My whole life I've been different. I know, how cliche of me right? No really, I've always been slightly odd compared to the other kids, family, and co-workers.

By the time I got to 3rd grade, I was, for no obvious reasons, obsessed with the paranormal, UFOs were my expertise. I'd spend hours on end reading about close encounters, sightings, and abductions. My favorite books were The Andreasson Affair, The Arizona Woodcutter (later popularized as Fire in the Sky), and a compilation of abduction cases who's name escapes me at the moment. During school, I'd draw pictures of Greys and talk to my friends about aliens and ghosts.

My infatuation with ETs was rather peculiar, but my deep interests in ghosts was due to the fact that the house I grew up in (you guessed it) was haunted. The house was about 150 years old when my dad got it. Strange experiences were the norm in this house. Electronics going off and on for no reason, strange numbers appearing on the microwave (even when we replaced it), and footsteps running up and down the stairs at night were part of our daily lives. There was a period of about 3 months where I'd hear footsteps come up the stairs (which were very squeaky) into my room (even though the door was closed), right up to my bed, and sometimes I'd feel small puffs of air on my face, like someone breathing.

My inexplicable draw to everything paranormal led me down an obvious path of curiosity. So when I was around 10 years old and I found a Ouija Board under my mom's side of my parent's bed, the only logical conclusion I could come to at the time was to try it out. I was home alone (my older brother was in his room out in the garage) so I decided to call my best buddy who lives on the other side of the woods (our back yards let out into the same large forest). We got it out and started with all the dumb questions one could expect from a pre-teen boy; "does such-and-such girl think I'm cute?", "will I be rich someday?", "will I die young?", etc. (all of which were "no" by the way haha). Of course we thought the other was moving the pointer to scare the other. When we realized that this thing was in fact moving on it's own, we kinda freaked out. I folded it up and ran to put it away, bumping the corner of it on the doorway on my way in.

After that I never really thought about it again, until about two weeks later.

It was around three a.m. Christmas morning.

When I woke, the first thing I noticed was that I couldn't breathe. Next was that I couldn't move, and after that, that I couldn't scream. My covers were off and in a pile in the middle of the room and there was a white fog-like shape hovering over me. I could feel pressure, a physical force, holding me down at my shoulders, hips, and knees. It hurt. I was to the point I thought I would pass out from lack of oxygen, and all at once it stopped.

I was in my parent's bedroom hysterical within two thirds of half a nano-second. I explained what had happened and my dad dismissed it as 'a bad dream'. My mom was a little more sympathetic and let me lay down on the floor at the foot of their bed. As soon as I began to dose off it happened again. I was rolled onto my back (I always sleep on my side) and I was paralyzed. And the same thing happened, as soon as I got dizzy like I would switch off, it stopped. This time there was no calming me down. My dad finally gave in and stayed up with me for about an hour, in which time we prayed over our family Bible, and he explained to me that if I call to Jesus to help me, nothing stands a chance. After that, it stopped.

I told this story to illustrate a point about myself: since I can remember I've been a magnet for paranormal activity. This isn't the only time something like this has happened to me, but this was the first major experience I had. It made me very aware that there is another part of reality, a part that we cant always see or explain, but is there none-the-less. After that, experiences became quite the norm for me. I'd see spirits pretty regularly. They didn't look like ghosts. They appeared as thin, colored outlines of people. And I began having very long, intricate, lucid dreams.

I became completely obsessed with ghosts.

One day, I was talking to my mom about it, and I mentioned that I felt different than other people because these things happened to me so frequently. She asked me if I thought it had anything to do with Tigerlily. I was confused, I had no idea what she was talking about. So I asked her about it and this is what she told me...

During the ages of 4 and 5, I'd wake up every morning, run to my mom, and tell her all about what happened the previous night in a place I called Tigerlily. Apparently, every night "strange people" would come to my room and take me to a "place in the sky" called Tigerlily. I'd tell her about the strange people and animals and things we'd do there. This happened almost every night for a little over a year. My mom told me she had kept a journal of all the things I told her, but by the time this had come up, we couldn't find it and her memory could only account for what I just described.

This has always been a great mystery in my life. I confirmed what my mom told me with my older siblings. They also remembered about as much as my mother did. What I find so interesting about it is that I have no memory about it. This is something amazing that happened to me on an almost daily basis for over a year, but I have no recollection at all about it. I can remember things before and after that period of time, but when I try to remember anything from that time in my life, I get nothing.

I hate to say that I'm special, or spiritually different from normal people. That's the kind of crap that wanna-be-witches and idiots suffering with delusions of grandeur spout out. But what else am I supposed to think? I know I'm different. Even my personality is very unique. I've never fit into any one genre at any point in my life. I'm part geek (computers, electronics, books), musician (guitar, singing, writing), and jock (running, fighting, weight training). Yet, despite my personality being all over the map, I've always been a natural leader. In school, kids from every click would flock to me. I was by no means a "cool kid", but I always had a large group of friends.

Another thing, maybe a tad more mundane than the others, is that I've always been very large for my age. When we moved to the town I would grow up in, I was half way through first grade. My first day in my new school, I walked into the classroom and I could hear the kids whispering about me. The only thing I remember verbatim is "he looks like a third grader". By the time I was 12 I was six feet tall and about 250lbs. Now at 26 years old I've topped off (hopefully) at 6'7, 230lbs.

Besides the complexity of my personal psyche and my physical stature, my life has always been very dramatic and eventful (as can be gathered from my blog "An American Horror Story", which as dramatic as it is, is hardly a percentage of my story). I've always felt very strongly that something is guiding me toward something. DejaVu and synchronicity are also very common events in my life to this day. I also have strange occurrences in my sleep. The instance that pops in my head is this; One night, while I was living with a girlfriend, she told me that I had gotten out of bed, walked to the corner of the room, got on my hands and knees, and started rocking back and forth, lightly banging my head into the junction of walls, all while chanting in "what sounded like a foreign language". This of course I had no memory of. The chanting in another language still happens, maybe once every two or three years.

I've tried researching my experience with Tigerlily, but my search has thus far been fruitless. I've never found anyone else with a similar story. I've scoured the internet, blogs, chatrooms, books, alternative churches, you-name-it. Tigerlily is the greatest mystery of my life, and from what I gather, may be the cause of this link I seem to have with the paranormal.