I used to believe in God while I was younger after a series of close deaths in the family. I don't know if I ever actually truly believed or it was just a coping mechanism, but I'm leaning towards the latter. Eventually, that faith gave way to atheism in my 20s, and I was your typical euphoric trench coat wearing Christian debating neckbeard.

My senior year of college, I needed money so I joined my brother doing construction/demo, which would eventually change my spirituality again. While knocking down an abandoned psychiatric hospital (Marlboro psych hospital + New Hope center in NJ), my crew and I repeatedly ran into what I can only describe as ghosts / spirits. I'm not talking about hearing strange noises or getting ominous feelings as so many ghost hunters describe, but full on apparitions. I'm not going to ramble on about all of them, but my favorite was a humanoid figure with horribly distorted proportions (appendages too long and curved, joints and limbs bent at unnatural angles) standing at least a head or two above the rest of floating down hallways whilst making absolutely no contact with the ground. It would eventually reach into a cabinet (the same one every time) and fade away. I havent the slightest clue why, but the apparition would perform the same routine completely oblivious to my boys and I watching. I even ended up bringing my girlfriend and best friends out because they assumed I was full of it -- to be fair, I would have reacted the same way to such farfetched claims from them. I figured my eyes were playing tricks on me and I was losing it at first, but after a dozen or so people, most of whom I'd call sane, saw the same thing it really got me thinking about the afterlife, spirituality and God in general. I ended up talking to our local priest and believing again, but I felt that Christianity wasn't a match for me. Nowadays I believe, but I consider spirituality a private matter between myself and god. But yes, I believe because some cheesy ghost story proved to me that there is at least some form of an afterlife -- I just hope mine doesn't even remotely resemble that of my psych hospital buddies.