My Ghostly Guardian Pt 1

I've always been what some people would classify as 'sensitive'. Comes from growing up in a haunted house, I guess, where things would go bump in the night with almost daily frequency. I've had many, many ghostly encounters over the years, but nothing like this, and I don't like to tell this particular story often for two reasons. 1) It has a tendency to make the people I'm telling look at me as if I'm crazy and 2) It's very personal in the fact that it changed my life, and how I look at life, completely.

This particular ghost story happened on September 24, 2008 in a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Part 1

If you need to know anything about me, my love for Scotland would be it. For as long as I could remember, I dreamed of going to Scotland. I longed to gaze upon the beauty Glen Shiel, walk across the stone bridge of Eilean Donan, and after two years, my husband and I had finally scrimped and saved enough to make my dream come true. We had hired a touring company to drive us around the country as neither of us trusted the other in attempting to drive on the other side of the road. Our driver was scheduled to pick us up in Inverness the next day, so we had made reservations to stay in Edinburgh for one night before catching the train north in the next morning.

The room we were shown to was nondescript. A bed, couple of chairs, en suite, it was your standard, completely impersonal, hotel room. Not much bigger than a closet, I wasn't impressed with the accommodations at all. I never could have guessed how that small, bland room would stick with me every day since!

After having dinner and exploring our small section of Edinburgh for a few hours, my husband and I decided to turn in. Easy for him. He's always been one of those people who falls asleep the second their head hits the pillow. Not so me. I have a tendency to toss and turn until I can finally turn my brain off and get some sleep. I was laying there on my side and for some reason I started to think about the location of our room. If you looked out of our window, the next building's flat roof was located maybe four feet below our window. Needless to say, it wouldn't have been difficult for someone to cross that roof and break into our room. While I'm laying there, thinking all of these worse case scenarios, I felt a squeeze on my left arm.

"That's kind of weird," I thought to myself before returning to my tortured thinking. Not even twenty seconds later, it happens again, but this time it was HARD. I could actually feel the fingers pressing into my skin! I immediately sat up and started rubbing my arm. "Ouch! That hurt!" I muttered into the darkness, never expecting that I would get an actual reply! "I'm sorry," he whispered into my head as the entire exchange was telepathic. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

Now I've had a lot of ghostly encounters, but I've NEVER experienced anything LIKE THIS. I was having an actual conversation with a ghost. Surprised doesn't quite cut it when describing my reaction. I wasn't frightened. I was never frightened. I was excited! This was INCREDIBLE!

"That's okay," I thought back at him. I can't explain it, but I knew the visitor was a man. "I just wanted you to know that you're safe. I'm on guard. You can go to sleep," he continued.

I will never, ever forget my response to this. I looked down at my husband who was sleeping so soundly and thought, "This is the most incredible moment of my life, and you're ruining it." The ghost obviously found this humorous because I could actually feel his amusement. You must understand that my husband is a super light sleeper, and I was afraid to talk aloud for fear that he would wake up and ruin what was happening.

I did debate waking him up for a long moment, wanting to share this experience, but the ghost's reply stayed my hand. "Don't wake him up. Let this be our moment."

Those words were almost prophetic. Eight years later, and I still remember it as if it were yesterday. My husband was slowly starting to wake up, so I whispered, "Please, don't leave," into the darkened room and laid back down.

And he didn't leave. He traveled with us our entire trip throughout Scotland, but that's for Part 2. And for those of you who read this, no, I never did ask his name. That's always the question I get from the few people I've told this story to. Yes, I could kick myself now, but how can I explain? It just wasn't important at the time. We had connected so far past the use of names that they were completely inconsequential.