Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

My dad was, and still is, a volunteer fireman in our town. The basement of his firehouse was converted into a relaxing area, with a pool table, TVs, and an electronic game system (with games like virtual air hockey or Conquest). Being a kid, I enjoyed going down there whenever my dad brought me along to the firehouse. I had been going there since I was 4 years old, and nothing remotely strange had ever happened. So when I went down there one day when I was about 9 or 10, I expected nothing. I walked down the stairs slowly, since the light switch was at the bottom of the stairs (why, I’ll never know…). The layout worked as such:

The stairs led down, but you had to turn through a door on the left to get into the room. Sorry, had to put that in there, it’s somewhat important. Anyway, when I got to the bottom I began feeling around for the light switch on the wall, but something felt… well, odd. I turned to my left and was met with, not darkness, but a faint light in the shape of a person. It looked like a fireman, in full uniform: yellow coat and gas mask. There were three problems with this picture that I noticed right away.

1. There were no recent fire calls.
2. His jacket was yellow… yellow jackets hadn’t been used in this firehouse since before my dad was born.
3. Most firemen weren’t see-through.

So, of course, I ran like the devil himself was chasing me up the stairs and to the office room my dad was in. I tugged on his sleeve, saying repeatedly that there was someone downstairs in the basement. To appease me, he went back down the stairs with me. We got to the bottom, flipped on the light switch, and saw that the door wasn’t even open. The landing at the bottom is small, there’s no way another person could have fit there. On top of that, when my dad tried to open it, he couldn’t. The door was locked, and the key was upstairs in the office.

When he went back up to check, it was still there, hanging on the key ring just like it did before we went down to check. My dad was in the office the whole time; no one went down into or came back from the basement.

By anonymous, Copyright 2009