Boo!
Just wondering if anyone’s had any reliable first-hand experience with ghosts and such.
I’ve heard other people’s personal ghost stories over the years, but there’s always something flaky, either about the situation, or the person. Except for one, maybe.
Heard another one today, so I thought I’d inquire …
If you count night terrors (sleep paralysis) I’ve seen “ghosts,” though I don’t honestly believe it was anything more than hallucinations.
I have a short essay online that I wrote about it, and I collected stories of other peoples’ first hand experiences as they sent them in (I had no way of authenticating them or anything though, so you have to take them at their word, but none of them are particularly outlandish re: what happened to them.)
A lot of the messages sent to me by others detailed experiences you could describe as ghost-like. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for, but you can read them here: http://essays.jinwicked.com/sp/
If you like to listen to that kind of thing for fun/curiosity, they frequently discuss things like that on Coast to Coast AM and people often call in stories there, too.
I’ve never seen a ghost, but there was a presence in my house for a while.
The previous owners were an elderly couple who had lived there since the 1950s. He passed away, and her family decided she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself, so they moved her into a nursing home and sold the property.
For a little over a year, I felt a definite presence in the house. You know that creepy feeling when you are being watched, the hair on the back of your neck prickles? It was always in one room or another. It felt as though someone was right behind me, looking over my shoulder. Guests would mention it, too. The dog would suddenly jump up and trot out of a room, looking around nervously.
Then it stopped, suddenly and completely.
I found out later that the lady had passed away in the nursing home, right about the time the presence disappeared. It is my belief that the husband’s spirit was hanging around waiting for her, in the last place they had been together.
www.coasttocoastam.com - in case the OP is interested in looking up local stations and times.
When I was about 10, my parents had a little cottage they were fixing up. Often one of them would be in there alone smelling cigar smoke and getting that “watched” feeling. Even after ripping out and replacing all the walls and sheetrock. We also had “unbreakable” glass items shatter for no apparent reason, and our share of things inexplicably falling.
Do I believe these were the effects of real people from the great beyond? Probably not, but you never know.
For many people, any person who claims to expiernece a ‘ghost’ is automatically on the suspect list, so the answerl, for them is “Nobody”.
What would make a person completly reliable in your book?
What factors discredit someone?
Fixed title.
No more reliable than any other ghost story, but here goes it:
I was on vacation in Cancun with two friends of mine. One night they went out drinking, and I stayed in the hotel. They came back, and we all went to sleep, them in one bed, me in the other.
After what seemed only a half hour of semi-sleep I woke to see this etherial woman looming above the bed. It wasn’t scary at all, in fact, she was a beautful older woman with long dark hair and a flowing nightgown. I think I stared at her for two min. or more. I can’t be sure. I tried to wake up my friends, but by that time she was gone and they were seriously passed out.
I’ll never forget that, which is why I think it was more than a dream. Really, a very memorable part of my vacation. I hoped to see her again, but she did not reappear.
We used to meet at The Country House restaurant after rehearsals for burgers and such. Good food.
One night a few of us were lingering there late, discussing our upcoming Halloween concert. I don’t remember exactly what remark prompted this, but all of a sudden a glass candle holder sitting in the middle of an unoccupied round table next to ours flew off the table and onto the floor, where it shattered. The rest of our friends had left so nobody was sitting at that table or even walking past it when this occurred.
Our waitress heard the shatter as she was walking towards us, but didn’t see what had happened. She was not pleased when we explained it to her.
It was only after that that I heard about the haunting there. I’m a believer.
Okay, so here is something that happened to a friend of mine and I one night. I don’t know what was going on, but I certainly can’t explain it.
So it’s July 14th, 1994 and my friend Jen and I were up for an interesting night. We decided at about midnight to head over to a place called Riverside cemetary in Rock Island, IL. Locals of the QC area should be quite familiar. We were into the whole teenage goth thing, so we just wanted to head there and hang out. We ended up sitting on the cement monument of the Velie memorial (a huge statue right on top of a hill that looks over the Mississippi river and Davenport, IA across it). We sat there for maybe a half hour or so just talking.
After a while, we kept feeling like we were hearing voices around us and decided that we should go. This was all in our heads, no doubt. We just eventually got creeped out by it and decided to head out. Here’s the interesting part …
When we got to Jen’s car, I waited for Jen to unlock the doors and all that. I just stared off into space on the side of the hill and looked at a statue of an angel. It was stone and looked like it was ascending out of the ground with its arm outstretched to the sky. Jen got the door open and we headed out. But as we rounded a corner and the statue came into view …there was no statue. It was gone.
I kinda freaked out a little that it was JUST there and now it was gone. Jen said “which statue?” and I pointed to where I saw it. She freaked out - she said she’d seen it, too. She’s an artist so I said “draw what you saw so I can see if we’re thinking of the same thing.” She drew it to a T. Perfectly. We were supremely creeped out.
The next day, we decided that we had to check it out again in daylight to see if maybe we were just looking in the wrong place. Came back to the same hillside and walked all over it …not a single statue in the entire area.
I still don’t know what happened that night. My rational thoughts think that there is NO WAY there is anything supernatural that could happen there. But …I can’t think of any rational explanation. So something weird happened and there might be a rational explanation that I’m missing here, but I haven’t been able to see it in the last 10 years.
This was posted while I was writing my reply, but I just wanted to chime in quickly and mention that this restaurant is about five minutes from where I live right now 
Ooooh, ghost story thread! (I love ghost stories. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other if they’re true-I just love hearing them!)
I personally have never seen a ghost, but my mother has said she’s felt my grandfather’s presence at her mother’s house. I haven’t, although if I did, it wouldn’t scare me at all, being that I was seven when he died.
My sister goes to Seton Hill University, which was founded in the 1840s. The campus is a five minute drive from my afore-mentioned grandmother’s house, and when my aunt was in her teens, she used to work as a housekeeper at the college. She claimed to have felt the presence of the long dead nuns while cleaning one of the rooms-which was the one where they used to hold wakes for the sisters who had passed. One of my sister’s dormmates had claimed to have seen the ghosts of some of the sisters (although this girl is a total flake).
And supposedly, there’s one room in the building that’s been completely blocked off-there’s no way to access it (that anyone knows of). Supposedly someone committed suicide in there.
Dammit, everyone I know has seen or felt a ghost-but me! I want to see a ghost!
IMO A first hand experience is not likely to be reliable/credible for most people. Those who believe will be quick to believe, and those who don’t believe will be quick to disprove.
I’ve had personal experiences, but nothing I could say is evidence for anyone other than myself.
We have a ghost where I work. I can’t prove it. No pictures, no EVPs, or anything of the sort. However, I personally have experienced things first hand that I have had confirmed as inexplicable. One of which was when all of the lights and electrical appliances (Computers, Printers, etc) in a particular area lost power at the same time. Even the track light on one wall that nobody knows how to turn off, lost power. The power dip lasted about three seconds (best guess) after which PCs needed to be rebooted, the emergency lights came back on, and the overhead vapor halogen lights needed to be warmed back up. Several people witnessed this happening. Nobody has been able to explain it.
Here’s what makes this unexplainable:
It is a commonly held belief that our ghost likes that area of the building, (insert Twilight Zone theme here)
I’ve been able to scientifically explain many of the other experiences people have had in the building, such as Voices in one of the bathrooms, printers spontaneously kicking out several blank sheets of paper etc.
But people claim to have heard typing in the next cubicle when they were alone in the building. The Bathroom that people heard voices in had a toilet that would flush on it’s own, after which the door would swing open…this led to a lot of funny commentary.
I did a little local historic research and nobody has ever died in the building, but it is in very close proximity to the site of a fatal airline disaster that took place in the 60s
I used to work late hours alone in the building during which most of my personal experiences took place. I call him Phil and I think he’s cool to have around.
Assuming we have free will about these things and ghosts are real do you guys see yourselves pulling pranks like this in the afterlife?
I think if I die and become a ghost I would probably try to contact dead relatives first. Probably spend years in reflection of my life, and trying to figure out what the hell I am now.
Then out of boredom I can see myself messing with people, I’d look for people I disliked especially or people who seem to be general pricks.
I wasn’t a believer in ghost stories, until I had my own unexplained phenomena, so I’d hazard a guess that in this case, reliable is in the eye of the beholder.
My second ghost story is a typically spooky one - I saw and felt a malevolent presence in my house that seemed female. My brother saw it too, but not at the same time, and I didn’t know about his experience with it until years later. When he and I compared notes, we became convinced that we’d both seen the same thing, a woman in a dark skirt and white blouse, wearing her hair in a bun. He saw her on the stairs leading to my bedroom and in the garden, I saw her in my bedroom and in the garden. I was frightened by her because I could “feel” dislike coming from her, and then one night when my husband was out of town, I went into the room and saw her feet at my eye level, swinging - as though she was hanging from the rafter. Freaked me RIGHT out, and I refused to ever enter that room again. My husband felt the presence, but perceived no malice from it, so we concluded that she just liked him for some reason.
It’s the FIRST ghost story that convinced me of the existence of such things, though, because it WASN’T at all spooky, just weird and really rather mundane. I was sharing a house with two other people, and we had dogs, none of which was either black or a Labrador. But we all routinely saw a black Lab walking from behind a chair in the living room down the hall toward the bedrooms. It never came back down the hallway in the other direction. We’d all pretty much convinced ourselves that this dog was a figment of our imagination, until one night when we had a poker party in the kitchen. I saw the dog walk past the doorway, one of my roommates glanced at me and nodded because SHE saw the dog, and TWO of our guests suddenly said, “When did you guys get a black Lab?”
Mr. Cotta and I had been living in a 1920s (no Death Ray) house in Atlanta that had been chopped up into 3 or 4 apartments. We had the ‘penthouse’ (attic). The house had been owned by a policeman originally and it had some vague history of violence. No big deal.
One night I woke up about 3 in the morning needing to visit the restroom. To get to it, I had to go thru the kitchen, down a short hall. To the left was the bath and the right was the main room.into the bath. I have rather good night vision so I don’t always open my eyes when wandering around at night and this was no exception until a voice in my head started screaming, “DON’T LOOK!! DON’T LOOK!! DON’T LOOK!”. Of course my eyes flew open and I froze.
I paused a few seconds trying to figure out who was yelling at me and what was in the main room. My bladder convinced me to get to the bathroom NOW. I shut my eyes and got my business done. Kept my eyes shut all the way back to bed, too.
Mr. Cotta is quite the cynic about such things so I didn’t even tell him of this incident until years later. When I did, he told me that our dog used to stalk one spot in the main room regularly. She would slowly advance with her hackles up to one spot on the floor. Never did anything like it before or after we moved.
No conclusions, but it was spooky. Besides, who was yelling at me? The ‘Thing’? Guardian Angel? My own spider sense?
Here goes…this is the ONLY thng I’ve ever seen that suggests a ghostly presence (most likely a POLTERGEIST). I was 12 years old, and the family was sitting at the dinner table. There was a large bottle of Heinz ketchup in the center of the table. Everyone was sitting down…and all of a sudden, the cap flew off the ketchup bottle! It flew through the air, and described a perfect arc, landing upside down, about 2 feet from the bottle! Weird!
Hell yeah. Maybe we could all plan a Post Mortum Dopefest and terrorize the new generation of Dopers?
Just so you know, I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m a good, logical little atheist. I don’t hold with such nonsense as souls, or the afterlife, or poltergeist, or such like.
When I lived in Perry Point, Maryland on the old military base, we stayed in old creaky houses that were just plain creepy. Everyone had a ghost story. The base was widely believed to be haunted. My neighbor Andrea’s house was the creepiest house by far. She told me that the first night she moved in, she had laid down in her bed when she heard what sounded like a little girl run screaming up the stairs, into her room, then back down the stairs and out the front door.
Andrea and I were going to DC early one morning, so I stayed the night in her house so we could get up and dressed at the same time. Her roommate was gone, so I took the top bunk in her bedroom and she the bottom. Andrea dropped off right away while I got comfortable. As I closed my eyes, I heard this incredible roaring sound, like a train coming down on top of me. I thought, Oh no this can’t be happening and kept my eyes shut tight. Then something reached down and started shaking me, shaking the entire bed.
I laid perfectly still for about two minutes and then it just… stopped. Entirely freaked out and too frightened to open my eyes, I leaned over the edge and whispered, “Andrea? Andrea, wake up. Something grabbed me and shook me. Please let me sleep with you. I can’t stay up here by myself.” Andrea let me crawl in next to her on the bottom bunk and I clung to her the whole night.
Mind you, I don’t believe in ghosts.
For anyone interested in reading some really good ghost stories told from a healthcare angle you can visit www.allnurses.com and do a search on the terms “spooky, haunted, and or ghost” some of the treads are over 80 replies long, and the fact that they are told mainly by nurses offers an interesting perspective. Also, if you have a chance to listen to old “Ghost to Ghost” shows (offered once a year on Halloween night at Coast to Coast AM) you would be doing yourself a favor ( if it is subject that you find interesting) since I have heard some great ghost stories on those shows.
I have never had a paranormal experience, but tend to believe in ghosts ( on a scale of one to ten with ten being metaphysical certainty and one being absolute disbelief, I’m probably at an 8 or so) for one simple reason. I have read, and listened tothousands of accounts of ghost type experiences sincerely told and presented as real. Furthermore, I have personally known at least seven people that I trust relate such experiences (in one case three people that I went to school with reported the same experience). Over the course of human history there have probably been many tens of thousands of “reported” experiences and exponentially more that have gone unreported. Consider, that if only one such experience in the history of mankind is objectively valid then the so called strict “atheist” or mechanistic view of the universe falls flat on it’s face (in other words if there is no spirit, or God then there cannot be even one case of legitimate haunting, ESP ect). On the other hand 99.999% of cases can be false or explainable in prosaic terms without endangering the “metaphysical” universe, paradigm. To me it is simpler to believe that “something” of a paranormal like nature exists, than that every report in the history of mankind is false or explainable in prosaic terms. It is almost a case of Ochum’s razor except for me the razor cuts in favor of ghosts (or something that manifests in a manner consistent with how ghosts are reported) being an objectively real phenomina.
The thing about “hauntings” is that they should be capable of being subject to scientific evaluation. Unlike UFO’s which are said to occur over a vast area, and usually at considerable distances hauntings are said to occur at specific locations. It should be possible to take the top 50 or so “most” reportedly haunted locations in the world and set up sceintific equipment for round the clock observation (say for a year). If these 50 locations are then compared to 50 randomly picked “control” locations we should see a significant difference in the readings of such things as EMF, temperature fluxuation ect (if we could control for fraud).
I’m not a believer in ghosts or the like, but I did live in a house that had what is often called poltergeist activity. I witnessed several incidents first hand. I saw cabinets and closet doors inexplicably open on their own. Pictures apparently jumped off the walls and were found in the middle of the room. A bookcase was emptied onto the floor when nobody was in the room.
I couldn’t tell you what caused these things to happen because I don’t know.