In the paranormal community, they have something they call imprint or residual hauntings. I suppose it may go by more than those two names depending upon who you talk to, but it all boils down to the same phenomena. There are hauntings that are not ghosts, rather they are the energies of those from the past that repeat the same actions as though they are lost or stuck in time. It is said to explain the types of hauntings in which a house experiences the same noise at the same time every day and the like.

It may sound crazy, but I think that I may already residually haunt Disneyland. I told you it would sound crazy, but just hear me out. When I walk around Disneyland, I have so many emotionally charged memories flood back to me, it’s almost hard for me to believe those times and experiences no longer exist. I left my job with Disneyland in 1998, yet when I walk through New Orleans Square, I almost always expect to see the friendly face of someone I played softball with. When I walk through the stores in Adventureland, I am always saddened and disappointed to not see my late friend Jo’s smiling face. When I see the huge gate between the Riverbelle Restaurant and the Stage Door Cafe, I immediately recall running through those doors with Dean Caine as we were chased by screaming girls and their mothers at the height of the show “Lois and Clark.” And it is virtually impossible for me to forget the time my fellow plaid goddesses and I danced the night away at Tomorrowland Terrace with the cast of the show “Boy Meets World.” I can hear myself exclaiming to my dear friend Millie, “Can you believe we are getting paid over time for this?!”

When I walk through Disneyland, the feelings, memories, and emotions I have tied to those five wonderful and amazing years in those eight lands are so strong that I feel as though they are still happening on some strange plane. I feel like I am so connected to the sites, sounds, and smells that my happy vibrations from the past cannot possibly be dead and gone. Is it possible for our joy to live on even after our connection with a place has been altered.

As I walk though Disneyland today with children in tow, loaded like a pack mule, I have to wonder if ten or 20 years from now I will look back at the time with my children at Disneyland and feel the same happy ties to Disneyland. Will the memories and emotions be just as strong? More importantly, will I create those memories for my boys? I can only hope that the sweat and backaches of today will be the imprinted or residual happy memories of tomorrow.