My brothers, sevral aunts and cousins went to clean out and remove the furniture from my grandfather’s house-it had just been sold; my grandparents had passed on about a year previously. Anyway, we were sitting down at the kitchen table, sharing a lsat meal in the old house (my grandparents had lived there for 46 years). It was a sad time-we all remembered the good times we shared in that house-all of a sudden, the lamp went out.
We figured it was Gramps way of saying “goodbye”!
This might be a really bad idea, but could you scan and post that? I think that others, like me, are dying to see it now.
I just thought of another that I’m pretty sure I’ve shared before, but oh well.
The first time I attended the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, back in 1998 or so, there was a big thunderstorm that rolled in over the night stage during a performance by Sweet Honey in the Rock. The skies opened and the torrents came down, and soon thousands of lesbians were scrambling to get out of the downpour. Friends of friends were running a booth in the crafts area where people could dress up in various costumes and pose with a Harley. A small crew of us converged on their tent to make sure all of their costumes were safe from the storm, quickly pulling everything into the white plastic tent and tying anything down that moved. The craft tents were also one of the best places to wait out the downpour, so we all huddled there together sitting on hay bales passing a communal bottle of something strong. My friend Lisa had her camera out and snapped many pictures of our little ad hoc, muddy crew. A few weeks after the festival, Lisa got her pictures developed, and there was one picture from that night that included a white-haired elderly woman in the group that no one remembers being there at all in the rain.
Bob. It is a bit tough to see when scanned, but here ya go.
All right, a little help here - where’s Bob in the picture?
I think it’s the lens artifact in the field. If you zoom in and clean it up a little Bob looks like a 3/4 view of a two story house with a pitched roof and a chimney, take a look here.
Sorry; not seeing it. Can you give me some pointers where to look?
My story isn’t very interesting, but here it is: One day (early afternoon), while I was walking past the room in which our (then) 3-month-old twins were sleeping, I distinctly heard a female voice, quite close to me, say “Nice one.” It was very matter-of-fact and non-threatening, and I assumed that my wife had come over and made a somewhat contextually-vague comment about something I had done.
Of course, the wife was sleeping in our bedroom at the time.
Our house isn’t particularly old (about 15 years) and, as far as I know, doesn’t have any interesting history (besides the awful interior paint colors it had when we moved in). Anyway, I chalk it up to a combination of either or both of these factors:
-
Ambient noise, at that particular place at that particular time, happened to combine in such a way that my mind interpreted it as a voice.
-
I was three months into a marathon run of sleep deprivation.
If you look to the left of the children, you will see what loks like – thanks to the scanner – a puff of smoke. There is no source for the “smoke.” I don’t know if you can enlarge the picture, to see it as clearly as you can in person, though.
The house daHubby and I rented when we first got married was about 90 years old and had been renovated several times in the past. It was a cute little house but I never felt right when we were living there. In 1995, I started having more and more difficulties with depression, manic-depressive episodes, serious considerations of suicide and times when I would be so angry I stood next to daHubby’s side of the bed thinking of ways I could kill him. When I’d come to, I’d sit and cry till I got sick, then pass out.
When we moved to the Farm in 1999, I started feeling better. I didn’t feel as if the house was closing in on me, I no longer felt hot and cold spots in certain areas of the house, and the cat didn’t stare at things that weren’t there. I was in the local grocery store shortly after we had the last load of furniture on the way to the new place, talking to the checkout clerk, and she told me that several older folks had lived in our house and had died there. One particular couple were quite mean to each other and the neighbors, and the last people to rent our old house moved out within 5 months.
I never saw anything but the feelings I had were enough.
This was something I shared here on SDMB shortly after Hurricane Katrina:
I still can’t quite figure that one out. My brother got through FROM IRAQ on my house’s land line which had been unusable for hours since the storm had come through, and which remained unusable for six weeks, until a crew physically came out and restrung the wire? (The repair crews were hopelessly backlogged with Katrina and then Rita.) And this call let him know that we were all safe and how to get in touch with us further – since my husband and I had the only working cell phones of our entire extended family? Too weird of a coincidence.
I see it.
Kind of the ‘light patch’.
true confession: I belonged to a ghosthunter group. Currently looking for a local group. I like the challenge of debunking - and when unable to debunk… well, there’s fun in that too.
I have so many, but nothing really stand out. Most of my investigations have been in cemeteries. And I’ve only lived in one - what I would consider to be - haunted house.
The owner had passed away and his daughter was renting out his house. My cat refused to go in the back room of the basement… a lot of his things were stored there. She would even hiss randomly when down there doing laundry (she would keep me company). Anyways, one day while doing a load I had the stereo (that was upstairs) on loud enough to where I could hear it downstairs. It wasnt long before I heard a “boom” from upstair - sounded like something heavy fell over (perhaps a speaker). I went upstairs to investigate but found nothing so I went back down to finish folding clothes. Again, a loud boom (like someone stomping their foot down). It definately came from the room above which was the living room. Upstairs -nothing, again. I passed it off as something else and shrugged it off. Well, this time when I went downstairs I noticed my cat “playing” on top of the pool table (owned by deceased), as if someone was dangling a toy in front of her. I resumed folding, until I heard a bang against the vent. Now THIS made me jump! After regaining my composure, I went back to chores until the next BANG BANG BANG! I whipped around really quick - the sound seemed to have come from the vent right behind me. “Is my music too loud? I’m sorry, I’ll turn it down if you dont like it, but can you give me a few minutes to finish this load?”
When I got upstairs, I turned the music down. And any time I went downstairs, I made sure I kept the music down. Nothing after that.
When living in a college town in KS - I got to experience some of the “unexplained” at the college (it was awesome!).
Right. It’s funny to hand people the photo and not mention the “face.” There is always the same thing – “oh, you were so cute, and look, you’re all dressed al…wait, what’s this?” rubs finger on picture trying to remove smudge “That’s weird – what is this? Oh, shit, it’s a face!” There are those who immediately say “oh my gods, it’s a ghost!” those who say “oh, it must be a double-exposure” (aside from it being obvious that it is not a double-exposure, there’s the whole thing about my dad having been a professional photographer through much of his younger years, reducing the likelihood of that being the case, anyway) and those who look for a valid explanation. The most valid explanation is smoke – that’s pretty much what it looks like, a column of smoke rising out of the field behind us, except that it is obvious that it is closer to the camera than the field, and there’s no source for the smoke.
Rumour has it that in some of the other (missing) pictures, Bob is standing behind me and is clearly visible with his hand on my shoulder. This is what my father told me. Since the eggdonor has those pictures, the world may never know. It is true enough that the odd shit has followed me throughout my life.
I’ve gotta say this intro made me laugh. I know it would give me the willies. 
First off, I’m not a big believer in this stuff, but it still creeps me out in a fun way.
This one was my dad’s story: He was a manager at a lumber yard, so he was often there after hours, finishing up for the day. One evening he had already locked up and was walking around, tidying up, doing all the usual closing stuff. He kept thinking he was seeing someone just out of his field of vision, but when he’d turn to see who it was, they’d be gone. By the time he got home, he was a bit freaked out. That night we got a call that his aunt, uncle and cousin had been killed in a car accident.
This one was my mom’s: The night before her mom died, my mom dreamt that her grandfather (her mom’s dad) was standing on the sidewalk outside her apartment, staring up at the window, a suitcase beside him. She smiled and waved down and he waved up to her. Now, this could be easily explained by the fact that my grandma was dying of cancer at the time and she was likely to go any day. And she was, of course, on my mom’s mind a lot.
And this is a funny one of mine: While in college I worked in “the tower” at the University of Texas–the one where Charles Whitman went on his shooting rampage. Anytime something odd would happen, we’d blame his ghost. One day I was working on something in the basement and heard a man’s voice (the only other people in the basement with me were women). I slowly, nervously followed the voice until I found…
the undisclosed location of the telephone registration and grade-checking system known affectionately as “Tex.” 
I have no spooky stories I can add myself… but interface2x, I was born and raised in Moline. There is an old story about the Black Angel of Riverside Cemetery. It was a supposed haunted grave marker, at the Deere grave, no less. Kids would dare each other to stay there or just touch the grave, and there were old stories of people’s hair turning white after staying the night with the Angel. People would say they saw the statue moving.
However, I’m pretty sure it was taken out of the cemetery in the 70’s or even before, I’m not sure. It was being vandalized.
http://www.qconline.com/ask_us/search.cgi?search=howl
If you go down to #4 on that site, it has a little explanation of the Black Angel.
Definitely a great story, my mom scared the crap out of me with it when I was young, just as she had been scared I imagine. This report of yours won’t help things!
There is a description in the link I posted, of how the statue (sort of) might have looked… They didn’t say anything about the feet, but “one arm held a wreath, and one was raised to the sky”. Does that match what you saw? I’m all curious now! 
My youngest sister (she’s 42) is in the process of buying my grandparents’ house from my dad’s estate. When my grandparents were too infirm to take care of themselves, they moved in with my folks, my dad bought their house, and my sister rented it. Anyway, both grandparents and my dad have all died.
My sister swears that my dad visited the house there and either turned the TV on or off (can’t recall which.) She also claims my grandmother is still hanging around the house, and that she saw her standing at the foot of the bed once. Of course, my sister is known to indulge in certain recreational substances, legal and otherwise, so I don’t give her tales a lot of weight…
Ooh, this is all so spooky.
Mine are no where near as interesting.
Once when I was a kid and visiting my cousins in Georgia we were walking somewhere in their neighborhood with a couple friends of theirs and they wanted to cut through a small cemetery. It was an old cemetery that still had graves but it wasn’t being used anymore. They said they did it all the time, but we made sure to walk quickly. I glanced at an above ground crypt that was maybe 30 to 40 feet away and I could have sworn I saw the top start to move. I commented on this and I expected them to joke about it but they all took off running. I had no choice but to run as well. When we got far enough away they admitted that they did not see it move they just didn’t want to stick around long enough to see if I was imagining things.
My mother told me that she saw her father at the foot of her bed before she was called and told that he had passed away.
I have vague memories of being in an old house and hearing strange noises and feeling cold spots but I don’t remember where this was, it might have been my grandparents old farm in Wisconsin.
A couple times while driving at night I have seen either a person on a bicycle riding along the side of the road and once I saw a dog. I can see them in the headlights ahead of me and I proceed cautiously to swerve around the biker or in case the dog runs into the road. However once I get even with the spot where they should have been they are no longer there. The dog could have turned and run the other way but where did the biker go? I was not sleepy or intoxicated. I’ve seen a biker a couple times but most of the times it was a quick flash of something there that was then gone before I got even with it but the one time I went so far as to come even with the bike, slowing and swerving around them to allow room and looked over and saw no one there. I was afraid the biker may have fallen so I looked in the rearview mirror and the road was bright enough to see that no one was there. The ground on the side of the road was flat enough that if they had gone down there it would have been obvious.
We had a poodle for a long time, we got her when I was about 6 and she lived to about 12 or 13. In the last house she was in there was a small Ben Franklin stove on a brick hearth and she always liked to lay on the hearth even if the stove wasn’t in use. After she died I would walk into the living room late at night and she something white on the hearth. If I turned on the lights it would be gone and there would be nothing white there to explain it. I later found out that my mom had seen the same thing several times.
It’s possible, I’d have to see a picture of the original angel. Even if I saw it now, though, I’m not sure I could positively ID it since it was so long ago. If I’m remembering the set-up of the place correctly, I saw it on the opposite side of the Velie monument as the Deere area. You can see the monument I sat on in the top picture on this page (we were sitting on the stairs there). I believe the John Deere grave is east of where we were and we were driving west/northwest to exit the cemetery when I saw the statue.
We were sitting here, roughly, and were driving on the road to the bottom down to the left (the statue was roughtly here by my memory).
I’ve posted this before but so what----
My ex and I once lived in an old, large, three-story house in South Dakota. The house was originally owned by a preacher who also happened to establish the first institute of higher learning in the Dakota Territories. The house was built by the preacher’s father-in-law back east (I don’t remember where), disassembled, shipped to SD and reassembled. I think it is now on a National Register of some sort, but I might be wrong about that.
Anyway, that house had a full basement with several rooms in it; one of those rooms had a dirt floor, if that’s relevant, and I was completely unable to enter that room. As soon as I tried to step over the threshold, I would become absolutely filled with terror. I could feel my hackles rise and I would break out in goose flesh over my entire body. I once managed to take two steps into that room before turning and running. I will swear to my dying day that something in that room hated me; I could feel the menace every time I went past it, even when the door was shut.
That house had a formal library room on the main floor; I loved to sit and read in that room. The problem was that it required walking down a long hallway to enter the library; that hallway always seemed to me to have several very cold spots in it, even during the summer. I usually read until fairly late before retiring and I will swear forever that when I left that room and used that hallway that I was touched on the back of my neck and on my cheeks several times.
The house also had a very wide and very ornate stairway to the second floor. I had felt light touches on my face and neck going up and down that stairway several times; once when I was coming down, I distinctly felt a hand in the small of my back pushing me. I did a header straight down those stairs—my ex saw it happen and always maintained that it looked as if I had suddenly decided to perform a swan dive.
I wasn’t comfortable in that house at any time; my ex and my son thought I was insane since nothing ever threatened them. Of course, my ex is a demon from hell, so maybe she was immune; my son was very young and anything untoward might have seemed natural.
That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.