As many of you probably know, I have lived in Summit Hill most of my life having been born and reared here in this hilltop community.

I can remember my very first interest in ghosts was with my friend Rich who told me about a ghost in the basement of the church near his house. We were about 9 or 10 years old at the time and I thought it would be cool to actually see one. I heard about them at the time but I never saw one. We went over to the church one afternoon in the fall if I remember correctly. Rich showed me which window was best to see "the ghost."He peered in and then had me peek, and we saw something in the corner of the basement, but to be quite honest, I cannot remember what it was. I am fairly certain to this day though it was not a "ghost" but something silhouetted in the dark basement.Rich also told me about a house up the street from his in the alley. That became our next "haunted venue."He told me things would happen when you spy on the house so we watched from the alley for a few days to see if anything would occur that was out of the ordinary. Nothing much happened the first day or the second day, but I remember the next time we went back as we watched from the alley the back screen door on the basement of the house opened and slammed shut on its own, startling us.I have to admit that shocked me and to this day, I am really not sure what we saw. As a 10-year-old in an unfamiliar neighborhood, I was not brave enough to see if someone was pulling a trick on us or even if Rich was pulling a prank on me, but the experience was enough to trigger an interest in ghosts.A few evenings later, Rich told me to come back over. We went past the house again and as we watched a light appeared in the room, traveled across the room and disappeared.I gave this strange occurrence some thought for several weeks and although I am not positive, my guess was what we saw were headlights from a car on the street. To this day I think that would explain what we saw that evening, but I cannot be certain.All I know is at the time it was a thrill.Our days of pretending to be ghost hunters soon disappeared into other boys' activities, but the idea of ghosts never left my mind. When I finally was old enough to move up to the middle school and the larger library there I was ecstatic. In that library I found a collection of ghost stories that was so good, I think I borrowed it and read it from cover to cover at least three or four times if not more. To this day I cannot recall if the short stories were supposed to be true or not but in the middle of the dark winter's nights they were enough to stoke my imagination and excite me.I often wondered what it would be like to be one of those people encountering a ghost for the first time.It was around this time I learned about the infamous Amityville Horror in Amityville on Long Island in New York. Excerpts of the story were published in the "Good Housekeeping" magazine my mother bought and I kept that story to read and reread it. It frightened me and intrigued me simultaneously.I would later learn that the story itself has been debunked as a likely fraud.George and Kathy Lutz claimed they were driven from their home and terrorized by this entity across the country, but investigators later on claim the story was most likely concocted by the Lutzes and author Jay Anson. The book has led to several legal actions and while a solid conclusion has never really been determined, it should be noted the house's subsequent owners never had any unusual occurrences in the house.The next story that grabbed my attention was in seventh or eighth grade when I learned about the Bell Witch. This was a shocking story about how the attraction of some children to a strange anomaly in a cave, a disembodied voice that spoke led to a family's personal disaster. The Bell Witch was terrifying. It attacked the family whose children discovered it and continued a relentless assault until the patriarch supposedly died from the vicious assaults. I read it with disbelief wondering if such horror actually existed, let alone committed such a heinous act.Years later in a matter similar to Amityville, I found a website that purports to dismiss the legend of the Bell Witch as a fabrication as well. Skeptics consider it an example of 19th century Southern folklore. In defense of that stance, there is no firsthand or secondhand account of the activities that occurred with regard to the case. The story includes accounts of attacks on patriarch John Bell culminating in his poisoning by the Witch, as well as a fight with President Andrew Jackson who retreated from the home. There is no proof of either encounter. Jackson has never written anywhere that historians have found about a Bell Witch.Legends are a fabric of our lives but we must always remember they are oral history and the truth is really a nugget within a great story. They are fun to hear and tell, but not necessarily academically accurate. What do you think?'Till next time…