by morris@koyote.com
My own mental picture is still as vivid as though I had just lived it. The
last faint beams of the November sun shown through my bedroom window
illuminating the dust in the air and giving it the image of lightly falling
snow. The prisms on my windows refracted the dim rays and turned them into
bright kaleidoscopic ornaments of colour splashed upon my wall. Usually in
the pristine hour of twilight the house was full of the aroma of my mothers
cooking and stories of the day's events, but that night I was the only one
home. The golden hour of twilight had slipped away into the void of
darkness, replacing the beauty of the prisms with the silver distortion of
moonbeams through the twisted bare branches outside my bedroom window.
Sleep was beginning to drug the air about me and I was rhythmically
drifting in and out of slumber. The sound of my father's footsteps
resounding hollowly through the stairwell woke me from my repose. I heard
him light on the top of the stairs and awaited the familiar creak of the
stairwell door, but the door remained closed and a gentle constant tapping
began. I assumed the door must be locked and this was my dad's attempt to
wake me so I stood up to unlock the door. Up to the instant I unlocked the
door the rapping continued gradually rising in intensity until I could see
the reverberations shaking the oil-stained wood. "Just a second!" I yelled
over the violent knocking. Finally I unlocked the door and it flew open to
reveal a rush of cold air and the emptiness of a dark stairwell. Terrified
I shouted for my dad but was answered by a harsh silence.
by kindy@mulberry.com
We live in a house built in 1836. Since the day we moved in we have
experinced strange things. We have often heard foot steps coming up our
stairs at the stroke of midnight.
so much so that a babysitter heard them to and remarked that we had come in
early that night, right at the stroke of midnight. We informed her that we
had not arrived until two am. A large dish placed in the middle of our
kitchen table was smashed on our floor one night with no one in the room.
My brother came to our backdoor one night to see no one in the room but a
large rocking chair rocking away. No one had been in the room for over an
hour.Shortly after that we bought a dog who would bound off the bed after
we heard the foot steps and grawel at the landing.Our cleaning lady would
often get the feeling some one was watching her while working in an up
stairs bedroom. My last story will make me sound really off the wall, but I
am going to yell you anyway. One day my husband brought home fresh liver
and rye bread. He put the bread in the cupbord and the liver in the fridge.
The next morning both the liver and bread were gone. Years later we spoke
to a women who was born in this house, she told us she thought our ghost
was her father who always came in at midnight and his best meal was liver
and rye bread
by rjdurha@ibm.net
When I was a senior in high school my mother remarried. We had
to move to another town and I was not very happy. During the first
months of the summer I met a girl and fell in love. Now I have never
believed in the supernatural until something happened to me that would
change my aspect for the supernatural for the rest of my life.
One evening I was Home alone talking on the phone to my girl
friend. A freak thunder storm occurred (considering it was cold and
late in the fall) and there was a power outage. At the time of the
outage I was in the kitchen on a phone, suddenly I heard the door to the
basement,also my new bedroom, open an somebody walked through the house
into my parents room. I told my girlfriend to hold on because my mother
was home and I wanted to ask her a quesion. The power came back on and
when I entered the room noone was there. I could not explain this and I
am 100% positive that I heard the door open then I heard footsteps
walking into my parents room.
The story does not stop here. The next day my parents left and
I was in the house alone again. While sitting in our living room
watching, I heard movement in my parents room. Suddenly the door burst
open and a black circular ball came rolling across the floor and burst
into the door going outside. to let you have an idea of what the ball
looked like, try looking into a light for a second and close your eyes.
When you do this you will see a ball, and this is what the ball looked
like. After I saw the black ball my life became a living hell! I woke
up one morning to a bright light. I thouhgt the light was coming from
the window and I kept staring at it. It was odd because the time was
5:00 a.m., and noone was awake in the house. The window was located int
the basement underneath the steps leading inside of the house. I
continued to stare at the light in the window until i realized I was not
looking at the window because the window was located 20 feet to my left!
Every night something would tap on the walls,and one night I was awakend
to something hitting the brick wall beside my bed. This was odd
considering I live in a basement that is 15 feet underground. Every
night when I would start to doze off the tapping would occurr and keep
me awake all night. My friends started to worry about my sleeplesness,
but I would never dare tell them why. One evening my family was home,
my mother was down in the basement(my room) exercising and my stepfather
was in his bedroom and I was in the living room, when all of the sudden
a something started to growl and snarl at me. I could hear the thing,
but I could see nothing. The sound was only 5 feet away from me and I
was scared to death. Finally I got my courage up and proceeded to get
my stepfather hoping he would hear it. When I reached his bedroom door,
the sound quit and I never heard it again. I was really getting fed up
with my little problem. I had not had a decent night sleep in months
and started to get angry. I found that I would stay out late drinking
because I was scared to go home, and I was to ashamed to tell anybody.
One night I came home intoxicated. I was not so drunk that I could not
comprehend, but I was drunk enough to where I was not afraid. I layed
in bed when the tapping sound started, I jumped up cussing mad and
started to yell and challenge whatever it was. This was not a good idea
because I dont know if I fell or was pushed but I found myself on my
waterbed. Suddenly a light flew slowy across my chest and the light
bulb began to flicker, next I blacked out and did not wake up until the
next morning.
My senior year was almost to an end and my life was a living
hell. While I was at school I had a carpentry class. One day the
teacher sent me and my friends down to the baseball field to work on a
two story building that they used for storage. We started to work
upstairs and then proceeded down stairs. There is only one entrance
into the building and I was standing in front of It. We then started to
hear someone tapping on the outside of the building. My friends and I
thought that it was one of our classmates, but the sound started to
sound familiar to me. I turned white as a ghost because I knew what it
was. the thing had followed me to school. I told my friends while we
were still in the building everything. I told them about the first time
my hauntings started and some other things to. The did not believe me
until we heard somebody walking up stairs beating on the floor and the
walls. THe ran up the stairs and I followed, but noone was to be found.
When I looked at them I knew that they believed me now and we fled the
building only to keep our experience to ourselves. The teacher was mad
because we did not finish our job, but we did not care. That was the
last time I was ever bothered by it,and I like to think that I left it
back at my old highschool in the baseball building. I am now 25 and I
live in another town. If anybody could give me input on what they think
was pestering me I would appreciate it...
by spau@netcom.ca
I am a 30 years old technical professional and like many technical
people, I prefer to explain thing logically, but what I am going to tell
you is beyond any logical explanation. These are my family experience,
not mine.These are the real things.
My family, especially on my father side, has been encountering ghostly
experience over the years and I was told these stories that make me
scared but at the same time I would like to be the one who experienced
them. The descriptions are very short because I don't remember the
details, just the jest of the stories.
1 st encounter (according to my memory)
My grandparents used to live in an old building in Hong Kong, it was
built before the second world war. They moved into this unit in this
building a few years after the war ended (after the japanese invasion of
the land). Like many old building built around the war time, it had long
hallway and dark corners. My aunt (my father's younger sister) told me
they always got this old chill in their bathroom which was very small
compared with western standard. They always felt there was a presence
there, and they never spent more than a few minutes there (even for a
shower).
Second encounter:
Another encounter was thi bright light suddenly appeared in the kitchen,
like an explosion. According to what I was told, the light was seen from
one end of the long hallway and the kitchen is on another hallway. It
lasted a second or so, but it was observable. When my grandparents went
inside the kitchen and checked, there was nothing and nobody. The
location of the kitchen was not at a place where bright sunlight would
shine through. The light was certainly not a reflection and more than a
bright light similar to a nuclear explosion, there was no sound.
Third encounter:
But the more scary one would be this crying sound coming out from the
wall at one of the dark corners. At around 12am most nights, the sound
came out from the wall. I forgot whether it was a male or female sound
but it was definitely a human crying sound. My uncle's bed was opposite
to this wall. Surprisingly ,my uncle got angry instead of being scared,
he used to shout at the wall or threw one of his slippers at it, saying
"Shut up" (in Chinese of course), then the sound would stop.
But he got very frustrated doing this almost every night.
Several years after, they moved to another building and again built
around the war time. On one of this Chinese halloween nights, when
families are burning stuff (for-the-dead-money, paper cars and house, it
is a tradition for the deads, hoping the dead ones get them on the other
side) for their love ones on the street, there was one such ceremony
right at the entrance to the building where my grandparents lived.
Around 12am, everyone was retired in their rooms and suddenly, all of
them heard this crying noise of a man running across the long hallway
which ran through the length of the unit , there was windows in the
living room which was one end of the hallway and the other end would be
the balcony. The dog was barking very loudly as this noise was running
from one end to another end. Everyone came out from their rooms which
ran along the length of the hallway.
Fourth Encounter:
This happened to my aunt (my father eldest sister). When she was
preparing dinner in the small kitchen, she suddenly felt a cold chill
coming from her back, she turned and then saw this woman watching her,
like many chinese ghosts (my impression with all stories that I heard),
you can see the face, not fog or just shape, chinese ghosts usually have
very well defined shape, almost like a real person. As an experience
person with this sort of thing, my aunt did not care or respond and
pretended she was not there, it was believed that if you communicate
with the ghost, it will grow attach to you and never leave you alone.
But on one occasion, she got very angry as her cabinet in the kitchen
were opening and closing like crazy, she slammed on the kitchen bench in
frustration and said that she had had enough, the whole thing stopped
immediately.
I guess my family had a way with ghosts.
Fifth encounter:
In the same place as in encounter four above. While watching TV behind
which was the balcony and where my aunt's dog was, my cousin suddenly
jumped and asked my aunt who the person head was, flying around near the
balcony, the dog was barking at the same time. My cousin was very scared
as he could clearly see the blood was dripping from the neck. The head
was floating around. My aunt did not see it this time but believe my
cousin right away as her family had been encountering ghostly experience
for years. She tried to calm my cousin, but it was a very scary
experience for him.
Sixth encounter:
(Same place as above)
My eldest cousin was sick (he was just a kid at the time)and had been
sleeping in the bed. One day (during the day)when my aunt brought in
some lunch for him, he asked who this boy was and said he was drowning,
he could see this image near the ceiling. The boy was drowning in water
and seemed to be screaming. Without any disbelieving, my aunt asked her
neighbour who was in the apartment building for a long time, about any
prior incident in the neighbourhood. The building was at a very
residential area, not downtown apartment building.
The answer she got was , there was a boy drowned a few year back in the
buiding swimming pool. Well, what else....
I was a kid at this time and spent time in their apartment a lot, but
never once I saw anything, I would say now it is a disappointment for
me.
Seventh Encounter:
My aunt (as above) moved to another buiding with larger living area. I
had been there many times and I did not like it as it was dark even with
a lot of sunlight outside.
One day, as she was doing some dusting around the apartment and was in
her bedroom, she suddenly saw all this fog around the whole apartment, I
would say it was like the Victorian London type of foggy. She smelt this
rodden meat smell,(this was new to her), as she turned back, she saw
this giant pair of hairy feet(just the feet, no upper body or head or
anything), walking across the fog which was very close to the floor.
then suddenly the feet disappeared.
As the smell thing was new to her, she asked my granddad what would that
be as my granddad was the most experienced with this type of thing. His
reply was "Oh, it was just dead people smell", meaning her apartment was
visited.
Once again, with all the time I spent there, I saw nothing.
Eighth Encounter:
My mum was visiting Taiwan. She was sleeping soundly in her bedroom in a
hotel, until she was awaken suddenly. She then saw this figure in the
dark with a giant pair of eyes approaching her, she could not identify
whether it was a man or a woman, as she screamed, my dad got up and
turned on the light, nothing there in the room.
Nineth encounter:
At the same place as above. Around 1am, my mum was still up but my dad
was asleep. My mum heard this noise coming from outside the hotel
building, she looked out down from her window, she saw a group of people
outside seemed to be having a party, the noise was so loud, it could
easily be heard even inside the hotel room. My mum, however, could not
figure out whether it was a group of men or women or both, the image was
so VAGUED,even at this short distance.She did not take any notice and
went to bed.
The next morning , she asked the management whether there was a party
outside last night. The management replied there was no party and
certainly not at 1am at night. But the noise was also heard by several
people in the group. Ghosts ?????
Tenth Encounter:
I was visting England with my brother and was staying in one of my
families house, it was a modern house. One night, when I was out and my
brother was alone in the house and was sleeping in his room with the
door completely closed. He suddenly heard footsteps on the stairs. They
were spiral-shaped stairs running all three floors. The footsteps were
clearly heard and were coming from bottom to top floor and was
approching his room on the third floor. My brother thought it was me
(the owner was gone for a trip), so he did not care, suddenly he heard
someone was talking outside his room (the foot steps stopped at the same
time, what he heard was someone speaking in Victorian English, it was
certainly not modern English. my brother recognised that it was not my
voice, he got a little bit scared. He did not open the door to find out.
By the time I came back, I asked him what was wrong as his face was
white.
Once again, I was there for a year on my own, I never heard or
encountered anything.
Finally, Eleven encounter
My brother used to study in a boarding school in the UK. One night, he
was the only one in his domitory (room), suddenly he heard this female
crying noise, it was like she was in pain, a very ugly sound. It sounded
very distance at the beginning but eventually it sounded from somewhere
next to him,like someone whispering at your ear, he got very frightened
and ran.
Thank you for reading this long description of my family encounters.
by Alden_Woodside@hp.com
When I was a child I grew up in Chesterfield Va. It is a small southern
town south of Richmond. During the War between the States the
Confederate defenses ran all the way down from Richmond through
Chesterfield and on to Petersburg. Some of those earthworks are still
there today and were right in my backyard. There were woods behind the
house I grew up in and my Dad built a tree house for me and my brothers
to play in.
One summer evening around 6 or 7 when the sun was going down my brother
and I were up in the tree house goofing around. When my brother told me
to be quiet that he thought he heard something. When I sat still I heard
what he was hearing. It sounded like a galloping horse and it was
getting nearer and nearer. We both looked at each other and jumped up to
the tree house window and looked down toward the dircetion of the sound.
That is when we saw him, it was a large man on a horse galloping really
fast and he kept looking behind him like someone was chasing him. He
wore the Confederate Gray and had a large brown beard with a long saber
at his side. His hosre was white with gray around the hooves. He sudenly
came to a stop and reared the horse around in circles like he did not
know what way to go. Then he turned back and rode in the direction he
had just came and then disapeared as he rode into the trees. This is
when my brother and I took off towards our house more excited then
scared. My father told us that many people have seen the ghost and that
it always appeared at dusk. They called him the Rider in Gray.
The woods where we saw the ghost has since been developed with houses
and from what I understand nobody sees the ghost any more. But I'm sure
if you talk to a local they can tell you a story about the Rider in
Gray!!!
by mprucha@mines.edu
After reading several of the stories on this page, I feel that I
can share mine. I am a college student planning to graduate soon.
For my last spring break, a group of friends and I decided to take a
road trip. Our first overnight stop was in Delta, Colorado which was
the home town of one of my friends.
My friend told us about a nearby cemetary that was supposed to
be haunted by evil spirits. Apparently a black cloud could be seen
moving around the cemetary by people who believed they were psychically
aware of such things. Feeling brave and wanting to see some
ghosts, we took a Polaroid camera and headed to the cemetary around
10:00 PM on a night with a new moon.
The cemetary was on the top of a steep hill with a rickety old
fence around it. The path to the gate was steep but easy to climb. We
entered the cemetary and started snapping pictures. It was a small
cemetary with small headstones at the heads of mounds of rocks which
were over the graves. There were three very large cast iron headstones
at the back of the cemetary. One of the headstones had some eerie
scratches on it. They looked like they were gouged into the iron but
the iron was smooth. We all started getting scared so we decided to
leave. I was the first one to the gate.
As I started down the path, I felt something pushing me in the lower
back. It felt like someone with their hand on my back but my closest
friends were five feet back. Then the pressure increased and something
scratched my back. I fell down the path and hurried to the car. My
friends practically ran to catch up with me.
Later, after my more squeamish friends had gone to bed, I told my
friend who had suggested going to the cemetary what had happened. He
asked to see my back. There were scratchs exactly where I had felt them
form while falling down the path. The scratches exactly matched the
scratches on the headstone in the cemetary.
I've got pictures of the scratches on my back and the scratches on the
headstone. I intend to go back to the cemetary during the day to get a
better look at the headstone.
Also, we had some really strange things show up in the Polaroid
pictures we took in the cemetary that night. I definitely want to take
more pictures in that cemetary.
by bcoffey@bu.edu
This is a true account of my experiences at Century III Mall in
West Mifflin, Pa. My friend Stacy and I worked in a bakery that her
parents owned. One Friday the mixer broke and the part needed to fix
the mixer could not be shipped to us until Monday. With a busy weekend
coming up and barely any product to sell, my friend and I decided to stay
overnight handmixing dough.
Everything started happening around midnight. We were sitting in
front of the store drinking coke and smoking cigarettes. I was facing
the railing where I could see down to the first floor and Stacy was
facing toward the rest of the food court area. Near the stairs going to
the first floor I saw a 2 foot tall, black, cylindrically shaped object
with legs. It would appear on one side of Stacy, disappear, and then
appear on her other side. This happened for about fifteen minutes before
Stacy asked what I was staring at. After I explained, she mentioned that
she had been seeing the same object behind me except that what she saw
was running into the wall, appearing behind me on my other side, and so on.
We began feeling hot and then cold to the point where we could
see gooseflesh on our arms. A rush of noise like a crowd in a football
stadium was heard coming through the food court. I noticed a glint of
light on the metal of the railing and I watched as it rose and fell.
Considering that I could see no moving light source that would enable
this glint to achieve its varying degrees of height, I was quite
disturbed when eventually an impossibly bright ray of light shot up from
the glint of light to the ceiling. I gestured for Stacy to quickly look
behind her but, as soon as she turned, the ray shot back down with an
audible whoosh, which we both heard.
Next, we were treated to a light show in the air above the first
floor. Pastel colored lights launched through the air as if a couple of
monkeys had gotten hold of some flashlights and were partying on the
first floor. We we quite delighted with the light show and although it
was unexplainable, it was not unpleasant.
I happened to glance down at Horne's, a department store on the
first floor which was closed for the night. There was a clear glass
partition over the entrance, no lights were on, and there should have
been no one inside, no one alive that is. An old man was kneeling on the
floor near the lower right corner of the store entrance. Inside the pet
shop, which is right next door to Horne's, dogs began barking. ( I guess
animals can sense apparitions )
Anyway, I asked Stacy to look down at Horne's and to tell me what
she saw. She immediately described the old man. I wondered if he were a
night watchman but after checking out the man from differing angles,
I noticed that, unless you were facing him from a direct angle, he could
not be seen, except for a white light where his head would have been.
Stacy and I decided to retreat into the back of the store to get our work
done and to try to clear our heads of what we considered too much
bullshit going on.
In the back of the store we had our tape deck playing very
loudly as we wanted to drown out the sounds of scratching and growling we
heard at the door. Over the loud music, I could hear the ching of an old
fashioned cash register opening. Considering that we had an electronic
cash register that was locked up for the night which did not make the
same type of noise, we knew that something unseen was playing with us,
trying to lure us to the front of the store. Being the curious person
that I am, I opened the front door and said, "All right, what's going on
out here?" Of course there was no answer and we could no longer hear the
noise so we went back inside.
After about an hour of mixing, we needed a break and, chronic
smokers that we were, a cigarette. We went back out front and sat at our
little table determined to ignore everything that was going on around
us. Of course, I could not help but to glance again at Horne's where I
noted that the old man had disappeared and in his place was an old woman
who was rotating as if she were on a potter's wheel. I,
once again asked Stacy to turn and describe what she saw at Horne's. The
old woman appeared to be aware of us because she stopped her spinning and
stared right back up at us. Our hearts immediately dropped into our
stomachs and we felt frozen with fear.
There was a mall employee who was on a riding carpet cleaner. He
was cleaning all the red carpeted ramps that led up to the major
department stores. We noted that he completely bypassed Horne's and
watched as he continued on to the rest of the mall. Once he was gone, we
walked down to the front of Horne's.
We stood in front of the glass partition looking for some
evidence of the old man and woman. We neither saw, nor heard anything.
As we turned to go back to the store, I noticed white powdery footprints
on the red carpeting. I sampled a bit of the white powder and it tasted
like the flour we had been using in the back of the store to mix dough.
The footprints were of a man's dress shoe with the
chuck heels and they were going in the direction from which we had just
come. Almost as if the thing was trying to get away from us. Anyhow,
the footprints went all the way up the stairs and they stopped at the
entrance to our store. They did not continue on further into or away
from the store, they just stopped as if whatever made them had
disappeared into thin air, which no doubt, it had.
All through the night until 8:30 the next morning, we were
bombarded by scenes shown on the glass partition of Horne's. We saw a
couple sitting in a park and a small ballarina doll which was 6 feet off
the ground and spinning a pirrouette. There was also a bright red light
above the doll's head.
If anyone has heard of anything similar happening at this mall,
please let me know. Thank you.
by jrnm91c@prodigy.com
My mother's father was an alcoholic who drank himself to death. He
wouldn't drink in big quantities, but he would take a glass of wine and
sip it all day, he did this for years. He died and left my mother, her
brother and her mother. One night, my grandmother (my mother's mom) was
laying in bed reading a book. She tells us to this day that she was
wide awake and not dreaming. She felt a strange feeling. She looked up
to her right and his head was floating in the air, but she could see
right through it. He began to speak to her: "Dolores, I didn't want to
die, I'm sorry and I love you", he said. That's basically it.