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Ghostly Experiences

Haus of Mystery

14:51 / 01.02.06

So, when I was a kid I was petrified of Ghosts. I had an extremely susceptible mind, and used to spend hours lying awake in my darkened room terrified of every scratch or knock. But aside from a few minor oddities I've never really had what I consider a 'proper' ghost experience. I consider myself a reasonably skeptical and open minded person, and part of me is desperate to have a genuinely unusual experience. Part of me is of course shit scared of that very thing happening.

So come on then. Share your spooky experiences with us please.

Earlier than I thought

19:42 / 01.02.06

Go on then.

When I was a young man, I had loads of trouble with a gang of kids that lived near me. Good kicking at school, shouted abuse on the way home, the usual charming stuff. Anyway, one night I had to go to my friend's house. As was the fashion at the time, I took some vinyl (records, pervert) with me.

So, I'm sort of nervous. It's dark, I keep thinking I'm going to run into the Gang. I keep looking around me, to make sure that I'm alone, that I'm not being followed.

The inevitable happens. Into sight loom the hardest bastard around, with his weedy mate who hates my guts. At the very least, I'm going to get my albums smashed (that can hurt). Worst case scenario, I'm fucking dead.

But they just look at me, oddly. They say a stilted hello. They walk on looking nervous. I take a quick look round and leg it.

Next day: the big lad comes up to me. Away from his twatty mates, he's not so bad. What I can't figure out is why they didn't go for me, 'cause the little guy would normally have jumped at the chance.

"Who was that big bloke?" says this lad. "Was that your dad?"

Apparently, they'd been considering doing me over. But then they'd seen that I was being followed by a massive guy. "He had a big hat on and a black coat. Looked really spooky".

I'd been looking over my shoulder the whole way. Believe me, I was on my own.

I told my ma. She looked at me oddly, then told me about the only time she'd seen a ghost, at the top of the stairs in her childhood home. She was about eleven. "A big man", she said, "in a black coat and a big hat...he just vanished..."

Well, it scared my partner anyway.

Tryphena Absent

20:00 / 01.02.06

I've said this on barbelith before, probably more than once but this event convinced me that ghosts exist, though possibly not the type that move. The only ghost I've seen seemed to a reflection from the past-

When I was about 10 or 11 I woke up in the middle of the night to find a boy dressed in Edwardian clothing, frozen in the middle of my bedroom in a running position. He looked incredibly panicked (and was running towards the wall that used to have a fireplace in the middle, for years I wondered if their had been an accident in the house at some point in the past). I pulled my duvet over my head and when I looked again he was fading and I could see my curtains through him. I was so scared that I didn't get up, as I would after a nightmare but just continued to lie in my bed in terror with the covers over my head. It took me hours to get to sleep again but I couldn't even bear to switch the light on. I was utterly frozen- not physically, just with fear.

I could try and make excuses but it would be futile, I've seen a ghost.

There was also a man in a tartan suit sitting down on some grass in a park who turned out not to be there but I put that down to sunlight kind of.

06:25 / 02.02.06

Those are two weird as fuck accounts. We need more.

More.

08:18 / 02.02.06

Okay, here’s one for you:

I’d like to preface this by saying I don’t believe in ghosts, but this story really happened and I’m a bit unsure how to explain it. When I was a baby – getting on for 30 years ago now, my parents took me and my older brother who was about 3 at the time, down to my dad’s cousin’s farm in Devon.

Harold owned a big farm which had an old, large farmhouse, the kind that had been added to over the years. Everyone had a jolly day walking in the country etc, and then went back to the farm for some dinner. After the meal, my mum took my older brother R- to the old nursery and put him down for the night. I got to stay up with the adults as I was still a baby. The night wore on, and my parents and Harold’s family were all chatting away enjoying the evening.

After a while, mum decides she should go and check on R, who she’s a bit worried about – since he might be having trouble sleeping in a strange room. As she nears the nursery door she hears him talking and tries to make out what he’s saying without opening the door anymore than it is. She can hear him talking away, but can’t quite make out what it is he’s saying. Mum goes into the room and sees R standing in his cot holding on to the bars looking away from the door. She asks him why he’s talking and to who! R says he was talking to the lady. Mum asks what lady? R goes on to describe a Florence Nightingale type figure in a long dark smock with an apron etc. Mum’s a bit perplexed, but R seems happy so she settles him down again and goes back to the adults.

She comes back into the room and exclaims: “you’ll never guess what R was doing!”. Harold says “don’t tell me, he was talking to the lady who looks like Florence Nightingale?”. Mum stands agog. Harold goes on to explain that all the children growing up in the farm in living memory (himself included) remember seeing the ghost of a woman who wore that style of garment. Apparently there had been a fire over a 100 years before and a nanny who had lived on the farm died saving the children from the fire. Ever since then her ghost had watched over the sleeping children in her care – and only the young could see her.

08:31 / 02.02.06

My "story" is not very exciting (although it was frightening when it happened), and that was feeling someone enter through the door of my appartment, walking through it, passing my bed and then leaving through the door of the balcony. I had awoken all of a sudden, couldn´t move and was very frightened. And when it had left my appartment I could move again and was bewildered. That was about seven years ago.

Someone told me it might have been sleep paralysis.

08:40 / 02.02.06

Sounds like sleep paralysis to me (although I'm no expert). In fact I think night visitations in general probably have more to do with sleep paralysis than anything else.

Jub, do you think someone could have mentioned the lady to R before the event?

08:44 / 02.02.06

Sounds a lot like sleep paralysis that one.

09:03 / 02.02.06

Well Boboss, that's what I think. I mean, ghosts! Really! I'm not sure exactly why anyone would have mentioned it, or how Harald could have mentioned it to R with my mum knowing about it - moreover even if it was mentioneed and the idea implanted somehow, it seems rather far fetched that he would then talk to the ghost and generally describe it the way people had before.

09:12 / 02.02.06

Well, perhaps a grown up said something to the effect of, "oh we have a nice lady staying here. If you see her, don't get frightened, she's really friendly". Then the little'un went to bed, got scared and went to the first available imaginary friend for help. I dunno, just an idea. I used to do similar things when I was a tiny tot.

Of course, I am slightly uncomfortable trying to explain away other people's experiences with complicated narratives invented by me.

Haus of Mystery

09:13 / 02.02.06

Grimes, that's some MR James shit man! Nasty.

I recall a friend of a friend (ha!) who even as an older kid had to sleep with his head under the covers because as a youngster he was 'bothered' by a ghost that played with his hair whilst he tried to sleep.

Yeeble.

Tryphena Absent

09:21 / 02.02.06

I think night visitations in general probably have more to do with sleep paralysis than anything else.

Are you going to tell me I was dreaming? It certainly wasn't sleep paralysis unless you can move your arms, legs and head when you're paralysed. And it's not like any dream I've ever had- because I've never actually physically dreamt of a room I know intimately in its actual state but I suppose I could have just that once. Perhaps I was, you know, half awake and my mind superimposed a historical fantasy into the air.

My arse.

09:25 / 02.02.06

Sorry, I actually wasn't lumping your account in with the sleep paralysis crew.

I like your story because it's truly very odd indeed, and doesn't seem to fit into yr standard ghost story catagories.

Haus of Mystery

10:03 / 02.02.06

Boboss, what was that one you and Runce told me about your Dad and his hippy mates being haunted?

10:45 / 02.02.06

I've never actually physically dreamt of a room I know intimately in its actual state but I suppose I could have just that once. Perhaps I was, you know, half awake and my mind superimposed a historical fantasy into the air.

My arse.

Yeh, far more likely to have been a ghost.

I’m not sure if you’re spoofing here, Nina. At least I find it hard to reconcile that with what you’ve said about magical experiences in the Temple thread.
Eg. Unfortunately there's very little that a person can put into words that will convince me that their brain isn't making things up. If I feel this way about evangelical Christianity then it probably has to extend to everything else as well.
What,‘cept ghosts?

11:30 / 02.02.06

We've had a few previous threads that went bump in the night.

praying mantis had R Dean Taylor's Ghost in hir House, for one.

nutella23's lonely paranormal experience

Lullaboozler's less lonely accounts of paranormal experiences.

How to banish unwelcome ghosts.

I'm sure there are more. I remember contributing to some that I haven't dug up with that first search.

Tryphena Absent

12:07 / 02.02.06

Sorry Smoothly but I don't know how to explain my conviction. You see the only ghost I'm certain I've seen- this boy- I thought he was a burglar at first. I don't dream like this, never have done, I don't believe that you can have one dream in your entire life that is so at odds with all others. It's not that I think all ghosts are real, usually (on a few other occasions) I put these things down to my brain playing tricks but not in this case. I'm not sure if ghost or paranormal experience is the right term, I think this type of experience is probably a scentific phenomena that we simply haven't worked out yet. One day, if anyone can be arsed, I honestly expect to hear physicists talking about this with reference to theories of time or energy- something along those lines. I don't think I saw a spirit, I think I saw a memory. I honestly wouldn't have a problem admitting it was a dream if I thought that it could be and the same with sleep paralysis but logically, from my own experience, it just doesn't fit with the rest of my life or my brain. I couldn't move but I was scared to attract attention to myself in case I- this is going to sound a little odd- woke it up from its frozeness and I was just awake, in my bed, actually my bed, nothing weird about the room, all furnishings intact etc. Places in my dreams always, without fail, shift and combine, have the sense of a place but look different and they're usually eerie because my head knows something's a little wrong with the picture. This didn't fit the pattern of my own head before or after the event.

14:07 / 02.02.06

Have you seen my friend, Mr. Paragraph?

Haus of Mystery

18:12 / 02.02.06

More Ghost stories! My campfire's nearly out...

18:42 / 02.02.06

Hum, not a visual one, but this is the only personal ghost story I have. (My mum, otoh, has ones from her boarding school holidays in an English country house that are real hair-standing-on-end ones. Got a bit meself from Ganesh's there.)

Erm, so I'm working in a hotel, couple years back, and there's only one guest staying, some American guy on business, along with the owner who lives in an outhouse and my pal the head chef. Also, I've already heard the tale of the place's haunting soon after starting, which was derided with mocking laughter, most probably. So, shift's over and that, and I'm up having a smoke in the chef's room, and after half an hour or so there's a load of banging out in the hall. Someone treading heavily. We just assume it's the owner doing a checkround, after a few beers; he's a big fella, ex-cop, you know.

Bit later, I leave and go home. Next shift, the owner starts jokingly calling me 'the ghost' and accusing me of disturbing this sole guest; initially, I'm like 'uh?', but eventually, by a process of elimination - there are only three of us in the hotel, all of whom have heard this racket, I'm left with - basically - the woman who established the building. In the late 19th century. Could be subsidence, o' course, but I never heard subsidence like that.

I've got a couple more, off my mum and a pal, if you like later.

19:00 / 02.02.06

Perfect Stranger and I are in the 'Ghosts of the Wight' book. Shit, out of internet time, I'll tell all later...

Haus of Mystery

20:37 / 02.02.06

Do. My Cocoa's getting cold.

20:55 / 02.02.06

Nina, with your experience (and I hope you're not spoofing also), where did it happen? Had the place any "history"?

I'll give reasons for my inquiry later.

15:05 / 03.02.06

My story's fairly mundane (and probably explainable) compared to some of the others, but I'll tell it anyway.

Ten years ago I was working retail in a mall. There were a number of seniors' residences in the area. Any time of the day or night, dozens to hundreds of old folks would descend upon the mall.

One night in particular, I noticed an old woman staring at me from a distance. Nothing too unusual -- she looked kind of familiar, but I couldn't place her. Being the polite person I am, I nodded my head and smiled. She smiled back, closing her eyes, and I went back to what I was doing. When I looked up a few seconds later she was gone.

After I got home, I found out that my great-grandmother -- whom I had never met as she lived in Germany -- had passed away.

You see where I'm going with this, I'm sure.

That's why she looked so familiar.

15:55 / 03.02.06

Told this one before, so apologies for the repetition.

A load of us staying round a mate's house when we were about fifteen. Sleeping in the living room. Bottom floor of house (newsagent's, very old building placed directly on a corner of a road, with angles that never quite managed to be exactly ninety degrees) all open plan. Living room connected directly to the next room by two open arches either side of a fireplace. Small rooms.

Everybody else had fallen asleep and I was half-watching some crappy wrestling match, trying to nod off myself. Saw a face appear around the bottom of the left archway - only a foot or so off the ground - and look directly at me. Half-asleep, so didn't really take it in. It might not even have happened - it could well have been one of those 'just about to pass out' nearly-dreams, because I totally accepted it as normal.

Never told anybody about it. Some years later, was chatting with same friend's mum (who had since moved) about how there was something not quite right about that old house - cupboards with latches would open and then slam themselves shut in the middle of the night, you'd forever be catching sight of something just out of the corner of your eye (because of those angles?), that sort of thing.

She started telling us about how she'd had a friend round for a drink the one night and left her alone in the living room for a few minutes. Came back in, friend was looking a bit shaky. Asked her what was up. Apparently, a few seconds after she'd been left alone in the room, she'd seen a face peer around the bottom of the left-hand archway, about a foot or so above the ground, and look directly at her.

'Twas cool. Like I say, I'd never told her - or anybody else - about this same thing happening to me, because I'd just put it down to tiredness. Probably still just that, but there's some weirdness in that two people who, to this day, have never met, *thought* they'd seen the exact same thing in the same place at different times.

17:04 / 03.02.06

I don't have any ghost stories, but my younger brother had a freakin' weird experience a couple of years back that makes me believe just a little bit more. my bro does not mess around and I totally believe this.

He was visiting a group of friends who were living in an old farmhouse. In the course of the evening they happened to tell him it was haunted, but as a sceptical young lad, he didn't think anything of it. Ad i stress: THEY DID NOT TELL HIM ANYTHING ABOUT THE ALLEGED HAUNTINGS AT ALL.

Their spare bedroom (the one he stayed in that night) has two doors: one leading to the hallway and one (locked) leading to the disused attic.

All of my bro's friends got up bright and early to go to work and mini-mono decided to have a lie-in. He was lone in the house.

Sometime in the late morning, he heard soem bumping and knocking coming from what he *thought* was the door to the hallway and dismissing it as their crazy cat drifted back to sleep. The noises got louder and her soon realized that they were coming from the attic door. Creepy. As he was half asleep, he dismissed it again, though felt kinda spooked. He couldn't get back to sleep and soon "felt a weird presence in the room" so sat up, to se what he described as 2 a vaguely human sized space in the room where alltyhe patterns of the wallpaper/furniture were just ALL WRONG."

He then felled really creeped out, but decided to go back to sleep and put the covers over his head and drifted off in to half-sleep. "oh no!" he thought out of no where, "it's the farmer...i'm supposed to be helping in the fields, but I've slept in!" He then felt the heat of someone leaning over him, and breath on his face. At this point, he was totally freaked out and didn't want to move a muscle. After a few seconds later he felt hands grab ahold of his shoulders and physically shake him. He jumped out of bed, ran out onto the porch and chain smoked until one of his friends came home.

As soon as the friend saw him looking so freaked out he said "So, you must have met the farmer. He gets upset when the farm hands sleep in" Apparently loads of boys and girls with shortish hair staying in that room have had the same experience when they sleep past 9 or 10 in the morning.

Spooky.

subcultureofone

17:17 / 03.02.06

in 1985, my sophomore year of college, i saw a ghost in my dorm room. my roommate was away [long weekend] and the evening’s plans hadn’t worked out so i took advantage of the quiet of my nearly-empty dorm and went to sleep early. at about 5am someone knocked on my door but i ignored it. they continued knocking and i finally got up to answer. no one was there, or in the hall or on the stairs [i lived on the 4th, & top, floor]. bleary-eyed, i was crawling back into bed when i saw a guy sitting at my desk and suddenly i was wide awake. he had dark hair and was wearing a white button-down shirt, grey suspenders with dark red pinstripes, charcoal trousers with cuffs, and loafers. he was staring at me. we made eye contact, which was absolutely terrifying and the scariest part of the whole thing. i was overwhelmed by the impression that he was going to speak or move toward me, so i pulled the covers over my head and tried to calm down. about half an hour later, the phone rang. i answered it, but no one was there. the ghost was still there, though; he was leaning forward on the desk, head propped in hand, suspenders hanging down. he sighed and glanced over at me so of course i hid under the covers again, eventually fell asleep, and when i woke up there was no more ghost.

in retrospect, i think what i saw was an echo or memory of a former student who’d lived in my room and studied at my desk. my dorm had been the freshmen boys’ dorm since around 1885 and the school used to have a dress code that included button-down shirts and no sneakers. of course, none of that occurred to me at the time. maybe i’d have been less freaked out. who knows, maybe decades ago he saw me and thought i was a ghost or hallucination. he didn’t do anything threatening but i felt very frightened. seeing a ghost was scary but not as scary as the ghost seeing me.

17:50 / 03.02.06

The house where I was born was about 300-400 years old. And I once thought I saw something there. My room faced the bathroom separated by the hallway which ran horizontally across. The house's top floor was usually completely empty except for me and one night I awoke unexpectedly and gradually through bleary eyes noticed someone I didn't recognise in the bathroom. They were lit blue by moonlight and seemed to be incessantly fiddling with or leaning over our towel rack. The action seemed so repetitive and odd. There isn't anything clear I can remember regarding the thing's face but I do remember that it was robed and heavy set. After a while they turned to look at me and I sensibly sat back down in bed and pretended to be asleep. When I eventually got up enough guts to look back the person was gone. Which was especially weird because I had heard no sound and having grown up in that house I knew it was almost impossible to avoid all of the creaking floorboards. Also my Dad told me many years later that the house had been occupied by priests or nuns or something along those lines at some point which might explain the robing. I woke up for the next few nights at exactly the same time but didn't encounter anything like that ever again. I never actually repeated the experience to anyone until now. I tend to rationalise and disbelieve it these days if I ever think of it at all but at the time.... (!!!!)

Living there used to scare the shit out of me alot when I was young. Lots of spooky stuff. There had been a butcher's and abattoir on the grounds at some point so there were always a few animal skulls and bones to be found around the grounds. Adding to the general gothic horror of that was horrible peril from a marsh you could sink and drown in which lay beyond our sheds or "yonder" as we called it. We even had a barred window that didn't seem to have a corresponding room and a couple of blocked-off passageways. And of the less supernatural bump or rather slither in the night variety we also had a infestation of the biggest slugs that I've ever seen that lay around at night time in the kitchen looking decidedly fecal. (ugh)

Haus of Mystery

20:29 / 03.02.06

Although not my experience per se, this happened to my best friend from childhood, and as such I'm predisposed to believe him. It was when we were about 17/18, and he recounted the various events to me as they happened.
so one day he confides in me that something odd happened when he was in the bath. A wash bag resting upon a shelf above his head flew across the room to land on the bathroom floor. Naturally I thought he might be exaggerating, but he assured me it was at a strange trajectory - it didn't simply fall. But so far so-so.
However, he recounted to me a few days later that he was telling his Mum about this and as he did so a picture of him on the window ledge slapped face down with a loud bang that startled him and his Mum. When he told me this I have to confess being a little unsettled. Over tthe next couple of weeks I'd get little ghostwatch updates - his bed being shaken while he was in it, stacks of books or disks falling over etc. It was clearly unsettling him, and whenever I was round his house I'd succumb to paranoia, and become reluctant to sit in his room alone. Didn't help that it was the attic room.
Now this was my oldest mate, and my then current drinking buddy ( I grew up in a village, and believe me when I say mushrooms and alcohol were the only escape routes..), and I was upset that he was clearly having a shit time. I'd read a bit about 'poltergeist' activity, and wondered if he was, in fact, deeply unhappy.
The occurences became less and less frequent, until they eventually ceased altogether, so that's kind of the end of the story - no EC Comics twist endings here - but the proximity of this possibly supernatural happening disturbed and fascinated me. Mainly though it just worried me that my friend was having a rough time. Pleased to say he seems to be a perfectly well adjusted dude nowadays. i have to say it'd be interesting to hook up and chat about it now, just to hear his take on it.
Weird shit.

21:05 / 03.02.06

I woke up in the middle of the night, many years ago in a bedroom far far away, and saw my grandmother sitting at a writing desk, across the room, wearing a nightie. She was writing a letter and turned to me and smiled. I lay, perfectly still, not wanting her to vanish but she did. I think both she and the writing desk were a hypnopompic hallucination but, at the time, they seemed astonishingly real and not at all scary. I was very happy to see her. She had been dead for twenty years by then.

The only other supernatural, perhaps, experience I recall was seeing my friend Donald walking towards me up a staircase in an Edinburgh bookshop, although he had killed himself the week before. A grief-related hallucination, I expect. Quite common.

22:30 / 03.02.06

Bump...

23:55 / 03.02.06

...in the night?

Tryphena Absent

00:18 / 04.02.06

Nina, with your experience (and I hope you're not spoofing also), where did it happen? Had the place any "history"?

A terraced house in North London, it was built around 1904 I think.

Tryphena Absent

00:20 / 04.02.06

Oh my god! One post without paragraphs and I get pulled up on it. Go and tell toksik to put some frickin capital letters in or something. It's not open season on the Nina!