Do you believe in ghosts?

You've probably found this site because you were searching for "ghost orbs" or ghosts or you saw our story on the Biography channel (My Ghost Story - Hauntings Revealed). It's important that I tell you who our "ghost" was. In life, she was a very good friend of ours. Her name was Tabitha McPharlin.

Tabitha moved directly across the street from us in 1999 with her mother and her 2 young sons, Austin (7) and Dylan (4). They had relocated to San Diego so that Tabitha could attend law school (California Western School of Law). We bonded as friends right away. She and her kids spent a lot of time at our house. Within those first few months, Tabitha was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was only 31.

She amazed everyone including friends, family, and her professors with her positive attitude. She weathered the chemo and radiation and was somehow able to continue with law school throughout the whole thing. After all of the treatments were over, she felt better than ever. She felt like she had beaten the cancer and nothing could stop her from doing whatever she wanted in her life. She wanted to be a defense lawyer. She was always for the "underdog". She got a p/t job working with the district attorney and things were going great.

Unfortunately, she was soon diagnosed with AML Leukemia. I was with her when the doctor told her this. We had no idea what leukemia was. It was most likely a side-effect from the chemo. They didn't let her leave the hospital. She spent the next 6 months in and out of the hospital. They tried a stem cell transplant with her own stem cells. We all believed that this was going to save her.

On Thanksgiving night, Austin, her eldest son, called me and said the leukemia was back. She was back in the hospital. She didn't want to ruin everyone's Thanksgiving so even though she was in great pain, she held off from telling anyone until she couldn't take it any longer. I went to go see her the next day.

It was the last time I saw her lucid. She held my hand and squeezed it really hard. Neither of us could say anything. It was her way of letting me know that this was it. We both knew she was going to die. I brought her a tape recorder the next day so that she could leave messages for her kids but she was on so much morphine that she was not able to do this. It happened so quickly. She passed a few days later after suffering a brain aneurysm.

Her boys stayed with us that night. Her mother asked if I could help with her memorial and if we wouldn't mind keeping her ashes at our house so that her kids didn't have to think about it. We had a beautiful memorial for her on the cliffs in La Jolla . Afterwards, a good friend of mine who is a licensed captain, took her family and close friends out on a yacht so that we could spread her ashes in the ocean. As far as memorials go, it was really nice. Her friend had put glitter in her ashes and as we all tossed her ashes into the ocean along with pink roses, you could see them glittering into the sunset.

A few days later, I remember looking out my kitchen window towards Tabitha's house thinking, how can a person be here one day and be completely gone the next? I remember saying outloud "Tabitha, I wish you could somehow let me know if you're okay." Little did I know what was going to start happening just a few days later.