A Real Ghost Story

What Did I See?

Photo by Ярослав Гринько on Unsplash

I was working for Blue Cross in Syracuse, New York in the early 2000's. We had a new office building, but it had been built on land that had previous buildings back to the founding of the city. I am an early person and with two elementary school aged children at the time with after school obligations, I would go into the office at 5AM and have three very productive hours before most of my co-workers arrived and my meetings started.

Only the security lights were on and I didn't turn on any other lights because I would go to my office to work. My office was in a row of five offices on the far side of the 3rd floor. One morning I arrived before 5, turned on the lights in my office, put down my briefcase and coat, then walked out to get coffee. I looked to my right down the row of offices and saw a man in a trench coat, wearing a fedora and carrying a briefcase.

He walked into my friend Andy's office. He did not look like Andy and Andy was a late person, usually getting to the office after 9. I walked down the row, maybe 50 feet, without taking my eyes off of the office door. I was concerned because there might be someone in our "secure" building that wasn't supposed to be there and the light in the office had not been turned on. I got to the office door and the room was empty. I turned on the light and confirmed no one was there. It would have been impossible for someone to go into the office and then walk out because I was a only a few feet away and I did not look anywhere else other than the office door.

Did I see a "ghost"?

I looked up the Catholic Church’s teaching on “ghosts” for this story. There really isn’t anything substantial on whether they exist or don’t exist but many Church thinkers had acknowledged that a soul could be between life and heaven/hell. Did I see a soul that was in purgatory? Going to his job every day in the afterlife?

I did not feel any fear at all when I saw the figure, even though I was alone in the dark office building. That would make me think that the figure didn’t pose any threat. He was not evil, I would hope if he had been I would have had some instinct to be afraid.

When I was in the Army I had the chance to visit the Dachau Memorial. Please go if you ever are near Munich. I know it was self-induced but the feeling of walking through the memorial was a vision of evil. I felt the murdered, I could feel their horror pushing down on me. The size of the camp was shocking. I understood the definition of “deafening silence” as I walked the gravel paths. The scale of the killing was far greater than I ever imagined. I knew why the first American soldiers that liberated the camp lined up the Nazi guards that hadn’t escaped and executed them.

Another possibility is that I saw this figure not very long before I almost died from pancreatitis. My triglycerides were out of control and my pancreas was shutting down, was this a sign that I myself was close to the afterlife? Was a close enough for a glimpse to the other side?

I felt nothing but curiosity when this man showed himself to me. He posed no threat, I knew that somehow. He was not evil, based on how I felt when I was in Germany.

What did I see?