Ghost stories are as old as the time of man. One of the first texts of the Western world describes a ghost talking to Homer in the “Iliad.” People are fascinated with the idea that there is something beyond the grave which can come back to interact with everyday people. When you ask someone if he or she believes in ghosts, it seems a division where one side usually scoffs and saying it’s rubbish, or someone on the other side usually has a ghost story of their own.I believe that in order to truly believe in ghosts you must have an experience with paranormal activity. I myself have had several. When you see something that you can’t deny nor blame on outside forces, you stop and ask yourself, “why are they here?”A lot of the time people say it is because a person who has died has not accepted to pass over into the spirit world. It is believed that the ghost has unresolved issues that it must work out until it can pass on.Scott Sudzina, a sophomore sport, arts and entertainment major at Point Park University brings up a good point about the scientific evidence for ghosts. “There is too much evidence that leads towards the belief in ghosts,” Sudzina said. “The thing that has really done it for me is that there’s an experiment where energy, like life energy, goes after you die. There is no way to destroy energy. It just kind of dissipates. So there’s really no explanation for where that goes.”I spent time when I was a child with my uncle, who was a ghost hunter, in several cemeteries. One cemetery sticks…out in my mind: Pinewood Cemetery in Troy, N.Y. It hasn’t had any burials in many years and is now closed off to the public, but it is said to be built on top of an even older Indian burial ground. This cemetery has made it into the top 10 “most haunted” cemeteries in the country.The worst part is the activity is known for being malicious.When entering the grounds, you find that you’ll have a hard time locating graves.  The grounds are so overgrown and most of the graves are broken, however, you can find a collapsed crypt and two statues with their heads knocked off.We didn’t hear or feel anything until we walked to the statues. I walked up and touched the statue and all of a sudden my body went hot. An unexplained thrashing started coming from all sides of us, like people were running around us. We started to run back out of the cemetery. As we made it to the gates, we heard a ferocious growl so loud it didn’t sound as if any animal of normal proportions could make the noise.After that, I decided my days as a ghost hunter were over.Not all stories of paranormal activity are as negative as mine.Dylan Grunn, a sophomore advertising major at Point Park, lived in a bed-and-breakfast inn with his parents. The inn was rumored to be haunted, but neither Dylan nor his parents believed in ghosts. For the first five or six years, nothing out of the ordinary ever happened.”My mother liked to have big Victorian balls where people would get dressed up and dance,” Grunn said. “We would always have pianos all around.  We had two in the basement because that’s where we would have our balls. One night after one of the balls, everyone was getting ready for bed. All of a sudden we heard this piano playing, so my mom went downstairs, and to our surprise no one was down there.  So we went back to bed and my mom kept hearing it more and more. We thought it was kind of like a way of them thanking us for doing something like that, I don’t like the term “haunted house.” I feel like it has a negative [connotation]. I don’t think ghosts are bad or evil.”Whatever your experience, good or bad, it is hard to deny that paranormal activity exists when you experience it yourself. In my case, I’m done searching for what’s out there. I have learned that it is easy to mess with the wrong kind of paranormal activity. I am much happier with cinema’s theatrical take on ghost stories; I will enjoy being scared from inside a movie theater as opposed to inside a cemetery.