In honor of Halloween, anyone have a real ghost story? You experienced?

[Clinton Crusader]

:kick:

[cindyw]

1. Here is one.

My aunt and uncle used to live in an old farm house in New Jersey. Originally it was two buildings. One the main house and one the slaves quarters. Over time they were attached and made one home. The previous owner was honest to them about the noises and the presence in the house. It tended to make a lot of noise on the floors no one was on and it liked to spy on people in the kitchen. Once my cousin was making microwave popcorn and she heard a someone say, 'Oh, your making popcorn". She turned and no one was there. Another cousin was doing the dishes and felt a hand on her shoulder she assumed was her mother. She was quite scared when she realized no one was around.
Another time my uncle was sitting in the living room when someone walked through the opening was into the hallway. Upon asking his wife was in another part of the house. The most interesting was the time when a man came to fix a heater. He was working in the basement and carried on an entire conversation about the weather with someone at the top of the stairs. Of course, he wasn't talking to my uncle and was a little shocked to hear that my uncle was in another part of the house. On occasions that my aunt would have to be alone in the house she would ask the ghost out loud not to make noises so that she would not be scared. He would listen to her and wait till others came home. SO it seems that really the ghost was just trying to continue his life in the home. Not harmful, just there, curious and noisy.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Ok, but remember, you asked for it

This happened several years back after the death of my younger brother, Lewis, who was always known as a practical joker. Even after death he continued to play his jokes on us. If you don't believe in ghosts, listen to this:

Strange things started happening to all of us. It began when my brother, Vic, picked me up on Sunday at the airport and took me to my mother's house so that I could change into a suit to go to the funeral. Vic was driving his brand new black Lincoln Navigator. After I put on my suit we got back in the Navigator, turned the ignition key, and nothing, not even a click. There had been no indication of a mechanical problem before then. Worse, we were in Mexico now, so we were out of range for the 24 hour emergency roadside service, for which he paid a bundle. His cellular phone is out of range and, of course, he can't dial a 1-800 number from Mexico. Next he tried to get a jump start from the neighbors. They brought the cables and tried for the next 20 minutes to get it going, but the Navigator just would not take a charge. Eventually, the neighbors took pity, and gave us a ride to the funeral in their ratty, 10 year old, can't-remember-the-brand car. You have to imagine the discomfort Vic was feeling at all this, Mr. Rich and Powerful and all that. One of my mother's friends spent the next three days teasing Vic, publicly, about his fancy shmancy Navigator, and how he should have bought a sensible car, perhaps a Toyota (You have to know this lady, She's 5' 2", and can verbally lacerate you down to the bone). Then that night, Vic is lying in bed half asleep and wondering whether Lewis' spirit is still around us (Mexicans believe that the spirit lingers for days after death). So Vic thinks to himself, "Lewis, if you're still here, show me a sign". Suddenly, he feels something scratching his face in the darkness. He bolts out of bed and stumbles to the light switch. There on the bed is a green lizard (yea, an anole, same kind we see in South Texas). It had dropped from the ceiling in the middle of the night, and fallen straight onto Vic's nose. How it got into the room, or why it decided to lose it's grip right then and there is still a mystery. By now, we're starting to think that maybe there's something to this Mexican superstition. Then it's my turn. I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I start to squat and BAM! something hits me on the top of my bald pate hard enough to draw blood. Right across from the toilet, there's a couple of metal brackets for a towel rack. Ok, so maybe that's just me being clumsy, but I still have to spend the next two days telling everybody how and why I have a huge scab on top of my bald head. Next day it's Uncle Dan's turn. HIS battery goes on the fritz leaving him stranded. Different car, different brand, same scenario. Won't start, won't take a charge. Then it's Richie's turn. My nephew, little Vic, wants to have Luis's eyeglasses as a memento. Richie was staying in Lewis' room, so he looks for the glasses. Last time he saw them they were on Lewis's bed. Now they've disappeared. He turns the room upside down looking for them, even turns the bed sheets over. Nothing. So we start blaming Charlie, one of Lewis' freeloader friends, who came by the house and wanted to know if HE could have Lewis' computer as a memento (I don't think so!). So we blame Charlie for this, since he's already left to go back to Dallas. That night Richie gets up around 2:00 AM for a drink of water. He comes back to bed, flops on the bed sideways, and his outstretched right hand falls right on top of Lewis's glasses at the foot of the bed. Richie could not sleep the rest of the night. So, by now every bump or scratch that happens to anyone at the house is being blamed on Lewis and his practical jokes. My mother says it serves us right for rummaging through Lewis' things. My Aunt says "We'll nothing has happened to me, and nothing will, because unlike you, I was always nice to Lewis". No sooner said that she gets her gold bracelet caught in the car's door handle and breaks it off at the latch. Now everyone is laughing at my aunt. Finally, on my last day there I'm rushing to get my things collected so I can leave. Everybody is downstairs already. I go up for a final look, and I hear music coming from Lewis' room. I go in and I see that his computer is still running, the ICQ still receiving messages. As I walk in, a new song starts playing. The lyrics say "It's so hard to leave without you, so hard to let go".

So maybe it's all BS, coincidence, and fabrication. But that's not important. What is important is that every time we stub a toe, or bump our heads, or get into silly or embarrassing situations we think of Lewis. He was a character, and it was in his character to make us laugh at ourselves.

So Happy Halloween, Lewis, I will be thinking of you on November 2nd, the Day of the Dead, as I walk into the voting booth.

[ihaveaquestion]

3. 1971 - Portage Lakes, Ohio

I was 16, living with my father, step-mother and little (1 yr-old) brother. We had a ghost that would walk the length of the upstairs hallway, enter the baby's room, who would then wake up screaming! This happened about 3 times during the year we rented the place. It was a lakeside cottage, converted to year-round use and the walls and floors were very thin, so we could hear the footsteps plainly.

All of us heard this, but we never saw anything when we went upstairs to comfort the baby and he would go right back to sleep.

The neighbors told us that a previous tenent had hanged himself in the downstairs area.

[Clinton Crusader]

4. You guys have great stories??!!

I dont have anything NEAR all these great stories!

My mom saw a guy walking down her flight of stairs for YEARS until my father knocked down the wall at the bottom of the stairs, then he disappeared. No one believed my mom, thought she was imaginng it, whatever. Then, one day she has a neighbor er and they're sitting on the couch facing the stairs. Out the corner f her eye, my mom sees the guy, but says nothing. The neighbor was talking to her and suddenly stopped. Mom says 'what's wrong?' Neighbor says I SWEAR I just saw a man walking down your stairs. So my mother tells her the whole story. Neighbor leaves, wont come back.

The only things with me are inmy old apartment, I had ALWAYS had the feeling I wasnt alone. Nothing to pinpoint, no weird goings on, etc., but I always had that feeling. And in another apt., the night my grandfather died (which I didnt know yet) books started dropping off the shelves on my wall. Had a shelf with books standing up with bookends. Suddenly, after Ive gone to bed for the night, the books start dropping off, one by one. Thought it was odd, but went back to sleep, found out the next day my grandfather died around the same time.

I have a friend who saw his mom walking around the family house after she had gone, going from room to room, and even SWEARS on bibles, she turned and looked at him. And she was wearing the same thing as at her funeral. He swears this is true and moved out right after, he was so shook.

That's about all, but you guys have GREAT stories.

Boo!
:kick:

[the Princess]

5. Well OK it's not a Ghost Story per se but..................

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE!!

Really I see spirits - I always have since I was a child. I see my dead father-in-law around here all the time.

This is normal for me - like I said - it's always been this way for me.

BOO!

[the Princess]

6. double post

[DrWeird]

7. Teenager-one of the first times getting drunk and stoned...

Me and my buddies were sitting around the place smoking weed and getting drunk off some poorly made moonshine. (there's a side story where we stopped by the house of a girl I liked, never being one to pass down a joke over potential sex, after leaving the girl's bathroom I announced to the room that one shouldn't go back in there for at least half an hour, because I totally stunk it up. But that's a story for another time).

Anywho, it's about one in the morning and the guy who's house we're at says, "hey! I know! Lets go down to the haunted house down the road!."

So we end up marching a mile or so in the middle of the cold october night through the countryside, I mean this is really out in the boondocks. (there's another story about how we tipped over a port-a-potty but that's another story for another time.)

Cutting a long story less long, we get to the house and this is your classic, classic haunted house. Abandoned for years. The whole thing's off center. It's tilted several degrees and is leaning against a tree. The floor inside of the house is covered with paper. Like typing paper. And there's stuff printed on it. I mean it was just all over the place, a couple of feet high and we're wading through it. (to this day I regret not saving a couple of peices to see what they say.) I proceed to the second floor, and there's more paper and writing on the walls. I get to the bathroom, and there's a claw-foot bathtub. There was something in the tub. I can't remember what it was because the next thing I remember I'm coming to in the back yard of the house. I head back up the road to my friends house and after awhile catch up with the group, they had panicked and spent quite awhile looking for me before supposing I had doubled back to the friends house. They were quite surprised when I came up behind them. Oh, and that back yard I woke up in, it was very well trimmed.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. When I came back from Japan the first time, I gave my father

a large lacquerware box for cufflinks and stuff, and after he died, my mother gave it to me. I put it on my dresser to store necklaces and other jewelry.

One day, shortly afterward, I came home from work (I lived alone with no pets or anything) and found the lid of the box upside down and halfway across the room. Although I was in Oregon, there had been no earthquakes that day, certainly not anything strong enough to throw the lid of a box halfway across a room.

And I noticed something for the first time. Taped on the inside of the lid was a birthday card I had made for my dad the year after returning from Japan.

It felt as if he was saying "hi."

After my grandmother died at the age of 100, my mother had trouble sleeping, so she went into the kitchen to get a drink of water in the middle of the night. There were some clothespins lying on the counter, and suddenly one of them popped up in the air and flew onto the floor. My mom is convinced that that was my grandmother telling everyone she was all right.

[SarahB]

9. The ghost of the VCR.

About a year ago, while on the phone with someone, and suddenly the VCR began rewinding, especially weird given the circumstances and conversation. I was no where near any remotes. Freaked me out. I think it was my late father-in-law being pissed at me as we're a bit convinced he's our resident, yet usually benevolent poltergeist.

[HEyHEY]

10. Nope