Paranormal Experience Vs. Reasonable Explanation

"It was"

"It was not"

"It Was"

"It Was Not"

"IT WAS SO"

"IT SO WAS NOT"

The back and forth bickering between the two is a result of an argument: one side says that the deformed figure was a ghost the other side saying it was a druggie. Of course Ed was thinking it was a ghost and Mills of the latter opinion.

"The chance of it being a screwed up cracked out homeless guy is like 100, while the chance it's a ghost which has zero, real, actual true evidence legitimately recorded is like 0." Mills was certain nothing paranormal existed.

"The world's so large with thousands of un-understandable things every day, you don't think not even for a second something exists that's considered paranormal" Ed was trying to find middle ground.

"Nope, I understand the human mind and how it can be very imaginative when faced with things it can't understand." Mills said with certainty.

"I'm telling you man, you go gotta trust me on this one, I just know there is more crazy information being hidden, I just read a little a go we only have like half the planet explored, and only 23 percent of that is colonized and used by humans. It's like you take a cup of water and dipped it into a lake, looked at it and decided there is no life in the lake." Ed wasn't backing down as he was also certain.

"Okay there may be undiscovered biological anomalies that we think is impossible but ghosts are so fake, just using any scientific knowledge debunks them." Mills while saying this swerves and honks at somebody who almost side swiped him.

"You can barely drive, let alone use "scientific knowledge" to debunk anything." Going back and forth a couple more times Ed brings back up last nights events outside his grandma's house, looking for Mill's explanation.

"Look I don't know what that was either, all I do know is when I told that story my grandparents faces went pale and told me not to worry about anything, they even did some weird blessing ritual thing saying it's for good luck or something, it's the first time I've seen them act like that." The thing Mills just said peaked Ed's interest.

"You think you can ask them what that situation was or something." In the last minutes of the ride home Ed gave Mills a request which he begrudgingly accepted.

"I'll see you soon." Ed waved Mills goodbye after he was dropped home. He walked up to his apartment door and got ready to open the door, but when he went to put his key in he noticed his door was already unlocked. Internally panicking Ed got the knife out that he brought with him, it only had a 3 inch long blade blade but it will have to do.

Opening his door abruptly and turning the lights on expecting to reveal the intruder resulted in Ed only looking stupid. Nothing was there, nothing was disturbed, and nothing seemed out of place or wrong. All was well and Ed probably only forgot to lock the door on his way out.

His entire apartment besides his bedroom and bathroom could be seen from the front door so after checking all the rooms Ed was confident he just forgot to lock the door.

After all was calm Ed got to thinking about his future, soon Cress's government will stop their program for Ed making space for a younger person. Ed finished all his schooling, but he never got a job or went to specialized school programs to get a better job in the future. He spent a lot of time researching online horror, trying to find a drive or creative outlet when urban exploring popped up on his homepage. It instantly gripped his interest as this was something even Ed could do

You didn't need teams of people or licenses to explore caves or deep wilderness to find the unknown, you could also find it in abandoned or mysterious places.

Using the money Ed saved up over his life doing odd jobs and just saving every coin and dollar, with almost no spending as the program covered most things, he paid for supplies along with other things like boots and gloves to find something scary.

Sitting down Ed felt something poking at him in his pocket prompting him to remember something. He took the toy soldier that was in his pocket and then washed the dry mud off it. Looking closely at the soldier that was made out of army green plastic and was missing a limb a thought came to Ed's mind. Why does this toy soldier kind of look like how the ghost does in his memory, in a uniform missing at least one limb, which was an arm just like the toy. At the same time this revelation came another one made Ed's blood run cold.

On Ed's desk, in his bedroom another, army green toy soldier sat there muddy and deformed.