True ghost stories?

[mamakat]

I just read the post about the haunted chandelier. I love stuff like that. Does anyone have any "real life ghost stories? Please share!!

[aruvqan]

I had an imaginary friend when I was about 3 years old. I described him to my parents and a child psychologist and the description fit my great grandfather down to the missing fingertips on his left hand. Never saw a picture of him, we had lived in Germany the entire time and the only formal portrait of him was at my grandparents house in Florida [and in the fashion of formal portraits at the turn of the last century, about 1902 you couldn't see his hands anyway.] Creeped my parents out. The child psych had no explaination for it. I still don't have one myself.

But then again, the next year when we moved back to the US, my mother and brother, our nanny and I moved into the house my g-grandfather built, and we would fairly frequently come home to find every light in the house switched on. Had the old style double pushbutton light switches so it took some effort to turn them on. Was definitely off-putting the first couple of times it happened. We moved out of the house for the final time when I was 9, and it was still happening at that time. The police, my grandparents, uncle and probably 10 or 15 people around at the time witnessed it happening. After the first 10 or so times it happened, we took to ignoring it and figured it was better than coming home to an empty house=)

<dad was army, and we moved in and out of the house a couple of times in the 5 years but spent a total of about 2 of the years there. Didn't happen unless we were in residence.

[kniz]

There is a plantation house near Aberdeen, MS that is open for tours. It was built in the 1850's by the Young family. The last two Young brothers died in 1913. It sat for 50 years without any residents. A glass door had been broken which allowed wild animals to get inside, but there was no vandalism done to the house. In 1963, Mr. & Mrs. Snow took on the task of restoring the house. They soon recognized that there was a someone there. Beds would become wrinkled at nap time and then straighten back out; things would come up missing, etc. Then one day, Mrs. Stone saw this little girl going up a flight of stairs and then disappearing. Through research they could find no little girl of the Youngs that had died. A few years ago, during a tour of the house, this story was told. A couple on the tour said that their family was from that area. There was a story of one of their ancestors attending a party at Waverly with their young daughter. They stayed the night, since it was impossible to return home. During the night the little girl got up for something and the next morning she was found dead. She had caught her head in the spindles in the railings. There was room at the top for her to get her head in but lower down not enough room for her to get out.

The railings inside the house are probably its main feature since there are four stories, with circular landings on all three upper levels.

[Gatopescado]

is an example of an oxymoron.

___________
Jesus was in a coma.

[Batsinma Belfry]

I was wondering how long it would take for one of the higher beings to pop in to spread his/her wisdom on us poor misguided fools who actually think that there may be something else out there, other than what we see in front of us every day. :rolleyes:

[SnakeSpirit]

Yeah, and sorry there will be more soon, and you don't have to be psychic to figure that one out.

I had just moved from Greenwich to Hartford (Connecticut). My girlfriend lived in a house just off the Post Road, not far from Mason Street, that had been converted into several apartments.

After a date one night I was too tired to drive back to Hartford (a couple of hours, anyway, I forget exactly) and asked if I could spend the night. Since she still lived with her older brother, this relegated me to one of the four rooms that had been a bedroom but was being used as a 'living room.'

I curled up on the couch with a blanket and started meditating. After a few minutes I started hearing a couple of unfamiliar voices, very clear. One said, "Hey, what are we going to do with this guy?" and the other answered, "Oh, I don't know. How about we make him jump out of a window?"

I sat up and turned around to confront whomever it was, and (surprise) there was no one there, and I didn't hear anything else. So, I just kind shrugged it off, figuring maybe I had slipped into a dream or whatever, and went back to meditating.

Now, I had worked quite a bit with bio-feedback back in those days, and using meditation I was able to alter my brainwave frequencies to both Apha and Theta while maintaining consciousness, and I was able to recognize when I had achieved these states.

So, as I slipped over the line from Beta into Alpha, I started hearing the 'voices' again. This time, instead of being across the room, they had moved so that I had a voice shouting into each ear, and they were laughing that "evil laugh" that we hear in horror movies so much. (Nyah, ha, ha, ha, ha........) tapering off into almost a croak then starting up again.

Now they had my attention.

I sent them a few thoughts of annoyance (how dare they disturb my meditation!) and proceeded to visualize (imagine) a bright white light within my body. I associated this light with... what I have come to refer to as the creative energy of the Universe, what some would call "God" or "Jesus" or whatever. I filled my body with this white light (or my body was filled, whatever) and then let it expand out into the room. By the time I had completely filled every corner of the room the voices faded away. I waited a few minutes, and when I felt assured they were gone I let my brainwave frequencies slow down to Delta and I went to sleep.

In the morning I told my girlfriend about the experience, and she turned pretty white (she had darker brown skin than most CT Yankees, having been born in India). She said, "Oh my god, I forgot! That's why we turned that room into the living room, nobody has been able to sleep in there, they have bad nightmares! We were told that the last tenant had jumped out the window!"

I told her not to worry, that it wouldn't be a problem in that room any more, and left for home.

Next week I saw her again, and she told me that she had started having nightmares. She dreamed that there were two "evil beings" and that they were chasing her and that she would even wake up screaming. So I spent some time in a meditative state, going around the house, filling every corner of every room with white light and anchoring it to the structure.

After that neither she nor her family had any more problems of that kind so far as I know.

True story.

[Eve]

I was wondering how long it would take for one of the higher beings to pop in to spread his/her wisdom on us poor misguided fools who actually think that there may be something else out there, other than what we see in front of us every day. :rolleyes:

Well, dear heart, this is a message board connected to a column on "fighting ignorance." You must expect us higher beings to waft down once in a while.

[SnakeSpirit]

Well, dear heart, this is a message board connected to a column on "fighting ignorance." You must expect us higher beings to waft down once in a while.

Some higher beings are more palatable than others.
Your waft is an honor.

[LouisB]

Eve, you are most assuredly a higher being and your presence here brightens my life. But-----I lived in an old (1870ish) house in South Dakota that I will go to my grave believing was haunted. I felt touches on my back and neck several times---I FELT them, dammit. I felt a hand in the small of my back just as I catapulted head first down a flight of stairs. When my ex-wife stopped laughing, she said it looked as if I had suddenly decided to pull a swan dive down the stairs. I AIN'T no acrobat, dammit. And, for what it is worth, there was a room in the basement of that place that I physically could not enter. No, the door wasn't locked. I could get as far as maybe one foot through the doorway before my hackles stood up, goosebumps formed all over my body, the temperature plummeted and my "fight or flight" reflex kicked in very strongly---the "flight" portion always won out. I can't describe the way I felt as anything other then terror. So there you have---a calm, rational, discourse and it should be enough to convince the most hardened skeptic.

[racinchikki]

During the night the little girl got up for something and the next morning she was found dead. She had caught her head in the spindles in the railings. There was room at the top for her to get her head in but lower down not enough room for her to get out..
How would getting your head stuck in a railing for a few hours KILL you? I mean, unless she somehow got her head stuck in them from the other side of the railing so she was dangling by her neck...

[Doomtrain]

How would getting your head stuck in a railing for a few hours KILL you? I mean, unless she somehow got her head stuck in them from the other side of the railing so she was dangling by her neck...

If you thrash around in panic or something, maybe you could hurt yourself?

I'm reaching, but I know how capable we humans can be at killing ourselves in new, innovative ways.

[Sandlegs]

i never believed in ghosts before the tale in which i am about to tell.....

of course a lot of people say that.

Ok.....so i live in a very old farm house. and the houses that neighbor mine within several miles are very old as well. In one of the neighbor's houses an old woman died, an after several days, they had an estate auction that i attended. I was about 15 years old at the time, and my mother went with me to the auction. There she bought several things, one of which was an old typewriter that she thought would look cool in our house.

Jump to several weeks later....

I was watching TV one night after everyone went to sleep, and from the other room i heard typing. Someone was typing on the old typewriter. I thought one of my family members was doing it, even tough i heard nobody go into the room. so i looked in the doorway, and the lights were off, and nobody was there. i went to sit down again and the typing resumed....now i was a little scared. i went to sleep that night kind of freaked out.

The same thing happened over the course of several days, but now, whatever was typing on the old typewriter was also typing on the paper-feed calculator, at the same time. All the while paper was coming out of it. After this i thought everything was in my head. But that changed one night when my father was woken up by the noises. He asked, "what is that", and i said that i didn't know. He went back to bed, and i went to sleep.

THe next day, i examined the typewriter, and things that came with it. The only thing that came with the typewriter was the manual from 1912. In this manual, there were written times above each page. I guessed that whoever owed this typewriter typed the pages in the manual and timed themselves. I also thought that this would be a good time to put some paper in the thing to see what in the blazes it was typing. That night, and every night after that........nothing happened. The typwriter has never typed anything ever since i read the manual and the times inside.

Maybe whoever was typing wanted me to see the times that they achieved in the manual.........and i must say, i could never type that fast on a typewriter.

well, that's mine, and i know it is true because it actually happed

Good day.

[Revtim]

I'm a complete skeptic, and I am all but positive ghosts don't exist.

But, I love ghost stories. And if someone claims the ghost story is true, the story might even creep me out, if it's a good one.

Cognitive dissonance: it isn't just for politics anymore!

[meenie7]

I understand why some people “disbelieve” in the existence of ghosts. In fact, I wouldn’t expect anyone to “believe” in them (i.e., accept them on faith, without concrete proof.) I don’t “believe” in them myself – I know they are real, just like the sun, the grass outside and the computer which I’m using to post this message, because I have seen and interacted with many of them.
My first college was the first place I really encountered a lot of ghosts in one place. Man, oh man, was that place Hauntings Central! Most of the dormitory and classroom buildings were built in the 1920s or earlier, so in addition to a large collection of spirits, including one that looked like a nun (it was a Catholic college, so this was not far-fetched) with glowing eyes who would watch you from the balcony overlooking the old ballroom in my dorm, there was just a lot of funky energy from thousands of people having lived there over the years, leaving the imprints of their sorrow, happiness, loneliness, etc. on the building.
I then transferred to a much newer college (almost all constructed in the 1960s) which basically completely surrounded a huge cemetery. The ghosts there seemed less malicious than the ones at my first college; they mostly just wanted to talk to someone. Still, it is creepy to get a cold hand on your face when you thought you were alone, or someone suddenly speaking your name out of perfect silence!
Further information would probably brand me as the resident mental case, but suffice it to say that I have a very deep and meaningful relationship with a ghost who I met at my second college. I haven’t been in college since 2001, but he’s still with me. (I probably already look like a mental case, right? Imagine if you heard the whole story...)

[Q.E.D.]

So there you have---a calm, rational, discourse and it should be enough to convince the most hardened skeptic.
Not hardly. All this does is convince me that people are better at deluding themselves than I thought.

[SnakeSpirit]

Not hardly. All this does is convince me that people are better at deluding themselves than I thought.

All this does is convince me that people are better at deluding themselves than I thought.

[Czarcasm]

Either tell your tall tale or move on, people. If you wish to bitch, you know the forum to do it in.

[jlzania]

My grandfather, an astonishingly pragmatic and practical man, served as a British officer in WWI.
While patrolling the trench line one night, he saw another officer approaching and hailed him.
The officer ignored him and when grandpa got within a few feet of him, vanished into the night air.
Grandpa reported that he felt a distinct chill when he walked through the spot that he had just seen the other officer in.
Make of it what you will.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

A True Ghost Story: Truly, there are no ghosts... None at all....save only in your Imagination.

[Jinx]

is an example of an oxymoron.

Hmm, would you prefer "unexplained phenomena", then?

[kniz]

How would getting your head stuck in a railing for a few hours KILL you? I mean, unless she somehow got her head stuck in them from the other side of the railing so she was dangling by her neck...
To be honest I thought the same thing when I heard the story. That is why I added at the end the fact that the main feature of the house was the railings. The tour cost $7.50 so they had to throw in something to keep us satisfied.

Living out in the country in a big house gets rather spooky at times. The other night I heard a loud noise downstairs. After some time I went downstairs to get something to drink and just had to do some checking. I finally turned off the lights to go back upstairs and again there was a loud noise out on the porch. I turned on a light in the sunroom and there was a racoon investigating a flower pot. I'm not too worried about ghosts, but the non-ghosts worry me some.

;) Seems like Snakespirit should consider becoming a GHOSTBUSTER

[Nobody]

Not a ghost story so much as an angel story, but, same diff.

Years ago, when I was living with my mother, we had a fire one night. Oddly enough, our refrigerator caught fire. It was an old one, and the insolation on top got too hot, or something like that.
Anyway, it was night, and we were sleeping. I heard my mother calling me, so I got up, walked into the front room, looked into the kitchen, and only saw a lot of smoke, with a large orange glow in the middle. I looked at it, thought to myself something like "That's gonna leave a huge mess for us to clean up tomorrow," and went back to bed. My mother had to call to me a few more times before I realized the danger we were in.
Well, we made it out OK, got the neighbors to call out the fire department, and everything turned out not to bad, considering.
Where's the ghost story part? Well, my mother woke me up, but what woke her up? A voice, telling her to "Get up now!" She argued with it, but after a short while, she got up, saw the fire, and woke me up.
True story.

[Eve]

Well, my mother woke me up, but what woke her up? A voice, telling her to "Get up now!" She argued with it, but after a short while, she got up, saw the fire, and woke me up.
True story.

Your Mom smelled smoke in her sleep, and her brain told her "Get up now!" I have no doubt it's true; we all "hear voices" in our dreams.

[Sampiro]

I'm a skeptic and generally a rationalist and I believe in ghosts. I don't know what they are, I have no clue as to how many ghost stories are "true" v. hypnopompic hallucination & what-not, but I've definitely had some experiences I couldn't explain, some of which occurred in front of witnesses.

I grew up on a farm in middle-of-nowhere Alabama that had once been part of a huge (10,000 acres+) plantation broken apart after the Civil War and sharecropped well into the mid 20th century. The earliest and the most vivid supernatural memory I have (this is the short version of a very long story):

I was about 5 years old and playing in a scuppanong arbor near the gates to our house (about 1/10 mile to the house). I heard children playing and that was odd because there were no other kids anywhere near the place- my siblings were much older and in school and our nearest neighbor who didn't have liver spots (and my last name) was 2 miles away. I went out to see and there were two little black children (I had seen black people before but there were none who lived in walking distance) playing in the sunlight.

The oldest was a little boy who I would guess was about 2 1/2-3 years old but I remember what he was wearing- a man's ragged shirt that fit him like a gown. He had a baby sister just old enough to walk who was wearing a flour sack like piece of cloth and had her hair tied in scraps of cloth (which was something I'd never seen before). He was spinning her and they were laughing and when I went running up to see who they were they vanished instantly (no special effects, sounds, fade-out, just "there"- "not there").

I remembered the incident for years but basically convinced myself I'd imagined it. When I was a teenager my Aunt Carrie moved from her house (the original tin-roofed & log family homeplace about half-a-mile from us where she had been born and lived her entire life) came to live in our house. She was over 90 and she babbled constantly, sometimes about TV and sometimes about her past. It was so constant that I generally learned to tune it out but would occasionally catch then end of something interesting.

One day that end of something interesting was to the effect of "and the two little n*gra chirren who died right down there nexta where the scup'nong bushes ere". I asked her to rewind and got the story (short version):

Crow (so called because he was so black- this was again c.1900 Alabama) was a sharecropper who lived in a shack near the edge of our woods (near the scuppanong arbor) around the turn of the century (when Carrie & her twin would have been about 11). One morning Carrie and her family smelled smoke and a very haggard looking Crow came walking up shortly after and asked my great-grandfather "Mistah Jimmy... I needs a box big nuff to bury two little n*gg*rs" (I've always thought that sentence spoke volumes about the plight of the man). His shack had burned during the night and his two youngest children were killed in the fire, very near where I had seen the two small children vanish.

Well, I freaked out.

There have been several other incidents, but that's one of the few "explained" ones. I don't know what ghosts are (my guess would be some form of time-space quirk) but I have no doubt they exist. I've lived in new houses that did have weird happenings and old spooky places where nothing strange ever happened so who knows what the explanation ultimately is.

Trivia: I used to live 7 miles from Andersonville, the infamous Confederate POW camp where more than 10,000 men died in just over a year in a two acre enclosure and many more survived as skeletons [and at least one baby was born to a woman disguised as a man] and if there is a place in Georgia that you would think would have a feeling of hell on Earth it would be this place. There's absolutely no sense of terror or evil or tranquility or anything else there- it's just a piney hillside- nothing spooky in the least. OTOH nearby was a 3 BR house with a pool built in the 1970s on the street where I lived at the time that had been sold numerous times below market value because people who lived in it swore it was haunted, while houses on either side of it had very stable occupancy histories.

[peculiar hailstone]

Ghosts, Loch Ness monster, Sasquatch or God... skeptics are in trouble all the time because all we have is the proof science which say that things DO exist. It's impossible to disprove something completely intangible. As I write this, there's the ghost of a puppy dog lying at my feet, only I can't see him. He's so cute.


Not bitching. This is a great thread!