Leah Newton

What started as a fun trip with a friend to the historical town of Charleston South Carolina turned out to be much more for the then fourteen year old Leah Newton. “I’m pretty sure a ghost touched me.” said Newton who’s now sixteen and lives with her mother Colleen, her step dad Paul, and her step brother Michael. Leah a typical teenage girl works as a lifeguard and for the most part lives a normal, healthy life. But in one instance that was not the case. Sydney Brenner a good friend of Newton invited her to go to Charleston with her family one summer. It turns out this memorable trip with a friend was remember for an abnormal reason.

The day started out as planned with a car ride to Charleston from Myrtle Beach South Carolina, once there they did what most people would do and looked around the historical sights and bought some souvenirs and shopped a little bit. After a while Sydney’s mother brought the two young teens tickets she had purchased for a haunted Ghost tour. They got tickets to the last tour of the night, and at approximately nine in the evening they entered the decommissioned jail and started their tour. The tour was fairly spooky at the start, but as the night went on it became more and more frightening. Newton mentioned seeing a face and several orbs, though she admits that some of it could have been her mind playing tricks on her due to the setting she was in. However, she is certain she saw at least one face. The tours excitement dulled down a little bit, but once they entered the last room that changed. The group walked in and the tour guide turned off her flashlight which was the only light source nearby at this point. “I couldn’t even see Sydney next to me” said Leah who was standing in the back of the group with her back to the wall of the jail cell. “I was standing up against the wall and I felt something behind me” Newton continued “I felt something breathe on me”. “It was a really small room, there was no windows in it” which leads Leah to believe it couldn’t have been a gentle breeze from an outside source. Leah nervously whispers to her friend “There’s something behind me”, and she continued by saying, “I felt something touch me down my back”, the entity left in a hurry “it was gone before the lady was done talking”. She summed up the experience by saying “It was hot and it was pitch black, it was creepy”.

Newton and Brenner both startled by what had just occurred went back to their hotel room after the tour. They talked continuously about what had just happened and eventually Leah had Sydney look at her back where she believed she was scratched. Leah thought her friend was just playing a simple joke on her when she said there was scratch marks on her back. So Leah wanted to check for herself “I look in the mirror and there’s threes scratch marks down my back”. “Something clawed me” she proclaimed. The ghost tour lived up to the girls expectations so well, that they decided to go back the following year. Leah says “The second time I went on the tour nothing happened... standing in the same spot and everything, and I didn’t feel anything”. When confronted with a question about the paranormal she responds with “it’s actually real, it’s a thing”. “That’s something I would never expect” the young and innocent girl says about her experience. Overall she thought of it as a unique experience that she doesn’t regret.

By Joseph Preseren