Anyone here ever have anything happen to them that science can’t explain? I’m talking alien abductions, ghost sightings, and the like. I only ask because NOTHING out of the ordinary has ever happened to me and I don’t suspect it ever will. So I must live vicariously through the stories of my fellow dopers. So who’s seen a ghost lately?
“Honey we’re recovering Christians.”
–Tori Amos - In the Springtime of his Voodoo
Alas, no. No aliens, no ghosts, no black helicopters, no cattle mutilations.
Just boring ol’ humdrum reality.
It’s enough to make me want to watch the X-Files movie again. 
A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.
I have a story, but it’s not from my experience, rather it happened to another member of my church. While I am usually skeptical (not quite up to DavidB’s level), I have no reason to doubt Tom. This is not, I repeat not a UL, it did occur to someone I know personally.
The Jones’ (as I shall refer to them) moved into a house formerly occupied by a family whose son died in the war. The house had a flagpole out front. Soon after they moved in, weird things started to happen: Tom was painting alone, when he heard a voice say, ‘That’s a lovely picture.’ His wife Jane felt cold going upstairs. Nothing major. The daughter, Lisa, had an imaginary friend who was a young man- not a typical one for a 4 year old girl. So one day they found an old chest up in the attic belonging to the previous family. They contacted the family, but they were not interested. There was a picture of the son. Along with several other photos from the same era, Tom and Jane showed this picture to Lisa. She pointed right to the one of the son and ID him as her imaginary friend. Apparently, all he wanted was a little respect. So they started putting up the flag every day, and never had another problem.
It’s not how you pick your nose, it’s where you put the boogers
One Tuesday night, my senior year in HS, I went to a party at a friend’s house. I had been drinking the whole night, but not totally hammered. The party broke up due to a fight, and the cops came.
Anyway, I was walking home, and trying to hitch a ride (I lived 10 minutes away, by car), but on a Tuesday night there was virtually no traffic. I walked for awhile til I came upon a meadow along the highway. This place had few houses around it, so there were no external lights to be seen.
Out of the trees came a bright light in the distance… but it turned out to be 3 green lights, set in an equilateral triangular pattern. It hovered over my head, but I could not judge the size or the distance of the object. It stayed for maybe 7-10 seconds, then went behind the trees again.
Soon after, I managed to flag a ride to a gas station near my house. I got out and walked toward my house, thinking about what I had seen earlier, but in disbelief. I walked about 1/8 mile, then I saw it again, but just a glimpse… then it was gone again.
I thought it was a figment of a drunk imagination, so I never spoke of it again til I was in college. I told my roommate Mike about it, but before I could describe it to him, he filled in the description for me, as his friends have told him something similar. Pretty weird! 
To this day I have never tried to come up with an explanation… I just accept it as strange.
“Penises don’t belong in the mouth, girls and boys. You’ve got the wrong hole there. Just like you wouldn’t shove pizza up your nose.”
-From the Brother Jed flyer-
I see dead people.
Me too. But I work in a morgue.
Well, I have an amazing encounter that seems almost supernatural.
When we moved from Atlanta to Chicago, there was a great deal of confusion, and our cat Chuckles got left behind. He jumped out of my wife’s arms before she could get him in the travel case (which he hated), and ran off. He usually came back within a few hours of such escapes, but in this case it was too late… we had a plane to catch and the moving van was taking off. We were heartbroken, but we had no choice. We alerted the neighbors to keep an eye out and to call us if they found him, but there was no word from anyone for weeks.
After we had been settled in our house in Chicago, about two months later, we heard a scratching at the back door, and here’s the amazing part of the story, it was a cat! But it wasn’t Chuckles, Chuckles was mostly brown with bits of yellow, and this cat was black with a white spot.
I have two, actually. I’m not a ‘believer’ in this stuff and the only reason I believe it is because my Dad told me about it and my Dad never lied to me before (especially about anything like this, he’s just not that type). It’s spooky as hell…
When my Dad was a teen living about 30 miles away from our current home, he used to romp through the backwoods of this part of Texas (it was the 50’s). He claims one night he was doing this with his pals and came across a clearing where this ‘creature’ was standing. It was completely unearthly, he says, and kind of glowed… Demon-like. I’ve never been able to get any other description out of him because I don’t like to bring it up. He clams up when anyone brings it up. He did show me the field area once when we were in town. Still empty (and he knew EXACTLY where it was). Apparently, the other boys saw it to, but they all lost touch with each other so I’ve never been able to ask them about it. But it has been a deep curiousity to me for a long time.
Another time a friend of mine who was a weekly churchgoer claimed he opened his church early one morning and saw a demon-like creature standing behind the pulpit. I know he saw something, because we were there when he called and he was shook up pretty bad. What it was, who knows…
Again, I tend to completely not believe any of this kind of stuff. It’s not like me at all… Which is why my Dad’s recollection drives me nuts. Did he really see something? What did he see? Is it easily explained? One day I might have the nerve to ask him… But then again, If it’s ‘creepy’ for him, why put him through it. I guess lots of things are different when they come from family.
Creeps the crap out of me just typing it here in the early morning… I’m going to have to have some coffee now and stay up. Damn!
Infamus Harding
When I lived in Salt Lake City, I moved in with a friend of mine who lived in this VERY VERY old house in Sugarhouse, which is a neighborhood in the city. Rumor had it that this house had been a bordello back in the 1800’s, but I have no idea if that was true. It had been converted into three apartments, but the person who did the converting had left all the little tiny sinks that were in the hallways. Supposedly, they were for the women so that when they were done with their “client” they could wash up. Like I said, I have no idea if any of this is true…that’s just what our landlord had told us.
Before I moved in, my friend had gone away for the weekend. She’s very safety conscious (she had a complete stranger stalk her once after getting her name off her credit card receipt while he was standing behind her in line at a convenience store…so she is now very careful about everything). She was sure to lock up, turn the lights out, etc. When she got back, all the lights were on and the cat was freaking out…bouncing off the walls, hair up, hissing, etc. She was nervous, but checked out the house and didn’t see anything. She turned out the lights to go to bed and when she got to the last one, she heard a man’s voice say, “I can see you.” She called her dad, nobody was there, they called a (Catholic)priest and the priest said all these prayers, etc. (This was all before I moved in).
After I moved in, by several months, we were up late one night doing what young, single hippy girls do (no, not that!)…we were talking about “women’s issues.” You know, abortion, rape, women’s rights, etc. When we hit on the rape thing, we both, at the same time, heard this roar outside. It sounded like 300 people were standing in our front yard screaming. We both jumped a mile and ran to the window…nobody there.
I’m not really a “believer”, but this definitely made me think of the possibilities.
My father who was French Canadian told us his father had gone on a hunting trip with some guys way up in the wilds of Canada in the fall. They all saw clearly for about 10 minutes in the night sky a whirling wheel of lights, like a wagon wheel all lit up. As UFO’s seem to prefer the out of the way places to show themselves, well, they couldn’t have picked a better spot.
Spooky stories, true. I actually have two of my own, and I was a major skeptic until these happened to me.
The first one happened when I was in high school. We had heard stories about this one place just south of town for years, and one day several of us decided to check it out for ourselves. Supposedly a busload of small children was crossing over these railroad tracks when the bus stalled and a train came and killed everyone. The story was that if your car stalled on the tracks, the dead children would come and push you to safety. We were a bit chicken to do it at night, besides, we figured no one could hide outside the car during the day without one of us seeing them. So, we went to that spot, found out that to sit straddling the tracks meant we were on an slight incline, enough so that there’s no way the car could roll forward to safety by itself. We stopped the car a short distance away and put flour all over the outside of the car, except the windows<in case of handprints or whatever>. Then, when we got to the tracks, the driver straddled them and put the car in neutral.
After about 5 minutes of sitting there feeling kinda foolish, the car suddenly started to move up and over the tracks, of its own accord. We all looked around and couldn’t see anything or anyone around for at least a half mile. The car stopped on its own just past the tracks when we were safely out of the way of any train.
Getting out, we all saw the car was covered with very small human handprints all over the sides and hood and trunk of the car. This is broad daylight, now. Not a soul in sight. The car couldn’t have rolled uphill on its own, and where did the handprints come from?? We were all VERY spooked by then, and couldn’t get back to our side of town fast enough. I have no explanation for what happened to us that day, and I’ve heard hundreds of similar stories about that same place.
The other one happened several years later when a friend and I went up to Sherman,Tx to visit a friend at college there. When we got there, he was having a party in his dorm room, going in full swing. During the party, lit at times only by a black light, I happened to look into the eyes of one of the people there. I swear to God that I saw what I later decided was probably a demon of some kind, or a ghost, looking out at me with a very evil glee. I freaked, and begged them to turn the other lights back on. I have never in my life felt such an evil presence in a room as I did that night. In full normal light, that person looked normal, just a regular person looking at me. They turned off the other lights, and that same evil presence was looking out at me from my traveling companion’s eyes then. I totally lost it and ran from the room. My friends found me over an hour later in a basement restroom, and to this day I have no idea how I got there, I only remember running for my life. I didn’t get any sleep at all that night, I don’t mind telling you. Later, I heard that several strange things happened at that same party that no one could explain, and all of them were evil, malicious random acts that no one saw happen, just the aftereffects of them. Was there a demon or a ghost in that room that night? I can’t say, but I never went back to his dorm room the rest of that weekend, that’s for sure.
I don’t blame any of you for finding this hard to swallow, I would to. Yet I swear to you that these things really happened to me.
I’m going to go turn on all of the lights here right now.shudder
Seen on billboard near home:
Don’t make me come down there.
God
Late one Friday afternoon in mid-February, I was waiting outside in the driveway for my friend Carol’s husband to go paint shopping for my apartment. (My friends were my landlords at that time; I lived on the first floor of a 2-family house in the front of the lot, and they lived in a separate house in the back of the lot.) Twice I felt a slight breeze and smelled flowers. I was surprised enough to look around for what might already be blooming, but couldn’t find any flowers up in either my friend’s garden or the next-door neighbor’s. When Walter finally arrived, I told him about the breeze and the flower smell, thinking he’d just crack a joke about me losing my mind. Instead, he looked at me for a moment and asked me to tell Carol when we got back.
When we returned, I told Carol what had happened, and she nodded knowingly. Thoroughly confused at this point, I asked what the heck was going on. It turned out that when Carol’s father passed away several years before, Carol and a cousin were sitting her living room after the funeral when they felt a slight breeze and smelled flowers - with all windows and doors shut, and no flowers in the house. Carol felt that it was her father trying to reassure her that everything would be okay.
The spooky part - Carol’s father had lived in my apartment until he died. She felt that my smelling flowers was a sign that he was watching over me as well. A little disconcerting to think about, especially since I never figured on anyone looking in on my private time, you know?
Yep - have had some very strange things happen to both my son and me involving ghosts/spirits - whatever you wanna call em. No, it’s not something I want to get into. Sorry.
Something sat on me once.
I was in bed asleep one night and was awakened by a noise or something. So… I’m lying in bed, head on pillow, feet at the end. And something sat down on the bed right through my abdomen/ hip area. My body stayed straight, as if the bed hadn’t moved down, as it does when someone sits on the mattress, but the bed underneath me curved away from my body. So the middle part of body was suspended straight and stiff in air, over the curved part of the matteress, where someone was “sitting.” (It’s hard to describe.) I tried to sit up to get it off me. I couldn’t move. I tried again. Nothing. Completely immobilized. By this time I was terrified. I just lay there for a minute and thought, okay. I’m going to summon all my strengh and just throw it off. I did that, and this time it worked. Whatever it was left, and the part of the matteress that had been sat upon went back to its normal position.
A lot of people, when they hear this story, say, Oh, you must have been asleep, you must have been dreaming. Well, I’m here to say, when something invisible sits on you in the middle of the night, you wake up pretty fast!
A girl
Is this in San Antonio in a really bad area of town? If it is, then that story has made it’s way to Dallas. We’ve even had a couple of radio deejays go down there to that area and test it. Nothing happened for awhile and then the car started moving. The radio deejay start screaming like a little girl. Creepy and funny at the same time.
“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”
If you are indeed a girl, then this is the part that science could not explain. Pretty common among males, though.
Sig! Sig a Sog! Sig it loud! Sig it Strog! – Karen Carpenter with a head cold
The experience that my family had wasn’t a ghost or aliens, it was more of an ESP kind of thing.
Back in the early 1980’s (cannot recall the exact year, maybe 82 or 83), the whole family was driving home from my grandparent’s house. Stepdad was driving with mom in the front seat next to him and us three kids in the backseat, squabbling and fighting as usual. Just as we are passing this overgrown field, my stepdad suddenly hits the brakes really hard and the car comes squealing to a halt. This was still back in the times when parents often didn’t strap their kids into seatbelts, so all three of us kids went flying forward and slammed our heads into the back of the front seat. We are all bitching about our heads and still arguing amongst ourselves, and our stepdad yelled at us and told us to shut up for a minute because something was wrong. He got out of the car and walked to the edge of the field, stood there for about a minute or so, then came back to the car and told us that there was a body in the field. Of course, none of us believed him. My mom wanted to know what he saw, but he confessed he couldn’t see anything in the field. It was just a hunch he had. By the time we got home, he had decided that it was just his imagination and pretty much forgot about it.
So, you have probably figured out the ending of the story by now. Yep, four days later, some teenage kids walking through the field found the decomposed body of a woman. The police estimated that it had been there for at least a couple of weeks, maybe more. The woman’s husband was questioned after the body was found and he confessed to killing her.
Shadowfox
“The dead have risen, and they’re voting Republican!” - Bart Simpson
I usually don’t tell many people about this because it is something I can’t explain, especially since I am not the religious type. I won’t try to convince anyone that it is true because the belief of others is something I don’t care about. The only thing important to me is that whatever it was that happened made the death of my little brother a little easier.
A couple of years ago my little brother (he was 7 years old) sat in his room and drew a detailed picture, something he never would have done on his own. He was the type who would rather be outside on his rollarblades or bike instead of sitting in his room drawing and coloring.
When he was finished, he took the picture to my step-mom. Drawn on the paper was a house, green grass, a blue sky with a sun and a cloud or two, flowers, a swing set, and a big tree. It was obviously a picture of my dad’s house. Nothing unusual except that underneath the tree was a gray headstone with his name written across. Hovering above the house was a stick figure angel with yellow hair and a great big smile that almost covered the head.
My step-mom was a little freaked out and asked him why his name was on the headstone and why he drew the angel. He just sort of brushed her off and said that he just wanted her to know that if he was ever an angel, he wouldn’t be scared.
Less than a week later, he was riding his bike with my other little brother. An 84 year old woman saw them on the side of the road, panicked, hit the gas instead of the brake, lost control of her car, hit my little brother, killing him instantly.
You turn me on. But maybe it’s because I just spent 20 years in the jungle, getting it on with anything I could attract with a piece of fruit.
Diane, that was as sad as it was beautiful.
Coldfire
Voted Poster Most Likely To Post Drunk
"You know how complex women are"
Great stories! It’s encouraging to know that people are experiencing this stuff. Don’t ask me why, but it is.
First hubby and I got kinda lost exploring some back roads in western Washington once. (Definitely not like Iowa, where it seems everything’s laid out in mile squares and you can just turn right forever and find yourself again.)
Anyway, we passed by a huge old ramshackle house in the country, paint peeling, all kinds of rusty implements, furniture and stuff in the yard, falling down outbuildings, and as we passed, an old stoopy guy in overalls (think Ed Gein) walked out from behind the house.
I was immediately nauseous, just had a terrible sinking, cold feeling all over.
We kept driving, came to a dead end, and had no choice but to turn around and pass that house again! I was sure Ed and his children (think Cthulhu’s kin here) would be out blocking the road, tentacles and chainsaws at the ready.
We rolled up the windows, locked the doors, and got a running start. Same feeling on the way back.
Nothing “happened”, but I’ve never had a feeling like that before or since.
Rundown old houses usually give me an urge to go inside and explore. Not that one.