Does anyone have any ghost stories they would like to share?
I find this an interesting thread which I’ve seen other other boards. Some people its just an odd “things that go bump in the night” or some expereince when a loved one passes away to really terrifying experiences that can leave a person with PTSD.
Anyone?
There was a very old lady and her daughter who lived passed me further down in the woods. They lived without electricity. The daughter was ‘not right’, that’s was all we knew. She would walk down the road, 4 miles to my house and bring me eggs. I never asked for the eggs. I always tried to give her a treat. Cookies or candy.
In August, 2002 they went missing. The daughter walked out of the woods and was able, somehow to get to some family who came and got her. The family kept going to old place looking for the old Lady. They had big dogs. An uncle turned the dogs loose (that was pleasant, they came toward my house:smack:)
One time they found some bones. One hand bone. They were human bones.
Fast forward --county officials, sheriffs office, tracking dogs all searched and found most of the old Lady’s body. They never found her head. It was never determined what killed her. I’m suspicious the daughter whacked her.
On gloomy fall nights you can sit outside and hear screaming and if you wait long enough you can hear plaintive singing.
That used to scare the bejesus out of my kids.
Alright, I’ve been dying to post this somewhere. I started to post it in GQ but was worried people would think I’m nuts, then in MPSIMS, but decided it’s a pretty lame story. It’s not a ghost story, but it’s something weird that keeps happening and I have no idea where else I could talk about it.
TL;DR: Something keeps clicking my door latch. I’ve determined that randomly, and without a doubt, the sound is the “click” from depressing the door latch lever down, but there’s never anyone out there. I don’t believe it’s anything supernatural, but it sure is weird.
First of all, let me set the mood: I live in a 1930s era single-family home with 3 beds and 1 bath. What’s strange about it is there’s a finished room in the attic, but no access up there except through a small scuttle. The attic itself is very unfinished–the floorboards aren’t even nailed down. But if you cross through this big, open, unfinished attic, there’s this completely finished “red room.” We call it that because it has 60s looking red shag carpet and wood panel walls.
So the finished, border-line inaccessible “fourth bedroom” in an already big enough house is weird enough on its own, but get this: It has a padlock hasp on the outside of the door. Like, as if to lock something IN the room. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation, but I don’t know what it is. Yesterday we had an electrician working on some wiring up there and he found the whole thing creepy.
Anyway–
So our living room is such that when you are hanging out on the couch, you’re maybe 10ft away from the front door. The front door is a thick old wood door. But there’s a heavy-duty glass storm door (not a screen door) that has a really distinctive “click” noise when you depress the latch-lever.
I’ve heard it click tons of time but never thought much of it. Eventually, I realized I would turn expecting my GF to come in, but no one was there. I’ve passed it off as the wind, the mailman, door menu guys, or just my imagination.
But recently, the animals have began to react to it. The cat has a cozy spot near the door and has started to run away when the click happens. My dog hears it and runs to the door thinking the GF is home, except NOPE. Once I realized I wasn’t imagining things, and after hearing it several times in one day and checking only to find no one/nothing, I mentioned it to the GF. I expected her to think I was being silly, but she confirmed she’s been hearing it, too. She initially passed it off as the HVAC pulling a vacuum or otherwise causing the door to jostle.
But I can easily test her theory: We have a NEST and on the day I really became wise to the sound, the HVAC didn’t run at all (there’s a usage log that I checked). What’s more, the wooden door would have to be the one moving, but the “play” in the door is minimal, with no outward “play” at all.
So I figured it was the wind. Only it happens on perfectly calm days, too. Again, the “play” in the glass door is minimal, and the action is OUTWARD, so the wind can’t really jiggle it. Plus it’s very heavy and the latch is solid.
Maybe it’s coming from the door and not the latch? I checked the hydraulic door closer, but it doesn’t make any similar sounds. There’s very few other moving parts that could be the culprit. It’s happened during hot days, cool days, and extremely temperate days. I don’t think it’s thermal expansion.
I’ve taken to asking my GF every time I hear it: “Did *YOU *hear it, too?” She always does. Right after hearing it one day, I ran to click the latch to see if it’s exactly the same sound. Confirmed: the noise is the sound the latch makes when you depress the hand lever. And again, to be clear, it’s too heavy-duty to depress from wind or by itself.
Also, there’s this: We have a Ring doorbell camera. So, one day during a particularly busy latch-click noise event, I decided to check the doorbell camera.
Now, anyone who has these know that they are motion triggered all the time. The plants on the porch rustle and trigger it, often resulting in basically nothing caught on camera. I’ve learned to ignore nearly all motion trigger videos (I’ll check occasionally).
On that day, I realized there are several videos of just the door swinging closed. Now, I’ve seen this a lot, and have always presumed it was someone dropping off a package, us leaving, door menu, etc etc. Except, on this day in particular, no one came, no one went. No packages. Mail has its own box. And it’s just triggered as the door is coming to a close.
In retrospect, I’ve caught a ton of these videos. Never thought much of it.
I guess I don’t particularly think too much of it now. It’s a series of stranger circumstances that probably aren’t related, but it’s been eating on me. I can conceive that someone could yank the door open as they walk by but I don’t see how they could escape the camera’s view.
And, FWIW, the latch clicks often without any video/motion triggering.
But I’ll offer up this fact, too: I am working on a painting in the living room where I open the wood door to let light in from the glass door, and I’ve never once had the click happen when the door is in full-view.
If you have some suggestions on what it could be, I’d love to test some theories.
Well, my kids insisted that the ghost of a small boy lived in my closet, and they called him “Dark Anthony”. “Dark” because he looks like a shadow, and “Anthony” because they say he told them that’s his name. Although my son once told me he’s not scared of Dark Anthony because he’s not really a ghost. He explained that ghosts are the spirits of dead people, but Dark Anthony was always a spirit and never a living person so he’s technically not a ghost. I do not know where my kids got this information.
The only supposed encounter I’ve had with Dark Anthony is one time I was in the kitchen, cooking at the stove. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a boy come up to me from behind and felt him grab onto my pant leg and tug on it a few times. I thought it was my son trying to get my attention, but when I turned around, nobody was there.
A few months ago, my wife started occasionally burning sage in a little bowl (I think she saw some Youtuber say that it purified the air or something). Shortly after she started, my kids informed me that Dark Anthony left because he didn’t like the smell and they haven’t seen him since. I did some Googling and found that burning sage is traditionally used to clear places of ghosts and negative energy.
Sorry if I’ve told this story before, I can’t remember for sure.
I’ve been a member of an old hunting club for decades. It was started in the early 1950’s, continuously on about 2500 acres of land all this time (some leased, some owned). Access is about 12-15 miles on a crude dirt road – it’s waaay out in the boonies.
As years passed I realized a small coterie of the older guys never hunted. They seemed to enjoy the camaraderie and I assumed didn’t want to go out in the cold at 4:00am any more. I (privately) called them the “Spit and Whittle” club. On opening day they’d take coffee to the chairs around the firepit and just hang out while the rest of us rode off to our stands.
Fast forward about 2 decades, and I’m returning from town late one night in my truck. It’s full dark and just me on that lonely dirt track. As I went around one of the many curves, my headlights caught (seriously) the biggest cat I’ve ever seen outside a zoo. It’s back was at least as high as my thigh, it was black, and it was slinking across the road when my headlights caught it. I just stopped and stared as it disappeared into the trees.
The next morning my enthusiasm for heading to my stand in the dark had disappeared. I decided I’d hang around and drink coffee too. As I sat there quietly watching the fire one of the old guys turned to me and said: “You seen the panther, didn’t ya?” I nodded and he looked around at the others. Then he shook his head back and forth and said: “Don’t wanna go out there no more after ya seen it.”
So… not really a ghost story, but a spooky one.
This isn’t really a ghost story but it’s something a bit eerie that happened to me.
We’ve had boxers since 2003. The first boxer puppy was brought home by our son right after he graduated high school. He used his grad party money to buy the dog. After that our family was smitten with boxers. Since that first puppy, we’ve had 2 more boxers plus a boxer mix.
Back story - As most of you know, my son died 4+ years ago from cancer. He and I were very close.
A couple of weeks ago I was on the website The Grommet. They offer unique-type gifts. I clicked on the tab titled “Gifts for Pet Owners”. They had some really cute dog breed silver necklaces. Some were whole the whole body of the dog with a small heart cut into it and another style was the head of the dog with a small heart cut into it. I thought to myself that I wouldn’t mind having a boxer necklace, though I never did order one.
Two days later, I was Swiffering under the TV cabinet. I saw something that looked like a piece of tin foil way in the back next to the wall. My first thought was that it was a candy wrapper that one of the little kids dropped and then ended up finding its way under there. I used the mop to pull it out. I picked it up and turned it over…It was a silver boxer necklace charm…with a heart cutout!!! I never saw it before, I know I never had one otherwise when I spotted them online it would have made me think about one I had. I also had cleaned under there a couple of weeks ago and never noticed it. I can’t think of anyone that would have been in my house that would have been wearing a boxer necklace. No one that I know has a boxer AND if I had seen someone wearing one, I would have commented on it for sure, exclaiming that I wish I had one.
So where did it come from? I choose to think that my son sent it. Crazy? Maybe, but it makes me feel good. And I have no other explanation.
I have been owned by [and lost to the Rainbow Bridge] a number of pets over my life, dogs, cats, snakes, iguanas, spiders, birds … and had temporarily moved from our home in Connecticut to Rochester NY 3 years back when my brother passed so someone would be in the family home. mrAru remained in the studio in the barn as he has a job in eastern CT. I was diagnosed with cancer 2 years ago and had to move back to the farm so I could do treatment there, as our roomie and assortment of pets was in the NY house and coming into contact with the chemo drugs is a really BAD idea for animals.
So, on a couple of my worst weekends, I swear I felt Banzai curling up behind my knees and Jezabel curling up under my arm … both of them in their favorite snuggle spots.
Wow, the more the thought of falling asleep in the early morning in a tree stand while bowhunting… and the mental image of a large black cat crawling up the tree to get you… ok, I’m officially creeped out.
Now my neighbor has this inflatable large black cat with the head that moves only makes me think of this more.
The more interesting thing to me was that this cat seemed to magically drain the hunters of their desire to hunt at all - and this effect was apparently permanent, by my read of the story.
Were this not a Magical Ghost Cat of Doom™, you’d think that at least somebody would say, “dayum, let’s go hunt us up some panther, for the safety of ourselves and all those dudes we let go out there without warning them about the panther!”
My Daddy has been dead 6+ years. When the lil’wrekker was young he insisted all little girls needed red shoes. If he saw red shoes he bought them for her. I have many texts saved where he was asking her shoe size because he found a cute pair. I think from infancy thru early school years he got her at least 12 pair and 1 pair of red cowboy boots.
I was cleaning up a storage area one time and I came across a box of her baby and toddler shoes. Daddy was still alive at this point. I took all the shoes to donate except a particularly cute pair of maryjanes and the red cowboy boots. Fast foward. Daddy has died. Lil’wrekker has gone to University. I’m cleaning her closet. The red shoes and boots are on a top shelf in a shoe box. I look at them and cry alittle for Daddy and my empty nest. I put them back on the shelf and finish cleaning.
A few weeks later it was Daddy’s birthday. I’m sad of course. I walk downstairs. I’m sitting at my table eating. I look over to a decorative shelf thing and see a red shoe. The left baby maryjane. WTH? Am I crazy?
Few weeks later. Close to Christmas. I have candles and greenery on my mantle. I found a box of red ornaments and put them in the greenery. Lil’wrekker is home for Christmas and she’s laughing out loud. I asked her what she’s laughing about. She asks me why her baby cowboy boot is on the mantle. The left red cowboy boot is there. I didn’t put it there. I doubt anyone else knew where they were.
It’s a mystery still.
Every now and then I’ll find one of the shoes or boots in an odd place. Always one. Never the pair.
I choose to believe Daddy is telling me he’s around. And watching.
That is about the creepiest story ever. I live in the deer woods. And someone killed a big black cat in this vicinity. Gah!:eek:
Well thats true I dont know why they cannot hunt in groups.
This isn’t a ghost story, but someone here might enjoy it. It’s 100% true.
I used to work at a vet clinic that also boarded animals. I worked part time as a kennel staffer, so I’d often go in early in the weekends, around 6:30 or 7 am, and walk/feed/medicate the animals. I was in high school, and it was the best damn first job a kid who loved animals could hope so. I really enjoyed it.
Except for during the winter. I live in the Midwest, in Iowa, and we can have some pretty chilly days. And that early in the morning, it wasn’t only freezing cold, but also pitch black.
In high school I lived with my parents in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. This wasn’t in a huge city, but it wasn’t rural, either. Imagine your typical suburb, without actually being a suburb. I drove and had my own car, but depending on whole list of factors I won’t get into, I could only park either in the driveway or on the street immediately in front of the yard.
This early morning in particular, I was parked in the driveway. It was cold, and dark. I woke up, got ready, and opened the garage door. I started down the driveway before an odd moment caught my eye. We had a neighbor who lived not directly across the street from us, but down one more house to the right. So we were basically kitty-corner from each other. I didn’t know the family, but my parents did. While most of the house was dark, there was a single bright window down in what I would assume was the basement. And in the window, there appeared to be what looked like a person’s head attached to a neck, and a set of shoulders.
The silhouette was vigorously rocking back and forth.
I froze and stared back at the figure. There was maybe 50-65 ft of yard and road between us (quite possibly more - I’m horrible at estimating distances). Point is, I was pretty close to my car, and figured that if anything were to suddenly disappear from the window and come running outside, I’d easily be able to get to my car and lock the doors. Or, more likely, run back inside the house. Not that I WANTED to experience anything like that, but I didn’t feel like I was in any real amount of danger. I was creeped out, and that was about it.
I starred at whatever the hell was in my neighbor’s window for a minute or two before getting into my car, locking the doors, and backing out into the street. I watched the sight a moment longer before deciding there was definitely a reasonable explanation that I just didn’t realize, and heading off to work. I forgot about it while I was getting my regular overdose of fuzzy wussy animals. Heading back home I remembered the strange sight, and took note to look at the neighbor’s house as I passed.
Nothing. The window was dark. The whole thing felt silly in the much lighter, 8:30 am light. I told my parents about it and we laughed it off.
A think a couple weeks went by without seeing the person in the window. But I eventually did. And of course, it was on a morning when I had to park out in the street the night before.
As soon as I exited the safety of the garage and saw the same exact figure doing the same exact motion in the window, I froze. I remember my heart pounding. This was insane. This was the kind of shit your average Stephen King character encountered, not me! I’ve never even *been *to Maine! I seriously, 100% and without an inch of sarcasm, considered into work. Telling them I was sick, injured, joined the Marines - whatever it fucking took. I was NOT walking out into the street.
Of course though, as you’d probably guess, I did walk into the street. I even had to turn my back to the figure to open my car door, although I never broke what I assumed was eye contact (I couldn’t see any actual details - only the black shape). I will say with 100% honesty that that moment was the most frightening I’ve ever experienced in my life (as you can correctly surmise, I’ve lived a pretty care-free life). This time, once I was safely in my car with the doors locked, I took no time in getting out of there. I found it harder to shake the image from my head during the day. And sure enough, once again, all was peaceful when I returned from work. The sky was light, and the window was dark.
I didn’t see the figure again the next week. Or any week after that. I wrote the whole thing off as an undoubtedly creepy, but probably harmless experience.
That summer, there was a neighborhood BBQ and pool party. We ended up at a house a few lots down from my parents’ enjoying brats and burgers. The episode I’d experienced that past winter was the furthest thing from my mind, until my mom approached me with a lady I didn’t recognize beside her.
“Hey, this is the woman who lives in that house across the street. The one you saw that…rocking person in?..”
The lady looked beyond confused. I laughed and told her the story. She blinked.
“I mean, we had a clock pretty close to that window… It would kind of swing side to side. The cats kept knocking it over though, so we got rid of it.”
I never was able to see it, and I honestly have a hard time picturing something like that. She had no reason to lie to me though, and the time frame matched up. But that’s how I learned that the scariest moment of my life turned out to be the shadow cast by a novelty clock.
Some great stories here! Mine is not as good as some of the others, but here goes (it is a true story).
My first job was at a pizza restaurant located in a small shopping center on the corner of two busy roads. The center included a grocery, hardware, a few restaurants, and other small businesses. In the pizza kitchen there were several move-able counters - big metal ones with large wheels that locked so they would not move around when not wanted, but could be moved for cleaning. One or two of them were also equipped with a refrigeration unit.
Anyway, one night after closing, I and one or two others were just finishing-up cleaning the kitchen. The counter used for putting toppings on the pizza was one of those with a fridge (to keep toppings cool), but was pulled away from the wall slightly AND unplugged so we could clean behind it. Me and a friend were leaning on it when we both felt it shake. We looked at each other as if one were playing a joke on the other, and when we realized neither of us had moved, we stared at each other (WTF was that?).
The manager came in just then and we mentioned it to him sort of in passing and as a joke, and then he informed us the shopping center where the restaurant was located was considered haunted. (!!) Evidently, the land owner (long since deceased) of the orchard that was removed to make way for the shopping center did not want to sell, but somehow was forced or coerced into selling the property, and routinely made mischief with businesses operating there.
Someone told me that working at a Toys Are Us at night was a weird experience because many toys would suddenly start talking or moving at random with their internal senors which could really creep you out.
Furbys are freakin’ weird. The lil’wrekker got one as a birthday present. She was more the Babydoll kinda young girl. She never really liked the Furby. It got deeper and deeper into her toybox. It the middle of the night it would start talking and chirping. She’d come jump in bed with me. The few times I got up to search for the stupid thing I could never find it. The next day it would be right out in the open. I blamed the lil’wrekker. She swore “no Mommy, not me” I tended to believe her. I knew she was scared of it. I was cleaning one day and came across it. I took it’s batteries out. And sent it to donations.
It chirped in the car with no batteries. Weird.
I worked for Taco Bell for years, mostly in one store. It had been built on the site of an old house.
One morning I knocked on the glass to be let in - it was before opening, and noticed the closing manager out of the corner of my eye inside the restaurant. I was a little bewildered as to why he was still there - it was 7 or so and he’d probably gotten out at 3 or 4 AM. In any case, the opening manager let me in and we walked back to the kitchen. With the closing manager walking next to us silently. Then my brain wakes up and I realize… this guy has brown-blond hair. The closing manager manager has jet black hair. I mean jet black. So I turn to look. He’s gone.
We searched the place, positive I’d seen an intruder. Nothing. I looked up an hour or so later and he’s standing at the counter, hands on it, leaning forward and staring at me. Store’s still empty.
Then a few years later - by this point we had a motion detector alarm - I was talking to the Taco Bell delivery driver at 6 AM, so again the store is closed and looked inside. There was that same man, same green grey knitted sweater walking around inside. Because of how it was built and where the truck was it could not have been a reflection.
And, of course, the alarm had not been tripped.
Years ago I was in NM for a conference, and my husband flew out for a mini-vacay and some sightseeing. We decided to go to Petroglyph National Monument because I’m fascinated by all things prehistoric.
They’ve made a walking trail through an area that is full of ancient markings on stones. The path (at that time, I haven’t been back) was rough in some places and cement in some places, and it was obvious that some boulders had been shifted for better viewing from the path. We’d been ambling along slowly for 10 or 15 minutes, and I was getting more and more uncomfortable. I have NEVER wanted out of a place as badly as I wanted out of there. The artwork was so interesting at first, but suddenly I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to be still and look, I just knew that we were NOT supposed to be there and something/someone was very, very angry.
My husband felt nothing and was pretty surprised - I’m not given to fancies like that. I believe in spirits and ghosts but only in the most basic, academic way. I’d never encountered any before then, and I can’t really say that I did on that day either. All I know is that I got a frighteningly bad case of the heebie-jeebies and couldn’t get back to the car and away from there quickly enough.
That’s the first and last time I’ve ever felt that way.
The trouble is finding it. Only a few (3-4) have seen it, and they get pooh-poohed when talking about it. (“Aww, all you seen wuz a big bobcat and it skeered ya!”)
The part that I keep thinking about is: “Is it the only one?” No one has ever been hassled by this (apparent) large cat, nor by the smaller bobcats we frequently see. I don’t think it’s really dangerous, but jeez it’s creepy walking a 1/2 mile into the woods to your stand in the dark. I’ll admit I wasn’t as gung-ho about hunting after that, and the few times I went out early, I drove the 4-wheeler much closer to my stand.
Bobcats are all over Tucson and unless they eat little Fido or Kitty people usually just leave them alone and send in cute photos of them to the local news shows and bobcats ignore us (they are cats, after all)*. A hotel I worked at here had a mother bobcat show up every year and raise that year’s litter on the roof of the main building. They just shrugged, blocked off access by people to that part of the roof and put up “please leave them alone” signs and everyone was happy.
*I was a little startled to leave the kitchen at the above hotel once, though, and see a bobcat waiting to one side and clearly checking me out to see if I had any food I was going to give it.