true sppoky halloween tales

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

With Halloween coming up, I thought it’d be cool to share a few “true” ghost stories. Surely something supernatural has happened to some of the people in this board. I’ve met people in real life that say they’ve seen, heard and experienced ghosts. I’m sure this community could top any of their tales…but i’ll start with one of my own.

This happened to me around 1996 or 97 when I lived in Washington DC.

I went on the “ghost tour of Arlington VA” . If anyone is around or from that area, they probably know about it. It was pretty freaking cold, that night, I remember. The tour itself was okay. A lady in old time garb led the group around Arlington, telling us about supposedly haunted places, etc. Nut the last stop of the tour was an old church. I was getting bored around this time, and hell, I was cold. Plus I had to pick up my wife from work soon, so I wasn’t paying as much attention as I could have. But I remember her saying something about George Washington, blah, blah, blah.

This part of the tour was the end. We were standing the group of us, about maybe 20 folks, on the side of the church. The tour guide lady was on some steps that went into a side door as she spoke. There was about maybe 15 feet of space between the side of the church and a brick wall behind us. Also behind the group, (as we were facing the tour guide lady) there were several grave stones before the wall. People were buried where we were standing. Struggling to pay attention to the tour guide lady I heard an audible sigh right behind me. I turned, and there was no one behind me. Yeah, there were people beside me, but no one behind me, nothing but the wall and a few gravestones. I shrugged and started listening to the tour guide…but then I heard it again. A very loud sigh, as if someone meant for me to hear it. I turned around again. No one there. Yeah, there was a guy standing next to me, but no one else within “sighing” range. I looked to the guy next to me and said “You say something?”.

He looked at me like I was crazy and said “No.”.

A few seconds went by and by this time I had decided to keep the guy next to me in my peripheral vision to make sure he wasn’t fucking with me. I heard it again, the sigh. It was definitely behind me. The guy next to me didn’t move or acknowledge the sound. I was partially freaked out, but I was thinking “Its gotta be something natural making that sound!”.

The tour guide lady said this was the end of the tour and we were all free to wander around the 200 or so year old cemetery behind the church. I walked back there and looked around. Others did too, but I wasn’t near any of them. I saw one gravestone that people had put Halloween candy around. It was near the wall as it extended into the graveyard. Two ladies stood by it so I walked up and asked them why people had put candy around this particular gravestone. They said they didn’t know and walked away. It was dark and the stone was old. The writing was worn away, but I tried to read it in the dark as best I could. I was alone, as the nearest person in the cemetery was at least 25 feet away.

And I heard the sigh again. There was no mistake about it this time. There was no one else NEAR me and no place for anyone to hide and screw around. Still, thinking this was some kind of prank I spun around and said “Ok, motherfucker, stop fucking around! Where are you!?”

I really hoped someone would have opened a trap door or something and said “ok, man, ya caught us!”.

But no, I was answered with a loud sigh, again directly behind me, even though I had shifted position. I then decided to do what I figured I’d always do when confronted with the supernatural. Run like Hell. I would have put Shaggy and Scooby to shame as I darted out of the cemetery and ran several blocks back to my car. As I told a friend of mine, I was wearing a long coat and it flew behind me like Batman’s cape as I ran. But Batman wouldn’t have been muttering “ohshitohshitohshit!” like I was.

After telling my wife about this story she said I should go back during the day. I never did, not out of fear, really, but apathy I guess.

That isn’t the scariest thing to ever happen to me, but I am sure that something paranormal happened. There was no one around me when I heard the last sighs…and I know I heard ‘em. I was trying very hard to make sure that I heard what was going on around me.

2

shizaru “This part of the tour was the end. We were standing the group of us, about maybe 20 folks, on the side of the church.”

I would even pay money to see that. :smiley:

3

This is weird of itself. I decided to reply to this thread with a story that didn’t happen directly to me, but that I heard first hand from the lady it happened to. I did a search for Springer Opera House and the story I am going to tell is mentioned on the page!

The wardrobe mistress of the Springer had gone upstairs to the costume loft to search for a particular costume. She looked in the area it should have been in - it wasn’t there. She looked in a few other areas with no success. Giving up, she had gone to the door and put her hand on the doorknob when she thought of another place to look. She went to that area and searched, again without success. When she got back to the door to leave, the costume was hanging on the doorknob.

The Springer is well-known for being haunted.

4

I have two. Well, one is on-going, and not really scary.
We bought our house from the son of the original owner.
Mrs. Evans lived in the house for 60 years. She and her husband moved in in 1942, when she was 33. She died here in 1992.
When we first moved in, it was just Hubby and I, no kids, no pets.
Almost every night we would hear footsteps on the basement stairs. Once I heard singing in the extra bedroom. Once I started to trim a bush outside the dining room window I heard happy laughter from inside the house. Hubby was at work. The more I cut, the louder it got. I had intended to olny trim the bush, but I ended up cutting it to the ground, and digging up the roots. I somehow knew Mrs. Evans hated it and was glad it was gone. :dubious:

The other story is from a hospital I worked in in LA. It was Hollywood Presbyterian. It was the oldest occupied building in LA.
It was the weekend before Christmas. All the patients who were well enough were sent home and the others were consolidated so several units were closed. We were working with minimal staff.
West 4, the unit next to mine, was one of the closed units.

My unit was next to the stairs. There was a wide hallway that connected the west 4 unit to us next to my nurses’ station. There was one service elevator about 6 feet from my nurses’ in that hallway. There was no other way in or out of West 4 that didn’t pass by my nurses’ station. Since we were trying to give as many people the week off as possible, I was head nurse playing ward clerk. I was stuck at the desk, answering phones and doing paperwork.

The last patient from West 4 was transferred to us at about 2:30PM. So when my shift started at 3:00, there was no one there.

At about 3:15, I heard a call light beeping. I looked at our board, but nothing was lit up. I walked over to West 4 and sure enough a call light was on in a room halfway down the hall. I went in, turned it off and noticed the bed was messed up. I smoothed it out and went back to the desk.

Five minutes later, I heard the call light again. This time I asked one of the aids to go with me. It call light was from the same room. I turned it off again and again noted that the bed was rumpled.

I told the aid that whoever was playing this game could stop. I wasn’t going to be anything but annoyed by this silliness. She said she didn’t know of anyone trying to play a trick.

I went back to the desk and sure enough, a few minutes later, it happened again. This time I called security to check it. The security guard came up the service elevator which made enough noise it could be heard from every room on the unit. No one could sneak in and out that way.

The security guard thought maybe there was a short in the call light, so he unplugged it and put in a cap so it couldn’t go off again.

He left and 10 minutes passed before it happened again. This time it was in the room next door to the first one. I called the guard and asked if he had put the call light in another room. He swore he didn’t, that he’d taken it to engineering to be fixed.

Did I mention that I checked every room and closet to looking for a pranskter? Did i mention that the security guard did the same?

At about 8:00 PM a hospital aid who had worked there for over 20 years came by to say hi. I told her what had been happening. She told me it had happened every Christmas when that unit was closed.
She said it was just a ghost that got lonely when no one was there.

5

I almost choked on my tea when I read this line. :smiley:

I’ve previously posted about a ghostly encounter I had several years ago. I was home sick one day when I was a junior in high school. My parents were at work and my sibs were at school, so I was all alone in the house. When I went into the kitchen to get a drink, I glanced up and saw a figure made of white light racing from my sister’s room to my brother’s room. I would have had to cross that area to get back to my room. Being the big fraidy cat that I was, I spent the rest of the day freaking out in the living room. After several hours I convinced myself that it had only been a trick of the light.

I didn’t tell anyone about the incident for several years, long after we had moved out of that house. One night, for whatever reason, my brother and I were talking about ghosts. I jokingly mentioned that I once thought I had seen a ghost in our old house. Without missing a beat, my brother asked “was it the one in Nancy’s room?”

I asked him what he’d seen in our sister’s room, and he described a figure made of white light that darted around the house. To this day I don’t know what to make of this information.