was that I sensed down there away from me. The worst place was the large, open room. I wouldn't go in there at all if I could avoid it.

In time I came to feel precisely where the "presence,",for lack of a better word, was located. As I'd get laundry out of the washer or put laundry in, I could feel someone staring at me from behind, in the doorway. If I turned quickly, there was no one there, but I still felt the presence. As time went on, I came to sense more about the ghostly person, in that it seemed to be female, and wearing a plain, calf-length dress, an apron, and a headscarf, basically like what you might imagine an early twentieth century housemaid might wear. She stood there in the doorway and just stared. She seemed unable to go anywhere else, and she never communicated, or if she did, I couldn't understand her. She seemed to me to be tied to the large room.

Years later, I mentioned that basement to my mother, who said in a very surprised voice, "Did you see her?"

I told her I hadn't seen anything, and that I only had a very clear impression. It turns out that my mother had the exact same impression, and neither of us had mentioned it to anyone else.

Other weird things in that building were the sound of footsteps from the upstairs apartment. For ages, we thought they just had kids who ran noisily. Eventually, I realized that the footsteps came at the same time every night (just after eleven) and always followed the exact same pattern, but at first, we just knew there was a lot of stomping going on. The upstairs neighbors accused us of constantly slamming doors. In fact, neither of us knew what the other was talking about. After they moved out, the footsteps continued, same time, same pattern. I had a friend over to spend the night with me and she asked if someone had moved in upstairs and I told her no, it was just the ghosts. On that occasion, there were no neighbors next door, upstairs, or downstairs from us, in fact.

 Another thing that now strikes me as odd is that one of the women in the neighboring stairwell was very spooked and complained that someone kept knocking on her door and then leaving. She was very nervous about this, as her husband was away on military maneuvers, like most of the men in the building, and she was there alone. The woman insisted that she felt as if the person must be coming across the hallway in the attic to the other stairwell, knocking on her door, and then escaping back across the attic.

My mother thought the woman was just overreacting, but she still tried to help, by sprinkling a fine layer of talcum powder down the hallway in the attic and in any place someone might have to walk in order to do this. The next night, it happened again, but there were no marks in the footprints.

In retrospect, I think the woman was indeed hearing knocking at her door, just as our upstairs neighbors heard slamming doors and we heard noisy footsteps.

I have no explanation for these things. I can theorize all day and night, and I have my impressions for why some of these things might have happened, but really, I believe the whole building was just plain haunted. Why, I don't know. I will tell you that while I admit to having a very active imagination, I didn't imagine those footsteps and I had a witness who also heard them, and I sincerely doubt that the woman with the mysterious knocking was imagining it. I also can't imagine why our upstairs neighbors would just plain make up something as odd as accusing us of slamming doors all the time.

So when someone asks me if I believe in this or that or the other, I usually say that I don't disbelieve, unless the topic is ghosts. Then I have to say that I do believe that there are ghosts, because I've lived with them.