A Medium In A Ghost Tour

I am about to be 21 years old, and although I've experienced my fair share of ghostly happenings in the past, it seems as though they're becoming more frequent and more complex and communicative.

When I was a child, I used to see disembodied feet/legs walking through my house, and have once even seen the torso of a 'shadow person' passing right in front of my face at my aunt's old house; I knew it was an irritable old man. In a friend's house, I was sitting alone in her kitchen tying my shoes and with my peripheral vision saw someone in white and navy running shoes walk past me towards the back door. They brushed up against a coat hanging on the back of a chair, which caught my attention. When I looked up to talk to them, there was no one there; there wasn't even anyone else on the first floor.

None of my experiences ever scared me, though the thought of having another experience frightened me to no end. I would walk around thinking (and saying out loud in places where I was alone and feeling like I was being watched) 'Please don't show yourself to me. I don't want to see you.' Now, after years and years of only feeling presences, my sightings are happening more and more.

This past summer my parents took me and my youngest brother on a trip to Gettysburg, PA. While walking through the battlefield, we began hearing gunshots. After trying to look for a re-enactment and failing miserably, they wanted to do a ghost tour; I conceded. The tour first met in the basement of the Farnsworth Inn, and the guide was talking about the bloody history of the inn and it's basement. I was barely paying attention when I heard a very deep, throaty voice whisper in my left ear. "I need... I need a..." I knew that the man needed a doctor, and pronto! I tried to rationalize it as one of the men behind me trying to scare the people around him and looked back, only to realize that behind me were a bunch of high school students on a field trip flirting with each other. None of them could have been older than 17. My mother was sitting to the left of me, and I nudged her to tell her what I'd just heard and she shushed me so she could hear the guide's ghost stories (ironic, right?!).

Minutes passed, when I felt someone brushing my exposed lower back with their fingertips. I turned around, shot the high schoolers yet another glare, and reflexively felt my back to pull down my shirt; there were bars on the back of my chair. Someone sitting behind me would have had to stick their fingers in the slats in order to touch my back, but when I was touched it went across my whole lower back. I tried to tell my mom and again got shushed, so I brushed it off and continued (barely) listening. A few minutes later one of the boys behind me stood up, sniffing at the air very loudly. The guide asked him what was wrong, and the boy asked if smoking was allowed in the tavern above us, to which I replied, "Of course! Don't you smell it!?" This freaked everyone around us out, and the guide came sprinting to the back of the room where we were seated to sniff around as well. He couldn't smell a thing. He then proceeded to tell us that nowhere in Gettysburg could you smoke inside. I laughed, probably too maniacal a laugh for the situation, but I had been smelling the cigar smoke for quite some time. It just struck me as funny, I guess.

Throughout the rest of the tour, nothing else happened to me, and I finally got to tell my parents what occurred in the basement. At the end of the tour, they literally forced me to tell the guide what I had smelled, felt, and heard. He seemed somewhat jaded, and didn't really care as much as he said he would and I walked away. I was within earshot when my father asked him if there were any re-enactments going on during that day, and the guide said no; hearing disembodied gunshots is common in Gettysburg. On the drive back to the hotel in the dark, looking out the car window at a red light, I saw shadows moving in the alleyways of people in the Civil War military style hats and suddenly stop, as if noticing that I had seen them.

Months went by with no ghostly encounters until recently when I got a part-time job at my local library. My job is to put books back on shelves, and when that work has waned I sit in the recently refurbished fiction section on the top floor, between shelves, and read. I am usually alone in the fiction section, and have only worked there for about 2 months. Throughout the back end of the room, there is the distinct feeling of being watched, the shuffling of feet, sounds of books moving and pages turning, books falling from shelves and knocks on the bookshelves and windows. There have been plenty of times where my body has not let me go to the back of the room, and I stop mid-aisle and turn right back around. Call it intuition, I suppose.

Today my intuition eluded me, and I walked straight to the back of the empty room to file books. To my left, on the opposite side of the aisle, I felt like someone was watching me. I looked; nothing was there. Upon continuing to put books away, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye and once again looked to the corner of the room. There, I distinctly saw one leg darting behind a bookshelf, as if someone was running away. It was smoky, gray and transparent, and disappeared as quickly as it came, however I could tell that was what had been in the corner that whole time watching me put my books away. I was not at all jarred, and under my breath introduced myself and told him that I worked there and was just doing my job. I then asked his name, and almost on instinct, closed my eyes and saw the name 'Daniel' spelled out on the black of my eyelids. Whispering, I asked him to confirm whether his name was actually Daniel by making a sound; a few bookshelves in front of where I was standing came three knocks. I'm not sure whether I was shaken by the fact that I got a clear 'response' or that I instinctually felt that his name was Daniel, but I proceeded to excuse myself from the room and go downstairs.

While Gettysburg and today's library story are only two of a lot of stories, they are the ones that stand out in my brain. I'm feeling somewhat guilty that I blocked out everything around me for so long. I'm not sure if what I'm experiencing is actually any type of medium-like abilities, an over-active imagination (which I admittedly do have), or just ghost stories. I have been told that I am 'an old soul' and sensitive before, but not from someone who actually has any psychic/mediumistic abilities. Any kind of help or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! (ps: sorry it's so long...)