Ever since I was a little kid, ghosts and paranormal phenomena have been interesting to me. I can recall all the way back to elementary school when I would check out all the old books in the school library on ghosts and haunted houses.

Mapleton Elementary’s library couldn’t get books like that in fast enough for me.

Not that I was ever that kid in the head-to-toe black or anything, and I have always been too spiritual to allow a casual fascination to lead me into the realm of the occult.

My interest — especially from my teenaged years onward — steered more toward the psychological and scientific side of hauntings, and why people see or experience what they say they do. And how the unexplainable can become explainable.

About a decade ago, television became bombarded with programs about teams and crews using new technology to prove or debunk hauntings, and the popularity of the practice seemed to grow like crazy around the globe.

The goofiness of the television programs and characters on them turned me away, but the increasing capabilities of available technology to detect unexplainable phenomena remained something that I kept an eye on.

On my birthday in May of 2015, my wife and I embarked on our first actual ghost-hunting adventure at the Trails & Rails Museum in Kearney, Nebraska.

The museum and property, long believed to be haunted by the many accounts of apparitions seen by tourists and employees alike, has been a popular ghost-hunting destination in central Nebraska for as long as ghosts have been hunted.

We didn’t see or hear anything that suggested the presence of anything other than the other ghost hunters around — particularly one lady in our little group was a bit…odd, shall I say?

Watching all of the living people look for spirits and try to not act scared in the dark was a nice consolation prize for the lack of paranormal activity we witnessed that night.

Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon of this week when I heard about the ghost hunts at Camp Nelson this month. Being the news reporter for The Jessamine Journal, I feel that it’s my duty to our readers to investigate the rumored haunting of Camp Nelson for your local newspaper.

So I called and booked some slots on the hunt this Friday night for my wife and I, as well as a fellow employee here at 507 North Main Street who shall remain nameless, but who has embarked on many more ghost hunting expeditions than my one because of a fascination similar to my own.

Will we experience any phenomena at Camp Nelson? I have no idea, but sometimes the pursuit of an unknown result is more exciting than the achievement of an expectation.

Speaking of Camp Nelson, a site so rich in history and dear to our veterans, I want to invite all Jessamine County veterans and their families to submit their photo, the branch of our military in which they served, the highest rank that they earned and the years that they served our country for our Veteran’s Day special section that will be published in the Nov. 9 issue of the Jessamine Journal.

All photo submissions are free of charge, and may be submitted in person at our office (address below), or they may be emailed directly to me at nick.hon@jessaminejournal.com. The deadline for getting them published in the special section is Friday, Nov. 3 at 4 p.m.

I have been told that past Veteran’s Day presentations in the Jessamine Journal have been really nice with an ample number of photo submissions from our local veterans. I would like to see this year’s edition be among the best, so please bring in those photos and information so that we can all of our area veterans the recognition they deserve for this Veteran’s Day!

Nick Hon is the editor of The Jessamine Journal and Jessamine Life Magazine. He can be reached at nick.hon@jessaminejournal.com