i'd just like to start out that i'm an atheist and don't believe in an afterlife, but i am open to different cultures and their ideas of religion. i'm not going to stop being an atheist, but i just have a lot of respect for them.
that being said, i have seen something with my own eyes. i'm not sure what i would call it, but the idea of it has 'haunted' me for a while because i have not shared it with many people because i don't want to be ridiculed. i also don't want to tell people who are ghost fanatics, because it just feeds into their mania. i don't care if anyone believes me, but if anyone has had a similar experience, i'd like to hear about it just to know that i'm not going crazy. (which i'm not)
here's the story as accurately as i remember it, and i know our memory is not always 100% and our retelling of stories slightly change over time as well, so whatever...
i was a college student and was visiting milwaukee, wi for the weekend with my friend. one night, i couldn't sleep and went into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. i was listless, so i went to the window and stared out from the second floor. from the left side, what i can only describe as a round ball came into view. it was close to the size of a beachball, but slightly depressed on top so it wasn't a perfect circle. it was solid and i couldn't see through it. It was an opaque color of gray or whatnot. it moved completely smooth. i wasn't frightened and tried to process in my mind what i was seeing. the first thought that entered my mind was 'oh, it's a tumbleweed.' then i was like, 'stupid, there are no tumbleweeds in the city, and tumbleweeds don't move like that.' then, i thought, it moves like a kid on a skateboard, but it obviously wasn't. it was just something i had never encountered before that i was trying to put into a frame of reference that i could understand, but i couldn't. as it moved across the street, it slowed and came to a halt behind a car. i could no longer see it and was still not scared because i didn't know what it was. i kept standing there and waiting. after a few seconds, the object came out from behind the vehicle and went back on its trajectory across the street. i would've been content to watch it move on, but it turned into the driveway of the house i was in. that was when i somehow instinctively knew that it was coming for me, and i bolted.
that's it. it's not really a ghost story, but just something unexplainable. this event has proven to me that there are things beyond our imagination and things we cannot explain in this world, but it hasn't caused me to believe in God. looking back, i think the object sensed me and stopped behind the car. since i continued not to be scared, it came for me. if there are such things as ghosts, i think that is why they gravitate towards children, because children had no idea what a ghost is and why they should fear them.