Reading my post, I want to add: I’ve been “tired” before and since, but I have never hallucinated. I just can’t believe that this would be the one and only time–and that goes for my daughter also.
So Miss Smartypants enlighten us as to what the hell “Sundowner’s Syndrome” is. Sounds intriguing. 
Yea, I can scoff all I want, but my lizard brain still gets the heebie jeebies at night, you know?
I had gotten the keys early to an apartment that I had rented in Montreal North. My friend lived in the same building and gave me all kinds of stories of stuff that happened to her. It’s not that I didn’t believe her; I just didn’t witness it.
On the day that my new fridge, stove, sofa and loveseat were to be delivered, I painted my living room and bathroom with my friend while waiting for the delivery. My boyfriend (at the time) showed up after work, when the rooms were painted and the furniture was delivered.
My friend, Sylvie, asked if we wanted to go see the “haunted house” near the river. “No thanks” was my answer. But Asswipe and Sylvie wanted to go. I agreed that I’d walk there with them, but wouldn’t set foot on the property. (My momma didn’t raise no fool 
). Didn’t help that they smoked a joint before they went; I probably would have, but the last thing I need is more paranoia.
So they head into the house where Sylvie’s been a few times before. It wasn’t so much a “house” as a neglected “institution-like” building, with a “For Sale” sign that was up for so long that the sun had bleached its colours. The hedges and trees were out of control; the grass was up to my shins. The windows and doors were boarded up, but prior visitors had broken through the wood planks in a back window and that’s how they got in. This is exactly the kind of building you’d see on the Scooby Doo cartoon, back in the day on Saturday mornings.
Sylvie had explained to me what she’s seen in the house prior to this visit. White lights shooting around. Not ghosts or forms of ghosts (like what I had seen a few times before), just shooting-star-like entities that would zoom around in random and zig zag patterns. I really didn’t give a shit what she saw in there. I was more concerned if there was any furniture that she could salvage for me (to refinish and prize). Antique Road Show, here I come! LOL
While I was waiting on the other side of the street (Gouin Blvd), a young guy came up to me. He kind of had a hunchback like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He said, “Tell your friends they shouldn’t go in there.” All I could say at the time was, “I did!”. While he walked away, he said: “They don’t know what they’re messing with.” Well now I’m shitting my pants and I’m about to go back to my new place and admire a fridge with a freezer I could actually make ice cubes in.
A few minutes later, they emerged. I kept in mind that they were stoned, so nothing they said really held much water with me. But my boyfriend kept saying, “Cheeky, you have to go in there. You gotta see the white lights. They zoom around in there like it’s a party!” I’m like, “Yeah, I think not. You didn’t get me any furniture?” Sylvie said, “You don’t want anything in there. It’s an inch thick with dust and I personally wouldn’t have anything from there in my home.”
So we went back to my apartment and celebrated the first night I would be sleeping there. Complete with pictures of us taken in every room and on the balcony. When I got the pictures back, there was a good one of me and Sylvie on the balcony. Unfortunately, there was a white spot over my shoulder, which made the picture unframeable. I showed Sylvie the picture, and she said, “THAT’S IT! THAT’S WHAT’S INSIDE THE HOUSE!” My first thought is: “Lovely, they’re at my place now.” My second thought is, “Bullshit.”
So I don’t say anything and my boyfriend comes over. I show him the pictures I’ve just had developped. I don’t say a WORD. He gets to the picture of me and Sylvie on the balcony and says, “Holy shit Cheeky. That’s it. That’s what’s in the house.”
It’s definitely not something I can explain on my film, though I’m no photography buff. But they both swear up and down that it’s what’s in the house. And the pictures were taken the same night they went in. I tried to not pay too much attention to it. But two years later, when I had signed a lease to move, I had a wicked dream.
I dreamt there were little demons running after me. Almost catching me, but never getting a good enough grasp around my waist. I always managed to get away, but just barely. The next morning, I woke up and remembered my nightmares. No big deal. I got undressed to take a shower and noticed three-finger burns on my skin, on both sides, around my waist. Just like where the demons were trying to grab onto me in my dream. They were very obviously burn marks, though I felt no pain. They ended up blistering, and peeling.
Sylvie decided that she would get her boyfriend’s aunt in, to see what it was about. She was experienced in these kinds of things. We had never told her the story about the “spirits” on the night I moved in, 2 years before. As soon as she saw the blisters, she went into my bedroom. She said, “Cheeky, you brought spirits in the place when you moved in. They don’t want to see you go. And they’re doing everything in their power to keep you here. But you have to go. They might follow you, but they’re very at home where they are. You have to go.” I said, “What kind of spirits?” She answered, “It’s like shooting white lights I’ve never seen before, but they’re pissed off as all hell. You have to go. You’ve been a hostess for them as long as you’ve been here.”
So I left. And I never had something like that happen again. And I pray I never will. From that moment, with the burns on my skin, I truly believed it was more than I could explain with science or logic.
Would you settle for “genuine” UFO pictures?
Cheeky, what on earth is the connection between zooming white lights and ghosts? We had lights like that all over our highschool dance floor, but the source was more likely the rotating mirror ball. Too prosaic an explanation?
How astonishingly accurate.
Oh, I’ve taken plenty of pictures of spirits. The trick is to catch them while they’re still inside a living physical body. That way, it’s easy.
I’m familiar with this expression, though I wasn’t aware of any official medical use of it. It refers to a mild dementia which, for some reason, gets worse at night, with the person being relatively more lucid by day.
Do the Cottlingley Fairies count?
On some godawful UK investigative programme I saw recently, there was a so-called ghost hunter - he reported feeling an unearthly chill in a particular room and promptly whipped out a digital thermometer, which would only function intermittently, he explained this as being the result of spiritual disturbance, but I think checking the batteries might have been a better first diagnostic step, but anyway, eventually, he got the thing working and demonstrated that on one side of the room, the ambient temperature was normal, but … over here there’s a chill, which is caused by ghosts - the cold area was directly below an access hatch leading to the roof void - pathetic.
No. The two girls, by then old women, admitted in 1983 that they had faked the photographs.
(OK, so one of them subsequently made a partial retraction, but, given the earlier confession and the contrary evidence of her cousin, that can hardly carry much weight.)
A while back I watch a ‘TV Psychic’ do a feature where he’d visit an old house, walk about a bit, and then report about the spirits he was encountering. He was amazingly accurate, as verified independently by the house owners afterwards, so it must all be true.
Until you consider…
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The old houses were museums and the like. The owners rarely turn down a chance of playing up the ghost angle to boost visitor numbers.
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All the ghosts he was claiming to encounter were people the museum publicise to their visitors. Hardly amazing then that he could describe them. This got to the farcical stage of him “struggling” to describe a presence, when the description clearly matched a picture of a man on the wall directly behind him, complete with large information panel that obviously told you all the details. “I sense this room belonged to a large man who died violently in an argument.” No kidding, I read exactly the same on the wall behind you. Obviously you’ve not read any of this beforehand… :rolleyes:
And remember, if you can prove you’ve got a picture of a spirit, then the Amazing Randi has a cool US$ million for you.
Yeah, nice one.
Dude. I can’t beleive no one has mentioned the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. It’s the most famous picture in this category.
I spent many a year thinking the ghost thing was “stupid nonsense,” like several posters on the boards. But good god, sometimes there really are things that you can’t explain away. And I have a bunch of stories involving myself or friends that i finally just gave up. Okay, maybe there are “ghosts.” I don’t know if they’re dead people or what, but it is creepy as hell.
I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that it’s just as ignorant to instantly deny everything like ghosts and yeti as it is to blindly believe all of it. IMHO.
Weren’t gorillas and giant squid in the same category as yetis and sea monsters just a few hundred years ago? That’s my take on it.
You know that The Psi Factor was a drama, right? Not a documentary?
Perhaps, but ghosts are a whole different kind of phenomenon to unknown, but strange animals, which are all made out of physical matter.
You would do well to keep thinking like that.
This is one of those occasions, where although you added the caveat “IMHO”, you still come off as stupid and dangerous.
Not really. And besides, we’re not talking crypto-zoology, we’re talking about things that actually don’t exist.
This thread has a home in the Pit.
So, to summerise…
1/ You spend the day working in your new house. Moving furniture, painting. Stirring up dust. A photograph taken that night catches some dust in the flash.
2/ Two stoned aquaintances run about a deserted, dusty building. With boarded-up windows. Take a torch with them by any chance? This photograph reminds them of it.
3/ A local weirdo talks to you.
4/ Two years later you burn yourself in some way around the waist, but as it is only slight you don’t notice at the time. You are conscious of it, however, that night in your sleep.
5/ You have a very common bad dream of being chased that incorporated the injuries.
6/ Stoned friend’s boyfriend’s weird aunt gives you the spooks. We are asked to believe that she had been urged to come and look the place over, yet your friend had never thought to mentioned her previous ‘spooky’ experience there.
Nice tale, but nothing supernatural here.