Ghost stories please..

[Atticus Finch]

In spite of my lighthearted post earlier in this thread, to my knowledge, I have never seen a ghost. I have seen bright car lights on a deserted road that disappeared in front of me with absolutely nowhere for them to have gone. I have heard footsteps descending the staircase in my childhood home...when only my parents and I were there, and we were all downstairs. In fact, several years later, my Mom heard exactly the same thing when she was there alone. I have been in places where, for no reason, I have become almost overwhelmed with a feeling of dread and foreboding.

But I have never seen a ghost.

In fact, I personally know only one person who has actually seen a ghost. When I say "actually seen a ghost" I mean Mark will tell you that he saw a ghost and knew he was seeing a ghost when he saw it. He didn't have to think about it. It wasn't some unexplained noise or wisp or light or feeling or whatever. It was a ghost. He saw it when he was eighteen and living with his parents aboard Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station. It was early one evening, not even totally dark. He was riding his motorcycle with his girlfriend when they came around a bend in the road. There, standing on the curb, was a woman dressed in clothing from some earlier time. He knew she was a ghost because he could see through her. Mark’s girlfriend also saw the ghost and had no misapprehensions about what she was seeing. She started screaming into Mark’s ear, “GO! GO! GO!” and so he did. He had no choice but to pass directly by the ghost and as he did, it disappeared.

Mark has been my neighbor for over a decade. I have heard him tell this story many times in much greater detail than I have told it here. In all those times, I have never heard him change even the smallest detail. I have listened with a prosecutor’s cynical ear trying to uncover some slight inconsistency, but I never have. Also, I have never heard Mark try to embellish the story. A good story teller would be tempted to make the ghost into the wife of a WWII Marine Officer, or the evening to be a dark and stormy night or whatever…but he never has. She has always been just an unknown, translucent woman dressed in old time clothes and he always seen her on an otherwise tranquil, early summer evening.

AF

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Several years ago a friend of mine owned a sports card shop and he used to hold Pokemon tournaments there. I was there once to take some pics of the tournament for him. Much to my surprise in one of the pics there was a young man standing in the foreground who was transparent. It wasn't a motion blur because you could see him very clearly but there was no lower half of his body. If ever I can find the pic I'll post it.

 

[koopkooper]

I stayed at a buddys place in Potts Point in Sydney some ten years ago and was woken by a ghost. It was a really old art deco apartment and I woke to find a woman who was a mixture of blue and white and was hovering against the wall in a chair.
She was very old and looked like she was from the Victorian Era. It was pretty freaky. I told my buddy the next day and he just shrugged and said, "yeah I've seen her before"!

 

[flat-top]

I'm not sure if I've posted this story on the FL, so forgive me if I have, but this is my "ghost" story:

It was during a hot Summer many many years ago. My family lived in an apartment in the Bronx, with the only air conditioning in the living room. My sister and I decided to try to sleep on the sofa bed one particularly hot night. She was on one side, and I was on the other. We started to drift off and she suddenly jumped up and snapped "OW! why did you do that??" Do what? "Why did you pull my hair?"
I replied "I'm nowhere near you, and I did not pull your hair!" She grumbled, and fell back to sleep.
A few minutes later I felt a distinct "tug" on my hair (I can still feel it now as I write this). It was startling. I jumped up and saw my sister was fast asleep. I shook her. "Did you do that??" She murmered "I didn't do anything." I told her what happened and she sat up, we looked at each other, screamed and ran into my parents room. Needless to say we never slept in the living room again!

 

[AtomicEraTom]

On Church Road - I don't know if I buy into all of it, but this is what has happened to me, and others with me.

You constantly hear footsteps in the cemetery, which I cannot explain. You hear a creaking and see the apparition of a woman hanging from a tree. You see figures, about the size of a child, moving back and forth from headstone to headstone (there are MANY children buried here) I would guess that there are as many, if not more children than adults in this small cemetery. It is very small. You will see a headstone one minute, turn around and it's not there (I can NOT explain this, it's happened to me) The one that has startled me the worst, was we didn't even get out of the car, but had bad 'vibes' for lack of a better word. I looked and said to my friend Jon (we are constantly 'investigating' there) "Do you see that shadow" and he did. As it got closer, it got bigger, and bigger. By the time it was about 10 feet from us, it was nearly the size of the car. Needless to say, we got the heck outta there!

 

[Gray Ghost]

My father built the house that I grew up in back in the late 50's. Some of the wood came from a hotel that was known to have been haunted. Over the years, all the Russ men have seen what appears to be a female. She is transparent but you can tell that it is a female. One day about a year ago my brother Tony was sitting in the living room talking to our mama and he felt something behind him. There was no one else in the house at the time. He took his cell phone and stuck it up over his head and took a picture. Below is what he saw. It is an image of a female. The clothing looks vintage, especially with the gathered shoulder seams. It is hard to tell but there is another figure behind this one. We do not know who or what she is. He has several times tried to take other pictures and shake the phone to cause it to blur but all images have come out clear. He has been unable to blur any images so this one is definitely strange. What ever it is it has never been violent but has sure scared the snot out of us over the years. Mama has since passed away and the house sits empty. I have some items from my mother's house in my house now and there has been some strange things happening. Unknown noises and seeing people out of the corner of my eyes. Doors shuting for no apparent reasons and fans moving from the side table and sitting on the bed when I wake up.

=GG=

 

[Miss Sis]

Thought I'd throw another little story into the mix!

A good friend of ours seems to attract/see things reasonably often, although he doesn't talk about it much. One New Year a few years ago by BF and I arranged hiring a beautiful Edwardian house for our friends to have a vintage party over a week. We were very busy arranging things and making sure our guests were happy and comfortable, so I was rushed off my feet, arranging a big meal, cooking breakfasts etc.

Our friend made a comment about 'seeing something' and I questioned him, as I am always curious about such things. He said 'I saw a dog come down the stairs'. Immediately I replied 'A jack russel terrier - white with brown markings and a brown tail'. As I said it, it was like the image flashed up in my mind's eye. He said (surprised) 'Did you see it too?'. I said no, but it came to me as soon as you said it. He explained that he had seen it in the large garden sniffing around under some big trees and then later run down the stairs ahead of him and disappear into the sitting room, where of course, it wasn't found. At first he thought it belonged to the owner, but he didn't have a dog, and we both said 'It's an old family pet come to check out all the strangers staying in the house!'

 

[Miss Sis]

Another slightly creepier one.

A female friend of mine is very open to seeing/experiencing things, but she hates it and tries hard to block it out. I was staying with her and her sister at what us Kiwis call their 'batch' (a holiday cottage, usually quite basic) which belonged to her grandparents. We were all sleeping together in one bedroom which had about six beds in it, her sister at the other end of the room and my friend and I across from each other at the other end.

We'd all gone to bed and been chatting for a bit when we fell silent and settled down. I lay there for quite some time when a heard some noise coming from under the floorboards, which I thought was rats or mice, which was a bit annoying as I'd just been drifting off and it had woken me up. I lay there for a bit longer when something made me open my eyes and look across to my friend.

There I saw something I cannot explain. It was a very dark and orangey glowing, swirling ball hovering over her chest. I closed my eyes then opened them and looked again. It was still there. It was not that I could see her as such as it was very dark but I knew it was over her. I felt quite stunned, and more than a bit uneasy. I shut my eyes again, and then my friend said in a rather worried voice (I thought she was asleep and hadn't made any sound) 'There's something there, isn't there?'. For a second I wanted to lie to her and say what are you talking about, but I calmly said 'Yes' and she said 'I knew it - I could feel it was there'. I think I said something like 'Let's go to sleep now and not talk about it at the moment'.

The street the house was on was very dark as there was only one streetlight and it was not near the house. We were at the back of the house and there was no light coming in, no lights on inside and nothing for any light to reflect off of. I cannot think of any logical way to explain what I saw. The next day we discussed it and I told her what I had seen. She often had strange things like this happen to her and it upset her. She once woke to see a figure bending over her sister's bed at home where they shared a bedroom and her sister woke at the same time to see that figure bending over her! They both screamed out, their mother leapt out of bed across the hallway and came in, turning on the light to find out what the heck was happening. She didn't see anything but my friend said the figure didn't just disappear when the light went on but slowly faded away. She was most disturbed by this and said 'It's one thing for them to bother me but they should leave my sister alone'.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

My father built the house that I grew up in back in the late 50's. Some of the wood came from a hotel that was known to have been haunted. Over the years, all the Russ men have seen what appears to be a female. She is transparent but you can tell that it is a female. One day about a year ago my brother Tony was sitting in the living room talking to our mama and he felt something behind him. There was no one else in the house at the time. He took his cell phone and stuck it up over his head and took a picture. Below is what he saw. It is an image of a female. The clothing looks vintage, especially with the gathered shoulder seams. It is hard to tell but there is another figure behind this one. We do not know who or what she is. He has several times tried to take other pictures and shake the phone to cause it to blur but all images have come out clear. He has been unable to blur any images so this one is definitely strange. What ever it is it has never been violent but has sure scared the snot out of us over the years. Mama has since passed away and the house sits empty. I have some items from my mother's house in my house now and there has been some strange things happening. Unknown noises and seeing people out of the corner of my eyes. Doors shuting for no apparent reasons and fans moving from the side table and sitting on the bed when I wake up.

=GG=

Here's what I see:

 

[K.McG]

I haven't ever really seen much of anything, but there have been a few strange things that have happened.Once when I was wee I was walking from the family room to the kitchen, which in my house is a little hall way between the two rooms with the basement door on the right and the Laundry room and powder room to the left, well I glanced into the laundry room, which was dark and saw a very large, tall and broad shouldered man shaped shadow coming from the powder room, I shouted and he disappeared. My middle sister said she saw a man in the basement and my Mom had a few times where Frank,which is what we think he was called, came about, she often smelled cigar smoke in the house, no one in my immediate family smokes, let alone cigars, well she firmly told him to take it outside, and hasn't smelled it since.
My mom has had some interesting experiences, so I like to think I got a bit of it from her. One of her stories that stands out most in my mind is from about 11 years ago, when my Great Grandmother passed, they had taken her to the hospital earlier that evening and later on Mom was sleeping and then all of a sudden she heard Nana tell her to wake up and answer the phone, at which point the phone rang, it was my Grandmother calling to say that Nana had passed on.

Just recently for me, I was working at the PA Renaissance Faire, which is located on the Mount Hope Estate, all of the business as well as a few theatre productions take place in the mansion, which is said to be very active. We had to take some things to the dressing room in the mansion and our intern had never been inside so after we did what we had to do, we took a mini tour of the down stairs where the shows happen, all of the downstairs lights were off at this point,we walk into the entry hall to show the intern the picture of Miss. Daisy Grubb(who is said to still be in residence, I always make it a point to say hello to her whenever I go in the mansion.) as well as the rooms adjacent, and and both myself and the other costume shop assistant immediately had to leave. We both felt like we shouldn't have been in there, I felt as if I interrupted something. My arms felt all strange and almost heavy and nervous, it was really strange, I felt funny all day. There are a few people said to still be there, and apparently the basement is where the strongest energy is.

Also a few summers back I was working as a camp counselor, and I had a group one week that was called 'Riding thru History' and we went to Gettysburg, one of our activities while we were there was a walking ghost tour, on that tour I snapped this picture:

in looking through my pictures I noticed something in the lower left hand corner of the above picture...I have no idea what it is.

 

[Miss sofia]

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!

 

[HoosierDaddy]

You just scared the livin **** out of me Miss Sofia.:eeek:..

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I believe I have a haunt where I live now, who likes chairs. My one orange lazy boy, only the one on the right, occasionally rocks on its own, and the kitchen chair, again, only the one closest to the oven, will be pulled out for no reason. Sometimes, I see what looks like a person in the entry way to the place, too. I'll hear footsteps walking across the house, too.

 

[DNO]

Thirty years ago, I visited the Gettysburg battlefield for the first time. I arrived at night but I couldn't wait to have a look at the battlefield, so my wife and I drove around the site. Needless to say, we were the only car doing so. It was pitch black when we came to a stop sign in the vicinity of the Peach Orchard and out of nowhere our car was swarmed by hundreds of fireflies...they seemed to be everywhere. They were the only fireflies we encountered and they just sort of swirled around for a while. I must admit that I don't believe in ghosts but that was quite unnerving.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

In 2001, my Father passed and my Mother turned a bedroom in her house into a den. Her wanting to use a computer on a dial up connection forced her to have what is called, "CallWave" so she could get off line to answer the phone. The CallWave had two calls from her own phone number, which left and actual recording It seemed there was some background noise in the recordings left on the CallWave voicemail, and a file is made to your inbox on the designated email address for the CallWave systems. After viewing the information and contacting CallWave to make inquiries about this happening, they responded it would be impossible to take place. I personally forwarded the information from the computer files (email file numbers recorded for their systems) to them. They had no explanation for how it could happen.

About a month later, my dog was staying with my Mother to give her a better sense of security. My dog was looking at the corner of the opening of the closet where the wall meets the opening, a noise like a bowling ball rolling on the floor was made, and my dog attacked the wall. No one in the family ever bowled and there was nothing in the closet to make that sort of noise.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Something similar happened to a friend of mine. His father just passed away a few months back and he told me shortly thereafter, same week. That he had a voicemail on his phone. It said 'Hey, it's Dad, answer your phone.'

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Something similar happened to a friend of mine. His father just passed away a few months back and he told me shortly thereafter, same week. That he had a voicemail on his phone. It said 'Hey, it's Dad, answer your phone.'

There was no voice on the recorded messages but you could hear some sort of back ground noises.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Mt Great Grandfather worked in a Funeral home for a few years in the 1930's. He stated more than one time dead people would sit up, yawn, turn their heads, kick their legs, make muffled laughs, and one time a dead person picked off a flower that was on a flower vase near the opening of the casket.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

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

Mt Great Grandfather worked in a Funeral home for a few years in the 1930's. He stated more than one time dead people would sit up, yawn, turn their heads, kick their legs, make muffled laughs, and one time a dead person picked off a flower that was on a flower vase near the opening of the casket.

 

[Tiller]

Thirty years ago, I visited the Gettysburg battlefield for the first time. I arrived at night but I couldn't wait to have a look at the battlefield, so my wife and I drove around the site. Needless to say, we were the only car doing so. It was pitch black when we came to a stop sign in the vicinity of the Peach Orchard and out of nowhere our car was swarmed by hundreds of fireflies...they seemed to be everywhere. They were the only fireflies we encountered and they just sort of swirled around for a while. I must admit that I don't believe in ghosts but that was quite unnerving.

I'm not a believer in ghosts myself either, but if there was such a thing as ghosts I could see them being in places like Gettysburg. Even if their aren't any ghost there people's lives still have left such an echo that it is felt to this day even by us skeptics.