Limited Edition Sericel from Hanna-Barbera Studios
I’ve got no knitting or spinning (Well I did spin last night and let’s say I was underwhelmed at best. One step up and two steps back.) so I’m going to talk about something else. I can’t give all the details because it’s a client, but a new project has come to me that deals with the supernatural. This person has written their life story detailing their adventures with the “other side.” I may have alluded in my re-cap post about my weekend at Ann’s that I’m scared shitless of this stuff – basically because I guess I believe it. I hate scary movies. I’ve never had my fortune read and won’t. There was that unfortunate incident with the Ouija Board that said I’d die in like October ’88 but I’ve since decided that it was my so-called girlfriends fucking with me. Basically because I lived. 😉 My problem tends to be the fact that I have an extraordinary imagination. And not always in a good way. So nothing is really outside the realm of possibility for me because if I can imagine it, it can be true. (My shrink has often remarked I’m stuck in the magical thinking stage so characteristic of five year olds. You know, the idea that if you think something you can cause it. Like a kid may wish a parent dead, then think it could actually happen.) This contributes a lot to my anxiety as you can imagine. I can think up some pretty horrific things. 😉
But I’d also like to think I have a healthy dose of skepticism and rationality in me. For instance, I’m skeptical of EVERYTHING our current government says. I’m often extremely logical and rational.
I’ve personally never seen a ghost. There was that one instance with my dead grandfather when I was a preteen, but I was in bed reading Go Ask Alice and I probably thought I was high or something and made the whole thing up. More likely, though, I will dream about dead relatives (mainly my great aunts and grandmother) and when I wake from the dream I usually have a feeling that they came to tell me that everything will be all right. It’s not only happened to me, but my sister and my mother as well. And they’ve all had this same reassuring feeling afterward. Nothing scary. Just peace. When I’m feeling bad or uncertain I often wish to dream about them, but it doesn’t happen like that.
Anyway, in the last few days I’ve spent a decent amount of time talking to this person who I’m going to be working with and I have to say, I believe everything they say. They’re earnest, honest, exasperated a little bit and more than anything, they’ve been burdened with this ability to a certain extent. Besides the “supernatural element,” this project is about writing the story of coming to terms with something in your life that you don’t really want – that you didn’t ask for – but has stuck around nonetheless. I could immediately relate to her. My anxiety will not go away, but it’s much more manageable now that I’ve accepted it into my life instead of fighting it and being afraid of it. The person I’ll be working with is a medium, but has been terrified of it since childhood. I don’t know the whole story yet, but it seems that in the last ten years they’ve made a conscious effort to learn about it and explore it so as not to be afraid. To be accepting and open and hopefully have a content life.
I’ve been talking to G about this and while he gets just as freaked out as I am, I’ve tried to explain why I believe what this person is telling me. I suffer from anxiety and panic, which is basically the fight or flight instinct gone awry. My shrink, when he’s not admonishing me about my magical thinking tendencies, likes to joke that I would’ve been GREAT in the time of the dinosaurs. You know when that anxiety mechanism kept you alive instead of making you think you’re crazy? Well who’s to say that at that same time, humans needed to be able to communicate with people who might have passed before them in order to survive? How many of you can say that you’ve never known something was going to happen before it happened? Or had a feeling about something that you couldn’t shake, and only later found out what that feeling meant? Everyone has anxiety. Some of us are lucky enough to have some kind of mix-up in our brains where that anxiety switch is set WAY TOO HIGH. So what’s to prevent someone from having that extrasensory switch set WAY TOO HIGH? In my mind it’s the same type of thing.
I often remark to myself how extraordinarily powerful the mind is – I see it all the time with the convoluted shit I come up with – so it’s not out of the realm for me that these things can and do happen. What do you think?
Here’s a little game we’ll play. I’ve been feeling pretty calm since my talks with this person – like I’m not so terrified of the whole ghost thing anymore. I’m trying to inure myself to all this ghost talk – I mean how am I going to deal with this project if I can’t sleep at night – so tell me your scariest (but TRUE!) ghost story! The person who succeeds in making me run screaming from my house will win a skein of STR Prove It All Night. Gather round the campfire, kids. We’re gonna tell ghost stories!
PS – Does anyone remember that really freaky deaky scene in Three Men and A Baby where you can see the kid behind the curtain in the window? OHMYGOD that was so SCARY! (And apparently false. What do you think?)
I have had several personal experiences with ghosts. It doesn’t make me happy and I’d rather it didn’t happen, but there it is. If I tell you, though, you’ll think I’m nuts, right? If you promise not to think I’m crazy, I’ve got 2 that I will share.
Well, not so sure if its a ghost story, but my husband is much like you…an incredible imagination, that ends up making him have HORRIFIC nightmares. He can ward it off now as an adult. I mean he still has the horrific nightmares, but they don’t scare him anymore. But it started when he was a little kid, at a specific house that his family lived in, in Albuquerque NM. His nightmares in that house, and the “imaginary friend” that tormented him when they lived there, were SO BAD that his family ended up moving to a new home. After that, the night terrors suddently went away, as did the “friend”.
The scary part of all this….
When our daughter was about 2, she started having similar night terrors (completely different house, different state even) and then developed an imaginary friend as well….who shockingly, had the same name as my husband’s “scary imaginary friend” when he was a child (and he had never ever, mentioned the name to her)
Daughter still has night terrors, but hasnt talked about the “imaginary person” in quite a while.
Oh my god. I totally feel the same way you do.
AND I have a real life ghost story. My friend Jill lived in an old farmhouse in Vermont. Her family put an addition on, but her room was in the ‘old’ part of the house. She said that she would come back to her room after school, and the curtains would be turned inside out and things would be moved around. She at first thought it was her sister messing with her – but then, one day – she was sitting on her bed reading, and a penny lifted up and flew across the room!
She was totally OK with it – the spirit or ghost or whatever wasn’t being nasty – just playing ‘jokes’ she would say. It totally freaked me out – but I guess since she lived with it every day – she was used to it.
OK, now I’ve just freaked myself out re-telling the story. Thanks.
More of a comforting dream story here, but a powerfull one in my life and one that convinced me that our brains work in ways of which we can’t conceive.
My dad died suddenly of a heart attack 5 years ago. I dreamed of him constantly after he died. For a solid year, he was in most of my dreams, in the background, quiet — very uncharacteristic for the gregarious, jocular man that was my dad let me tell you. I longed to hear his voice again, but he never spoke, just smiled, or walked through the dream, ignoring me. Finally, after a year, I dreamed of him sitting at a white patio table on a sunny porch in maybe Italy or some other warm place, sipping a Manhattan with my mom, and he spoke. His warm deep voice woke me up. He hasn’t been back since then…
I don’t know if that dream was for me or for him, but he’s gone now, and I have his voice in my head firmly. So…that’s my “ghostly dream” story.
Not in the realm of super-scary, but file it under “I believe”:
In the old brownstone I shared in Boston, one afternoon when my roomie and I were standing about three feet apart in the living room, a bottle of Pepto Bismol flew (and I mean flew) off of the top of the fridge in the kitchen (a good 9 feet away) and landed right between us.
Also in the same place, in my bedroom one night I woke up when I heard a crash. The large mirror on my dresser – which sat about 2 feet across from the end of my bed – was on the floor. The kicker was it landed mirror side up, so if it had slid over the dresser and then onto the floor, it would have taken out everything on the dresser. Not one thing was out of place.
True story: The house I grew up in was built in 1902 in a cotton mill village in the south. One of the previous occupants of the house was beheaded in a horrible accident. During the time we lived there we always heard strange noises. We would hear doors open and close in the back of the house when everyone was accounted for in the front of the house. We eventually named the ghost “George”. So anytime we heard a noise we would say there’s George again. You know how when you were a teen you would crank up the stereo and dance and sing along? Well sometimes when I did this “George” would whistle. It would f.r.e.a.k. me out. I’d check that the curtains were securely closed so I knew no one was outside the window peeking in. My brother wouldn’t be at home during these episodes so, I knew it wasn’t him playing pranks. It had to be “George”. The kicker came one evening when I was dancing and I SAW a black shape float across the adjoining room. It was sort of just a glob shape and the width of it filled the doorway. I literally ran from the room and reported what I had seen to my Mother. She believed that I actually had seen a ghost and was just as freaked out by it as I was. That was the day I decided “George” may not be a friendly ghost and I never felt comfortable in that house again. My Mother has since seen ghost in her new home and thinks maybe “George” followed her when she moved.
Now you know what your “g” pictures for the alphabet will be – n’est pas?
I don’t have a ghost story, but OMG, I’ve had that EXACT same thing as you with my grandmother…
I don’t have any ghost stories…but I get freaked out too!
It was a dark and rainy night…a black cat walked in front of the grrl as she walked down the hall to her apartment. Suddenly a pig with a spindle jump out in front of her and said touch this and you will laugh yourself silly for 100 years!
Supernatural or not? I don’t know.
A friend of mine died while we were in graduate school. Adding to the burden of grief was my fear that, as a non-Christian, she would not go to heaven (I didn’t really believe that, but there was a tiny niggling doubt.) Soon after her death, I dreamed that she called me on a phone from heaven. She told me that the phone was just a construct that I could understand so that she could tell me she was okay and in a good place. She also told me that she could continue to contact me if I wanted that. I was scared shitless in the dream, and told her that I loved her and was incredibly glad she was okay, but that I was uncomfortable with her calling me again. She said okay, and that was that.
I never dreamed again about her contacting me. And while I don’t normally take my dreams as gospel truth (heh heh), I never worried about my friend again.
P.S. My faith has since expanded to become a tad more inclusive.
I have a few ghost type stories, but the thing about having contact with people is very recently borne out in my life, and in a couple of different ways.
There are two songs that immediately bring me back to the time of my dad’s death. They are fairly recent and popular songs (my dad passed suddenly a little over seven years ago), so I hear them still fairly often on the radio. Since his death, when other family members are near death I dream about my dad and other relatives, and then I know that someone is about to be welcomed to be with them. Last fall I was driving with my daughter and I heard one of the songs. I didn’t think much of it, as I do hear them, but the very next song I heard was the other song from that time. The next day my uncle, who my dad was close to, died. I don’t believe in coincidences.
The other contact I feel I have with someone, I have had for many years. It usually happens (not always-sometimes when I am wide awake) when I am in that place between sleeping and waking. I hear someone talk to me. It is sometimes a woman, sometimes a man and they may only say “Hi Terry” before I wake up and it goes away. It is an actual voice outside of my head, not inside like a dream. I often will hear answers to problems or reassurances that I might need at the time. It actually happened this week. I was very worried about a situation and a woman told me Tuesday morning that it would resolve that day. And it did. I often think that if I could keep my wits about me I could find out more, but maybe this is just exactly all I am allowed, and am lucky to have it.
My ghost stories will have to wait. I have one that is extremely frightening and is the reason that I will never ever allow a ouija board anywhere near me or my family. Ever. And it was not manipulated by a person at the board. The board was in a different town being used by friends and I was asleep at home. My dreams and their experiences matched up. I have other OB experiences too, that are not so much scary, but weird and could not have been manipulated.
Are you sure you want to hear all of this? 😉 I like Margene’s experience the best!
Well, I made my living working in theatre for awhile, and most theatres are rumored to have their ghosts for one reason or another. Many theatres are old and have burned down at one time or been rebuilt.
Such was the case with my theatre in college. It was a large auditorium and the balcony had been sealed off and turned into a large lecture hall, leaving only the booths for light and sound around it and the seating below. Many people think that this annoyed the energy the dwelled there and that’s why it was so mischevious.
My job as the stage manager meant first to get there and open up, last to leave, turn out the lights, and lock up. Because I believed in it’s presence I always greeted it when I came in and said goodnight when I left, and thus, I think it left me alone. I have, however, helped others lock up and found heavy sandbags we used to block doors open, pulled out of the doorway, lights turned off and on in hallways we’d already cleared, and lights “ghosting” (it’s a real term for lights that are getting power somehow, but aren’t technically on) right on someone who was standing onstage, when the entire theatre was supposed to be dark.
People said that the ghost would slip into the theatre and watch the rehearsals, and I never felt that until one night I was heading to the back of the auditorium to lock the house doors and there was someone sitting in the seats. It was a large man, wearing work clothes and a baseball cap. I figured it was one of the janitors or work men taking a break. He was in this little cove towards the back, and I spotted him as I was walking up the aisle. I was going to ask who he was as soon as I passed a rather large column/wall that blocked those seats off, and as soon as I got around to talk to this man, there was no one there. I clearly had seen a figure sitting in one of these seats and when I came around the chairs were all empty, and there was no way anyone could have gotten out of the tight space without passing me in one direction or the other.
The other story I have is from a friend in college. He was also stage managing in a different theatre in the building and he came in to do his rounds and found someone, in the middle of the stage, on a ladder, working on the lights. It was not someone from the theatre and no one should have been in there. He said to him “can I help you?” and the man went on with his business, so as my friend was a student, he went out to find a the teacher in charge of the theatre. He came out, found us, and said that this old guy, not in a workers uniform for the college, was on stage on a ladder. We went with him and the stage was empty. No evidence that anyone had come or gone.
We then heard the story from the professor…
In the 70s the college had arranged for all of the electrical wires to be moved underground. Crews were going all over the college rewiring. Eventually three guys came to the theatre building and they were working on disconnecting the wires for the building. While working, there was a power surge and the men had all three holding onto the metal ladder that they were using had been electricuted and died on the spot.
These men are still seen sporadically around the building on ladders, working, just as they were when they died.
The college put a policy into effect right after that that no metal ladders are allowed on campus, and the wiring for the theatre has never been moved underground.
I’ve seen ghosts on occasion and lived with one for a few years. I never saw her, but my roommate did. In all instances the ghosts where non-threatening and we happily co-existed.
I used to see colorful auras around people when I was a kid. Nice people had pretty, sparkly colors around them, mean people had very dark auras. I wish I still had that ability, it would be helpful in the politics of the work environment.
I believe in evil, that’s why I don’t watch scary movies. I don’t need to give my imagination any fodder.
When i was a little girl and I would lay in bed, I used to hear voices in the wall. My mom always told me it was the tv or something, but there was no tv on that side of the house.
years later she told me, it freaked her out all to hell (even though I never knew she was freaked) because the times I would come tell her, she was sitting in bed reading, and no one was around the make any noise. No tv’s, no radio’s, nothing. Even in my teenage years I would hear mumbling in the wall, but my mother had convinced me it was the TV in the house, and I lived with my mom, dad and sister so I just didn’t let it bother me.
It’s funny to find out so many years later, there was nothing making that noise, and I do wonder what I heard.
I had a far over active imagination as a child, I used to fear flushing the toilet because I was convinved a giant poo hand was going to suck my down, and flushing released this giant hand to come grab me. I never saw anything scarey in a bathroom but I had that fear for years none-the less. I would RUN out of the bathroom right after I flushed.. pulling up my pants as I ran. But i was very young then!
I do remember the mumbles in the wall. I told my mother it sounded like a bunch of men, sitting around talking. Deep voises, and when I closed my eyes I imagine men around a card table smoking cigars and talking. That’s what it sounded like to me.
I had many many fears as a child of ghosts and things like that, I also believed in NOT talking about it. Don’t say you believe in ghosts or don’t, just don’t say! So if my family or friends wanted to talk about it I would.. say SHH SHH!! Your going to make something happen LOL which clearly showed I did believe! But I never would admit to myself what i thought, I only knew I was afraid.
My husband was out of town last week. One evening I came home, got the dogs and we went to pick up some sushi. When we got back and I left the dogs in the car and went to unlock the front door I heard a noise. I could not identify if it had come from the side inside the dinning room in the house, or from the car, if the dogs had jumped. It sounded like someone moving stuff around.
I put the sushi down on the cement and went and sat in the car and locked it, and sat in the car for 10 minutes before getting the courage to go inside. I am a slight neurotic 🙂 but hey that’s just me.
My ghost story is short and sweet: when I was little, my mom would sometimes wake up in the morning and go to the kitchen to find all the cabinets and drawers wide open. Nothing disturbed, no explanation. She told me later that it scared her to death.
I had a 7th grade teacher who all the kids ridiculed because he told stories about seeing UFOs and strange things happening in his house. I found out later that he was talking about my house – my parents bought it from him when I was four. So maybe there was something to it. I get scared so easily too – I can talk myself into anything. 🙂
Probably most people that work in a hospital have angel stories, which I believe are probably close enough to ghost stories. Most nurses will tell you of patients that are near death talking about angels/ghosts either visiting their room or talking to them. I’m a born skeptic, but have one of these stories that I can’t just explain away.
Several years ago I had a patient in the hospital who was in his late 70’s and had been extremely sick. He was hospitalized for months, and it was touch and go the whole time. He had taken a small turn for the worse, and two mornings in a row when I went to visit him, he talked about nothing except the angels who had visited his room the night before.
I figured that he would probably be dead the next time I came in, but the next morning when I got to the hospital, I found out that the patient in the room next to his had died. My patient never saw the angel again, and eventually got better and went home. We often joked that the angel must have been confused and had the wrong room number.
Oh can I ever relate. That anxiety button in my head is set way too high, too. Thank goodness for pharmaceuticals…………….
I have another one. This was more of a vision than a ghost. One weekend last year I had a fleeting image of a man that I used to work with. In this vision the man was extremely frail and completely white headed. (he was only in his 40’s.) Two days later I got a phone call from my MIL informing me that the man had died…2 days ago! How freaky is that? I later talked with his ex-wife and found that he had been very ill in the months before this and was in hospital for two months. Thus the frail appearance in the vision. Before this vision I had not thought of this man in years.
I unequivocally, absolutely, and without a doubt don’t believe in ghosts. But just in case, my friend Victor and I have promised each other that for as long as we live, if one of us ever calls the other convinced that they’ve seen anything even remotely supernatural in their house, the other one will immediately come and get them, no questions asked.
Y’know, just in case . . .
I’ve had several experiences with what I think are “ghosts”.It started when I was around 10 years old,and I still have it happen but not as often.I would see things out of the corner of my eye,images of people, I would turn my head to look and they were gone.It was anywhere,school,home,grocery store.I would tell my mom and she would just tell me to tell them to stop.
One day I was in the stairwell of my house that has been in our family for about 150 years(this house is not an abandoned old farmhouse mind you,the house is in the city, on the street I live on today.Two blocks from the Ohio River)
I was at the bottom of the stairs looking out the door, my little brother was at the top of the stairs playing with his cars. He said “Melwanie,Whats that?” I turned around and not 3 feet away on my stairwell was a big black man,I knew what it was because I didn’t see feet. He was wearing a dirty white shirt.He looked at me but didnt say anything.SCARED ME TO DEATH! I yelled for my little brother to run and I ran out the door to get my mom.
I still see things out of the corner of my eye and I just look straight.I don’t even turn my head.
I’ve had my eyes checked several times and I have been told I have perfect 20/20 vision and no problems with astigmatism.
Most of the houses around here actually have slave tunnels in the basement from when the slaves escaped to Ohio across the river for freedom.
I guess thats who it was.
I keep a journal of all the books I read–when I finish a book, I pull out the journal, scribble in the date, author, and title, and then go get another book. It’s just part of the routine. One day, I was in the middle of doing this, and I felt so, so strongly that my grandfather–who had some of the most beautiful handwriting I’ve ever seen–was standing behind me, shaking his head at my deplorable handwriting. I felt it so strongly, I turned around and looked behind me, and finally said out loud, “I’m sorry Grandpa, I can’t help my handwriting.”
Then there was my mother’s experience with a Oujia board, where she was absolutely convinced she was talking to my twin sister, Susan, who pointed out that I’d seen her name in a hymnal, the only one in the family ever to see the book dedicated to her memory at our church. And then, the one and only time I’ve been to a real psychic, she looked at me, looked past my shoulder, back at me, and said, “You dye your hair, don’t you? Because hers is a different color.”
In 1990 my Grandfather was killed in a plane crash (it was a small, single engine plane and he was the pilot). My Grandmother and he were very close and he pretty much took care of everything so when he was gone she was kind of lost. They had a house in Florida and a house in Mass and my Grandmother insisted on making the Spring/Fall trip by herself each year. The first year she made the trip and when she arrived in Mass. she couldn’t find her wallet. Anywhere. She called her tenant, Nancy, in Fla. and asked her to look for it in the main house. (not sure why she didn’t realize that she must have used it somewhere between Fla and Mass but as I said, she was older and suddenly alone so logic was a little fuzzy). Nancy let herself into the house and got the crap scared out of her because my Grandfather either appeared or spoke to her (she never made that quite clear) and told her to tell my Grandmother that her wallet was under the front seat in her car. Nancy told Grandma where to look (didn’t tell her about the Grandpa part because she didn’t want to completely freak her out) and voila, there it was. She told one of my Uncles about ‘seeing’ Grandpa – so Grandma didn’t end up having a mental breakdown.
I get goosebumps every time I think about it. Also, Nancy was a little on the weird side but we never knew her to make up stories.
We also have a friend who has had some pretty freaky experiences at his Mother’s house – cupboard doors opening, silver chafing dishes flying across the room and almost hitting his Mom…*shudder*
k – going back into lurk mode again… ;o)
I’ve had encounters with family members that have died, none of them scary though. The most interesting one was when a cousin in my great-grandmother’s generation showed up. She wanted me to find her grave. For about a month she communicated bits and pieces of info that gave me a general idea of where to look. My mom and I then went out driving, our ghost leading the way, and we found her graves and those of her parents at the top of a hill in some woods at the edge of an very overgrown old corn field. The graves (from 1890s)were in danger of being destroyed because of erosion. We spoke with the man that now owns the land, and he promised to make sure that the graves were protected for the future. It was actually a lot of fun.
I personally love reading true ghost stories, but, like you, I have a hugely active imagination and generally can’t sleep at night after I have been reading them. (Don’t even get me started on “horror” stories and scary movies, both supernatural and slasher – I really can’t deal with them at all!) I too, have had dreams about deceased relatives telling me that they were okay now, though only one or two that I have never forgotten. I’ve also decided that one probably should not seek out contact with something that one does not understand, and so I don’t mess with Ouija boards (refuse to be near one, actually), tarot, ghost hunting, or anything like that. I do, however, have a couple of stories.
The first one is not particularly frightening and happened to me several months after my great-grandfather died. We had moved into the house that he had built and lived in with his second wife, and he had died rather suddenly, though not on the property. My four-person family ended up buying and remodeling the one-bedroom house, mostly in order to keep it in the family. If I laid in bed, I could see the entire laundry room, and about half of the kitchen. Straight across from my bed, in the kitchen, was a gap between counters where we had the phone and message board hung on the wall. One morning, I woke up, and I swear that I saw my great-grandfather standing next to the phone, smiling across the rooms at me. He waved, and I kind of blinked, and then he was gone. The way the sun was shining in (the kitchen window faced east), it could have been some odd trick of the morning light, but I’ve never been certain, nor did I ever see him again. Occasionally, if I was alone in the house, I would get the feeling that someone was watching me, but chalked it up to overimagination, teenage-ness and being alone in a house in the middle of nowhere. I like to think that Grandpa was just making sure that we’re okay and that we’re taking care of his house.
My brother’s more recent experience is, to me, much scarier. Like me, he believes in ghosts, but unlike me, he and his friends love to go ghost hunting in local “haunts”. He called me last weekend and told me this story: The week before last, they decided to go to a fairly large and very old cemetary that is supposed to be crawling with ghosts. It was a little bit misty and foggy from storms that had hit over the weekend, and was, according to him, the “perfect Hollywood haunting atmosphere” walking through the cemetary gates. He said that he and his friends were walking up the first hill, and he looked back for some reason (I can’t remember why) and saw a man following them. He figured it was the caretaker and that they were busted, given the fact that it is technically illegal to be in that cemetary at night. Instead of running or trying to get out of it, he figured that since the guy had already seen them, the best course of action would be to go up to him, apologize, assure him that they weren’t doing any damage, and leave quietly. (That’s totally my brother for you) He said that he started walking towards the guy, got within about thirty feet of him, and then the guy vanished. My brother was puzzled, but figured it was a trick of the light on the fog or something and they continued puttering around the cemetary, found nothing else interesting, and left. One of his friends dug up a story about the previous caretaker, who is said to haunt the cemetary and guard it with his two dogs. Supposedly it is a death omen to see the dogs or get chased by the dogs or something. The next night, it was much clearer and they went back, using a different entrance this time. Again, my brother saw a man standing on a hill this time, watching them, and thought he saw a dog next to him. Another of his friends also saw the man this time, and they decided to approach the figure again. This time they ran up the hill, ignoring the yells of the rest of their friends, just in time to see the man and his dog walk behind a tree and disappear. They checked the area at the top of the hill and found no footprints other than their own. They called back to the rest of the group and asked why they had been yelling. They said that as the my brother and his friend had been running up the hill, a second dog had been chasing them! They checked the footprints on the way back down the hill, and sure enough, following my brother’s footprints were the tracks of a dog! No one has died that I know of, although my brother did say that he fell and almost cracked his head on a tombstone as they were leaving that night. Weird!
My father died 3 years ago after a very short illness. He and I would talk about life after death and our belief in it.
Since his death I am quite blessed to have dreams with him in them. One I remember I was standing in the kitchen when I felt him there. I turned around to see him standing near the kitchen table. I said,”Dad I haven’t seen you in so long”, and went up to him and gave him a big hug. He was wearing a beautiful colbalt blue shirt. He said to me that everything was going to be okay, and that everyone is waiting on the otherside. I knew he ment the rest of our family who have been deceased. It was a very peaceful dream.
Now a year ago my grandmother who was 100 at the time passed away. Mom and I took care of her during her last days, and when I say days, it really was days. It went very quickly. She being of Hungarian/Polish desent, we always called her a gypsy. The last days were hard, she would call to us and we would come, one day she started speaking in Hungarian, and both my mother and I were speachless, since neither her or I knew she could speak this language. She would call me by her sister name, Erma. The night before she passed, I was sitting next to her bed and she asked me who were the man and woman who were standing at the foot of her bed. She asked why they were crying. I knew she was seeing my grandfather and my aunt who both had passed decades ago.
We share our house with the ghost of the man who built it 60 years ago ( apparently) My daughter used to see him all the time when she was young – she says he used to read her bedtime stories. He is totally benign and looks after us like a kind of guardian angel. He doesn’t intrude but occasionally you see something go to the front door out of the corner of your eye or you smell pipe tobacco – no one smokes….
I have two instances.
When I was in 3rd grade I was sitting in class after my father had dropped me off, quietly working as was everyone else. When I had this huge sudden strong emotion wash over me so intensely I jerked up and gasped. I can’t really explain it, especially then- a desperateness and panic like feeling almost. I remember all the people around me looking at me. I shook it off but when I got home I found out my Dad had been in a car accident heading to work at the same time I had that feeling. He was thankfully ok, having his van nearly go off a bridge but the 2 men in the other car (a red truck) were rather seriously hurt. Also, he later told me he had a dream a week before of hitting a red truck.
I always remembered that and for a long time it freaked me out. I made a note to pay attention if it ever happened again though. Then a couple of years ago I was sitting at work leaning over working on something when I saw a bright flash to my side and heard a loud click of a camera shutter. Thinking someone had jokingly snapped a picture of me I turned, mouth open to admonish them and no one was there. I then saw a kind of vision I guess, of all these people looking at something, police officers with cameras snapping photos of what seemed like a crime scene and I had that same feeling again. I just kinda shook it off but thought to myself Remember This, thinking in case something happened in the future. Later that day we got the call uncle had committed suicide. My grandfather had found him and the police had to come to file reports.
I don’t really fear the supernatural, to me it’s just part of nature- just in ways we can’t yet explain. Doesn’t make it bad in my mind. I actually desperately wanted to be a ghost hunter when I was a kid, had this great book and everything. The only thing I dread though is just another experience like those as I fear for what it could mean has happened.
Man, you guys really know how to help a girl get over her fears of global warming! 😉
Ok, true story from my mother who is a good Catholic woman and never lies. Thing is, we’re also Chinese and she inherited some of those old Chinese pagan superstitions. More than 20 years ago, as my parents were looking for a new place to live, they visited several apartments with my baby sister in tow. The Chinese believe that animals and very young children are able to tell if a place is “clean” or not, and so Sis was basically the canary in the supernatural coalmine.
For nights after that, my mother told me, my sister would get up in the middle of the night, take her toys out from where they were stored, and then sit down and play with them as she chattered merrily to herself.
Puzzled, my parents sought advice from my paternal grandmother, who consulted a Chinese medium. Apparently, at one of the older apartments they had been into, a little ghost boy had taken a shine to my sister and followed them home.
Some burning of joss paper and Buddhist prayers ensued I think, and my sister never behaved in this odd fashion again.
Oh another one–a story my mother said she never even told my father. When I was about 10, my mother was hospitalized to get a benign cyst removed. She was all alone in her room when suddenly she felt somebody slap her!
Also, my father, who is Buddhist, during his younger days, recalls visiting a medium and watching him feed his “imp” with blood from his big toe. This “imp”, the source of his power, was a human fetus preserved in a jar.
I’ve got a couple for you:
My friend reports that her two sons are afraid of their bedroom. She finally asked them why, and the older boy said, “Because of that man lying on my floor.” Then he got down on the floor, on his stomach, and looked up at her, and
Okay, not particularly a ghost story, but a freaky story nonetheless:
When I was in college, I took a history course about the Civil War. We spent several days on the Battle of Gettysburg, and for three nights running during that time, I had the same dream.
Every night I dreamt that I was on a battlefield, in the midst of a charge of men running towards a stone wall and large tree ahead of us. Dimly I would realize that I was in Confederate grey as I ran up the hill. I had almost reached the wall when I was shot in the head and fell down, dying. (Coincidentally, the place where I was shot in the forehead/temple is the exact location where I have suffered from cluster headaches since I was a kid.) I woke up right before I died each night.
A week later was spring break, and I decided to visit some family members who lived in the Gettysburg area. Oh a whim, we went to the battlefield, and as we were touring the place, I saw the stone wall and tree from my dream. I walked through the field and just as I got to the spot where I had died in my dream, I burst out in tears – I was completely overwhelmed by emotions. I was standing on the location of Pickett’s Charge, the furthest north the Confederate forces got during the war.
To this day I think I walked in the footsteps of a past life in that field. And yes, I still get the cluster headaches in the exact same spot.
I believe there are ways we know things that aren’t rational, but turn out to be true. This is not about ghosts, but about those extrasensory or anxiety switches.
When I was in high school, I didn’t have a curfew and used to stay out with friends till all hours of the night. One night, my friend D. got beat up by some neighborhood thugs. The cops were called. D. wasn’t severely injured, but we were all very freaked out. Such violence wasn’t that common around there, at least not that we had seen. We all got rides home in the cop car (this was before any of us had cars of our own).
My parents were already in bed when I got home, so I just went upstairs and got into bed. In the morning, over the Sunday paper my mom turned to me and asked, “Was everything OK last night?” My dad added, “She was worried about you last night, but I kept telling her not to worry.” My mom had sensed there was something amiss. She was not normally worried about me: I was a straight-A student, good kid, etc. Hence no curfew or rules. But she had known that night something was wrong (although not enough to stay up till I got home!). I think we all have had experiences like this, where we sense something but don’t know the full story, and perhaps just toss it off as a coincidence.
Lately I’ve been wondering about my own ability to feel things I don’t know rationally.
I recently quit my job. While working that job for a year and a half, I always had weird “vibes” about one of my supervisors, whom I’ll call Violet. Everyone else in the office just loved Violet, but I somehow could not relate to her and always had such an uncomfortable feeling around her. Because of the creeps I kept feeling, I could never understand how everyone else in the office worshipped the ground Violet walked on.
During my time at that job, I found out that my friend J., whom I’ve known since the 4th grade, is friends with one of Violet’s children (all of whom are now grown). Once we all figured this out, I thought the “creeps” might go away… But things just kept getting worse and worse. I tried to write it off as something about myself, I’m just antisocial, or something.
A week or so after I quit, I had lunch with J. She was asking me how I felt, having quit. I expressed relief. Then J. told me that my former supervisor Violet, the one who gave me such creeps, used to physically abuse her children.
I shuddered and cringed. I did not know what to do with this information. Was this why had I felt such intense discomfort around Violet? Why hadn’t J. told me before? If what she told me really was the source of the negative “vibes” I felt, then how come I sensed something but didn’t have the full information? Was it because I simply brushed it off? How are we supposed to handle such “information”? How could I have interpreted it?
I’m still trying to understand this, but I am also trying to listen more. If I could become more aware of such insights, maybe I can go deeper into them and understand more. Although that sort of TERRIFIES me too…
P.S. I have lived with TONS of anxiety for years too. I wonder if part of the anxiety is little “sensations” of other people’s weirdness like this…?
Since I am a ho for STR, this is the reason I do not allow Ouija boards in my home or around my family:
Late one night when I was in college I went to a party over Christmas break where a bunch of old high school friends and I hooked up to catch up on life. At one point, somebody had the idea of pulling out the Ouija board.
Well the usual incredibly lame stuff went on with the board that you would expect. Pushing, pulling, and monumentally stupid questions. It was good fun, and we were all laughing and joking. It took us a moment to notice that things had changed.
While I watched Ginny and Anne working the board, goosebumps rose up on my skin sort of randomly. I thought that was odd, so I looked closer. The planchette had started vibrating and moved strongly in various directions around the board. Nothing made sense, so we don’t really know what it meant. Anne had her eyes closed and a look of total peace on her face. But Ginny was looking down while her lips moved rapidly, saying something I couldn’t quite hear.
“Gin, what’s up? I can’t hear you.”
Well (and I shudder and tear up to think of this even now), Ginny looked up at me, but I swear to you it wasn’t Ginny. Her lips curled in a sneer and she just kept chanting some kind of strange nonsense under her breath. But what I will never, ever, as long as I live forget are those eyes. They were not Ginny’s eyes.
My friend Greg and I grabbed the planchette and Ouija board away. Some of the people watching were saying “Knock it off you guys, it isn’t funny”. Anne opened her eyes and asked what was going on. But Ginny (or whatever was inside Ginny’s body) kept snarling, chanting and glaring at us.
We tried walking Ginny around like a drunk. We yelled at her, talked softly to her, trying to bring her back. Nothing worked. We took her into the bedroom to lie down for a while and she went to sleep. The rest of us huddled together. I’ll tell you, I had never been this freaked out in my life, and I know the rest of my friends felt pretty much the same. Some people left right away, a few people (including a guy friend who would deny it) were crying. Greg broke the Ouija board in half and crushed the planchette.
Finally, after about an hour, we went in to check on her and woke her up. She stretched, yawned, sat up—and started chanting again. The eyes were dark, and I swear they were completely evil.
Ginny’s best friend and her brother decided to take her home. They explained to her parents about the Ouija board and what had happened. We called Ginny a couple of times over the holiday break but her parents told us she wasn’t available. It was clear that they were PISSED. We heard later through her best friend that Ginny had recovered fully, but wouldn’t talk about it. There were whisperings that she’d had to visit a special priest up in San Francisco during that holiday season.
Ginny doesn’t come to reunions.
True story….when my husband was a kid, he had a cousin with whom he would often spend the night. Thing was, whenever they spent the night they would always sleep outside in the pop-up camper–even in the dead of winter. Cool, they loved it. After we got married he found out WHY they always had to sleep in the camper. Turns out the house had a resident ghost–the family didn’t want to talk about it for fear none of the cousins would want to come and visit. Also, didn’t want the kids in the house for fear they would be scared out of their skivvies due to the ghost’s shennanigans. Their ghost was fairly benign, for the most part moving furniture and such around in the attic. However one afternoon, dh’s cousin had come home from school/work/somewhere and was in the house alone. He was taking a shower when he felt a presence in the bathroom with him, and then he heard a clear and very audible “Hello”, but no one was in the bathroom with him–that he could see. The cousin wound up in the middle of the front yard naked as a jaybird. C’mon who showers when you’re alone in a house that is known to have a ghost? The sister actually saw the ghost on the stairs at one time. I thought for years about doing some research on the home to find out it’s history, but they sold the place and it has since been torn down. Oh yeah–same place–when the house was being built the contractor had a terrible time keeping workers–while on the job tools would be moved or go missing, things changed from one day to the next. The workers knew enough that something was not right at the site and didn’t want to hang around for more encounters with the property’s ghost. So it wasn’t the house itself, since it was being built, but the property.
My aunt was diagnosed with liver cancer several years ago and was living out her final days with her daughter. Right before she died, she looked up, smiled, and said clear as day, “Oh, hello,” as if welcoming a long lost loved one. Then she was gone.
I also suffer from panic disorder and have for a long time. My father asked me once if I was afraid of death. I can say that I’m not because of something that happened to me over 21 years ago.
My mother was a foster child and I always kinda wondered about her biological family and it came to a head when I was pregnant with my son, who is now 21 years old. I wanted to know health histories and what I may have been passing on to my child. My paternal grandfather had died when I was 4, but I had one very vivid memory of him.
My paternal grandmother had given us a letter that he had written to us and never got to mail as he passed away. At the bottom of the letter he had put my brothers and my initial and encircled each one with a heart.
One morning, pretty far into my pregnancy, I was sitting in my Living Room obsessing over the health issues for the thousandth time. I looked toward the hallway and a man was standing there in a White shirt, with the snowiest white hair I’d ever seen. He spoke to me and said, “How are you my little girl?” I replied, “I’m fine Grampa. How are you?” He said to me, “I am okay. I have fun where I am. I get to go fishing.”
It seemed like we talked for a really long time and then he said the one thing that I needed to hear. “Don’t cry over my grave, honey. Everything is going to be okay. You are going to be okay.”
And then just like that he was gone! I told my father about it and he was very skeptical that it had been real. But it was very real to me. From that moment on I just knew that everything was going to be okay.
I went to my grandmother and told her my story. I told her that my father, her son, thought maybe I was losing it. She began to cry and told me that my grandfather always loved to go fishing and she was glad that he still could.
My grandmother has since passed away. She was 8 days from being a hundred years old. I know, though, that she is happy where she is!
Also, I was able to reunite my mother to some of her biological family. Grampa was right, everything is okay.
I’m another person who lives with panic disorder. I agree with you, it’s become much easier to deal with when you face the issue, and not deny it.
As far as the ghosts, I believe it can be true. I’ve had some curious experiences that lend me to believe in the supernatural. I find that somewhat comforting, though.
What do you mean, we CAN’T make things happen just by thinking about them??? Whoa there, Nelly. 😉 😉
It isn’t my story, but my daddy told me and I believe him. He had this girlfriend years ago (I think I was 12, I didn’t like her AT ALL, but that’s another story…) and he was at her house I think for the first time. He was sitting in the living room waiting for her to get a drink and an old woman walked past him and into another room. He figured maybe it was her mom or something and asked her when she came back, but there wasn’t anyone else there.
well, it certainly is nice to see that i’m not the only one here. lets see what i can dredge up that’s relatively ‘ghost’ related.
my university has one of the highest sucide rates. in my four years there i think around 12 people killed themselves. (not being blasé one was a friend of mine, but being honest) because of that several of the school buildings and dorms are considered haunted. there was one room in my house that people hated to have because of the strange things that would happen in it. lights turned on and off, books/closets rearranged, terrible smells.
the theatres there were also great. people would see things in the mirrors in dressing rooms, other people on stage, and people simply crossing the stage when no one else was in the building. however, peroid was hard to tell because we never knew what was costume and what was actual dress. also the lights ghosted terribly in all the theatres. we’d unplug the boards and still they’d be on.
also as a theatre technician i’ve had similar experiences in other theatres as well. i’m guessing it’s due to the chicago fire and the ‘colourful history’ of the city. but really, the theatre in the old pump house is terrible. people see things all the time, tools go missing, and bolts would be loosened.
other than that i’ve had a few experiences with dreams. the best example is one i had about 2 years ago about a friend of mine. he’s in the military and was at the time deployed to iraq. i dreamed that he had gotted shot up and then as dreams go that somehow he and i ended up getting married. i thought nothing of it until i got a call from a mutial friend of ours who told me that he had gotten hit by a mortar and was just now out of the icu. i contacted him again and found out that i had the dream around the time when he got hit. i didn’t think about the dream again until about 6 months ago when i remember the second half of it where we were married. and well, we are now. i told him about the dream and he and i both were kinda freaked out that it was about 2 major changes in our lives.
(on a side note) the friend who told me about him getting hit has dreams about her family members next to death just before they die. through her, and my last dream i’ve started to kinda believe.
–lindsey
“Do you see dead people?”
Yes, as a matter of fact I do. At least once a week in my house. I have even had them brush against me … it’s weird though because although I can feel them brushing against me I can’t actually “feel” them. If you know what I mean. We moved into this house nearly two years ago and immediately we started seeing things. There are a couple of “extra” cats here as well as some people too. I actually think there are only two spirits who are here all the time and we also have some passers-by (like there’s a portal or something or something). My sister and son have both seen a small boy in the house, probably about 6 years old, and my sister, husband and I have frequently seen a man in the dining room and kitchen. I have no idea who these people are.
I also have seen people I know. My Nana hangs around once in awhile, and I have seen my Grandpa a couple of times too. One time at my old house my good friend stood up from the sofa and headed towards the kitchen. He turned back to me and said “um, yeaaah, there’s an old lady in your kitchen, but now she’s gone” so I asked him what she looked like and he described my Nana perfectly. He had never met her, nor had I ever shown him a picture of her. He even described her outfit perfectly as one I remember her wearing when I was a child.
As for dreams, I believe that when a person dreams of a deceased relative or pet that it is because the deceased are visiting. One time I dreamed about my dog, Caleb, who had died … I dreamed I was petting him and playing with him. When I woke up not only could I smell his doggy smell on my hand, but my husband could too. I thought I was going crazy until my hubby confirmed the doggy smell. But hey, maybe both of us are crazy. *lol*
Okay, so those stories aren’t all that scary … here’s one that is very true that my uncle had happen to him. When he was younger he was working with a friend of his fixing up a house (doing construction or something with the friend’s company who was fixing the house to sell it) and it was an oldish house. A few times he was working there he thought he heard something but never thought twice about it until one time just as he was about to go up the stairs he saw the steps sag ahead of him, and heard footsteps and the stairs creak, as if someone else was walking up them before him. It freaked him out. After that everytime he was working there something strange would happen. A year later there was an article in the newspaper about that house … the new owners of the house were doing some major renovations and in one of the walls at the top of the stairs they found the body of a dead woman, who had lived there and was presumed missing like 20 years before my uncle ever set foot in that house. Creepy.
My aunt and uncle bought a house some years ago that was rather in disrepair. They brought the mess down to the foundation and rebuilt. Most of the house went right over the original foundation. Their office went over the original garage. Their bedroom and new garage had new foundations poured.
After construction, they started noticing strange things. Doors that had been securely shut would be opened. Items that had been put in one place would be moved to another. That sort of stuff, but, ONLY IN ROOMS OVER THE OLD FOUNDATION. My uncle was kind of freaked out about it but refused to discuss it with anyone.
Here’s another true ghost story.
A guy in our old bagpipe band has both an indoor ghost and an outdoor ghost. The indoor ghost is friendly, the other is not.
After they moved in, they started noticing strange things like items moved about the house. At first they figured it was their imagination, eh? Then stranger things started happening. One morning they woke up to find that their window screens had been slashed as if someone raked razor sharp fingernails through them. Then they learned that the previous owner was a lady who had died in the house, suicide, I think. Finally, the guy, let’s call him Lenny, stood in the middle of the house and announced to the ghost that he knew it was her house and that they were just living there and that it was okay for her to stay, too. The pesky little things being moved and such stopped immediately.
Then one night, Lenny was asleep and he felt someone tugging on him to wake up. His wife wasn’t there and the house was empty except for him. He wanted to roll over and go back to sleep thinking that it was just a dream but then it happened again, he was yanked on and he was awake. So he got up and looked about the house. That’s when he looked out the window and saw that the neighbor’s trash can was on fire. He ran outside and grabbed th hose and put out the fire. His neighbor had put coals from the grill into the trash can not realizing that they were still smoldering. If the trash had continued to burn, both houses would have caught because they were on the driveway side and there was little room between the too houses. Lenny remembered to thank his ghost when he went inside.
The outdoor ghost is not so helpful and, in fact, is malicious. There is a patch of earth in the yard where they can grow nothing. No grass, no English ivy even. Nothing. It is 6′ x 3′. This ghost has been seen by a number of people as a man in Revolutionary War colonial attire. One time, Lenny hired someone to cut his lawn. I knew the lawn cutter too: he was a true biker dude – big guy, tattooed all over and afraid of nothing – or so I thought. Let’s call him Spike. Well, Spike was cutting the lawn and he said that he kept looking over his shoulder because he had a feeling that he was being watched and then that he was being followed. Every time he looked around, there was no one there. Spike didn’t even finish mowing the lawn. He left and has never been back to that yard again.
For a while, Lenny had an above ground pool in his yard. I say for a while because the outdoor ghost caused him to get rid of it. Lenny was in the pool one evening and all of a sudden, his head was forced under water. You have to understand, too, Lenny is a burly guy that goes for about 290 and is a former military guy. Lenny was trying to get his head out of the water but the force holding him under didn’t stop. He was also the only one home at the time so even splashing around in the pool wasn’t going to get much attention. Just before he was certain that he was going to die because he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, the pressure disappeared and he was able to pull his head out of the water and breathe air again. He tore down the pool and gave it away the following week.
Another one with panic disorder here! Hi everyone – I feel like were starting a Panic Club. LOL!
Anyhow – my ghost stories aren’t scary which is weird because if I think about ghosts it totally freaks me out but the only actual experiences I have had were fine.
I used to play with the ghost of a small terrier type dog when I was a kid. He would appear and bark at me, inviting me to play. I was totally aware that he was not a “normal” dog. For one thing I could see through him – but it was more like he was just sort of overlapping the present world, if that makes any sense. Also, his barking – while clear as day – was not a “normal” sounding bark. More like an echo. I saw him many times and and our play sessions would usually end when he would run around the corner of the house and I would chase him only to catch a glimpse of his little tail disappearing into the crawl space under the house. There was NO WAY I was going to follow him under there – but as an adult I started to wonder if he was trying to show me something. Anyhow – I later on heard my Grandmother talking about the old lady who had lived in the house before her. I started telling her about the dog and it freaked her out because she was convinced that it was that old ladys dog.
Also – not ghosty but related I suppose – I used to see “trails” coming off of people as they moved. It wasn’t an aura like people describe but it was more like seeing film footage of where the person had been lingering after they had already moved out of that space. It’s hard to describe. I never knew why I saw that on some people and not others. Honestly I never really wanted to find out! Also – in my early teen years I had some pre-cognition stuff like where I knew when the phone was going to ring and who it was for. I would announce – “Phone – for so and so” and then a few seconds later the phone would ring and it would be someone calling for whomever I had said. After awhile I started knowing who was calling as well. This went on for about two years and was really starting to freak my family out pretty bad. It finally stopped when they got so freaked out that it started scaring me too. Before that it just felt normal that I knew things. I have lots of examples of stuff like that.
Sorry not a scary story. Just strange!
Oh man-these are great reading. I’m totally freaked out by ghost stories, although I don’t have any of my own. I’m about halfway through but I think they are so fun to read. This would make a good book!!
Here’s a short, not true ghost story, since you have so many fabulous ones already:
The last person in the world sat in her room.
There was a knock at the door.
In college, I was the scenic artist for the theater. There were always stories of the “ghost” in our theater (supposedly someone fell while they were building the stage and died, and others had had experiences with the ghost…lights being turned on, even voices when they were alone). For one show, I was working on a huge backdrop. The first step was to spread the fabric all out on the floor of the stage, and then spray it with spray starch to get out the wrinkles (It really works, BTW…I use it on my clothes all the time now…spray & shake!). So I was working in a zig-zag pattern going up & down the fabric. It was kind of dark on the stage (I was upstage where there weren’t many work lights), and when I got to one particularly dark area, I said out loud to myself, “I could use some more light here.” Instantly, one of the stage lights came on in that exact spot. I turned around and looked up at the lighting booth, but no one was in it. I continued working down the fabric, and then back up again, and when I came to that area again, the light came back on. I checked again, and still no one was up in the lighting booth. When I moved out of that area again, the light went back off. It was a helpful ghost!
I went to this small school in MO, and in the town there was this old derelict mental asylum that was supposidly haunted, and being a bunch of college kids, we would break in and explore. One time, a couple of us were in there and we found this screened in porch on an upper floor. Probobly some place for the patients to sit out and not escape or something. Anyway, one of my friends didn’t beleive any of the stories until she opened this screen door in the porch, and it was full of huge black birds. She slammed the door, and it bounched back open, and one of the birds flew out and went straight for her. We all ran, and got out. WHen we got back to school, my friend had a cut on her cheak, less than an inch from her eye. We told everyone about the room, and noone who had ever been there remembered an enclosed porch room, and we went back a couple weeks later, we coudn’t find it again. None of the pics we took in that room came out, and every other picture that we took that nite in the asylum had bloaches on them. But other pics from the roll that were taken before and after didn’t, so it wasn’t that there was amistake when the roll was developed.
My father told me about a night when he was in bed and looked at the foot and saw an old friend of his standing there. The friend communicated “I just wanted to say goodbye.” And then he was gone. My dad thought ‘I haven’t seen _____ in years I wonder how he is doing.’ The following morning he called to talk with his old friend. The friend’s sister answered the phone and said “I’m am sorry to tell you this but my brother died last night.” My dad said “Did he pass around 11PM?” She confirmed that in fact that was when he had died. My dad went on to explain that her brother had come to him to say “goodbye.” It comforted her.
My dad died very suddenly from a heart attack a little over two years ago. It was beyond devastating. For months, I had sobbing dreams, where I’d wake up exhausted because I cried subconsciously all night.
Ever since then, he sends me signals. The first Christmas after he died, we were like zombies. And on Christmas Eve, we went to the cemetery. On the way there, my mom said she had asked him to just send her a sign to know that we would make it through the next few days without totally falling apart. When we got to the cemetery, pulling in right behind us at the exact same time was his best friend and his wife (my mom’s best friend), the two people who have been of greatest support since his death. He sent his best friend and her best friend to us to be with us on that miserable errand.
Like, last summer, I was having a reverie while with the kids eating cookies at the local farmers market, imagining him walking in the door, saying, “hey, kids, how are those cookies!” Well, at the very moment, a older man from out of nowhere came up and asked the kids that very same question, interacted with the kids for a minute or two, and then basically disappeared.
My dad was a cigar smoker, and the last time we spent together was about three weeks before he died, at a Villanova basketball game. This year, I was walking into a Villanova game for my first game since he died, and as I thinking about him and remembering that wonderful day together, our last father-daughter date, and there was this wonderful puff of cigar smoke. I looked around and couldn’t see anyone smoking.
I have many of these stories, and they are very comforting. It’s no replacement for his actual presence, but I am comforted knowing that he is alright and watching over us.
This is not something I have told many people, but the lure of STR is too much. I had a few “supernatural” type experiences when i was a child that absolutely terrified me. I won’t watch scarey movies, and don’t really like to be around when people talk about ghosts and stuff, it creeps me out for days. After one of those incidents when I was a child, I prayed to God and asked him to PLEASE not let me go through any more scarey experiences, it was just too much for me to handle. Even getting a sense that something was watching me would terrify me. When I was about 20 I was sleeping in bed next to my husband. I woke up suddenly, and when I looked to my left there was a green ghosty looking man. As soon as I looked at him he grabbed me around my neck, and I couldn’t breathe. While he was choking me he was saying something in a deep voice that I couldn’t understand. I started choking out the words “Jesus, save me” and as soon as I said it the man dissappeared. One of the strangest things is that I was calm afterwards. I felt such a sense of peace and security. Normally, in a situation like that I would have been hysterical, but I really felt ok, like God was protecting me and there was nothing to be afraid of. My husband was VERY freaked out after I told him though! I have always wondered what the man was saying, but I am not willing to go through that again to find out. Now its going to take me all day to get rid of the heeby jeebies!
I love these stories. I’ve been fascinated with ghosts since I was a kid, but never had any experiences. My dreams, however, seem to be quite clear and informative.
My father was sick when I was in college and the doctors diagnosed him with a hiatal hernia (sp?). Nothing too serious, except that he kept going into the hospital with blood clots. He would be released a couple of days later and Mom would say it was nothing to worry about and he was completely fine.
One night I had a dream about battlefield, where I was standing on the edge and my Dad was a soldier. There was a break in the fighting and Dad wasn’t shot or hurt, but I sensed something was wrong and told him to come over to us and rest. He turned around and there was dark blood trickling from his mouth (I assumed internal injury). He laid down, put his head in my lap and died instantly.
When I woke up the next morning, Mom called to say she was worried about Dad. I remembered my dream and drove home immediately and he died 10 days later of stomach cancer.
The whole time he was in the hospital, the doctors kept giving us life expentancy of 6 months and then 6 weeks and I just kept thinking of my dream and shaking my head. I was the only one who knew he was dying in the next few days.
Since then, he’s showed up in a lot of dreams. Very comforting and sometimes trying to draw me out to interact more. Except those dreams happen less and less since I moved to Germany, which kind of bums me out – I liked the feeling that he was hanging around.
So….that’s the dead person I see. Thanks for the forum. It was cool reading other people’s stories and telling my own after such a long time.
Ghost story-
We bought our first dog just a few months after we were married and named him Mozel Tov. 12 ½ years later we were on vacation and he passed away (at a friends home) of congestive heart failure. It wasn’t unexpected but he didn’t seem all that ill, either. We never saw him again as our friends took him to the vet and we decided it would be too sad to see the dog after it had been refrigerated for several days. A few days later we had Murphy and it was shortly after that I started to ‘see’ Mozel Tov. He would be curled up in his favorite spot or walk into a room and turn around and leave (he often walked in to check on me and then went back to sleep). Some nights I would be reading in the living room and see him head up the stairs to bed at 10:00…our usual bed time. It was always ‘out of the corner of the eye’ that I would see him, never straight on.
We had several friends over one evening as some friends from CA had come to town. We were in the living room chatting and out of the corner of my eye I saw Muzzy walk in and sit on the landing. He stayed there for a short time and then fed up that I would follow (it was 10:00 after all) he went up the stairs. Paul, our friend from CA, suddenly asked for our attention and asked if anyone else had seen a dark shadow stop on the landing and then run up the stairs. I nearly came unglued. I thought it was ‘my thing’, my way of grieving. I loved Murphy but he didn’t take Muzzy’s place. He stayed around for about a year and then disappeared. We thought he was just checking to make sure we were happy and that Murphy would be a good dog.
Margene told me you were collecting ghost encounters. Here’s a true one for you: http://stitch-n-snitch.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_stitch-n-snitch_archive.html (post is for Monday the 3rd).
I haven’t gotten anything done recently. I’ve just been hanging out doing nothing. I haven’t been up to anything these days, but it’s not important. Today was a total loss.