When I was a kid, aliens landed in the field behind my house. They kept themselves well hidden by moving through underground tunnels left behind by abandoned coal mines. No one else noticed the lights that disappeared into the ground. My brother and I did, however, and we set out on a mission to discover what those aliens were doing and to prove their existence to the unbelieving adults around us.
Eventually we realized that the adults in our life may have been right and our quest to find the aliens wouldn’t lead us anywhere. We gave up and moved on to other things. Even still, I look out at the night sky once in a while and wonder “what if?” What if we had discovered something that no one else was aware existed? What if we did uncover the secret plot of aliens as they watched us? What if we just got a little too close one day?
My brother and I weren’t just alien hunters, of course. We were also quite experienced in the paranormal. After all, we had two resident ghosts that kept us occupied as we tried to conjure all the possibilities between who they were and why they set up camp at our house. I don’t think we ever came to any real conclusions but we had a lot of fun talking about them and waiting for something to happen. (And yes, once in while creepy things did happen!)
One could argue that like typical kids, we had some pretty overactive imaginations but I look back on those days fondly. In many ways they are the fuel for the stories that I write today. The inspiration behind my first attempts at writing a full-length novel came from our ghost “experiences”. That novel wasn’t very good, as most first novels aren’t, but the idea still lingers and I keep wondering if perhaps someday I won’t revisit my original ghost story and turn it into something better? That “perfect” ghost story is always in the back of mind … just waiting for the moment to escape into the world.
Just as one day, I will likely uncover the secrets of the alien hideaway as I follow the footsteps of the two crazy kids who dared to get just a little too close…
Stephanie Ingram 
Love the imagination of children including how those vivid memories (true or imagined), fuel our creativity and inpsire world-building down the road. I recently did a blog post on the “spooky house” in my neighborhood where I lived as a kid and how my friends and I wove stories around it. I remember being “creeped out” but also delighted by the whole prospect. We had aliens too, though somehow they always took a backseat to our invented witches and ghosts.
I’ve written several of those memories into WIPs. I think childhood and childhood memories are amazingly feritle field for authors. Great post, Stepahnie!
You and I seem to share a lot in common. I chuckle when I think back to the aliens but in reality, ghosts consumed most of our time too. (This actually lead to learning about witchcraft and my discovering Wicca) All those things we dream up as kids are scary but more than that, they are exciting. This summer I plan to collaborate with my own kids who have equally active imaginations to create our own small collection of children’s stories. Not sure how well they will turn out but it will be education for the kiddos and hopefully fun for us all.
Thanks for the comment, Mae! 🙂
Hello, Stephanie. I just wrote the first draft of my first ghost story after waiting for many years before attempting one. That’s what caught my attention in your post; the part about waiting for that perfect ghosts story! I hope it comes to you! The story, not actual ghosts. That would be bad.
😉
-Jimmy
Hi, Jimmy! Thanks for stopping by the new blog. 🙂 Yep, I read your excerpt on your blog and because I have always had a fascination with ghosts, I’ll be looking forward to reading your book when it comes out. My stories always seem to include ghosts or supernatural beings in some shape or form but I have yet to perfect the original story that I tried to write so many years ago. One of these days I will tackle it again though! I’m very comfortable with writing about ghosts and I’m comfortable with believing they are real, too. They aren’t all bad. 😉
Hi Stephanie,
Very nice to meet you. I’m glad to have found your blog. It a very nice lay out.
The following is the same response that I posted for Mae. Your blogs were similar this week so I thought I would share this for both. It was a creepy experience for me.
One night, I was roughly 16, riding my bike home from football practice. I lived two miles outside of a small town. (Rigby, Idaho. The Birthplace of Television!! whoo hooo! lol) and on that ride is a cemetery roughly a quarter of a mile on the way to my childhood home. It was usually dusk on my ride and I was so skittish about that cemetery, even though my little sister is buried there, that I would pick up a lot of speed as I came close and then I would pedal as hard as I could until I was clear of it.
This night however, I was tired of being scared and I decided to just cruise by. As I did so I saw a girl walking along the road on the opposite side walking toward me. when I moved closer I realized she wasn’t on the road, she was on the grass next to the road. Closer still I realized, with the hair standing on the back of my neck, that she wasn’t just on the grass, she was on the other side of the fence; she was inside the cemetery, just walking with her hands in her pockets. she was roughly my age, and she didn’t look up, and it was too dark to really see her face. she had on Levi’s and a plaid button up shirt, with dark black hair. I passed her, not taking my eyes off her, she never looked up. I kept glancing back in her direction thinking she would reach an opening and come out of the fence, come out of the Cemetery, but she never came out.
To this day I wonder about that. Why would a young girl be walking alone at dusk inside the cemetery fence? Even if she wasn’t scared, that’s weird. I’ve never figured it out, and I’ve never told anyone. Thinking on it now, it’s spooky.
Thanks for sharing your experience, M.L.! I enjoyed reading it. It’s another one of those moments when you just don’t know… was it a girl … or was it a ghost? It’s certainly odd that she didn’t look up at you as you passed. (I’m imagining that there wasn’t much else around so you should have caught her attention.)
I’ve always loved walking through cemeteries. As kids, my brother and I considered it a less crowded version of the park and I had an early fascination at reading the tombstones and trying to imagine what the person would have been like while living. As an adult, I still love a walk through the cemetery once in a while. I had an unusual experience a couple of years ago while walking through a very old one in England. I saw (very clearly) a man walking his dog. He was in hurry but never glanced our way. I mentioned him to my husband but my husband didn’t see anything. Odd. It wasn’t my imagination so either I’m crazy, my husband was too distracted, or the man walking his dog was a ghost. Who knows!
By the way, I never knew Rigby, Idaho was the birthplace of TV. Learn something new everyday. 🙂
Absolutely, she was just across the road, very few cars on that route and my bike made a racket from the pedaling. Of course, I believe that my heart makes more of the situation than may be present. I have considered it a lot over the years and I’m not sure what my stance is on beliefs of ghosts and such, other than they give me the hebegeebies. However, my little sister died of pneumonia when I was two. I have brown hair and dark brown eyes, but my father has jet black hair, so it is conceivable that, if there is something paranormal at work, she could have been my little sister. Why else would I be able to see her at that particular moment of my life; what significance of seeing her there could possibly be if she was not my sister.
I don’t know what the answer is, though I do know she was there, whether ghost or flesh, it wasn’t a trick of my mind. It’s a mystery I can never solve. But I could write about it. 😉
I too love to walk through cemeteries, especially very old ones. As I have shared with Mae, my roommate and I found an old cemetery in McCall, Idaho with graves as old as the early 1800’s. It’s sad but amazing, but I couldn’t ever do it at night. lol. After your experience with the old man, in daylight … I’m not sure I would venture in again at high noon. 😉 I’ll bet England is just an amazing place to be. I would love to visit some day.
Yes, as my hometown, that is our one claim to fame. Mr. Philo T. Farnsworth invented the picture tube there and the very first broadcast signal occurred in the basement of Rigby High School.