by Karen Frazier, Managing Editor
Paranormal Underground Magazine

I have a skeptical mind. I am always suspect of my own experiences and impressions – especially with regard to the paranormal. In the moment what I experience seems so solid and real, but in the aftermath I always come in and skeptically question myself.

There’s a reason for this. I am all too aware that I want to believe, and I wonder if that desire fuels the experiences I have and turns them into something else entirely. I wonder if my imagination runs wild because I have such a desire to experience and know that there is an afterlife. Because I am so aware of this desire, it colors all of the aspects of my experience. I always question them. Could this be true? Could I have imagined this? Did I see what I wanted to see, feel what I wanted to feel and hear what I wanted to hear?

After each round of questioning, I wind up even more confused than I started out. After all, experiences of the paranormal are often ephemeral. There is such subtlety there. Very seldom is it something solid and unmistakable. Even more rarely is it provable. I’ve had my fair share of such experiences, and I’ve talked myself out of a number of them. Those experiences still wind up in the realm of the unexplained for me, but added into all of the other things that might be an explanation I add imagination run wild.

Which brings me to my experience with the full-body apparition at Wellington on Saturday night. Naturally there’s been a lot of debriefing. I’ve discussed the experience with a number of people -both immediately after the fact and in the days following. And each person has had their own set of questions associated with the experience. All which have led me to think deeply about this experience in ways other than just how I would normally question myself.

I see this as a good thing. Because, in spite of all of my concerns that I have about wanting to find evidence so badly that I just might imagine it, answering everyone’s questions has solidified the experience for me in a way that it might not had I merely been answering my own questions.

In the end, for me it comes down to a simple statement. I know what I saw.

As one who always questions everyone else after an experience – not out of skepticism, but just out of a desire to really know and understand their experience – I have heard enough people eventually after answering all of my questions say to me, “I know what I saw.”

I found myself saying it in this case. Now I get it. When it is there before your very eyes, how can you deny it? For me, at least, seeing is believing.

As I questioned myself – and answered the questions of others – there were a few things that actually solidified the experience for me. First and foremost – I saw the figure in a moment when I was expecting nothing and wasn’t really looking for anything. There were a lot of people in that snow shed. One group of about 10 people was 50 yards behind us. Another group of about the same size was a good 200 yards ahead of us. When the snow shed has that many people, one doesn’t expect to have many experiences – if any. Another thing that convinces me is the utter lack of emotion. I was in an area where I normally get very creeped out, and I was feeling nothing. Not even a twinge of the heaviness or hostility that I normally feel in that very location. Every other experience I’ve had in that area – whether it is hearing something, feeling something or actually being touched – has been accompanied by such a heavy, hostile feeling that one can’t help but wonder if imagination is coming into play. This time there was none of that. Instead, it was just Bill and me – walking and talking after having laughed with two different groups of people.

I know that I won’t be able to convince many of what I saw. Heck – there have been plenty of times when I have trouble convincing myself. I am my own worst critic in that way. What it comes down to for me this time is that I know what I saw. It was a man. He was solid. He had height, width, depth and density. He stood in the middle of the snow shed, quietly waiting for me to notice him. When I did, he disappeared. In this moment, at this time, that is good enough for me.

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