For a long time I didn't believe in ghosts but that all changed last year on summer vacation. My family and I went to the Conneaut Hotel which was supposedly very haunted.

While we waited for someone to check us in we looked at a book that was on display filled with stories about the ghosts that haunted the hotel. I felt ridiculous as my siblings obsessed over the book.

After we rode all the rides at the nearby amusement park, we came back to the hotel around eleven. My brother was exhausted so my grandmother and sister wanted to go ghost hunting. I was dragged along for the ride armed only with a camera phone.

In our pajamas we trekked throughout the hotel snapping pictures and recording things. After finding nothing and much to my embarrassment, my grandmother asked the lady at the front desk where to look for ghosts. She told us to go to the second floor because that's where a lot of stuff happens.

And so with my mother who had joined us we went upstairs. The area we investigated was a long creepy hallway with creaky floorboards. My mother sat in an alcove off the hallway as we went down one side of the hall. According to my sister the end of the hall was where a young child fell down a servants' staircase. I just wisely ignored my sister and we turned around to go to the other end of the hall.

I cocked my head to the side as I saw a black shadowy figure at the end of the hallway. For a second we thought it was my mother because she had been wearing all black that evening but something seemed off. I snapped a picture quickly right before the apparition disappeared.

My sister and I ran to see if our mother was still where we had left her and she was. Rapidly we asked her questions like did you hear something or did somebody walk past you? She looked at us as if we were crazy and replied no. We had just seen a ghost.

I didn't sleep that well that night. I had just seen something that made me question my beliefs. But that wasn't what kept me up.

For hours I tossed and turned and came close to falling asleep many times. Except something or someone kept me up. There was this presence that wasn't exactly threatening but it certainly didn't feel friendly.

Now the next part might have been a dream, my imagination, or lack of sleep making me hallucinate. I seriously doubt it was any of these reasons though.

As the night turned to day I began to see this terrifying woman when I awoke from my almost sleeping episodes. Her black hair completely covered her face and she wore a white nightgown. Before I could even move a muscle she would just disappear in what seemed to me to be a fraction of a second as if she were never there.

From exhaustion I fell asleep in the early morning but my family woke me around nine to see of I wanted to go swimming. Still groggy I replied no but noticed something.

My sister's stuffed animal was staring directly at me from a chair in the center of the room. The same animal that my sister dropped on the floor before going to sleep. After we left the hotel I asked if anyone had moved the toy but my family sweared that they had not.

Most of my family left to go swimming. Only my mother and I remained in the room. She hadn't even been woken up by the chaos that is my family.

I woke up to my family returning to the room and something pierced through my sleepy haze. Right in front of my face less than half a foot a way was the stuffed animal once again staring at me. The only person who could have moved it was my mom but she sleeps like a rock so she couldn't have done it. Once I realized this I nearly screamed.