The Catholic Church Ghost Sighting

My mother was a catholic and I was brought up with the same values and believes from an early age. As a child I served as an Altar boy at my local church from 11 years old to 15 years old. The church "Our Lady & St Philip Neri Catholic Church " was next to my school and many times I was called out of my lessons to help assist the priest in weddings and funeral ceromonys. I did not mind this as the priests were great and I often got a tip from a family member from the wedding or funeral at the end of the service.

Of course I was to young to understand why people were so upset at the funerals and so happy at the weddings. All I knew was that I had a routine and serving a funeral and the odd wedding every week was part of my life. I had always believed in God and I still do to this very day. While people at the funerals and the weddings were going through the emotions that you would expect, I on the other hand was thinking about what I needed to do to help assist the priest, when was it time for me to stand, kneel, and ring the bell at certain times during the service was all that was on my mind.

There were many times in my childhood when I needed to attend church to help serve as an Altar boy, I had to serve First Holy Communions, Conformations and Easter and Christmas masses. It was on Christmas Eve when I was serving midnight mass that I saw something that I still can't believe I saw even today,18 years on. Something that made me realise that serving as an Altar boy and being a catholic was no mundane routine, but was actually something special, something truly magical.

I am a still a catholic and I do have strong believes in Jesus and the holy spirit and everything, but I am not up to date with the church as I have not been for many years. I always state to my friends that I don't need to go anymore as I always joke that the many hours that I had attended church as an Altar boy was my time served with the church. This is not true however, the reason that I don't go to church anymore is because I believe Jesus is everywhere, and even though I don't visit his home, he visits mine all the time. The church is manmade, the Earth was made by God so as far as I see it, I can pray to Jesus anywhere. Don't get me wrong , I love the church and I plan on being married there and holding my funeral there, but I don't feel the need to hang out there every weekend.

It was December the 24th 1989 and I was around 13 years old, everyone was excited about going to midnight mass and I was even more excited as I was going to be serving it. Now as I mentioned before, I am not up to date with the church so things may have changed a little, but then again when does the church ever change, that's a whole other story I guess. Well in my day the church would have an Easter ceremony and this would be celebrating "Good Friday" when Jesus had been crucified leading up to when he returned back to earth "Easter Day". Now what I remember is during the whole year there would be a light, a red light shining in a glass tube in the church. This light represented Christ being alive, and on Good Friday the light would be taken down to show that Jesus had died, and then it would be put back up on Easter day to celebrate that Christ was not dead but had only returned to Heaven to be with his father. It was this red light that always intrigued me and it was this very same light that showed me something that I still can not get my head around today.

Christmas mass was the same as any other year, the church was packed out and instead of the usual 2-3 Alter boys, we had about 6 Altar boys as it was a special day. The day was of course, celebrating Jesus being born and the mass lasted about an hour. There was plenty of Altar boys as we all had our own tasks to do and mine was to go into the back of the church halfway through the mass and collect the thurible which is a metal ball suspended from chains that the priest uses to burn his incense during the mass. As we got halfway through the mass, the head Altar boy gave me a nod that it was time for me to go out the back of the church and collect the thurible and I stood up and made my way down the stairs to were I was told the thurible would be.

Now the back of the church was only made up of a few rooms, one room was the changing room for Altar boys and the other room was the priests dressing room where he kept all of his clerical clothing, holy communion, bottles of blessed wine and other items and materials that he may need for his masses. It was in the far end corner of the priests room that I was told I would find the thurible, and the head Altar boy was standing at the top of the stairs waiting for me to collect it, so he could light it for me before I gave it to the priest. Only when I stepped towards the thurible did I feel something else watching me, as if I had someone standing right behind me. I swung around and to my astonishment, there in the other corner was the red light in the tube that I had always been intrigued by, but it was not the red light in the tube that made my hairs stand on end, it was the image of an Angel that hovered above the light that made me turn white as a ghost.

I still remember the image as if I only saw it yesterday, it was a white image in a dress, it had open arms and didn't seem to have a head. It hovered over the light as if it was protecting it. I remember freezing to the spot until I heard the head Altar boy calling out my name to get a move on. When I turned around and headed back up the stairs with the thurible I still remember the look on the head Altar boys face. He looked as white as I felt and he looked scared. It was then that I had to give him a nudge to light the thurible as he also now seemed to be glued to the spot. I remember him looking at me with this frightened look on his face. Now he wasn't around my age at all, in fact this Altar boy was well into his 50's which was why he was the head Altar boy, and a man of that age with such a frightened look on his face just confirmed to me what I had seen. A Ghost, Angel, or maybe just a spirit, but I had seen something not of this world.

I will never forget it and I will also never deny it, which is exactly what this head Altar boy did after midnight mass outside the church, when I instead went around shouting my mouth off like you would expect from a 13 year old boy. Now if you choose not to believe me then I understand completely, sometimes I can't believe it myself, but it happened, I was there and I stood in front of this Angel for a good few minutes and I know what I saw, I saw something magical, something to definitely write home about, even 18 years on.