Tell me your personal stories of unexplained, ghosty things.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I don’t think I’ve posted this yet, so here goes. It was July 1994 and I was hanging out with my friend Jen. It was about 11 pm or so and for some reason we decided to go hang out at a cemetery. This cemetery has a local reputation for being haunted (it’s Riverside Cemetery in Moline, IL, if you’re interested) but we were weird goth kids so it didn’t matter to us. There is a place in this cemetery that has a huge monument (the Velie monument) overlooking the Mississippi River so you can see both Illinois and Iowa.

We were up there for maybe 45 or so minutes, just looking out at the view and talking. Nothing much happened while we were there but we started to hear some noises in the cemetery area behind us. This area had a lot of trees and was pretty dense. It also was the only way back to the winding road there. We didn’t know what to think of the noises - ghostly? Some other weird teenagers like us? Either way, we decided to take off.

We walked back to the car and I was waiting for her to unlock the passenger side door. While I was waiting, I stared off down to the right of the road at a statue of an angel, maybe a little larger than an average adult. It looked like the angel was ascending from the ground with one of its feet still connected to the ground. It was kind of pretty. Jen got the door, I got in, and she started driving down the road. The statue was obscured by a tree for a moment and when we got around to where I should have been able to see it again … no statue. WTF? I took another look, I searched to see if maybe one of the hills wasn’t obscuring it again … nope. It was a flat little area and there was no statue.

I mentioned that I had seen a statue and that it was now gone. Jen said “Was it of an angel that looked like it was coming out of the ground?” I said yes and she said “I saw it, too.” Confused, I asked her to describe it and she described it perfectly to me. Later that night we went back to her place and since she was an artist, I asked her to draw what she saw. It was identical to what I had seen.

Deciding that this was just too weird, we decided to come back to the cemetery the next day to look for it. We got there about mid-afternoon and sure enough, no such statue existed. I still have no idea what happened.

22

From ages 12-15 I lived in a house where I would occasionally glimpse the figure of a person in the doorway between my room and my brother’s. It was one of those out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye things, but always in the same doorway. My brother and I were discussing it one day when he spouted off something like “That’s stupid, there’s no such thing as ghosts.” A picture fell off the wall behind him at that moment and missed his head by about half an inch.

Years later I was in college, getting ready to move from my dorm to a house with my roommates. The last few weeks in the dorm I kept hearing someone call my name when I was there alone. It was very weird. It also stopped when we moved, until the last couple of weeks we were in the house, when the same thing started again. Very creepy.

23

Not quite in the *spirit * of things, but cats will often seem to be looking at nothing, whereas they are actually hearing something that a human cannot.

24

I have wanted to tell this story for a long, long time.

When I was 12 years old I performed an exorcism.

I am currently an atheist Buddhist, but I shall continue with this story from my perspective as a 12 year old religious maniac.

You see, when I was 11 years old I became a devout Pentecostal Christian pretty much overnight, and had a troubled friend my age who had a fanatically religious mother. My friend had tried to hang herself in the family barn when she was 9 years old, and at the time I met her was fresh out of the mental hospital. She gleefully told stories of throwing her friends down her stairwell and breaking their arms, threatening her mother with knives, etc. You think I would be afraid, but I wasn’t intimidated – this girl revered me, trusted me, considered me a kind of wise mentor. Our relationship was incredibly intense… almost ethereal. I was also incredibly close to her mother, who was batshit insane and has been slowly dying over the last several years.

One evening while sitting at the dining room table, my friend began talking about how she was incredibly depressed and wanted to kill herself because she didn’t have as close a relationship with God as I do. Naturally her mother cracked open the Bible and started reading the Psalm 139:13

At this moment, exactly, the local Christian radio station began to repeat this same verse, along with a commentary along the lines of, ‘‘I feel that there is a young person out there considering suicide, let us turn to this verse, blah blah…’’

This was of course, a Divine Message Sent By God. My friend’s mother began praying intensely. Then we were all sitting at the table praying. And suddenly I had this overwhelming inner voice that screamed: get out of this room NOW!

I bolted from the room and ran to the top of my friend’s staircase. It is important to understand at this point that, while I adored my friend and her mother, their house permeates evil. I really have no other way to describe it. Everything is wrong in that house.

God was talking to me that that point, BIG TIME. It was just one statement, over and over: Get thee behind me Satan. Get thee behind me Satan. I started repeating it over and over because the more I sat on that darkened staircase the more I felt the crushing evil on my back. Finally I could take it no more and ran back to the kitchen, where my friend and her mother were praying at the table.

I sat down, and prayed, and then I felt a tremendous, incredible surge of energy rushing through my body… more powerful than anything I had ever experienced in church. I began shaking, and the shaking became convulsing, until I could not control myself and I ended up smacking my forehead on the living room table. It was like someone stabbed me with a bolt of electricity and I lost control of all motor functions.

My friend got understandably freaked out and ran into the bathroom. I can’t describe to you the evil that was in that room. It was enormous, and it was terrifying. The dog and the cat started fighting and barking and crying. Suddenly, from the bathroom, came the most inhuman shriek, and I realized it was on.

I started SHOUTING over the dog and the cat, words I’d never even spoken before. I don’t even remember, but it started ‘‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’’ and got rather complex toward the end (''In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit… etc… you’ve all seen The Exorcist haven’t you?) Things were flying off the walls in the bathroom, I presume because my friend couldn’t control herself and was smashing into things.

I walked into the bathroom and my friend was laying facedown on the floor, unconscious, surrounded by a whole bunch of shit she’d knocked off the counters. Her mother had pulled her shirt up and had her hands on her back, chanting in tongues. My friend was laying perfectly still, but when I touched her, I swear there was something moving under her skin. She felt like she was convulsing but my eyes could see that she was not moving.

Her mother begged me to pray over her, so I did. We laid our hands on her and we prayed until she stopped moving underneath her skin.

Eventually, she woke up. She didn’t remember anything. We tried to go to bed, but we spent the night covered in blankets on the kitchen floor, scared out of our minds. For the next year or so I found myself speaking in tongues just about every chance I found myself alone, terrified if I didn’t the evil was going to get me.

Friends, I am an agnostic Buddhist, about as far from the ‘‘fanatic’’ end of the spectrum as you can be and still claim to have a religion. I can say with certainty, 12 years later, that I do not believe in evil. But what I can tell you is that I have never been the same since that night. I am always looking over my shoulder. I am a firm believer in the scientific method and I am aware of a number of psychological phenomenon (knowing this girl’s history and my own) that could have contributed to that evening, which is only the most extreme of the host of experiences I had as a Pentecostal. Honestly the scientific explanations creep me out more than the religious ones.

I will never, ever, as long as I live, forget, or understand what happened to me that night.

It seems incredibly one-dimensional and obvious on preview, but man, you just hadda be there.

25

Two stories, not at all ghostly, more just pretty darn cool:

On my first day at college, my new roommate and I were getting to know each other a bit, figuring out how we should set up the room, and just goofing around. I picked up a penny and flicked it. The penny hit a wall, then a bedpost, bounced into the bookshelf, fell into the sink, swooped down one side of the sink and up the other, and landed in a cup on a dresser.

About a year ago, I was driving my truck home from work, when I heard what sounded like a rock hitting my windshield. It sounded more like metal than glass, though. I was startled by how loud it was, and looked over at my buddy. He held up a pebble about 3/8" diameter that had fallen into his lap.

26

Santo Rugger, that is flippin’ amazing!

ETA: Especially the penny thing.

27

I thought your story was way cooler, but to each their own. :slight_smile:

28

I can’t explain it, but it happens, I swear!

I have a real nice garage/shop that I spend a lot of time in. No matter what time of day, what I’ve eaten or what I’ve done beforehand, I gotta pinch the biggest loaf within the first five minutes of me getting out there. Morning, noon or night, drunk or sober, fed or starving- I gotta lay cable if go out to the garage.

On a positive note, I will never be constipated as long as I live here.

Closest thing to ghosty I got.

29

I used to work at a small regional hospital. Most of my time was spent in the basement cleaning and sterilizing surgical equipment and pulling supplies to re-stock the floors and nurse’s stations.

My shift often ended at midnight, or later if there were any emergency surgeries still ongoing when midnight came around. I pretty much had the entire basement to myself after about 8pm. My time spent alone usually included a heightened sense of “awareness” for lack of a better word. I never got scared, and always interpreted any perceived presences as being benign and possessing a sense of humor. Re-stocking often involved handling awkward volumes of awkward objects like chux underpads (in large, light boxes when in bulk, or slippery handfulls for each shelf), plastic urinals and sealed urine cups.

If I had a nickel for every time I swear something ethereal knocked a bin of urine cups out of my hands and all over the floor…

And there was this one time that while out on the floors delivering supplies to our rather isolated ICU unit, my push cart ended up taking an elevator ride without me, when I had parked it outside the elevator after making some deliveries. When I came back to where I had left it, it was gone. When I hit the elevator button, the doors opened to…my cart.

There were surgical supervisory staff also at the hospital, and we all make the same rounds, but I still wonder who actually moved my cart that night.

30

Who was the doper who posted a story about looking over the edge of the bed (or something) to see the apparition of a man in a lying-down position, but hovering above the floor, who then slid silently sideways out of the door? - can anyone link to the thread where this was mentioned? I remember reading it late at night and not daring to take my eyes off the screen, in case there was a man hovering prostrate next to me…

31

[QUOTE=elfkin477]
Not two minutes later the boy across the street yelled that there was a dead cat in the road. Cold and stiff, there was Katie, the only tortie in the neighborhood…of course when I ran back to the picnic table to prove it wasn’t her since I’d just seen her, she was gone.
[/QUOTE]

Cats in general do a lot of unexplained, ghosty things, I’d say.

Cat owners: how many times have you, say, opened the door to let the cat outside, watched her go outside, then walked two rooms over only to discover her lying on the couch? Or left the bedroom where she was sleeping peacefully, went downstairs to the kitchen, and then there she is, sitting on the counter staring at you?

My cat did this on an almost daily basis. It was freaky as hell when she first came to live with us.

Eventually we all chalked it up to just a ‘cat thing,’ but seriously, how do they do that? Ok, so maybe she went outside and then immediately ran back inside without me noticing (or woke up the second I walked out of the bedroom), but how the hell did she always beat me to the other room without me even seeing a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye?

Because I don’t recall a single occurance where, say, she was sleeping peacefully in my bedroom, then suddenly was awake and appeared at my feet while I was walking down the stairs or something. She always just magically appeared in whatever room my next destination was.

Moreover, I’ll accept the fact that cats are fast and agile and sneaky, so it’s possible she made a regular habit of racing me to rooms. But when I got there, why did she always look so calm and relaxed with peaceful half-opened-eyes like she’d been sitting/lying there for hours? She never looked like she just got done darting halfway across the house.

Cats, man. Something just a* leeeetle *weird about them. :dubious:

Although, I’ve really only lived with one cat in my life – maybe this isn’t just your regular ‘cat thing’ and my cat in particular WAS a spooky and paranormal teleporting ghost cat? Well, IS a spooky and paranormal teleporting ghost cat, as she’s still alive… or is she? :eek:
(:smiley: at everything written above, just so nobody takes me too seriously.)

[QUOTE=Santo Rugger]
On my first day at college, my new roommate and I were getting to know each other a bit, figuring out how we should set up the room, and just goofing around. I picked up a penny and flicked it. The penny hit a wall, then a bedpost, bounced into the bookshelf, fell into the sink, swooped down one side of the sink and up the other, and landed in a cup on a dresser.
[/QUOTE]

While bowling once, my ball hopped the divider and went into the next lane, where it proceeded to get a strike. :smiley:

I have a bunch of stories, though none nearly as freaky as some of the ones in this thread.

First, my most “in your face” experience.

I was maybe 8 years old* and had some friends sleeping over.

We were watching a movie – me in my bed, and the four girls on the floor. Two of the girls in particular were sisters, were both blonde, and looked similar except that one was about 2 years older. The older girl was Rachel, and I’m blanking on the younger one’s name, so we’ll just call her Sarah.

We all dozed off while watching the movie. I woke up a bit later and got up to get a glass of water from the kitchen. When I woke up, I noticed, in the corner of the room, what I thought at the time was Sarah – blonde girl, same age, looked enough like her that I just assumed.

However, something was a bit odd. With as much (probably unnecessary and tedious, but ah well) detail as I can possibly remember, this is what I (quickly) saw, noticed and thought about:

First off, the girl and the air around her looked weird. I don’t mean to sound cliche, but she looked like dulled-down version of a typical movie “ghost” – While I could clearly make out all her features, her outline, and pretty much every detail that was there, she somehow looked slightly misty/hazy, with slightly washed out color, and while she was not transparent at all, she didn’t really look “solid” either. Hard to explain, but it was kind of like she was composed out of very tiny, delicate, iridescent dust particles. The air around her seemed just a little misty.

Secondly, she wasn’t wearing pajamas or anything Sarah would normally wear at all, but a white dress. The dress looked like it was made out of heavy cotton, and was very simple with some lace-like crocheted eyelet designs (what is the word for this?) around the collar area and a ribbon/tie a little bit above the waist.

Third, she was kneeling on the ground, right next to my goldfish tank, which had one of those tall black wrought-iron looking stands. Her hand was holding onto/curled around the stand. She was looking right at me. Basically, what the hell was she doing over there, sitting like that, in the middle of the night, while everyone else in the room was asleep?

So, I was obviously very confused by all of these things. I stared at her for what was probably 20 seconds, confused and waiting for her to say something, but she just stared at me.

Then I noticed a single blonde girl on the floor. Ok, Sarah is over there, so it must be Rachel (the only other blonde girl in the house, remember) on the floor. That was obvious. But, I thought, “that doesn’t look like Rachel. That looks just like Sarah.” I leaned in and squinted. My little kid eyes and logic told me, “yup, looks just like Sarah on the floor. But Sarah’s over there, so I guess it must be Rachel on the floor.”

For some reason, none of this really scared or worried me. I remember thinking that the girl seemed odd looking all around, and being really confused that I wasn’t able to tell who was Sarah and who was Rachel, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. “Ghost” certainly didn’t even begin to enter my mind at that point.

Anyway, I shrugged the situation off and walked downstairs to get my glass of water, and who was sitting on the couch watching TV but – you guessed it – Rachel.

I went back to my room, and the girl in the corner was gone, The girl on the floor was still sound asleep, and was definitely Sarah.

I’m 100% sure I was awake, and didn’t dream any of this. I’m not budging on that point. But still, the rational explanation (going against the OP, drat!) is obvious: I was awake and moving around, but had just woken up, and so part of my brain was partially dreaming. I inserted things I was still “seeing” in my dreams into the real world. It’s completely rational and, being a person who is a big believer in science (and logic), I understand and comprehend it. Apparently, other people see weird things when they first wake up all the time.

However (I can’t tell if it’s because of or in spite of my being a big believer in science and logic) I always consider all the details to be important ones, not just the ones that fit into the easy or ‘obvious’ explanation. And so I argue that there are details that, to me, don’t make sense/fit with that explanation:

A big one is that while I’m sometimes confused about what time it is or where I am upon waking up, I’ve never (after this event, or from what I can remember, before) seen or heard anything weird or any other kind of dream remnants once I go from ‘asleep’ to ‘awake.’ I’m also not the kind of person who thinks, even for a second, after suddenly awaking from a dream that it was real. Basically, I’ve never experienced anything other than being completely grounded in reality the second I wake up. Precedent and succedent** are big to me.
And then there are other details..
My vision wasn’t blurry or anything.
I saw the girl clearly and in perfect detail, not at all how things look in dreams.
Nothing else looked ‘dreamy’ either.
Nothing else seemed odd in any way.
I wasn’t seeing any other weird people or objects.
I remember feeling completely awake, not groggy at all.
I saw the girl for at least 20 seconds, from more than one angle.

And here’s the non-logical part of me speaking: it was just so real.
I can’t say for sure that it wasn’t real, but I CAN say that it definitely felt and seemed exactly like looking at a real, physical person (or thing) who was literally there just as much as I was.

But I don’t have any other rational explanation. I mean, I don’t necessarily think it was a ghost – I’m still not sure I even believe in them! – but I’m not necessarily sure it was my imagination, either.

I had a couple more less interesting stories, but this post ended up being way too long, and I’m kinda storied out now. I’m gonna go post the other thread mentioned in the footnote below (you did read them as you came to them, right?!) and then maybe come back if I’m still bored. I mean, not because I’m bored, not at all, but just because I’m sure everyone was just so thrilled with my storytelling that they’re dying to read more of them. :smiley:

  • Yes, I was young, but I have a very, very, very good memory. I often have to force myself to pretend I don’t remember certain things about people, like, for example, exactly what we did the first time we met, what they were wearing that night, or direct quotes they said in regards to the conversation we were having about whatever on the same night. Whatever random things no normal people would remember, I ‘forget’ just so they don’t think I’m weird just for remembering. Or, even worse (and what I always assume when someone I met once remembers every detail about the meeting), that I just like them SO much that I remember the details so well because they mean so much to me. That’s almost never the case – I just remember almost everything I experience, and I remember it vividly. This applies to my childhood memories as well. I’ll sometimes sit there and tell my parents stupid things I remember from when I was 5 years old. Like we went to this park over the summer this one time, and it was raining, and I wore this outfit, and I found a butterfly that was this color and this pattern. They’ll be amazed that I remember it, and confirm all the details. Or maybe they’ll argue a small detail, but I always know they’re wrong and I was right the first time. ( ;)) And, now that this footnote has more than enough text to make an entire new thread on the subject (which I think I might do), I’ll make my point: I’ll present as much detail as I remember, and ignore the things I don’t remember (I admit, I sometimes forget things like a 'normal person :wink: ) or don’t trust, posting only the details I’m sure of. So basically, if you doubt anything in this story, please just take my word for it when I say I’m not misremembering anything, nor have I allowed my brain to change any details/fill in ones that were missing over the years.
    ** I think I might have just made this word up, but hopefully you get the point.
32

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Who was the doper who posted a story about looking over the edge of the bed (or something) to see the apparition of a man in a lying-down position, but hovering above the floor, who then slid silently sideways out of the door? - can anyone link to the thread where this was mentioned? I remember reading it late at night and not daring to take my eyes off the screen, in case there was a man hovering prostrate next to me…
[/QUOTE]

I don’t remember this exact post, but I was just looking for the original Very Vaguely Creepy threads from 2000, and it sounds like something that would have belonged there.

Unfortunately for me (because they were my favorite threads here and I wanted to reread them), for you (because they might have contained the post you’re thinking of), and for the newbies (who NEVER got a chance to read them and never will), they seem to be gone forever. This is a true loss that can be felt by everyone. :frowning:

There are, however, two sequels that came years later, although I haven’t yet read them over:

33

I waited until morning to open this thread but I still got chills. Of course, it’s 30 degrees out and my office is drafty. :rolleyes:

The only thing I can contribute is from the house my family owned when I was growing up. The previous owner had actually died in the house (not sure why) and IIRC had been buried in the yard for a time. I used to wake up at night, absolutely convinced that someone was standing at the foot of my bed. I was always too terrified to look.

I mentioned this to my mother one day and she told me that my sister (who had moved out) used to say the same thing.

34

Hmmm ok.

When I was nine my aunt came to visit. She slept in my room and I bunked with my mom. In the morning she told my mom that she had seen me, come in the room crying then sit on the edge of the bed and ask for my mommy. Being mostly asleep said something and I was gone. Now as I’ve already stated she’s in my room why would I go there looking for my mom when she’s in the bed next to me?? Same house a few months later my older brother had been mean to me and made me cry. as he left my room and went to go downstairs I yelled “Someone should get you, you meanie” (I WAS nine) he slipped down the stairs and got his foot stuck under the door at he bottom of the steps but he swears to this day he was pushed… felt the hands and all.

On a more current note. I lived in a house in a small town for about 5 years. What most people would think of as the attic had been remodeled into a large room and a HUGE walk in closet. (think bedroom size and that was the closet) there was a door at both the top and bottom of the stairs, why?? dunno. Just was. I would lay in bed at night and hear the bottom door open, close and someone walk up the stairs but they would never open the upper door or go back down. Just click, smack, step… once or twice a night.

35

Just as I was reading the newest posts, my 5y/o said the fire place just turned on by itself. This time its the one in the family room. It had a remote that was up on a very high shelf. It went out when I walked over by it, very strange.

36

I don’t per se believe in ghosts but I’ve experienced something for which I lack an adequate explanation.

I used to have a job in an old two-story house, with this 24/7 mostly volunteer operation. If you asked me now I would probably concede that something was not quite right in that house, but at the time the things in my peripheral vision didn’t seem particularly strange. There was always alot of people running around the place during the day, so it wasn’t strange to walk down a hallway and see someone in the corner of your eye, about to collide with you, to take a step back just in time to avoid a collision with no one. Or to look over at a couch and see someone lying on it, just for a split second. Then nothing.

And then there were the noises at night, kitchen noises. I’d be on the phone chattering away, concentrating on what I was doing. What’s the fuck is that racket, will you people quiet down in there?! Sounds like someone is cleaning a sink full of dishes and being LOUD about it. I’m trying to work in here, people. Then I’d realize it was two in the morning and there wasn’t anyone else in the house.

But I can at least explain all that, chalk it up to a slight defect in the senses, a trick of echoes or something. They have potentially rational explanations, even if my own imperfect empiricism leads me to secretly doubt applicability.

But the one I can’t beat happened one night on an overnight shift, me and this girl. We were just chatting away and it comes up that her friend supposedly has “The Sight” and says the upstairs is haunted in this old house. So I decide to be cute and I run down the hall and up the stairs. The upstairs was converted for office use and there not being anyone there in the middle of the night, all the lights were out. So I stood outside the suspect office and loudly enough that the girl downstairs could hear me (he he!) I called out for the ghost “to come out because we weren’t afraid.” Hee.

And then I swear on my mother’s life: that door closed in my face. It just shut. Not a slam, like in a movie. A gentle, almost reluctant closing, a barely audible creak, and me standing there with a stupid grin frozen on my face. And I was scared, not like skydiving-scared, or we’re-all-gonna-die-in-a-fiery-auto-crash scared. Truly fucking scared, I’d never known terror like that before and never known it since. It just came out of nowhere and I wanted to start running. I turned around slowly and went downstairs, and didn’t say anything to that girl, because I didn’t want her to be afraid of being in that place.

If I believed in haunted houses, I’d say that place was pretty effing haunted. Fortunately I don’t believe in any of it, so what the hey.

37

I don’t know if it’s necessarily ‘ghostly’, but it was oddly comforting.

Our last family cat died two weeks ago (as in, my parents’ last cat, but the last cat I grew up with, and I still considered him MY cat) from cancer - he had to be put down. My parents didn’t call me until after the fact, although I wished I had been there with him when he was put to sleep, or they could have waited until last week when my family visited - I would have taken him and held him while they did it.

So that was tough. The night after he died, I dreamt about him. It was an odd dream anyway, but made normal by the fact that in the dream, I was able to hold him and pet him and say goodbye. I woke up the next morning feeling much better.

When I went to visit my parents with my husband and son this past long weekend, I kept forgetting that Rugby was gone. I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye, I kept looking for him in his usual sleeping spot, and at one point, I swear I woke up and he was asleep on my feet (where he loved to sleep). I also heard him scratching on the garage door that leads into the living room several times - it was a very distinct sound, and the only time I ever heard it was when he wanted to come inside.

I thought I was losing my mind until I admitted some of this to my mom during the visit, and she said she’s felt the same thing - she’ll see him around corners and she swears she saw him asleep on his pillow in her room at one point. I think he was just hanging around until I got to come home and say goodbye to him because she said that she hasn’t experienced it since we left on Sunday. I’m comforted knowing this, and I feel like I did get the chance to say goodbye to him.

The night my grandmother died, I woke up to see a young teenage girl sitting at the bottom of my bed smiling at me. I got scared and closed my eyes again to go back to sleep, but I wish I hadn’t. It very well could have been my subconscious, but I had never seen a picture of my grandmother as a child/teenager until I was in her house two months AFTER she died, and the picture I saw was the young girl sitting at the end of my bed.

38

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Who was the doper who posted a story about looking over the edge of the bed (or something) to see the apparition of a man in a lying-down position, but hovering above the floor, who then slid silently sideways out of the door? - can anyone link to the thread where this was mentioned? I remember reading it late at night and not daring to take my eyes off the screen, in case there was a man hovering prostrate next to me…
[/QUOTE]

Augh augh augh augh thank you very much now I keep checking behind my desk chair every two and a half seconds. :frowning:
Apologies if I’ve told this story before on the boards, but it really is the best one I’ve got:

Way back in grade six, our class–only ten or twelve of us, we were at a tiny private school the size of a shoebox–got together for a sleepover party, and we were huddled up down in the basement with all our sleeping bags and pajamas. The basement was really nice: finished, with soft beige carpeting and wood-panelled walls and a TV set and bookshelves and everything. And–this is the important part–just out of sight, beyond the stairs, a small bathroom with a sink, a toilet, and a mirror.

So we all got together and giggled, and ate chips and cake, and unwrapped presents and played truth or dare, and finally settled in for a couple of movies. The first one was Anaconda, which was terrifying in how awful it was. The second was The Craft, and even as a (mostly) grown woman today I still get the creeps thinking about Nancy and her evil freakouts.

The mood thus set, we got into a circle to play ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board’. It’s in The Craft, but if you’ve never played this game: you pick one person to lie down on the floor with her arms folded over her chest and her eyes closed. Three or four other people slide the index and middle finger of both their hands underneath her body (if you make the gun gesture in the air with two fingers you know what I’m talking about). Then everyone chants “light as a feather, stiff as a board”, all together, and try to lift the girl in the air with sheer willpower or the help of the ghostly spirits or whatever.

We tried this first with one girl. She was ticklish and laughed and wriggled through the whole thing, and it didn’t work. Second girl didn’t work. Neither did the third. This was starting to get pretty boring.

Finally, the fourth girl lies down. Fourth girl–call her Laura–was very petite and slender, and really seemed to be zoning out as we all chanted together. Laura shut her eyes and everyone held their breath and the other girls lifted…

…and Laura was raised up three, maybe four inches off the ground. And at the exact same moment, the tap in the bathroom turned on all by itself.

To this day I’ve never had an experience like that.

39

Two events:

I live and work in England.

Event one:

The majority of my family live in Canada. Two of my uncles are Catholic priests. We visited one year when I was about 13. My uncle had been made priest of a small old church in a small town in the middle of nowhere. The house that he lived in was large, as at one time, before cars, the church had been on the main route through to a number of larger towns and the house had bedrooms for those on these routes (as well as some servant stairs).

My uncle (and his dog) were the only habitants. He was posted to this church as there had been a number of changes of priests in 2 years. A few had retired with psychiatric problems, others had stated that they could not live there…the last before my uncle had exorcised the house several times (there were crosses on stickers on every wall) and he had taken the large crucifix out of the church and mounted it in the main bedroom of the house. All of this information was told to us AFTER what occurred. When I entered the house all sound from the conversations we were having seemed muted, as if we had entered a sound studio or anechoic chamber, that type of muted. When I went to the bathroom I was ‘aware’ of being watched. The final icing on the cake was as my uncle was showing us around we entered a downstairs room. He was ahead of us, my father and brother were ahead of me. As I passed through the door, I head a definite, loud, “shhhhhhh” and then something that sounded like two or more words. At first I though it had been one of the others, but all denied it - in fact my father said he had heard the same thing. Later my uncle took us upstairs to the attic, the previous priest (the one who took the crucifix) had taken to sleeping in the dead centre of the attic - the matress and a (clean) plate were there with dust lying all around it There were two distinct footprints at the base of the matress, but none from the stair entry to the centre of the room.

Second, I was staying at the George Hotel in Stamford, England, while away working. I was on the phone to my wife one evening, when I was aware that the bed underneath me was trembling. I wasn’t frightened, if I remember correctly (and quite weirdly now), I remarked on it to my wife and continued the phone conversation with the bed audible clacking from foot to foot. My wife did some investigating…Stamford has the oldest running local newspaper. The hotel that I stayed in is here:

The George

Apparently it has been a hostelry of one sort of another for the last 1500 years or so. Opposite was the court house around 200 years or so ago. Criminals were hung next to the hotel.

And lastly, we have what the wife and I call the little girl in our hall. We have 3 children, but this little girl is not one of ours - at night she will hover so that the corner of your eye can catch her presence in the hallway between the gap of the living room or kitchen door. She may move things - but we would have no idea, our children do that well enough in anycase.

40

youmustbemistaken – I love your stories. One of the first “real” ghost stories I remember reading was about the Borley Rectory, reputed to be one of the most haunted places in England. Your priest-uncle’s story reminds me of that!

Also, wow on the The George. I just went to the George Hotel and on its history page it says:

We just don’t get that kinda history here in the colonies!