Encounters with the Unseen: What My Ghost Stories Taught Me About Energy

I don’t talk about this very often, but Halloween always brings it out of me. It’s the one time of year when people actually share their strange encounters—those quiet stories that usually stay tucked away. Maybe it’s the collective curiosity that opens a doorway, or maybe the veil really does thin a bit this time of year. Either way, it feels right to finally tell a few of mine.

I’ve had experiences that made me question the limits of what we call “real.” They’ve shown me that the world we move through every day—the solid, 3D one—might only be the outermost layer of something much more intricate.

The Woman of Light

I was eight or nine when it first happened. My parents had set the timer on my TV, and when it clicked off, the room fell into complete darkness. The kind of basement dark that feels thick, like it has weight.

A flash of light came from the bathroom connected to my room, and out of that light stepped a woman—fully illuminated, as if her light was flowing through her. She walked toward me, calm and radiant, and I did what any terrified child would do: I hid under the blanket. But even under the covers, I could still see the glow.

I remember her reaching out and gently touching my cheek before everything went black and I fell asleep. Looking back, I realize I wasn’t just scared—I think my nervous system was overwhelmed, and it shut down the only way it knew how. But when I woke up, the fear had shifted into something else. Wonder. Curiosity. A sense that there was more.

The Shadow in France

Years later, while on vacation with my husband, we were staying in a quiet hotel room. He had fallen asleep right away, as he always does, and I was still unwinding. The room was peaceful—but then something felt off.

I glanced toward the far side of the room and noticed that I couldn’t see the wall behind it anymore. It wasn’t shadow in the normal sense—it was darker than dark, like the light itself had been swallowed.

As my eyes adjusted, I realized the darkness had shape. It was tall—almost as tall as the ceiling—and narrow, not bulky, just there. And then I saw them: two white eyes, staring right at me.

I didn’t panic. I’ve had experiences like this before, and I simply asked it, quietly, to leave. But it didn’t. Instead, the moment I closed my eyes, it was like I was pulled into a dream that wasn’t a dream. I felt like I was falling out of bed, over and over, but every time I opened my eyes, I was still in the same position. Then, in that same in-between space, I saw a boy standing in the corner. When I opened my eyes, he was gone. It was strange—like the figure was showing me images, manipulating what I saw inside my mind.

The whole thing felt like a hallucination layered on top of reality—something that was both happening in me and around me. When I researched later, I found that other people have seen similar beings, often described as “shadow figures” with white eyes. Some say they bring a kind of paralysis or dreamlike sensations, which helped me make sense of what I’d felt. It didn’t make it less real—it just helped me see that others had touched the same strange edge of experience.

The Scent of Memory

After my grandmother passed away, her perfume began showing up in the hallway. I didn’t own it, hadn’t smelled it in years. It wasn’t faint either—it was like she’d just walked through. No words, no apparition, just scent. The subtlest way to say, I’m still here.

Moments like that remind me that energy doesn’t vanish; it transforms. Whether it’s the chemical energy of scent molecules or the vibrational imprint of love itself, it finds a way to be felt.

The Dream Whisper

The most startling experience came during sleep—or something that felt close to it. I was aware I was dreaming, surrounded by a white static haze. Out of the corner of my vision, a man approached so fast I couldn’t move. He leaned in and whispered boo.

I woke instantly, my ear ringing as though someone had spoken right into it. It was the first time a dream crossed into physical sensation, and to this day, I can’t explain it. Maybe it was an energy being interacting with me. Maybe it was consciousness blurring the boundary between planes. But whatever it was, it changed how I think about reality.

Skepticism and the Search for Meaning

For a long time, I didn’t know what to do with these experiences. In my teenage and early adult years, I actually considered myself an atheist. Not because I didn’t believe in the unseen—but because none of the religions I’d encountered seemed to hold what I’d felt. They felt more like systems to follow than mysteries to explore.

Still, I could never shake the truth of what I’d seen and sensed. It was too clear, too physical, too real. And as I began studying yoga and energy work later in life, the language I’d been missing finally arrived.

Yoga doesn’t deny the unseen—it explains it. It speaks of prana, life force; of the subtle body, where energy and consciousness flow; and of lokas, the many planes of existence. Reading about those teachings was like remembering something I already knew. I didn’t need to label what I’d seen as ghost or angel. It was all energy—different frequencies of the same universal field.

Energy Has Many Forms

Through all of these encounters, one truth keeps returning: we don’t live in the 3D world—we live through it. The physical is only one layer of a much larger field of consciousness.

So when people talk about ghosts, spirits, ancestors, or angels, I don’t see them as fantasy. I see them as frequencies that sometimes overlap with ours, just enough for the senses to notice. We’re all part of the same web—some forms visible, some not.

These experiences remind me that being open to the unseen doesn’t mean rejecting logic; it means holding space for mystery. Curiosity is a bridge between the physical and the subtle. And every time I’ve crossed it, I’ve learned something new about what it means to exist.

Staying Curious

I share these stories because I know I’m not the only one. So many people have felt things they can’t explain, but they hesitate to talk about them. Maybe they’re afraid of being judged, or maybe they just don’t have the language for what they’ve felt.

But the yogic lens gives us that language—it reminds us that energy takes many forms, and not all of them are visible. If we can hold that truth with openness instead of fear, these experiences become less about ghosts and more about awareness.

Maybe Halloween isn’t about fear at all. Maybe it’s the one time of year when we’re collectively willing to admit there’s more to existence than what our eyes can prove.

Have you ever felt something unexplainable—a scent, a presence, a flicker of knowing that didn’t quite belong to the physical world?
I’d love to hear your story.

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