When you read Edgar Allan Poe at the age of 8, make up ghost stories for your younger siblings, long for some "close encounters," and then finally experience some of your own, I suppose it follows that you're going to join a ghost-hunting group when you're grown up. Maybe the age of 52 may seem a bit old to some, but hey, it's never too late, right?

I joined the Bloomington chapter of Indiana Ghost Trackers this past spring, after hearing about it from a friend who was a member. Looking at the pictures he showed me, my hair rose on the back of my neck and I thought, "This is what I want to be doing." So I attended a meeting with my husband Rob, and we both joined IGT the next month. But it was more than just the pictures that enticed me. It was also the paranormal experiences we had already encountered.

I had once heard a firm whisper save my life when I was about to be electrocuted. And Rob had once heard a voice whisper his name as he lay on his bed one evening in his apartment, a few years before we were married. So it wasn't a complete shock to me when, on a hot summer night, just before sleep took over, I heard someone whisper rather urgently, "Rob!" from the other side of him. I was startled, though not afraid, and I woke Rob by asking, "Did you hear that?!" He had not. But I had, for sure.

That was only the beginning of our paranormal experiences in that apartment on the IU campus. My two adolescent sons, ages 12 and 10, were living with us. Perhaps that is what excited the poltergeist-like activity. Whatever it was, over the next year we heard footsteps upstairs when no one was up there. Items jumped off the walls, while keys were found on the floor beneath a table where they had been placed securely just a minute before. The VCR in our bedroom turned itself on and fast-forwarded and -reversed on its own. (No, it had not been set for sleep.) We felt ourselves being followed up the stairs. In fact, Rob once heard a voice whisper "Someone's coming" as he climbed the steps to bed.

None of this really scared us. It only seemed, well, mischievous. The only time I felt threatened was one weekend when my boys were visiting their grandparents in Indy. I started to go in their room, but I suddenly felt a presence that didn't want me in there and heard a sound as of several voices entwined, whispering menacingly and eerily, "Boys!" Unnerved, I backed out immediately.

The following year, 1992, we moved out of that apartment into a house we had bought several blocks away. At first the experiences seemed to follow us. As I once drove away from the house, I heard Rob yell to me and, looking in my rear-view mirror, saw him standing in the middle of the street. So I turned around and went back to see what he wanted - but he had never come out of the house! My younger son once saw himself approach as he passed the open door of the bathroom, but when he looked in, the bathroom was empty and the mirror, which might have reflected him, was shut.

Not long after that, we got our first pet, and all the paranormal experiences stopped. However, on a walk up near the IU family housing complex where we had lived, Rob met a man from our old apartment and asked him conversationally if he had ever experienced anything other-worldly. The man frowned and said it was curious that he should ask, because his wife claimed to have seen a human figure at the top of the stairs, and their children always seemed to be inexplicably sick.

So although I maintain my motto of "Skeptical but open-minded," I do believe there is more to the world than we can explain, and that sometimes that part of it may intrude into ours - perhaps even wanting to make itself known. This is why I search. And it is also why I am trying to arrange a hunt or an investigation in that old apartment of ours. So far the university, perhaps understandably, is reluctant to allow us in while it is inhabited. Still, if we ever do get to enter, I'll be sure to let you know what we find.