I was raised in a Christian home. My parents assured my brother and I that ghosts weren't real, that demons play tricks on us to keep us from believing in God. I never experienced anything paranormal as a child. As I grew older, it was almost as if the spirit world did not exist to me. The Poltergeist, Demons, Ghosts, those things only existed on the big screen.
Halloween, 2009: I really wanted to impress my co-worker Mehgann. She said she wanted to go somewhere that was actually "haunted", but she also wanted to go camping. I did a Google search for "Haunted Camping Maryland". What I found was a weekend I will never forget. Point Lookout State Park is home to one of the most haunted lighthouses in the country. The background check I did on the Library of Congress' web site exposed a dark personality of the southernmost peninsula of Maryland. Before the Park was a campsite with a nature trail, it was home to over 20, 000 P.O.W's during the civil war, 4,000 of whom died from the fever, starvation or worse. Before that, Point Lookout was home to a colony of settlers who were slaughtered by Indians during the night. Mehgann and I were going to spend the night in America's most haunted campground. We were joined by our friends David and Crystal. I had made reservations for site 137 after speaking with a park ranger. I asked him, "Which site would you not want to stay the entire night at?"
After we had set up our tent, got a fire going and had a few drinks, all of us decided that it just wouldn't be Halloween without a walk through the woods at night. We had all read stories about the place, eyewitness accounts from campers and local residents. Each one of us hoped to experience some kind of terrifying event that night. Being a fan of the TV Show "Ghost Hunters", I decided to bring a digital voice recorder to attempt to capture an Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP). For some reason, I also brought a small pair of binoculars that I wore on a string around my neck.
We took off from our campsite around 11:00pm. Being the only sober one in our group, I led the way. We walked down the small road that circles the campground called, the D-ring. It was quiet, and the air was filled with smoke from nearby campfires. It wasn't easy, trying to talk to ghosts while my drunk friends giggled and joked in the back of our formation. I started asking questions to provoke some kind of response as I had seen done on the SciFi Channel: "Who are you? How did you die? What are you doing here?" Though my friends may have thought of me as an idiot, I know they wanted to see something scary as much as I did. Everyone scanned the woods for movement expecting something to jump out at us. We made it halfway around the D-ring when I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the road. Mehgann asked what was wrong. I told her I had a gut feeling to turn back, as if something didn't want us to walk any further. Mehgann and Crystal weren't the least bit frightened and seemed ballsy, but David and I, the men, were terrified.
Crystal suggested that I was just paranoid and that we should keep going. I always go with what my gut tells me but this time, I ignored it. The binoculars around my neck bounced slightly when I walked, which started to bug me, so I held them in my hand, the string still around my neck. Mehgan and I were talking about the theory behind EVP's when I said, "You just gotta keep an open mind. Who knows you might even make a friend." Instantly, my binoculars were snatched from my hand, spun around in front of my face for a second, then fell. I froze in shock, then, panicked. My friends looked at my like I was crazy. They didn't see a thing. Shaking like a leaf I explained what had just happened. We all agreed to go back to our tent. Later I analyzed the tape. After my initial contact with that thing, I told it, "If you want to talk, all you have to do is say something. I'm listening. Please don't touch me again or any of my gear." An audible voice can be heard on the tape responding, "I won't."
Later that night, Meghann and Crystal wandered off to get some more wood for the fire. They had been gone for about an hour, for something that should have taken fifteen minutes. David wanted to go find them. I didn't want to go back out there after the "binoculars incident", but I didn't want my Army buddies to think I was a wuss. David and I started off on the same path we had before: the D-ring. We caught up with Mehgann and Crystal halfway, the same place I was "attacked" before. They were on the other side of a line of trees and were walking around to us. I had been telling David how you shouldn't fear the dead, you should fear the living, because only real people can hurt you. I said, "I think I'd be more afraid of getting killed by a Taliban than getting scared by a ghost." As soon as I said that, I felt my upper body vibrate and felt something pass through me, as it breathed heavily into BOTH my ears with an asthmatic tone of voice. I went through all the emotions again: Panic, Fear, Excitement. But then I found a new feeling... Adrenaline. The pure Adrenaline from that single experience drove me to provoke the thing again. I started yelling into the trees, "You want a piece of me!? Come on! Hit me with your best shot!" I heard the spirit walk off into the forest. My friends looked at me like I was insane. David said, "Dude, don't do that, you're going to make it mad."
I found it difficult to sleep that night. I analyzed in my mind every sound I heard outside our tent. I was scared. But looking back now, I remember the emotion I felt when I was confronted by what I now believe to have been a poltergeist. Most people feel sad around a ghost, depressed or sometimes angry. I felt like it just wanted me to know that it existed, as if to say, "Now to you believe in us?"
I've never had any experience like that in my life, and I've never felt more alive. The feeling is awesome, knowing you're out there in the middle of so much haunted history. My story is one of hundreds, maybe thousands of people who have witnessed something paranormal at Point Lookout State Park. All I know is, this experience will make me more prepared, for the next time I visit.
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