Haunted By Nostalgia

There’s a weird pulse in the air this week.
Maybe it’s the stars. Maybe it’s the news cycle. Or maybe the seasons are doing that shady thing where they mess with your mood in ways you can’t explain.

But chances are, it’s just me.

It started Tuesday night, when I received a Ring camera alert. I’m dog-sitting right now, not staying at my place, so any notification hits with a mix of sudden fear and mild curiosity.

When I checked the footage, everything looked to be in its place. No intruder and neither of my cats were in sight.

Then suddenly, the most eerie, Stephen King-adjacent sound echoed through my phone. The sound was barely decipherable. It started as a muffled noise, morphed into a man singing, then ended with the slam of a door.

And just like that, everything went back to normal.

I lay as quiet and still in my bed as I could, as if whatever was on the other side of the screen might somehow hear me through the phone.

Was it supernatural? Or just a glitch? I wanted an answer. I wanted to solve the mystery of the possibly possessed Ring camera.

Then my mild curiosity turned full-blown conspiracy theorist.

Did a part of me want to see a dark shadow pass by, or a candle flicker to life? Something just mysterious enough to match the feeling I haven’t been able to name all week.

I can’t be the only one who checks their Ring camera like it’s a Ouija board, half-hoping to see a ghost, a shadow, a message from the void.

(Okay, maybe I’m in the minority on this one.)

It’s a terrifying feeling. But also? Weirdly comforting. Like maybe if something did show up, I wouldn’t be alone in this strange energetic limbo.

I turned into a full-time paranormal investigator for about three days. Replayed the footage on a loop, hoping for... something. A clue. A sign. A ghostly cameo.

But nothing.

And that brings me to Rowayton.

It’s where I’m staying this week. A tiny coastal town just one exit away, but it feels like stepping through a portal. It’s quiet, a little eerie, and somehow… familiar. Like it knows me. Like it remembers a version of me I forgot about.

Some places carry a frequency. It’s not just in the vibe or the architecture, but in the way it welcomes you.

That said, the architecture is stunning. Each house looks different. Some date back to the late 1700s, with history frozen in time and somehow still picture perfect.

It’s like Rowayton unlocks a memory I don’t actually have. It doesn’t just feel pretty. It feels personal. Like it’s winking at me from another timeline.

And I swear, this isn’t some weird promotion for the town of Rowayton. But if they want to send me a check, I wouldn’t turn it down.

It just hit me today, standing in this quaint, adorably overpriced beach-town market, how much it feels like home even though I’ve never lived there.

It’s the strangest feeling. Not scary. Just overwhelmingly comfortable…if that makes sense.

I’ve felt this before in a handful of places: the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, the town of Southport in North Carolina, the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome, the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, and the Tower of London (that one felt a little darker—maybe I was Anne Boleyn in a past life). I can’t quite explain it, but in those moments, it feels like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.

Like maybe I’ve stood there before. Not in any way I can prove, but just in a feeling that moves through me like muscle memory.

It’s not exactly nostalgia. It’s more like a flicker of recognition. No backstory. Just a quiet certainty, like I’m walking a road the universe already paved in its mind.

Maybe that’s what déjà vu really is. Not so much a glitch, as it is a message. A quiet nudge from your intuition.

I always feel the need to connect things to a bigger picture. To name what I’m sensing. And for me, that almost always comes back to intuition.

While some of these moments might seem supernatural, I think most of them are just me tuning in.

Those places and the way they made me feel probably weren’t coincidences. Maybe they were just confirmation. Subtle signals that I was exactly where I needed to be.

So to bring it full circle, maybe the Ring footage wasn’t paranormal at all. Maybe it was just the sound of that message arriving. A reminder to stop overthinking the unexplainable and just let it be what it is.

Something felt. Something real. Something true.

And if it really is a ghost photobombing my Ring footage? Fair enough. I’ll give it a nod and go back to bed, as long as it doesn’t mess with my Wi-Fi.