I have nothing to add to the “are ghosts real” debate or even which is the proper forum for point and laughing. But what I would like to know is, why did it take angelicate seven threads to come across with these stories?!? I mean, if anything as creepy/fascinating happened to me, it would be number one. Alright, maybe asking for pain relief suggestions for a chipped tooth would be number one, but the ghost stuff definitely goes ahead of asking why the car blinker only works when the heater is on.
My house has a rep for being haunted. (No I don’t believe in ghosts…now) but I have a story anyway.
One day (I’d guess I was about in 2nd grade) I went off to bed.
I woke up in a room I just sort of sensed wasn’t my room even though it was fairly dark…as my eyes adjusted I realized I was in the basement on the sleep on the couch. I don’t sleepwalk and I’m a VERY light sleeper so if my brother or someone had carried me down there as a joke it would have woken me up. The room I was in is exactly below my bedroom and I had been having the WEIRDEST dream where I was sinking and sinking through the floor.
My 2nd grade mind believed I had somehow melted through my floor into the basement to end up on the couch.
Strangely this didn’t frighten or bother me very much. I got up and started staggering toward the basement stairs. Now this is hard to explain. The stairs are at a right angle to the basement on the top of these stairs there’s another right turn into the main floor but if you go straight there is an east facing door that goes outside (with a big window in it). So light was streaming down the stairs and through the doorway I’d have to go before turning right up the stairs.
Only the light wasn’t flowing completely through the door like it should. There was a large dark lumpy shadow just kind of blocking the middle of the doorway. I stopped and now suddendly I was afraid. I looked at it a bit but it didn’t move or do anything. It was vaguely man shaped and clearly wasn’t being cast by anything it was just standing there with the light streaming around it. I decided I was going to kick it and run like hell up the stairs. So I ran toward it…suddendly I felt like I was moving very slowly. It then fllloooowwwed out of the way to the side. Suddendly I was going normal speed again and nearly ran into the wall as I rushed up the stairs.
Now I realize that I had probably been watching TV in that room and fell asleep on the couch (though who turned off the lights is a question I’m curious about my mom would have NEVER let me sleep in the cold basement on the couch) and the fact of being disorientated and 1/2 asleep gave me a bit of a waking dream.
Still pretty unerving for a 2nd grader though.
My parents’ house was built by a doctor, and since the town was kind small a hundred and fifty years ago it doubled as an office. Lots of interesting things happened to the space over time, as it became a hair salon, an apartment house, and then was changed back to a regular residence by my parents. Took about a year to knock everything down and put it back up.
My sister swore up and down that it was haunted, although I never saw anything or heard anything. She said that she would hear knocking at night. Knocking on the walls of her room, in the air, on her windows, everywhere. It wouldn’t go away when she turned on the lights, either.
The only thing that happened to me, other than the normal wooginess associated with dark clammy basements and high stuffy attics, was one day when I was going out the side door of the house. The side door was about two feet away from the garage, which used to be a carriage house.
I reached my hand out to open the door and I got very scared. That sounds silly, typing it down, and maybe it was silly, but I really couldn’t bring myself to open the door. I’ve never felt that way before or since. I tried to force myself to just turn the stupid knob and push the stupid door open, but instead I walked the other way as fast as I could, and I told my sister not to go out there, either.
The only thing I can think of is that I might have caught a glimpse of something with my peripheral vision out the windows by the door, and it short-circuited the reasoning part of my brain, saying DANGER DANGER.
This was around the same time that my sister’s freaky boyfriend was stalking her, so maybe that had something to do with it too.
I am always getting on our MPSIMS boards because I love the topics that I see here. It is GREAT during the workday to sift thru some of the odd ball topics and sometimes post my thoughts. I was excited to see a thread posted that was looking to see some Doper’s experiences, thoughts and opinions on spiritual phenomena. I thought that I would read some great things. It started out well, I clicked on it and read Angelicate’s post. It was honest and interesting and I was looking forward to reading more experiences. I am not saying that there are not plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations for the phenomena other than ghosts. But Angelicate said that she did think that it was something spiritual. She gave her opinion and asked for other stories she could relate to. And there is NOTHING that should be disputed about that.
In all the threads that ive gone through I have never seen Dopers treat someones thoughts and ideas like this. Very rude. Discussion and disagreement is always welcome on Straight Dope… but rudness is not. And rudeness is ignorant. And we fight ignorance- do we not?
Since my very first introduction onto these Straight Dope message boards I was super excited to read about the specific stance of fighting ignorance. But to me, someone who puts down another for their views- especially a view as mundane as ghosts- is the ignorant one.
I beleive that when someone posts a valid topic onto these message boards they should be given a fair chance to communicate. The topic should be allowed to grow. They certainly should NEVER BE LAUGHED AT for suggesting an idea or posing a question.
I’ve had way too many weird things happen to me in my relatively short life to proclaim definitively that anything is impossible. I am a sufficiently intelligent (if not “officially educated”) person. And I believe in ghosts. So meh.
Anyway, I used to live in an apartment in a bad section of Boston. My roommate and I were just out of our first year of college, struggling and scrimping little girls in the big bad city. We often heard gunshots outside, and the convenience store below our apartment actually closed for four hours a night, because the neighborhood was so questionable.
About a week after moving in, we discovered that the lights in the living room would blink on and off occasionally at night. There was recessed lighting in the ceiling, and every night, one of the four bulbs would go out for a few minutes, then come back on. Then another bulb would go out a little while later, and come back on. There were even instances when the lights were off, but one would blaze up for a few seconds. It didn’t happen every night, but it always started between 10 and 10:30.
So, we began experimenting. Lights on, lights off, sitting in different places, whatever we could think of. It took us almost the whole summer to figure it out–the lights would only blink if the door was unlocked. If we hadn’t locked the knob, both deadbolts, and secured the chain, the lights would blink until we did.
After that, we started acknowledging our ghost for his thoughtfulness. We agreed it seemed to be a definite male presence, and we named him Sean, just to have something to call him. The lights would blink if we forgot to lock the door, and if the television was on at 7:00, the channel would automatically change so we could watch Jeopardy.
I often wonder if anybody who has lived in the apartment since has recognized or acknowledged our Sean. But the night we found out that the apartment next to ours was broken into, we were glad we got the haunted one.
Hey, Draelin, that sounds just like Gus !
He was in a house I lived in for a year and a half or so. He manifested himself in various random things like taps turning on randomly; light bulbs blowing out (twice); the doorbell ringing when nobody was there and not ringing when somebody was; the feeling that there was always somebody home, even when there wasn’t; and crazy acoustics that made someone upstairs sound like they were outside, or someone downstairs sound like they were next to you. That kind of thing.
There was something else weird that happened that’s much too long and uninteresting to relate (he basically frightened off a houseguest who was being a complete arse by teasing us about our ‘ghost’), I’ll just assure you that his presence was definitely felt.
The thing is, I’ve lived in a lot of places. I just moved from an apartment in one old creaky mansion to another (I love them!) and the house where Gus lived was pretty new and well-maintained. If I was expecting to encounter a ‘ghost’ I would have expected it to be in one of the old mansions, where original Torontonians with their (no doubt) nefarious schemes and habits lived and died. But they’ve been pretty quiet. It was just the otherwise-character-free duplex that was haunted.
As jovan so aptly said, Gus was a high-level abstraction for all kinds of weirdness in that house. But I’m not convinced that there wasn’t something more.
But, like Sean, he was benevolent. I also wonder whether the current residents are aquainted with him. Maybe I should send him a Christmas card?
We felt very fondly towards him (we even put his name on the answering machine), and were disappointed when our next house (the drafty mansion) turned out to be spiritually vacant.
My house is believed to be haunted. My wife and some of her family members insist that it is.
Occasionally, the doorbell rings with no one on the porch to push the buttion. Sometimes late at night an old man’s voice can be heard whispering from outside the bedroom windows on the 2nd floor. A strange image appeared in the window in a photograph taken on Halloween a few years ago.
Now I have a rational explanation for all of these, but it still makes chills run up and down my spine when I experience them.
Well, this stuff all happened back when I was 16 or 17. I haven’t even lived in the house for 6 years, and don’t think about it too often. I just happened to think about it last night, for one reason or another, and posted this thing, which I’d actually written up a couple of years back.
I didn’t post it till now, because I had a feeling that the responses would be like some of the ones that have been posted. I certainly don’t go around consulting the spirits, and imagining that every little noise I hear is the ghost of the former occupants of the house that I live in, but there were just a lot of creepy things that happened there that I can’t personally explain.
And I’m still bummed that no one could help me out on the Christian drug propaganda books thread.
i got a couple of stories which may be related.
when i was about 3years old, i was in bed in my grandmothers house.it was still light,so i think it was summer. anyway, my mother came upstairs to make sure i was ok, and i told her that i had seen a man in the room. (i have asked my mother about this incident,and she was surprised that i could remember it)
at the time, i could only tell her that the man was very tall,and that he was wearing a hat, but now i can describe more clearly what i still remember.
the man was wearing a hat and beard like the kind abraham lincoln is seen wearing, (is it a stovepipe hat?) and he seemed to be floating,with his head almost touching the ceiling. i have the impression that his legs kind of tapered away( like casper the ghost!)
nothing really happened, the man just looked at me for a minute or two, and i looked at him.he never spoke,and i did not feel any threat.
the interesting part, is that my mom says her sister saw the same thing, in the same room years before, but i dont know if this is a ghost encounter or not.
Weird, freaky things happen to my boyfriend.
Neither of us is willing to profess a belief in “ghosts” because of it, because that would imply that we’re buying into other people’s beliefs about “ghosts”, and we certainly don’t have any evidence to back up what OTHER people believe. We just know that weird, freaky things happen to him sometimes. We don’t try to explain them. They’re just… things. I may consider some sort of quasi-scientific tests at some point, but for now, we prefer not to think about them too much.
Anyway, on to the juicy stories.
Maybe six or seven years ago, he and his mom were camping. He went to hang out in an area that was near the campground’s sweat lodge. (Yes, the campground had a sweat lodge.) He was walking along, kicking rocks, usual teenage boy sort of activities, when he heard this roar and felt a searing pain across his chest. He got the hell out of there, and when his mom made him take off his shirt to see what had happened, there were very noticeable red marks on his chest that looked an awful lot like very large claw marks. I believe someone tried to explain it as bad joojoo coming out of the sweat lodge or something. They just decided that it was probably time to go home, regardless.
A couple of years ago, he got out of his shower one night to notice that there was a very clear-looking letter “D” on his bathroom mirror, as if someone had taken a finger and written it in the mirror-steam, except that there were no drips like you usually get when you write like that. He made sure his mom hadn’t been messing with his head, then tried to ignore it until the next night, when there was an I on the mirror. The night after that, an E. He and I joked that maybe they were writing something in German. We wondered if a T would show up the next night, referencing a Simpsons episode where Homer sees a billboard that says “DIE”, screams, sees a billboard that says “DIET”, and screams even louder. We criticized whatever had made that happen for writing something you’d expect to see in a horror movie with really terrible scriptwriting. But it was still pretty freaky.
Last year or so, he was biking through the forest near his house and stopped for a moment. Off to the side of the trail, he suddenly saw this weird haze, kind of like a heat haze, except dark, and with something suggesting eyes. He heard a growling kind of noise, it came toward him VERY quickly, and he suddenly felt VERY cold. He thought something along the lines of “Well. That was weird!” and went home. The next day, showing far more fortitude than I would have, he was biking in the same place. No freaky hazes or anything, but a fallen tree did scratch his upper arm pretty hard as he rode by. For someone who’s driven pedals into his shins multiple times, this was pretty minor, so he didn’t pay much attention. When he got undressed (yum yum! ) to take a shower, though, he noticed that the scratches on his arm formed the word “DIE”. Well, maybe “PIE” if you squint. Or “PLE”, which we decided stood for “Please Lift Ent” and meant that the fallen tree was actually an ent that needed help getting up. Anyway, I’ve got a picture of it, and it’s pretty weird looking.
Again, none of this should be taken to represent a belief in ghosts, spirits, or what have you. Freaky things just happen to him sometimes. They’re not much fun, but they make interesting stories.
my friends mother had been abandoned by her mother when she was only 2 or 3 years old,and had never known her, or had any contact with her all through her life. now she was in her 60s,and she started wondering what had become of her mother, and so she tried to trace records of marriage/birth/death etc to try to find her. to cut a long story short, this "quest" she was on, was becoming an obsession, to the extent that she even went back to italy for a month, (where her mother had come to scotland from) where she tried in vain to find any sign of her. eventually, she started to think that maybe her mother was dead,and since she had exhausted every avenue of enquiry,she decided that the last chance was to go along to a spiritualist meeting to see if she could get a "message from the grave". she had never been to this kind of thing before,and so her daughter took her along to a local meeting/service or whatever they are called, and they just sat near the back of the hall, and watched and listened, but no message came for her, so they went home. they went along for 3 or 4 weekly meetings, and the same thing happened. they never spoke to anyone, or let it be known why they were there, and they did not know any of the people who attended the meeting. at the end of the last meeting, when again there was no message,they were just about to leave, when a man, (who seemed to be a member of the audience, and not one of the clergy/mediums on stage) came over to them and said; "i believe that you are looking for someone. the person you seek is known by the name "houston" and you will find them at a graveyard in ayrshire" the man told them the particular graveyard to go to,then turned and walked away. the next day,my friend
s mum set off with her daughter for the graveyard, and they spent a few hours looking at the gravestones, but were having no success in finding one with the name “houston”.
an older chap, who worked there as the keeper of the graveyard, saw that they were obviously looking for something,and asked if he could help them.
when they explained why they were looking for the name of “houston”, the gravekeeper started to help them look for some time, although he did not recall any graves of that name.
after a bit, he suddenly stopped and said,try “that house over there” and pointed to a house situated right next to the cemetery. when they knocked on the door and asked if anybody called houston lived there, it was a big surprise when they discovered that the person who answered the door was her mother, who had married a man named houston.
the interesting part for me, is – how did the guy in the meeting know what they were looking for, and how did he know where to send them?
anybody got an explanation?
Yeah, weird things happen. Evidently my grandfather haunts a crack in the ceiling in my parents’ living room.
Grampa had been living with my parents for some months when he was killed in an auto accident just shy of his 85th birthday.
He had plenty of company while there: his two youngest great-grandsons, who were there often, and my parents’ dog.
So anyway, a few days after the funeral, the two year old was standing in the living room, excitedly pointing up and saying “Hey! Hey!”
I should point out that Grampa’s name was Harry, and the little one called him “Hay.” Well, okay, that doesn’t mean anything much.
So a day or so later, the four year old is pointing up at the same place, saying “I see Grampa!” Okay, he probably heard people talking about it.
But here is the damnedest thing, I saw it with my own eyes, the dog was sitting in that spot, gazing intently at the ceiling! For minutes at a time!
Yeah, there’s no such thing as ghosts, but enough weird stuff happens that you could almost see why some people believe in them.