OPINION: There's nothing quite like a good ghost story

IT doesn't matter whether you're a believer or a skeptic - there's nothing quite like a good ghost story.

Is there something lurking in the dark? Picture: scyther5

IT doesn't matter whether you're a believer or a skeptic - there's nothing quite like a good ghost story.

I've been in my element with all the recent talk about ghosts, ghouls, local haunted houses and everything in between here at The Gympie Times office, and it's probably for this reason that I had my own creepy little experience one night after work last week.

Do you believe in ghosts? Picture: Contributed

Approaching the Nash St stop sign with nothing much other than a hot plate of pasta on my mind, I was startled to see the figure of an old man very suddenly appear to the left of my car - as if out of thin air.

I saw the man pass behind me in my peripheral vision, but lost him as I turned onto Lawrence St and headed towards five ways.

It couldn't have been more than three seconds before I craned my head around to locate him as I drove away, but he was gone - as if he'd vanished.

I'm not saying this man was a ghost, but...

There's no way he could have moved beyond the boundaries of my eyesight in the time it took me to turn and look for him.

He would've had to sprint to get that far, and anyone would have noticed a random old man sprinting down a quiet street bathed in overhead lights.

Ron West believes the Pomona Majestic Theatre is haunted. Picture: Renee Albrecht

Granted, it was the end of a long work day - a day in which I'd heard multiple ghost stories - and my brain was exhausted.

I could've simply missed him. I could've been seeing things.

I didn't feel weird at all about the experience, and I guess I'll never know what I really saw, but...

Sometimes it's better when you don't know.

Lake Alford fountain appears to channel the ghost of Lady Mary. Picture: Contributed

We'll probably never know whether Frances Klein's 10 most haunted Gympie places really are haunted.

We'll probably never know whether the alleged spectre caught in a spooky Lake Alford snap was that of Lady Mary, but that's the fun part.

There's a magic in the unknown, there's a magic in those mysterious tales we've always told, and that magic will never die.