I never believed in ghosts or apparitions up until the age of thirteen. The story I’m about to tell happened when I was in high school,and at the time scared the life out of me. It occurred one night while at my friend’s house. Quite a few mates of mine, male and female, visited out of the same classes and got together every week around about the same night. And on that night we hung around the streets as typical teenagers did. Up the lane near my mates there was a church along with a graveyard, it was a large one at that. Considering the amount of times we visited our mates, all of us were quite curious of going through it as teenagers do, so that is what we did. Unafraid and fearless, we were. We entered the graveyard, walked all the way through it, then came all the way back, did our usual thing for the night, and then went home.

For a few weeks, we did this and then one night in late October something weird happened. All of us went to our mates’ house then hung around the streets and near the graveyard. This particular night we did not enter it. We were standing near the wall when one mate of mine asked had I just seen a black figure standing near one of the gravestones. So I explained that I did not. Then as we all turned round to see what he meant, it was then we saw the figure of a monk standing as my mate said, near the gravestone. Just for a split second we all froze and never said a word. From then on, from my mates’ house to going all the way home, I think everyone was in some sort of shock. No one spoke or mentioned as to what we all encountered up until next day. After that the whole school found out, then our parents got news of our spooky experience. We saw the monk figure a couple of times on different occasions.

Then it was what happened next which was most interesting. About three months later, I was reading an article in our local paper when I came across this picture of this church and graveyard, and to my amazement was the same one, the one we had been through. The story was explaining members of the public who had experienced figures of a hooded figure of a monk. I’m 42 now and still think of that experience, more so the reason being spirits must exist, well, after the news article anyway.