Ghost stories please..

[Old Rogue]

I rented a large victorian house, which was a former retirement home with a bunch of friends when i left college. On the first night we picked up the keys, my mate and i decided to snaffle the third floor, as it was self contained and had a kitchenette and loo, plus two small, cosy bedrooms. For some reason, we got the heeby-jeebies, bad vibes, whatever you want to call it and bedded down together for the night. We both heard the front door open not long after we turned out the light, then we heard footsteps climbing the stairs to the second floor then nothing. It was a detached property so there was no chance it came from next door at all. Needless to say we had a rather sleepless night! We decided to say nothing to our other flatmates who moved in the following day to see if they noticed anything untoward. Over the course of our stay there, the three chaps who took rooms downstairs ended up sleeping on the second floor or the third floor as they got so spooked. At night time the first floor coridoor was inky black, even with a really bright lightbulb it had shadows and well, just a horrid, malevolent feeling to it, there was a loo on that floor, but most of the guys wouldn't dare walk down the corridoor to use it as they were so spooked and would run upstairs and use our loo. Lights would turn themselves on and off, doors would open or slam shut, it really was not pleasant. We stuck it out for six months and then moved.

My last house was a fourteenth century cottage, occasionally i would hear a child laughing upstairs and the door to the sitting room would open sometimes, especially in the evenings when i was warming my cockles by the fire and after a few minutes gently close itself. I never felt felt frightened, in fact the house had a lovely, warm, cosy feeling to it.

I got to know an old fella Ron who lived down the road, who told me he had lived in my cottage as a boy, as his father was a farm worker and it had been a tithe cottage. This would have been around the 1930's. Sadly his little sister Elsie died from a weak heart when she was about eight. I told him about the voices and the door and he said he was sure it was her as she was always a mischevious little girl and full of fun. From that time on i used to say hello to Elsie when the door opened and goodnight when it shut!

Nice to see you again Miss sofia! That is a scary story. And I have to walk through a dark house to get to my bed when I turn in for the night in a few minutes, yikes!!!

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I can with a very open mind say that we only know what we do, and there are many things we have no clue about....yet. If we as a living person have what we could commonly label a "soul" and we pass away, why could it not be that what is in part our "electronical" memory, (we know there are electrical impulses within our brains...well most of us at least have that, lol!) and when we pass away, the soul which would have to be connected in some realm to an electrical impulse, could linger and still be what I would call, "local"...thus being near a source of life prior to death.

There have been some rather deep study about life after death and even near death experiences. One I recall that was involving a hospital operating room that had placed one of those digital light bars that spell out sentences, was on the very top of a medical equipment cabinet in an operating room. This was done per many patients saying they could see things in the operating room while they were clinically dead and then brought back to life. When a patient said they had seen a message "the buffalo was on roller skates", which is what was programmed onto the light bar, well, you have to know that person had told the truth. There were I think at the time I read about that article, over 20 patients that had experienced the same thing.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Wow! Now that'd scare the bejeezus outta me!

That is why he quit working there, right then he said that is it.

 

[DavidJ]

There are some good experiences here! Around ten years ago, before my family moved twice, all of my siblings would have things happen to us. If any one of us was ever left alone, we would turn on all the radios, and all the tvs, so that we wouldn't hear my mom's voice calling our name. Also, before my youngest sister was born, I had one of my most frightening experiences. I used to share a room with my older brother. It was like any other night, until we both heard the dishes in the kitchen start to rattle. After a while we checked to see if the other was awake, then proceeded to go down the hall and into the living room, which was in view of the kitchen. As soon as we could see the kitchen everything stopped. We eventually armed ourselves with bats and the like. And we woke up my big sister, who after yelling at us to sleep, finally heard it and decided to pray. That was the end of that.

My most frightening of all experiences occurred after our first move. My dad was in Iraq at the time, and my little sister was sleeping in my parents' room. I decided to take her room for a while. A few days in, I awoke to the most horrible feeling I have ever felt. I swear I felt eyes as big as, say a bath tub (each eye), staring at me. After making up my mind that running out of the room was the best idea, I ran out to the kitchen and ate a ton of food.

I have more experiences, but they can wait for later.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I think at times just seeing something spooky or hearing something could scare a person like crazy! Let me show you what I mean, can you even in your wildest dream imagine waking up and seeing this..................................

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I haven't really seen a ghost..but I did have an experience at a very young age..that has stuck with me all these years. I must have been four years old. A year before I started Kindergarten at 5 yrs old in the early '50s. I lived in an apartment with my Mother who worked as a secretary during the day and took me to a baby sitter's home who watched several children in what would probably be considered a Day Care..or preschool today(since we did play games and read story books..as I recall). Mother would pick me up each day after she got off work at 5 PM.
It was a beautiful blue sky summer day with white clouds drifting through the sky. All of the other kid's parents picked them earlier..so I would wait alone for about an hour. On this particular day the babysitter fixed me an icecream cone and told me to go outside on the back step and eat it. My Mother would be here soon. As I sat there eating the icecream..I heard my Mother come in and begin talking to the sitter. I looked up at the pretty sky....and froze! Up in the sky was a woman...and I somehow recognized her immediately as Mary...or as the Catholics would say 'the Virgin Mary'. She was stationary with clouds passing by her and around her. Almost like a statue..but very vivid and lifelike. I was stunned..but took the time to intently stare at her and sense that this vision(?) was real. The flow of her robes..her hands.. features..and eyes. I jumped up..dropped what was left of the cone..and ran back in the kitchen yelling for my Mom. "Mom..Mom..Come look there is something in the sky"!! Bewildered at my excitement..she hurried back out the door with me...asking"What is it"? Of course as we both got outside on the step..there was nothing there. She said..'What was it?..An airplane? After I explained to her about what I had seen..and she saw how adament I was..and disappointed that it was,indeed,now gone..she said that she believed me. In fact later on she again asked me all the details. The sight of that apparition is as real to me today as it was then. I have often wondered over the years of just what the meaning of that seemingly spiritual appearance could mean. Although I am a Christian now...at that young age I knew nothing or very little about anything 'religious'. Yet..I have always felt that it happened for a reason..perhaps a very important reason just for me. Unfortunately..I haven't figured it out..or it hasn't been revealed. I can't help but strongly feel that something that startling does have significance..somehow,though.......

 

[DavidJ]

Very interesting HD, I would say that what you saw was definitely not a ghost, as you said. Maybe its meaning will become clear, possibly even after death.

LoveMyHats, that is truly beyond my wildest dreams, even nightmares. I believe you may have scarred me for life.

 

[Justin B]

You know, I sat and read through this thread start to finish and all the stories are great. One of my best friends is a paranormal investigator and has taken me several times to various places so that I can experience what she has. Now here's the weird part...I never have. Apparently, according to her there is something about me that either quiets or drives away the spirits. One sight is a house where a multiple murder was commented and she and her team have never failed to have some serious stuff happen including doors slamming, items being flung across rooms, one poor fellow was shoved down a hallway and out the back door! And even other people who have been in the house always experience uneasy feelings, and say they can feel the anger and "Something crazed". Yet the moment I stepped into the house, every single one of them just stopped and looked at me and said everything they had felt before was just gone. We spent the full day and evening there, but we mostly sat and played cards. Not a single event happened. They went back months later and said that the place was still blank as when I was there. So I guess I'm not the guy you want going to your haunted attractions...I'll ruin them.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

You know, I sat and read through this thread start to finish and all the stories are great. One of my best friends is a paranormal investigator and has taken me several times to various places so that I can experience what she has. Now here's the weird part...I never have. Apparently, according to her there is something about me that either quiets or drives away the spirits. One sight is a house where a multiple murder was commented and she and her team have never failed to have some serious stuff happen including doors slamming, items being flung across rooms, one poor fellow was shoved down a hallway and out the back door! And even other people who have been in the house always experience uneasy feelings, and say they can feel the anger and "Something crazed". Yet the moment I stepped into the house, every single one of them just stopped and looked at me and said everything they had felt before was just gone. We spent the full day and evening there, but we mostly sat and played cards. Not a single event happened. They went back months later and said that the place was still blank as when I was there. So I guess I'm not the guy you want going to your haunted attractions...I'll ruin them.

It could be you have some skills you are not aware of, or, that some thing could sense you are not going to take any hanky panky from them!

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I think at times just seeing something spooky or hearing something could scare a person like crazy! Let me show you what I mean, can you even in your wildest dream imagine waking up and seeing this..................................

And she says, "just come nibble on my ear...you know....get the M&M...."......(wooooot)!

 

[hellsbellslolly]

I was sat having Sunday roast, at my in-laws. There was say 8 of us sat around the table all passing bowls of this and that to one another, every-one talking and joking. When I had this strong smell of lavender coming from right next to me. I looked at the two closest people to me to see if they had noticed it, but no one seemed to. It was so odd, because as soon as I could smell it, I felt like I was just staring at the table and although I could see them talking..it was like the volume had been turned down. I felt really warm all of a sudden. Then someone passed me a bowl of potatoes and it sought of popped a bubble, a mad moment. I asked my father in law and he said it was probably his mum visiting?

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Some years ago I had several experiences that led me to believe...or develope somewhat of a theory about what many consider 'supernatural happenings'. I dated a girl who's family was from the 'backwoods' of southeastern Kentucky. I say backwoods because much of that family did live in the 'sticks' of rolling hill country out in the boondocks linked together by generations of 'kinfolk' residing in the same places. There were superstitions innerwoven within these families throughout every day life and seemingly enhanced during special events. With death..burials..accidents...etc. Ghostly visits...rugs moving from room to room..voices out of thin air...'signs'...you name it! Many of these 'hillfolk' not only attended small community churches..but also seances...or readings. They would pick up on every word from supposedly dead relatives and friends with familiar sounding voices and personal revelations that no one else could possibly know...from their prospective.
At first I shrugged this off as..just 'the way'these families coped with life that had been handed down as a lifestyle..if you will. However...after several hair raising 'happenings' that involved me..I wondered..just what the hell was really going on. They all seemed to readily accept that these revelations and happenings were just what they appeared to be...but I wondered. Finally in my view..instead of these experiences coming about because of 'open minds'...or allowing these things to happen..these families seemed to 'breed' this atmosphere of heaviness in the air at times around them. However..I noticed that it was not only an excitement of the unknown...but most often brought a feeling of dread in that enviroment..accompanied with understandings that seemed quite sufficient for them to explain these 'natural' occurrences in their lives. I'll go a step farther and suggest from this outsiders point of view...a sense of a lingering presence of evil the more the events are fostered . Rather than questioning a possibility of deception of what is/was really what or real...they easily recieved these circumstances as what they may appear to be. I suppose out of wonderment..and to keep it going with a certain importance of some satisfactory more innocent and 'usual' explanations. I'm led to believe that many of these occurrences can be conjured up or manifested not necessarily for malicious reasons..but the leading source may not be so harmlessly playing. Although...possibly real..these things may not be really what they appear to be...but only for confusion..delusion.

 

[hellsbellslolly]

When I was about 9 or so we used to walk across our village to get to school, and we'd always pass by this empty house. It stood on a large plot and the grass was literally taller than me. I always walked passed it and thought it wasn't a typically looking creepy house, but it just looked odd. I put it down to it just being empty and over grown. Oddly enough we ended up moving into that house, it wasn't far from our old house but it was a bigger house, more bedrooms etc and it was closer to my school. Any how we moved in and my guardians did it up. My neice was around 2 or 3 just at the age where she was toddling around. And she used to tell her mum, that she used to fly down the stairs. It was something we all just sort of smiled and nodded at. Nothing else at the time was said. Now I can remember after my 11th birthday after the party every-one had gone home and I was stood in the kitchen with my sister (who was 18 yrs older) when our very heavy and old back door managed to opened itself and creak open. I looked at my sister, and saw the amazement turn to fear. She said she was going to nip out to the field that backed onto our garden to call her husband who was walking our dog. And she left me in the kitchen. I don't remember any-thing significant happening after that.
A few years ago I was talking to my brother in law, and we started talking about the old house, and he said that he was once stood in the kitchen making our packup when out of the corner of his eye he saw something come down the stairs behind him. He turned to look and it was my niece who was only 3 or so, now he said he didn't see her flying nor did he hear her little feet on the steps eother. But what he did see was her literally touch both feet on the floor, as if she almost jumped - but in slowmotion. He went onto tell me that obviously you wouldn't tell small children if you thought there was something in the house you lived in. But he said there was something that really made him uneasy in that house.

 

[fortworthgal]

I posted earlier in this thread. My second ghost story happened about 15 years ago. I was working for a newspaper in the old composition department - back in the days of actually cutting, waxing & pasting up pages. The comp room was an extremely large open space with a tile floor, entrances at either end, and light tables all the way around the perimeter, and a cluster of workstations at one end of the room. I was working at a table at the far end of the room away from the workstations. I was leaning over the table working when I felt a hand placed on my lower back, then it ran slowly all the way up my back to my collar. It felt large, like a man's hand. I turned around to find out who it was so I could make a sexual harassment wisecrack, but nobody was there. Everyone was seated at their desks - far other end of the room, working. There was nobody in my vicinity and with the tile floor and large open space, no way anyone could have done it and then ran away unseen and unheard. Needless to say, I was pretty creeped out for the rest of that day.

The building had formerly been a grocery store in the early half of the 20th century, and there was an older employee who had died in the locker room area of a heart attack. When I worked there, that area was now the camera room - just off the composition room where I worked. I worked many late nights alone in the building and there were all sorts of weird noises - footsteps, voices like muffled conversations, doors slamming, etc. Weird things like that happened so often that it was just an accepted part of the job and people even joked about it. To the best of my knowledge - or that anyone would admit - nobody else ever saw or felt anything.

 

[Tango Yankee]

I moved into the house I'm in now when I retired from the Air Force and joined my wife here in southern Ohio. The house used to belong to her grandparents. One morning I was at the sink in the bathroom, with the door open on my left. There is a hall that runs from about where our bedroom door is and ends at the bathroom . As I shaved I saw a woman out of the corner of my eye cross the hall from our bedroom to the dining room. She was shorter than my wife and wearing a blue nightgown or housecoat. I walked down the hall and looked around into the dining room; no one there. I looked into the bedroom and my wife was still in bed, reading. She hadn't seen anything, but said the woman I described was her grandmother.

She also told me that her sister has felt her grandmother touch her; a hand on her shoulder. And her son said that one time he was in the living room with the dogs when suddenly both dogs raised up their heads and stared towards the other side of the dining room, their heads swinging from left to right as if they were watching someone walk across the end of the dining room. They then lay back down.

Regards,
Tom

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Our gun store used to be in downtown Columbus. A very neat building. Built in 1853, it was one of the oldest remaining downtown buildings. Tile floor, tin ceiling, etc. The place was a pharmacy from 1865, until we bought it in 2001.

It's the big building with the ads on the side, around the turn of the century.

I was about 12 or 13 and working on the building at night, after school. Cleaning, painting, patching, etc. I'd be there late, after everyone was gone and all the buildings were closed. I'd hear talking coming from the other rooms on the 2nd floor (it was two apartments) and nobody was there. The apartments had last been used in 1968. The third floor had 2 meeting rooms and hadn't been used since the 1920s. You'd hear laughing and carrying on, go up there, nothing. The basement had also been an Oyster bar in the late 1800s, and you always felt watched, and the alley had been closed off and given to the building at the turn of the century. The newspaper article claimed 'hooligans' murdered the chief of police after cornering him in the dead-end alley. Ironically, nothing too peculiar there.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I have no further ghost stories...but if I croak any time soon, I promise to haunt a few people here!

 

[Adcurium]

I have several stories. Here's some background that sets the stage for a few of them: When I bought my home about 7 or 8 years ago, I spent several (hundred?) hours cleaning up part of the lot which was overgrown. I unearthed arrowheads and other stone tools including an ax-head that was made from stone. In fact, I found soo many of those artifacts that I contacted Brown University in case these were important finds which should be considered in piecing together Rhode Island history. So, about 3 or 4 years ago my neighbor started a new job and on his first day his new co-worker asked him where he lived. When he told her, she spent their entire lunch break telling him about how when she was little, her friend lived in our neighborhood and during sleepovers, they would often be visited by a native American ghost. When he told us about it, we thought it was interesting considering what we found in our yard. What brings this home to us is this: We bought one of those big, bitchin' three story cedar swingset/playhouses for our daughter this past summer (our duaghter is 2 1/2). We put it in the lot where I found the arrowheads, etc. The shorty loves this swingset. In fact, she even shouts "Bye Swingset!" when we leave the house. And, when she isn't playing on it, she is looking out the window at it and talking about it. For the past six weeks or so, she looks out the window and yells that there is a girl playing on her swingset. We look out the window, and nobody is there. It's been going on for several weeks. When we ask her who it is that is playing on her swingset, she tells us a girl 'with no shirt on'. And sometimes she talks about the girl's long hair. But the shirtless girl with long hair is always playing on her swingset. Until we look out the window. The other night I was tellig my daughter that I just looked out the window and didn't see anyone, and no father would let his daughter play on someone else's swingset when kids should be in bed, etc. My wife grabbed my arm and then made the connection for me... a Native American child (long hair, no shirt regardless of boy or girl) playing on our swingset.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I have no further ghost stories...but if I croak any time soon, I promise to haunt a few people here!

Oh I have a really short one....but now I don't remember it!

 

[Herzen]

You know, I sat and read through this thread start to finish and all the stories are great. One of my best friends is a paranormal investigator and has taken me several times to various places so that I can experience what she has. Now here's the weird part...I never have. Apparently, according to her there is something about me that either quiets or drives away the spirits. One sight is a house where a multiple murder was commented and she and her team have never failed to have some serious stuff happen including doors slamming, items being flung across rooms, one poor fellow was shoved down a hallway and out the back door! And even other people who have been in the house always experience uneasy feelings, and say they can feel the anger and "Something crazed". Yet the moment I stepped into the house, every single one of them just stopped and looked at me and said everything they had felt before was just gone. We spent the full day and evening there, but we mostly sat and played cards. Not a single event happened. They went back months later and said that the place was still blank as when I was there. So I guess I'm not the guy you want going to your haunted attractions...I'll ruin them.

I think that I must be the same way. I am currently a museum curator, and have worked at several historic sites over the years that were supposed to be haunted, yet I have never experienced anything. I worked for years at an 18th century fort with a wealth of ghost stories, and I was the only member of the year-round staff never to see/hear/feel anything. I type this now from my office which is located in the windowless basement of a 19th century home for the indigent... nothing.

Spiders, on the other hand... I see plenty of them.