It’s Friday night, my parents are gone for the night and left me to watch my sisters. It is 8:55 and I tell my sisters to go into their room at least. They know what I am planing on watching, so they don’t give any complaints. I go around the house and turn off all but one light and grab my phone for the commercials. I sit down in the recliner and put my feet up for, at that time, a new episode of my favorite show. As I sit there I think back to how I grew to be able to watch a show of this genre.
It starts on a Wednesday June 17, 2009. I was getting ready to go to my religion class so I was watching cartoon network and it just so happened that they were trying a new block on their schedule called CN real. I didn’t really know what was on so I sat down and decided to watch.
The show that they were airing at that time was a new show called The Othersiders, and it was about following a group of kids that are paranormal investigators; as they go to different haunted locations to see if they are truly haunted.
I didn’t really see much of the episode because I had to leave, but some of the things that were in the episode stuck with me for  the rest of the night.
When we got home from religion that night I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn't because I kept flashing back to the episode that I saw earlier on the show. Eventually I went out to the living room where my mom was talking on the phone.
“Alex go to bed.”, she said when she saw me
“I can’t.” I replied.
“I’ll call you back in a second, I have a child to deal with.” She said to whoever she was talking to. She hung up the phone, looked at me and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“I keep thinking of what I saw on the show I watched earlier.”
She scooted over on the couch and patted the spot next to her. I walked over and sat down. she raised her arm and draped it over my shoulder.
“What sort of things did you see”
“There was one shot where they showed a chair, and later it wasn’t there. When they looked around they found scratches on the floor and when they found it it was not anywhere near where it was before.”
She gives me a little side hug, releases and looks at me. “You know that most of those shows are fake right?”
“But they said that it was real.” was my answer.
“Just because they say that it is true doesn’t mean that it is true. Do you get what I’m saying?”
I look at her and nod.
“Good now get to bed it’s past your bedtime and you have school tomorrow.”
I get up and start to head back to my room I pause as I go into the hallway, looked at my mom and say, “Good night”
She looks at me and says, “Goodnight Alex.”
Fast forward two year to our trip to Arkansas to visit my grandparents. I was trying to entertain myself because my sisters were using the portable DVD player and I didn’t feel like reading at that moment. I pulled out my phone and saw that I had something that is extremely rare on this trip, Phone service.
I go to Youtube and start to watch some videos when my mom looks back and asks “Anyone need to go to the bathroom, because we are stopping at Walmart to get something quick and you should go now if you need to.”
We pull into the parking lot and I step out with phone in hand and headphones in ears as we walk into the store. As I am sitting on the bench waiting for everyone to get out of the bathroom I am scrolling through videos and come across one labeled best of Ghost Adventures. Curious, I select to watch it not knowing what was in store for me.
As I watch it I notice that there I do get scared of somethings but not all of it was as terrifying like I thought it was. I make a decision to at some point look into watching a full episode in the future.
I didn't have to wait long though, because it turned out that on Youtube some people uploaded some episodes. So I look into it and decide on which one to watch.
I made my decision and I must admit that I made one of the worst decisions on which one to watch fist, I choose to watch their episode on Bobby Mackey's Music World.
As I watched the episode I started to notice that I got little goosebumps along my arm. I then started to shiver and felt my heartbeat speed up as they went into nightvision and started the investigation. I found myself jumping at scenes when there was an EVP or shadows moving.
When I finished with the episode I was absolutely terrified. However this did not stop me from clicking on another episode and watching it.
By the time we got to my grandparents house I had seen a few episodes and was scared out of my mind. However that night I was able to get to sleep at a relatively good time. I decide that since I fell asleep I would watch more episodes in the future.
As time went on I found myself being less and less scared of paranormal shows and watching more shows involving the paranormal. Shows like Ghost Hunters, Paranormal Collector, and Finding Bigfoot.
I think through all of this as I sit and wait for the newest episode of Ghost Adventures. I think of how had I not clicked on and watched that one Youtube video I may not have beaten that fear down or become a believer in the paranormal.