Do you believe in ghosts?? (I'm serious)

[ailsagirl]

I've never experienced anything of the sort myself but I have heard plenty of stories!!

[leftofthedial]

1. by a particular definition of "ghost"

YES!

(I'm serious)

[Maddy McCall]

2. I live about 100' from an American Indian burial site.

I believe in some form of spiritual existence. Don't know that I'd term it ghosts, but sometimes at 3AM here, things can get a little eerie.

[Teaser]

7. story?

I love burial ground stories.

[ailsagirl]

9. The Queen Mary is supposedly haunted...

I live in California, where the Queen Mary is permanently docked. I haven't been to see it but it sounds pretty creepy. Once, on Unsolved Mysteries, they played a tape recording of a phantom noise (the sound of a shipwreck, along with people's cries). Evidently the tape recorder was voice activated and it was put down into the hull of the ship, and sometime during the night, all these noises were recorded.

Weird!!

And the USS Hornet, in Alameda County, has had its share of spooky happenings.

Gettysburg is, not surprisingly, supposed to be crawling with ghosts.

Here's an interesting little story:

Two Gettysburg College administrators were working late one night in the early 1980s in their fourth floor offices at Pennsylvania Hall. The building is one of the oldest on the campus. During the Battle of Gettysburg, it had been used as hospital. After completing their work, the men left their offices, entered the elevator and pressed the button for the first floor. Instead of stopping on the main floor, though, the elevator continued down to the basement.

When the elevator finally stopped and the doors opened, the men looked out on a scene worthy of Dante's Inferno. What they knew as a storage area was filled with doctors and orderlies feverishly working on wounded men. In one corner lay a pile of amputated arms and legs. For a moment, the two administrators could do nothing but stare in confusion. Then they panicked and began pounding the elevator buttons. As the doors slowly closed one of the orderlies turned toward the men, his face an image of pain pleading for help.

Immediately upon reaching the main floor, the administrators hurried to the campus security office about 100 yards away. Thinking fraternity prank, the guard on duty, now chief of security at the college, ran to the building to investigate. But when he reached the basement there was nothing.

http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/p_getty.htm

[evlbstrd]

88. That Gettysburg story is chilling!

And I was just about to go to bed.
My wife swears our house is haunted, but I've never encountered anything.

[LastKnight]

85. are we talkin like ammityville horror type of thing?

3 15ish? ya know...?

[Floogeldy]

3. I've heard stories, too.

In fact, I heard that you are a ghost.

:scared:

[lenidog]

4. Well I have actually seen a ghost and had two ghost experiences

[ailsagirl]

10. Oh, you must tell us about it. Please???

[lenidog]

24. It happened about 10 years ago

I was home on leave and visiting a friend of mine from HS. Her family owned a farmhouse that had been built in 1783. For years she had told me that the house was haunted but what she believed was a female ghost. She had told me about things moving on their own, cold spots, hearing singing or humming when no one was home. I had never experienced anything but then again I had known her for years and knew she wouldn't lie to me. So I hung out with her and another friend and had a couple beers and came to her house to crash. So me and Brian (another friend) crashed on a L shaped couch she had in the living room upstairs. Around 3:00 am I woke up for some reason and turned over away from the wall which I was facing. About 10 feet away from me and about five feet in the air there was a condensed ball of smoke floating. It was bouncing back and forth and up and down and never lost its cohesion. I woke up Brian and told him to turn over and asked him what he saw. He basically described to me exactly what I was seeing. We watched for about five minutes and then the ball of smoke came toward us and then turned to the left and headed down the stairs. We stared at each other for a moment and decided that we had seen the ghost and then flipped over and went back to bed. At no time did we feel scared or threatened and in the morning we told our friend and her mom. We were the first to ever physically ever see the ghost and as far as we know the only ones.

[ailsagirl]

27. Yikes!! That would have scared the hell out of me

[lenidog]

34. She was just bouncing around and we felt nothing like fear or dread

emanating from her.

[lenidog]

33. As for the ghost experiences

To make some money I took an extra job part time doing ghost tours. One of the spots was at an old cemetery in Intercourse PA. The cemetery was established in 1753 and veterans from every war starting with the French and Indian to Vietnam are buried there. The cemetery has a reputation for being haunted and I once while taking a small tour with another guide ran into a cold spot. I noticed the other guide was waving his hand around waist level like he was trying to feel something. It took me a minute to figure out what he was doing and when I did I leaned over and felt the air around him. It was about 85 degrees out and very muggy but to his one side and behind him you could feel a temperature difference of about 20 degrees. Another time I was leading a tour and leaned over to with my candle lantern to throw some light on a crypt. All four panes of glass in the lantern cracked as I leaned over. The lantern never touched the crypt and the glass was cool to the touch.

[ailsagirl]

45. WHAT was the name of the town?????????

:rofl:

Sorry-- that caught me off-guard

More good stories. Thanks!

[leftofthedial]

82. if you live there

you are f****d.

[Teaser]

91. Intercourse PA

is near Bird-in-Hand and Blue Ball, PA

I'm not shitting you.

[ailsagirl]

92. I believe you-- it's just an unusual name. Do you know why it

was named that? I know that, way back when, the term "social intercourse" simply meant social interaction-- nothing sexual.

"Make love" used to mean court.

And how "awful" came to mean terrible and not "full of awe" (its original meaning) is beyond me!!

One last thing: the word "nice" used to mean the opposite of its current definition.

(I love language)

[Nothing Without Hope]

144. Just about everybody in the US has heard of Intercourse, PA. At least

it isn't called something REALLY outré like "Good Sex" Now THAT would be SHOCKING! :scared: ( ;) )

Actually, the funniest US city name I have seen, and there are a LOT of contenders, is Toad Suck, Arkansas. I have always wanted to know how it got its name. Had to be someone's idea of a joke. And yes, it's a real place.

[ghostsofgiants]

5. Nope

Though I love ghost stories and reading about paranormal shit.

[Teaser]

6. Yep seen one

or something equally spooky by the woods at night.

I've told this story before, but here's the write up I gave at the time, which I posted at Fortean Times:

Well, this is something new for me. I've always wanted something really fortean to happen to me and now that it has, my life hasn't been as mind blowingly altered as I suspected it would be.

The long and short of it:

I am an avid runner/jogger. Because I have a young son, I typically have to do my running at night after my wife and I have put our son to bed and I have finished my nightly tasks. USually this means that I'll go jogging around 10:30 or 11:00 pm, not always an appetizing prospect as my house borders a largish tract of forest that is certainly old (several ruined 18th century houses can be found therein with some effort). This patch of woods is one of the few left in Philadelphia that aren't part of Fairmount park...but I digress.

Whilst jogging the other night (during the new moon no less), I ran past a darkened house not far from the woods and some movement caught the corner of my eye. I turned to look and I saw that I was being charged by something. It was about the size of a man, and it was clearly bipedal and appeared to be running parallel to me between two trees on either side of the house's walkway. About an arms length from me, I could pick out a lot of detail. It had legs and a head like a deer. It had antlers. But the most notable detail about this thing was it's mouth. It had a smile that was characteristically human. And it was a nasty smile. My only thought was to run fast and figure out what happened later.

After a few seconds, the figure turned toward me and charged. Not knowing what else to do, I covered up my face, adopted a defensive posture and braced for impact. But no impact came. Nothing. I uncovered my face and there was nothing in front of me. No figure. I walked back to the house where the figure came from and looked for anything...low hanging branches, the play of shadows, what have you, that could have generated the apparition. More nothing.

I continued my run, as there were a lot of bright lights and shops were ahead of me and I didn't want to go back near the woods for a bit. Of course, the halfway point of the course I run is at a very old cemetary, so my heart skipped a few more beats, but there was no further incident, not even when I came back near the woods for the trip home.

Yes, it was walking on 2 legs. Yes it was weird.

[Floogeldy]

8. That was no ghost!

You're just a scaredy-cat!

B-)

[Teaser]

11. You see a lot of deer

walking on 2 legs?

It was more like a faun or some kind of fairy-thing than a ghost, but
I assure you I saw it.

[ailsagirl]

12. I believe you-- why would you make it up?

[Teaser]

15. Believe me, I've tried to figure this out for a while

I'm a scientist, sot his kind of weird shit is new to me

However, I'm passing friends with a dude who's travelled all over the place. Took training in tibet as a yogi under a respected lama. Also trained as a hoodoo root doctor. Claims he sees weird shit all the time, and I don't have good reason to disbelieve him.

He told me, quite independently of this, that he sees a "ghost deer" back these same woods. I told him my story...it may have blown his mind. It did mine!

[Floogeldy]

13. That was "Bloodyfoots". Half man, half goat.

T'was not a ghost.

I thought he had been killed.

[Teaser]

16. Jersey Devil

was actually one suggestion I received.

[Zuni]

103. Holy shit

I grew up in a town called Crofton, MD roughly 25 miles NE from Washington DC. Two of my friends were walking through a field one night on their way home when we were in 9th grade and saw a figure with a deer head jump at them from out of the shadows. :hide:

Another 2 of my friends were driving down Governors bridge road, about 5 miles south of there and since it is a very quiet rural road, one of them got out to take a piss---something called out to them, and in the shadows they saw what looked liked a llama on 2 legs or something :scared:

Both these places are only a few miles across the Prince Georges/Anne Arundel County Line from Bowie MD, home of the Goat Man

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Aurora/4746/feature2.html

[Scruffbunny]

113. um...

Ever heard of Herne the Hunter?

[lildreamer316]

124. Tha'ts what I'm saying!

Definately the Horned One...could actually have been a blessing in disguise.

[Teaser]

153. Cernunnos, right?

I'm not a neopagan, but many of my friends are, so I try and keep up!

[HeeBGBz]

125. Chupacabra?

[kittenpants]

130. that would scare the hell out of me! n/t

[starroute]

14. My son said there was a similar ghosts thread going on rpg.net

(That's the role-playing game forum.)

Is this one of those things that sweeps across the net occasionally for no particular reason?

[Floogeldy]

17. I've seen 11 ghosts, 3 misty apparitions, 7 poltergeists, and 2 gnomes.

I dated the two gnomes, but that's neither here nor there, I guess.

B-)

[Redstone]

18. I have seen several, skeptic though I generally am.

So yes, they're there.

Redstone

[Blue-Jay]

19. I have seen none, even though I'd like to.

So no, they're not.

Jaystone

[Redstone]

21. Broken logic. Just because you desire a particular

event, and have not witnessed it, does not provide prima facie evidence that the existence of the particular event is invalid.

Redstone

[Blue-Jay]

35. Exactly.

And just because you claim to have seen something does not carpe diem prove its existance is indeed real. People see, smell, feel weird shit all the time that turns out to be something other than what they originally believed it to be.

[ailsagirl]

50. Like that photo... where did you get that?? ;=)

[Blue-Jay]

62. A ghost photoshopped it for me.

wooooooooo wooooooooooo

[Redstone]

74. "Carpe diem" means, roughly, "seize the day."

I think you meant to say "per se" which means "as it is."

And it's "existence," not "existance," if you don't mind me pointing that out.

Redstone

[Blue-Jay]

78. I know exactly what it means. I was being silly.

And, honestly, I was taking a little poke at your posting style, ipso facto.

Obsessively correcting others' spelling and grammar is rude and can indicate other passive aggressive behavior.

[Redstone]

84. OK, I'll admit to being oblivious to your being joking,

but let's not get into personal attacks that contain loaded words and phrases such as "obsessively" and "passive-agressive behavior," shall we? Name-calling is very rude.

Do we have an understanding here, or do we need to have some further discussion?

Redstone

[Blue-Jay]

87. Nah. I'm good.

And I sincerely apologize for getting snarky. It's nothing personal. You're one of my favorite posters here, but I tend to "get my back up" if I feel as though I'm being talked down to. Especially if one addresses the medium instead of the message of a particular post.

Again, I'm sorry for being slightly caustic. It's late.

[acmavm]

20. I lived in a house at one time on California Street that is legendary.

The things that happened while I lived there were amazing. Lots and lots of people, not just my and my family, had really crazed experiences in that house. Hell, twice there was this strange kid just in the yard staring at the house. The second time he asked to come in to look around. That's when he showed us where his father had committed suicide.

Quite the house.

[ailsagirl]

30. This is in the City, I'm assuming?

[acmavm]

70. Yep, Omaha.

At least it was interesting. I've never before or since lived in such an interesting abode. I know I never will.

But I need to let you understand that it's wasn't scary, not after you understood the situation. But sometimes it could be damn aggravating, like when the electric plugs would work for everything except a light (in the kitchen). You could plug in a coffee pot, popcorn popper, radio, portable t.v., they'd all work. Try to get a light to work (the overhead ceiling light was being replaced and this was at night and I had company that night so there were witnesses to this fiasco). Anyway, the light plugs worked the next day.

It wasn't the bulbs in the lamps either. I could take them into another room and they'd work. But we were trying to play cards at the kitchen table, and when it got dark, that's when the fun started. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the guy committed suicide in the kitchen. And he was kind of strange, a soldier-of-fortune wannabe. Had stockpiles of guns and ammo according to the son.

[ailsagirl]

94. I don't think I could like in a house where someone committed

suicide. Or was murdered.

Remember the Sharon Tate murders? The house in which she and Polanski lived (it was rented) was never sold. So the owner had it torn down and a huge new one built in its place (even the address itself was changed) but STILL no one bought it.

(Maybe by now someone has but last I heard, it hadn't sold)

[texas1928]

95. I would not blame anyone.

Those murders and the gruesomeness of the act, would impring itself on the area. I bet there is a lot of uncomfortable vibes in that area.

[ailsagirl]

99. What I don't get is why the concentration camps (many of which

have been preserved as museums) are never said to be haunted. Logically it would seem that they would be-- but then, I don't suppose logic necessarily has anything to do with it.

[texas1928]

134. I bet there are some there.

But there are so many that the energy is used up so they can not manifest themselves. Hell I bet the pond where the Nazi dumped the ashes at Aushwitz is crawling with spirits.

[kittenpants]

131. an old man killed himself in the house I grew up in,

but I never saw anything. I used to have some fucked up nightmares growing up though about an old man peeking in my window, so maybe there's something there or maybe there was just an old pervert in my neighborhood.

[texas1928]

22. I guess you can say from this post I do.

I have seen to much unexplainable things in my life to say I do not.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x3431354

[ailsagirl]

53. Thanks for the link... I still have goosebumps

Esp the pic of the lady drinking and that substance behind her...

[enigmatic]

23. yep

I posted this long ago; it's a true story:

In the early 90's, I owned a Restuarant in a small town with a close friend. The Resturarnt was located in a
buliding that also housed a Mansonic Lodge on the second floor
as well as a Post Office next door. I was living in what used to
be the town barbershop, which was in the basement area below the
PO.

Although I had always been interested in the paranormal, I'd had
nothing remotely "ghost-like" ever happen to me, until about 6
months after I had moved in to my basement studio.

During that time, I had gotten to be good friends with the man
who was the postmaster in town from the late 40's until the late
80's; he had eaten in the Restuarant with his wife many times,
and I had picked his brain about the history of the building,
and the town, while drinking coffee with them after their meals.
They had a son who died in the Viet Nam War; my parents had both
passed, so we deveopled a kind of a parent/son relationship in a
way. He had told me about my apartment which had once been the
barbershop, and talked about the barber, who was one of his best
friends but had died in 1982.

One Friday night a few monhts after I had moved in it had been a
busy night in the Restuarant, and after we closed I headed down
to my apartement with my then-girlfriend, who was visting for
the weekend from Cincinnati. I had to get up the next morning at
7AM to open up the Restuarant for Breakfast, so after I drank a
Mickey's Malt Liquor, we went to bed.

About 3:30AM I woke up to go to the bathroom, which was a few
steps away from my bed in the one room apartment. I walked
inside the bathroom and sat down with the light off, doing my
business and thinking about what I had to do later that morning
in the Restuarant. After I was done, I started to walk out the
door and towards my bed. "Something" told me to look to my left,
toward the other end of the rectangular room. I slowly turned,
and through the shadows in the corner of the room, I saw a man
cutting a little boy hair, who was about 9 or 10 years old and
sitting in a barber chair. I couldn't see the man's face in the
shadows, but I could see the boy's clearly.

He turned and "looked" at me with a kind of half-smile on his
face. I then literally backed into the bathroom, closed the
door, and sat on the john, shaking like a leaf. After about 25
or so minutes, I realized that I couldn't stay there all night,
but I was literally scared to death. After another 5 minutes, I
got up enough courage to open the door and walk to the bed. I
looked straight ahead as I walked, and when I was in bed, threw
the covers over my head and held on to my girlfriend, still
shaking. I ended up sleeping for about 2 hours, and when I
awoke, was still freaked out, to put it mildly. I never told my
girlfriend, or anybody else, what happened.

About 4 months later I had decided to sell my part of the
Restuarant to my friend and move to Phoenix with my girlfriend.
The last day I was working in the Restauant, the old postmaster
and his wife came in to have a last meal there with me. He had
brought a stack of photos that he had taken while he was
postmaster of the building and the town itself, and I was really
excited to pore through these since I had been gently bugging
him to see them since the first time he mentioned having them to
me.

We looked through them, and there were pics of the building in
the 50's; the town's main street, and of people he had known at
that time. He then picked up a picture and handed it to me. I
looked at it, and my heart literally stopped. It was a picture
of a man dressed up in a barber's smock standing next to a
little boy, who was smiling. I recognized the boy. He was the
one I had seen in the middle of the night 4 months earlier. I
asked the old postmaster who the people were.

He said, "Well, that's the barber of course, the one who's shop
is where you've been living in. The boy is my son; he had just
gotten his hair cut by my friend the barber when I took the
picture."

[ailsagirl]

36. Wow... cool story (though scary!!)

I'm remembering another one about The Comedy Club (formerly Ciro's) in L.A. I think it was before opening time and the waiters had set everything up, chairs, candles on tables, etc. One of the waiters left the room then came back about 30 seconds later, only to find a bunch of chairs stacked up in a huge pile. There's NO WAY any person could have done that. In fact, that story was so pervasive that Spielberg used it in "Poltergeist."

[enigmatic]

39. It was something I've never forgotten..

I was always the one who wanted to see a spirit, when I did, it was something I'll never, ever forget..

[ailsagirl]

49. Nor would I!! Lincoln's ghost is supposed to haunt the WH

Wish he'd pay a visit to Georgie-Porgie and scare the hell out of him!!!

:evilgrin:

[Behind the Aegis]

67. He probably has

Ghosts usually are a cold presence, sometimes, you can feel them touch your shoulder, stand next to you. My guess, Shrub has had a lot of "unexplained" cold feeling around the neck. :evilgrin:

[crimson333]

25. not at all

[alittlelark]

26. The 'San Jose Cemetery' in Alb, NM.

2 stories.

1) My grandfather came to NM from Minn. in the late 40's as a supervisor in the building of I-25 and I-40. I-25 cut straight through the 'San Jose Cemetery', anyone from Alb can see the cemetery on either side of the freeway, right at the Gibson Blvd. exit. They were supposed to 're-locate' the bods (ha, just hispanics...)... anyway, as they were dozing through the cemetery some of the dirt fell away from a dozer-created cliff. There was a sparkle, and someone went to check it out - it was glass, he called other people over and they ended up excavating a glass box with was looked like a 15 or so year old elaborately dressed Hispanic female in it. She looked as though she had just been buried - the authorities were called. Between the time they sent for the police, and their arrival one of the workmen got too close to the box and the hammer on his belt hit it. The small crack let in enough air for them to watch her mummify right in front of them. The clothes became grayish and fragile, her youthful face sunk in w/ the colors fading to dust.
A number of the workers never returned, some had run off screaming. My grandfather was such a supremely serious and stoic person I can't imagine that he made it up.

2) Off of I-25 in Bernallio is a typical NM cemetery. There was construction going on, and we were stuck on the on ramp from Bernallio to I-25 S. I was staring out the window at the cemetery and saw a small family - it seemed odd, because one of the kids was running around playing (in a cemetery). I was distracted by my kids for a few seconds - I looked out the window again and saw a middle aged couple, an older boy (same as before) and a long string of pink balloons tied end to end going up 20 or so feet. There was no sign of the child I had seen running around..... It still creeps me out.

[ailsagirl]

29. Thanks for sharing... those are creepy stories

The Toys 'R Us in, I think Sunnyvale (Calif), is supposed to be haunted. I've heard lots of tales about that.

[alittlelark]

40. I haven't been there for 3-4 years, ever since I found out

about their sweatshop toys. I have heard the tales.

[GirlinContempt]

28. Heeeeeeelllllllllz no

[texas1928]

31. Here is a site dedicated to listing scary places by state.

http://theshadowlands.net/places/

[enigmatic]

32. That's a great site

I've visted a good number of the places in Arizona; both Jerome and Bisbee is crawling w/ spirits..

[lenidog]

38. This a fun and itnresting book to about North American ghosts

The Field Guide to North American Hauntings : Everything You Need to Know About Encountering Over 100 Ghosts, Phantoms, and Spectral Entities
by W. Haden Blackman

The guy has an easy style about him and a good sense of humor. I like it that he rates the possibility of seeing the ghost using little tombstones from 1 to 5.

[ailsagirl]

43. As interesting as I find the subject, I would NOT want to see

anything creepy. I'm chicken!!

[ailsagirl]

41. This site is just crammed with weird photos

http://paranormal.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fghoststudy.com%2Fgallery.html

[cleofus1]

37. it was a dark and stormy night

I was working in downtown Santa Fe. I was doing the late night shift at one of the oldest radio stations in town...

i deadlocked all the doors and turned off most of the lights...i sat down to do my shift and drifted into the zone...the music was playing and i was getting into the big band era music...frank Sinatra faded away and django Reinhardt began to caress his gypsy guitar...

suddenly i heard a huge crash! i freaked out...no one here but me...no one hear but me...no one here but me...i kept thinking as the hair stood up on the back of my arms...

i jumped up out of my seat and ran the course of the radio station...it is a very small radio station and i easily checked every nook and cranny...there was no place for anyone to hide...

the last place i checked was the teletype room...there on the floor in the corner lay the steel bar we used to rip copy...just laying there...i kept thinking this must be some sort of joke...i know it couldn't just fly across the room on it's own...i walked across the room and picked it up...it was heavy in my hands...very heavy...so i put it back on the teletype and went back into the control room...

i sat there shaken...but making the effort to get into the music again...the Andrew sisters began to sing Elmer's tune...and again...a huge bang in the other room! i couldn't get up because i was right in the middle of a segue...it seemed to take forever for the next song to start...as soon as it did...i flew out of the on-air control room straight to the teletype room...sure enought...the steel bar was across the room...in the corner....in the dark...and the station was quite as a tomb...



true story...

[alittlelark]

44. New Mexico isn't called 'The Land of Enchantment' for nothing.

Try hanging out around Chimayo on a dark and stormy night.
:scared:

[cleofus1]

46. i have oh yes...i have...

my brother used to live out there...

[alittlelark]

51. OMG... There is something sooo 'wrong' out there

I don't even know how to begin to explain it.

[cleofus1]

55. i used to walk around at night

in many parts of NM...in the arroyos of Santa Fe...along the highway near chimayo...pojuoque...the pueblos...sometimes in the pitch dark...sometimes in bright starlight...sometimes in the dark i could see the silhouette of something coming out of the ground...but when i reached the spot there was nothing there...

i kept thinking..prairie dogs...

lots of magic there...maybe that is what you felt...

[alittlelark]

76. I'm from there - I go back 3-4 times a year.

I 'need' NM... it's hard to explain to those who have not been there.

[cleofus1]

79. i miss it so badly

my bones ache...my dad and brother and sister and nieces etc are still there...they will never leave...

[alittlelark]

80. I know I will return there to live someday.

I don't think I really have any other choice (the trips get expensive!)

[ailsagirl]

56. Could you try? You've piqued my curiosity

[alittlelark]

73. My friends and I used to do road trips from '79-84 or so.

Pile into a car w/ cassettes, food, dogs. and misc 'means of altered consciousness' . We just drove somewhere, found a place to hang, and stayed the night. We did it twice in the Chimayo valley. The first time we were doing Peyote ( we only had 2 caps for 5 people, so it wasn't a lot) . None of us had ever had an issue w/ it before, but we all freaked... we 'saw' eyes, and hands coming out of nowhere. I kept hearing this weird mumbling in my head. We ended up driving to somewhere around Cebolla to spend the night (we almost NEVER drove in altered states). About 2 years later we decided to take that route again. We could not find the place we had been, but we found another spot about 100 yds off the road. We laughed about our last trip to the area as we explored. We came upon what was likely a poacher's dressing spot. Everything from Turkey to deer to cows. The skulls were all over in different stages of decomposition- there were bags of feathers all over, along w/ legs and piles of decomposing entrails.......


We drove to Taos and blew waaay too much on a hotel room that night - Missy was elected to stay in the car w/ the dog.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

47. I have friend who works in the Silver City Museum

and he says there are ghosts there every night. I think he said it's a family of four and they cause no trouble.

[cleofus1]

48. he he

my grandmother was born in silver city...old mining town has lots o ghosts...witches too...

[enigmatic]

54. Oh mam, I love Silver City!

Almost moved there a number of years ago...

[cleofus1]

59. thats my ancestral hometown

very charming place...

[enigmatic]

64. It's beautiful....

Hell, the whole southwest is; if I hadn't met my wife I'd still be living there...

[alittlelark]

58. Silver City was a horrifically violent town around the turn of the century

I had a roommate from hell at NMSU who was from there. She was in the Nat. Guard, so I'll bet she's been to Iraq by now. She was a horrid, violent person. Some places are just toxic.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

72. It's not too bad anymore.

I don't think we really have any more violence nowadays than any other town, but you're right, it was a very rough and tumble mining town in the early days.

[alittlelark]

75. Are you familiar w/ the Moores of Silver City?

Specifically Stephanie Moore? She is the psycho roommate I was talking about. They have a huge piece of property they run cattle on... oh, and pot-hunt on - interesting since she was in the Anth dept. w/me.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

77. Hmmm....

That name really doesn't ring a bell, although there are many Moore's in this town.

[alittlelark]

81. This families 60's - 70's generation had 8 kids.

[Beware the Beast Man]

42. It's not out of the realm of impossibility.

I, for one, have never seen one.

[unsavedtrash]

52. yep. our house is haunted and I am completely serious.

[ailsagirl]

57. Does it bother you? You're obviously still living there...

[unsavedtrash]

61. when they throw things- cast iron skillets, balls and when I wake up and

see one of them staring at me from the bedroom door. Once, I saw the old guy hanging from the attic entrance. That freaked me out. But I am used to it. My mom won't come visit anymore

[ailsagirl]

97. I don't blame her!! My hat's off to you if you're used to it

But just reading the post makes me very uneasy

[Floogeldy]

60. Your house is haunted by the spirit of a cat.

B-)

[unsavedtrash]

63. no. An older man and woman, and a child. There is also a really tall white

thing that walks around the house. Inside and out.

[enigmatic]

65. How long have you lived there?

I'd love to hear more about this..

[unsavedtrash]

68. had the house for about 14 years. I just assume that most places around

here are haunted.

[gardenista]

66. Good God, you must really love your house! I would be so out of there!

Do you begin to feel like you're living "The Six Sense"?

I could not take that.

We only had one ghost, once, and she was obviously benevolent. Still freaked me out!

[unsavedtrash]

71. it's not so bad once you get used to it. Friends often don't believe us

until something happens or they see one of them. We do love the house.

[Floogeldy]

69. The tall white thing you see is the spirit of a cat.

B-)

[texas1928]

83. This is another one I took of my new car.

check out the 4 orbs in the pic. There was no rain or other things to cause this.

[The Animator]

86. I used to work at the King Kong attraction at Universal Studios Florida.

Many who have worked there say that it is haunted. According to the backstory, there was a Ride Tech named Whitaker, for fell to his death from the catwalks high above the soundstage floor. This incident, from what I've heard, happened before the grand opening of the park, so at least 15 years ago. Ever since, there had been rumours of Kong employees having seen, or felt his specter in the building.

In the many years I'd worked in that building, I never saw him. A group of us, inspired by the recent release of the Blair Witch Project, even set out with a video camera to look for him, we weren't sucessful. Some of other people I'd worked with over the years had seen him though. The one that sticks out in my memory though, was Julie.

As a Speiler for the attraction, one sits up in the front of the tram, and rides with the guests while perforimg in a five minute long action show.

Julie was on one of the trams, and was cycling the ride in the morning before the attraction was to opened for the day. When your cycling, it's just you, an empty tram, and the Big Monkey, going round in circles to make sure everything is working beofre we put guests on the ride.

Occasionally (often there's a problem), a tech will hop onboard and ride along with you, usually in the back row.

Julie cycles through the ride, and comes to a point in the ride, near the end, where TV monitors drop down and reveal that "a news crew had caught the trams run in with Kong on tape" She is watching the Monitior for any glitches in the video when she notices the TV shows that there was a Tech in the back row of her Tram for that last cycle. She looks behind her to the last row... no Tech.

Let me emphisize that there is no way for anyone to get off the ride, at any point after it leaves the loading/unloading platform, until it returns, full circle, to that platform. The Tram had NOT yet returned to the platform, and was still suspended 32 feet in the air!

It's been at least three years since the Kongfrontation Attraction at Universal Florida has been closed down and the building gutted. The Revenge of the Mummy indoor Rollercoaster now takes up the space where Kong once lived. Very few of the people I used to work with at Kong still working in that building. Every now and again we'll still hear reports about, unexplained phenomina, and phantom Techs wandering the building. Apparently Mummy has inherited more than Kong's old place.

[ailsagirl]

96. That's pretty amazing-- reminds me of Disneyland's Haunted

House ride (which I have been on). I heard stories later about its supposedly being truly haunted.

New Orleans is supposed to be crawling with ghosts. So is Tombstone, Arizona.

[merh]

89. Yes.

Spirits are all around us. :hi:

[evlbstrd]

90. Theatre people believe in them. A lot.

I'ver heard so many haunted theatre stories. And don't even mention Macbeth. Crap, I just did.

[ailsagirl]

93. Yes-- "break a leg," and so on

And the play you mentioned is often referred to as "the Scottish play" instead of its real name.

[evlbstrd]

132. Yes, they don't like saying th "M" word.

And there are many stories about haunted theatres.

[AngryAmish]

98. I heard a banshee once.

Next morning my mother was dead.

My father heard a banshee also before his father died.

[ailsagirl]

100. Are you serious?

[AngryAmish]

102. Extremely

Banshees follow families. I was living in Roscoe Village in Chicago. Not exactly the wilds of Ireland, but I did. My folks were from Ireland.

[ailsagirl]

104. That's terrible. The word "banshee" has always given

me goosebumps anyway.

[Zuni]

101. yes. I have never seen one, but I have had experiences

and I know people who have seen them.

I have heard ghost voices screaming in a cemetery one night, actually. It was scary as hell :scared:

I also work in a 150 yr old building in Annapolis, and it is haunted.

[ailsagirl]

105. Do you experience things on a regular basis?

Or just occasionally?

[Zuni]

107. occasionally

I have had a few experiences in my whole life.

The scariest was at St Stephen's Church, in the cemetery, where a friend and I were lurking around after dark and we heard screams

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

106. Absolutely.

nt

[tjwmason]

108. Yes, of course

I wouldn't care to speculate on their precise nature (not having engaged in any study of them), but I have no problem at all in accepting the existence of paranormal phenomena.

[mvd]

109. Yes, I do

I have never had an experience with one, but when my dad was young, he was in an old ambulance when the fan suddenly turned on. Shortly after his father died, he felt a cold spot in his parents' house. These are minor experiences, but still, combined with all the stories, something we can't understand is going on IMO.

Members of my family just don't come back, it seems. I don't seem to be receptive to ghosts, either. My trip to Williamsburg and Jamestown was ghost free. I only visited a couple specific places there that were in a book on haunted places in Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown, but they say you can see a spirit any time on many of the grounds.

[elshiva]

110. YES!

[SOteric]

111. I believe there are many things we don't yet fully understand.

Those things include concrete scientific information energy, regarding life and the human existence and abstract concepts such as life, death, soul and it's disposition.

I know there is a form of existence that awaits us after death, different from that which we experience as life. I don't believe most of us have the ability to understand that form of existence. Yet we see, sense, experience some echoes of that existence in limited ways we can comprehend.

[ailsagirl]

117. "There are more things in heaven and earth..."

I'm certain there are many phenomena we don't understand. And to read Raymond Moody's book ("Life After Life") really gives one pause.

[Scruffbunny]

112. I was once possesed by a ghost.

No, Seriously. I was half asleep when I noticed I couldn't move at all. My brain wouldn't work for me right and kept showing me visions of my cats chasing after a butterly into the room in bright daylight-and it was about midnight. And as I don't do drugs and my house is haunted, I'm guessing that's what it was.

This led to my Wicca friend coming over a doing a protection spell on my canopy net.

[ailsagirl]

119. That is a very strange experience, Scruffbunny

(I'm sure you've been welcomed to DU but I'll do it again anyway)

Welcome to DU!!
:hi:

You say your house is haunted?

[joneschick]

129. Scruffbunny's mom here......

yeah, the kids all claim to see/feel someone in the one bedroom. But then, we've also had squirrels in the attic and a raccoon in the chimney! The house was built in 1929 in what was then the middle of no where. We suspect it was home to a speakeasy during Prohibition. Lovely brick bungalow with a clay tile roof.

[ailsagirl]

137. A friend of mine would often hear the sound of closets opening

and closing late at night. These sounds came from one of the kids' rooms. She'd poke her head in and the kids would be sound asleep. And I absolutely trust this friend to be honest. Some people, I'd take it with a grain of salt. But she I trusted.

[Onlooker]

114. No, and neither does the luminous ectoplasm at my side n/t

[NoSheep]

115. I do. I think I may have encountered a couple. I think they are lingering

energy left over from trauma.:shrug:

[mvd]

116. Some certainly seem to be that way

Like the ones reenacting certain important events in their lives, or sadly, their deaths.

My house is close to the graveyard of an old Lutheran church (according to their website, it's the "oldest, unchanged Lutheran Church building in continuous use in the United States,") but I'm too far away to get any effects. It is a very peaceful/quiet graveyard anyway.

[ailsagirl]

121. According to what I've read, a ghost is

a surviving emotional memory of someone who has died traumatically, and usually tragically, but is unaware of his or her death. An "energy imprint" in the atmosphere.

[mvd]

128. I think that there could be imprints, ghosts, and spirit..

encounters.

spirits: not trapped; more flexible
ghosts: trapped in a certain place
imprints: just energy

[MrSlayer]

118. No, it's rubbish.

In the realm of Santa Claus.

[ikojo]

120. I am not sure but a former high school classmate

Tim Harte, did his master's thesis on ghost hunting. He is also a ghost hunter....

Go here

http://www.mesaproject.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=55

[ailsagirl]

122. Hmmm... interesting. Thanks for the link

[Pithlet]

123. I've never seen one.

I've been to and have lived in and near places that were supposedly haunted. Never saw anything even remotely suspicious. It's a subject I'm fascinated with, but I'm inclined to think they don't actually exist.

[Nikia]

126. I have not personally seen one

I have heard accounts though from people who I consider to be credible.
I don't know if I have experienced one. I did see an object fly through the air that seemed to do so for no naturual reason. I was intensely afraid of ghosts as a child and was constantly praying for protection from them.

[u4ic]

127. About a year after my mom died

some strange things started happening at my father's house. Mostly aural, such as doors closing, keylocks sounding like they were being fiddled with (a very unique sound, and the screen door was chained so there was no way anyone from the outside could be doing anything), footsteps (my father is very hard of hearing, and would have the tv turned way up and still hear footsteps upstairs). A few times, things were rearranged, and one morning he woke up to all the cupboard doors in the kitchen being wide open. Another time, in the middle of the night, the phone rang, he got up to get it and was overwhelmed by her perfume. The phone stopped ringing, and nothing was on the call display.

One night, he woke up to the sound of her voice, and she was standing by his bed. He said her hair was different, but her face was the same. He is not one given to flights of fancy, a very salt of the earth, pragmatic fellow.

I had a couple of experiences there - the one that stands out in my mind was being right by the staircase and hearing what sounded like a 300 lb man run up it. There was no mistaking that sound for anything else. I know it was her, just making herself known.

About a year after that, any activity ceased. My sisters also had various sensory encounters, but not visual.

[ailsagirl]

138. Very interesting. I've heard of these kinds of things happening

in books I have read.

The one about the 300 pound man reminds me of a story by James Thurber!! I believe Thurber was standing on the second floor landing and he heard these loud footsteps coming up the stairs. Then... nothing. The story was called "The Night the Ghost Got In."

Just looked it up. Apparently someone committed suicide in the house that Thurber grew up in. That would explain it.

http://www.forgottenoh.com/Counties/Franklin/thurber.html

[u4ic]

141. That is a beautiful house

and a very interesting, but tragic, story.

That, in kind, reminds me of a incident involving a friend of my father's. This happened about 25 years ago...after he and his family had moved to a small town in Ontario, she had joined the Jehovah's Witnesses. She got more and more involved, and forced her son into it as well (I think he was about 10 or 12). My father's friend got very depressed - he was from a generation for whom divorce wasn't an option, nor was talking about one's feelings - the stress of the family coming apart, plus working full time and then being a farmer in his off-time, became unbearable, and I guess in a last jab at his wife, he asked his son to come upstairs with him. He shot and killed himself in front of his son.

I don't know what ever happened to them, but I can't help but wonder if that farmhouse is haunted - and if the son had somehow come to grips with that tragedy. I can't imagine him being anything but scarred for life.

[ailsagirl]

142. That's so tragic... why torture his son??

Too often you'll hear of a spurned husband or wife killing the kids then themselves. That actually happened in the town I grew up in. The estranged husband killed his wife and kids, set the house on fire, then killed himself.

All too depressing.

Someone, I don't know who, said that suicide was a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

[Robeson]

133. No.

[immoderate]

136. Me either!

--IMM

[barb162]

135. yes, I had one experience about a year and a half ago

either a ghost or angel or soul.

[ailsagirl]

139. Do you want to tell us about it?

[barb162]

143. No, but it happened about 6 hours and then the next morning

after this individual died.I heard him in his own voice and that's all I want to say. I have only told two people about this who knew him. Maybe ten years from now I'd be able to write about it.

[ailsagirl]

145. I understand completely. Thanks for sharing

[Steve Nash is god 13]

140. not me, but my friend's brother works at

a bar and grill and once he was the last one there and he locked all the doors ant turned the T.V's off and went to the basement for a few minutes and when he came up, all of the tv's were on. Also have heard about various things there.

[ailsagirl]

146. I hear about restaurants having ghosts now and again.

In California there's the famous Moss Beach Distillery where weird things have happened over the years.

What I don't get is that if ghosts (or whatever these things are) aren't 3-D, how can they move solid objects?

[barb162]

147. power surges can cause this. This happens in my house

and you know you shut off the fans and tv and when you come home 3 of the fans (ONLY THE CASABLANCAS FOR SOME REASON)and TV will be on and all the electronic clocks have to be reset. Often happens in bad thunderstorms too. If I see one fan on high speed I know I have to check the other two also.

[libodem]

148. Yep, I do believe in ghosts

I do believe in ghosts, I do believe in ghosts......

[Nothing Without Hope]

149. I don't know - but I've had two very weird experiences.

That's in addition to electrical things turning themselves on and such.

I've posted on this first of the two out-of-the-ordinary-weird experiences at DU before. Here's what I wrote, as clear and complete as I can make it. It's very vivid in my memory:

I've only had two ghostlike experiences that I can recall. Here's the first, and if there's another of these threads some day I'll post the second, which is much more recent and rather different.

The first, very vivid ghostlike experience I had was when I was 8-10 years old and spending the summer in southern Illinois with my grandparents in their old house. I slept in a room between the kitchen and the living room, and there were very old family portraits of people who had died before I was born all around the room.

One night something - I don't know what - woke me in the middle of the night and I decided to go into the kitchen for a glass of water. The night was moonless and the room was pitch black, but I knew the short distance I had to go and wasn't worried about bumping into anything. ( I still remember the layout, after all these years.) I got out of bed and walked to the middle of the room, my hand out ahead of me to be sure I didn't bump into anything. But I know I only went a few steps, not far enough to reach any of the furniture or walls. My hand touched what felt exactly like the wool fabric of a man's suit jacket, and it was vertical and had exactly the degree of resiliency and overall feel that would have. I was terrified because THERE WAS NOTHING LIKE THAT IN MY ROOM OR THE TWO ADJACENT ROOMS. I was in the empty middle of the room, but I was touching something just like a man's suit jacket. I still remember the adrenaline rush and the way my stomach felt like it was falling to my feet. There was absolute silence, no sound at all. No footsteps or breathing except mine.

The next day, I looked all around my sleeping room and the two adjacent rooms, but there was NOTHING that would have felt like that. Nor did anyone get up during the night - there was only the immediate family and all of them said they had stayed in their rooms.

To this day I don't know what I touched, but those old pictures of greats and great-greats took on an eerie context for me. Right over the bed where I slept was an old photo showing a man I had never met, my great-great grandfather holding my grandfather as a baby. He was wearing a wool-looking suit.

I've never stopped wondering what happened that night.

[LastKnight]

150. so after your hand hit it... how did you take it?

what happened then? you slowly back away and go back to bed or what? how'd you react?

-LK

[Nothing Without Hope]

151. I backed up very fast and hid out in the kitchen for a long time, turned

the lights on. Waited until I was VERY tired and then went to bed with the lights on. It was very frightening, though I didn't feel any IMPOSED sense of dread or cold or anything. It's just that there was something there that shouldn't have been, and I could not explain it and so I feared it.

In later years I slept in that room again - we usually visited once a year - and despite initial fears, nothing else happened. I do admit that the sounds of the old house cooling at night, which sometimes made sounds like footsteps above me in the attic, were rather unnerving. But nothing else that was truly strange happened again there, at least that I can recall. I first went there when I was a baby, so who knows what I might have taken in stride early on.

[Nothing Without Hope]

152. OK, this isn't my 2nd "big" story, but it did unnerve me at the time:

I was maybe 12 or 13 and living with my parents in Fort Worth, Texas. I was on my bed reading - which I did whenever I could. I wasn't paying attention to what was going on around me and was up on my elbows looking down at my book.

Suddenly the whole bed shook EXACTLY as if a big cat and jumped onto the foot end of the bed. It wasn't subtle, it was a big bounce. I didn't feel anything brush my skin, but the whole bed shook. But at that time I did not own a cat, and the family dog was outside and would not have jumped on the bed in any case. No one else was in the room but me. I had a reading light on, but I wasn't watching the end of the bed where it happened.

I jumped out of bed and looked everywhere, including under the bed, but saw and heard nothing more. There were no rats or other animals that could have caused it in the house. Nothing like a bed slat breaking or other mechanical cause had happened either - I checked very thoroughly. Very, very strange, and like the other story I related above, I never forgot it. It never happened again.