There wasn’t any noise that woke me. I just woke up. I was suddenly wide-awake, my mind clear as a bell. I didn’t hear, or at first see, anything unusual. But, as I rose up on my elbows in my bed so that I could look around, I saw the old black man's face peering around one of the doorways down the hall! He was visible in the night light's glow as he gazed down the short hallway into my bedroom. He was looking at me! I was five years old, and I screamed bloody murder! My family was white and we didn't have anyone black living with us, so I assumed an intruder had entered our home!

      To add to my fright the old black man had by now ventured farther around the doorway and was standing in the hallway, having moved closer to me! He wore khaki pants, a plaid shirt, and black dress shoes. As I stared in disbelief and fear he maintained his steady gaze, his eyes never once leaving mine. My heart was racing and my mouth was dry!

      The old black man was not smiling. But neither was his look menacing. His close-cropped white hair gave him an almost regal appearance as he stared at me with a benign, slightly bemused expression as if he were intrigued by this strange white child who was living in what I now believe was his home…when he'd roamed this corner of the Earth in a physical body!

      By now I was sitting straight up in bed, the tears streaming down my face, and as I howled again he slowly vanished, beginning at his feet, and he slowly disappeared up the height of his body until he was all gone, his head and face vanishing last! That benign, slightly bemused expression never left his handsome face.

      As my parents came running, I began screaming at the top of my lungs that there was someone in the house (even though I’d just seen him disappear!), and I begged them to turn on the lights and look for the old black man. So powerful was the sense of reality and urgency I conveyed that they did indeed turn on every light in the house, and they looked through every room and in every closet. I think they even looked under the beds!

      Of course, they found no one, and therefore they insisted it had been a bad dream. A child's nightmare.

      I knew better.

      I had seen someone. Someone who was just as solid as you or I, someone who had subsequently vanished into thin air when I saw him and began to yell. And I finally realized what else I had just seen.

      I had seen my first ghost!

      It took me long hours to get back to sleep! I peered down the hallway (my parents had left the big hall light on for me) wondering when the ghost would come back, and what he would want with me? What would he say to me, what would he ask me? Would he want me to do something that I would consider frightening?

      I never saw him again, and I'm now 48. But I remember him as clearly as if the incident had happened this morning!

      He was the first of many ghosts I would come to see, the harbinger of the beginning of my paranormal life. Life lived at the edge of the veil, that veil which separates the worlds that we perceive as “physical” and “spiritual.”

      To that old black man, that old black ghost: I never knew your name, Sir, nor have I seen you since...but it is to you that I fondly dedicate this book.

      Thank you for opening the portal. It’s been one incredible journey for me, and as for you my friend, I hope you found your way. And please come see me again. I’ve missed you. And this time, I promise not to scream!