by mwaddell@indy.net
A few years ago I worked in the county museum which was housed in one of our town's founding father's old homes. It is a beautiful Gothic Revival style mansion and has been immaculately kept. I was in charge of security and m maintenance, and I was the first on the list to be called if the audio alarm ever went off. On Christmas morning of 1988, the security company called me around 7:00 a.m. and told me they heard children's voices and a dog barking. I went to the house to investigate and found absolutely nothing. The house, like our entire small city, were quiet on Christmas morning. A former employee of the museum--a total skeptic--onces admitted to seeing a lady in a long, white Victorian gown walking down the upstairs hall. Others had seen her as well over the many years the house had been open to the public. When I was attending classes at the local university, I would often go there at night to type my papers, and frequently I heard creaking floorboards, closing doors, and distant voices. Usually, I ran out of the building as quick as I could! The house itself is gorgeous--beautiful gardens, ornate rooms...but there is definetly a "feel" to the place. My only direct encounter was when I went to use the basement lavatory one day and found myself "locked" in by a giggling child. I went to open the door and found it forced shut by "someone", and I heard a yong child laughing on the other side of the door. Often, the house smelled inexplicably like roses. Other than these incidences, I'm not aware of many other occurences. Nothing was ever threatening about the place...only odd.
by chrissmith@llv.com
Ever since I was a little girl I have had and made connections with the unexplained. I wonder if our DNA carries this to our children, for my son and daughter also have their own stories to tell. Like our our heritage, a continuing connection with our relatives and their past, spirits, and events that have a connection with them, that we many know nothing about other than the fact that something strange happens to us, something that we cannot explain or understand? I am second generation American, my grandparents on my mother's side were Russian immigrants from the Carpathian mountain range in Europe, home of Dracula. My father's side came from Budapest, and it was told to me that his family was of Hungarian gypsi descent. Many strange stories were told to me by my father during the course of his life, but I am going to tell you about my own experiences, and my children's. I have lived in many different cities, and things just seem to follow me, I think, or does our spirit possibly hold connections that lead us to certain places without conscious choice, I have yet to figure it out. My most recent eventful story is in Las Vegas where I now live. I bought a house that is about 35 years old (that's old by las vegas standards). When I went house hunting I found this house and without even going in it I told the realtor that this is the house I wanted. It was out of my price range, not expensive but I had a modest income and was a single parent with two children. I wanted the house so bad, I didnt even have the money in the bank to cover the earnest money deposit and during escrow I hoped that it wouldnt be found out. I prayed every night that I could have this house, I dont know why but something drove me to it. One night I was lying in my bed, on my stomach, and I heard a very soft whisper in my ear, directly behind my head. A man's voice said to me in a comforting way "you shall have your house". The very next morning, I got the call from the realtor, the loan was approved. We moved into the house, then things started to happen. The first day the air conditioning went out, the second day the refrigator went out. I had the repairs made, but one thing that I could never fix was the master bedroom's constant coldness, sometimes too cold to even sleep in. Every heating and air conditioning company that I called in to check it out said there was no mechanical problems with the unit or the vents, and strangely whenever someone came out to check it, the room's temperature was normal. So I learned to live with it, then one day I was yelling at my kids while I was walking towards my bedroom, and just before I entered my room, and as I stood in the threshold my voice resonated as if I were in a great hall. I took a few steps back and it sounded normal, I walked in my room and it sounded normal. Only in that one small spot did my voice resonate like that. Strange events started to happen in the next few days, every night around midnight. Just after I had fallen asleep, my dogs began barking as if to alert me of a stranger. My dogs slept with me in my bedroom on my bed. I started to get upset after the first few times of checking it out and found nothing. My kids were fast asleep, so what could it be? One night I decided to stay awake and catch whatever caused this disruption, I just lied in my bed with the lights off as usual, pretending to be going to sleep, looked at the clock and it was just before midnight, and just like clockwork Roxy, one of my dogs who was lying at the foot of my bed, jumped up and started barking which staring towards the doorway. I threw off the covers, sat up, and looked towards the doorway of my bedroom, and to my astonishment I saw only two large almond shaped yellow-green glowing eyes staring right at me! It happend all so fast, I must have startled whatever it was, because it lasted only seconds and the eyes seemed to have backed up so rapidly as to whoosh away like a shooting star or comet falling from the sky with a trail of light. I turned on the light and got out of bed and quickly checked the kids to see if they were ok. They were fast asleep and heard nothing and knew nothing when I talked to them the next morning. But my daughter did say that a few nights previous to this incident that she had walked past her brother's bedroom and saw him vertically suspended upside-down on his head, out of his bed, still in his sleeping position with his blanket and pillow in the air. She never told me about this because she thought I would never believe it. Well that next morining also brought about the change of the sound in the threshould of the doorway to my bedroom, I stood in the same spot as before, spoke alould, and the resonating sound my voice made was gone. Both my children have seen unexplained apparitions, at another house we lived in. This one was in Portland, Oregon. It was a new house build on unholy ground. Objects were moved and found in places where they didn't belong, lights were found on when they were on when we had turned them off, but the most disturbing was a faceless lady covered in a hooded dark cloak that appeared to my son that made him cry in the night. He saw her standing in his sliding closet doorway in his bedroom. The next night my daughter not knowing what her brother had seen, saw the very same thing in her bedroom closet doorway, both of their closets shared the same wall and were back to back. My stories are many and so are my experiences, maybe some other time I can tell you more. I swear that all I have said is the truth.
by boxak@hg.uleth.ca
I have always been a believer in the supernatural, but I never saw anything until I started working at a restaurant in my hometown. It was a long-standing rumour that this restaurant has been haunted. It was a large, old house that had been converted into an eating establishment. Anyways, when I worked there, I always worked the later shifts. These would usually last until 1:00 a.m. and I worked the upstairs setting up tables and doing clean-up. But I always felt uneasy at work, especially when I would pass by the stairs to the third floor. Whenever my back was turned towards the stairs, I would get this feeling that someone was watching me. This continued for sometime. Then, after a few months, I would see movement in the corners of my eyes and it would always come from the top of those stairs. The thing that really scared me was what happened late one night when two other coworkers were upstairs with me. We had a really busy night and it was especially late when we were setting up tables. We had just finished setting the tables and we were talking when we heard the sounds of movement. All three of us look towards a table in the corner just in time to see a chair move up to the table by itself! One of the coworkers, who had been there for 6 years, calmly laughed and said it was the ghost. When we talked to him later, he said that he had seen lots of things like that, and when I talked to other coworkers, they said they got the same feeling I did, and saw movement at the top of the stairs as well. Maybe we are all just imagining things, I don't know. This is what I saw and experienced and I believe it. Judge for yourself.
by ? (please send me your address again)
My sister moved to kansas about one month ago. When i was at her house i got bored so she decided to tell me a story about a recent experance she had had when she was working on a shipwrecked ship (after the ship was wrecked the made it into a restaurnt). The first day on the job she needed to find the office but she couldn't (she had never been on the ship before)She ran into a yound man with bright ornge hair, and very pail looking. She asked him where the office was and he gave her a key and pointed to a door. When she went over to the door and opened it she was overwhelmed with fear but she kept on going. The room she was in was an old pool room. when she got to the other side of the room she opened the door and the captin just stared at her for a while Then he said "How the heck did you get in here?" she replied "someone gave me a key and told me to go through that door." he replied "ma'am that door has been locked for Years no one has the key but me" She said "but that can't be true one of your saliors let me in!" he said "what did he look like?" She said "ornge hair slender pail looking and i think he said his name was browns." he said "ma'am no one on this ship fits that description, The room has been closed beacouse people died there and it is said to be haunted." I never really knew if i belived her but to this day she swears it is true.
by cpeifer@headcrash.lanl.gov
I live in one of the many forests in New Mexico, and many of the homes
are built either on or near ancient indian ruins; many date back to the
1100's. I have been told by many people of the area that these are
sacred mountains.
One September late afternoon, I was standing at my kitchen sink doing
dishes. The kitchen windows look into a solarium where the houseplants
live.
This particular day, while doing dishes, I look up and into the windows,
and there on the other side of the window is the manifestation of a young
man of about 30 years old. What was so strange was that it was like I
couldn't move or look away...and it appeared as though he didn't even see
me. It was more like he was looking through or past me. The thoughts I
was receiving was that this man was recently deceased, and had died
tragically, and before what he thought was his time. He looked so scared
and confused. He was wearing blue jeans, a white shirt not buttoned all
the way up, and white socks with no shoes.
And then he was gone; just faded quickly and that was that. When I
looked in the solarium, the first thing that struck me was that for
anyone to stand in front of the windows on that side, they would have to
be at least four feet off the ground!
Before this person's appearance, my family and I had seen shadows moving
through the house, or had just caught glimpses of people. This was the
first time someone had actually manifested themselves.
We were told by a spiritual healer friend, that our house had a vortex
running through it... a doorway for the spirits to pass into, and that
some of them missed the mark.
There are still a few passersby, and in different parts of the house.
They seem totally unaware of us, and we have had to help a couple of them
move on. You get used to the traffic after a while.
by marshallnet.com@ns.marshallnet.com
My mother had two cats, one named carmel, (like the candy) and another named
nubee. (thats how we spelled it, but its actually cloud in french or
something) Carmel died long before nubee did, while we were on vacation I
believe. It was so long ago, I don't recall exactly. Then there was nubee.
Pronounced NEW BEE, she lived to be 20 human years, although i'm not sure
what that is in cat years, she had to be put to sleep. I always loved nubee
because she was so old she just loved to curl up next to you while watching
T.V. or taking a nap. She was the kindest gentlest cat I ever knew. Never bit
or scratched.
After she died, I really didn't think of her much, just because I never get
really attached to animals. Then one night while sleeping downstairs (where
my room had just been moved to) I heard the familiar cry of a cat. A very
unusual sound to those whom have heard it, not a whining or whimpering but a
very sort of scary odd sounding cry that is very hard to describe. I don't
know that all cats make the sound, never the less I heard it. Just like nubee
would do late late at night. When I had friends stay the night they would
often shake me awake at night and ask me, "What in the world is that sound?"
It would frighten most people. Now that I think of it I think there is a name
for what they do but I just can't remember.
After hearing the cry I pulled my head up to a ceiling high window, which
was just a foot off the ground level, so your eyes would just pan the area
just at ground level, which would make it easy to see any animals around. No
cats, no anything outside. I admit I was a little scared, so I didn't go
outside. But then it happed again, not more than a few days later. I had to
determine whether or not it was a cat outside or not, but it sounded so
close, not like sound through a window, but inside, like sound through a
hollow object. I slowly crept upstairs and looked around outside, but I saw
absolutly nothing. I didn't just peek around, I had a flashlight and I combed
my yard (under the decks and all) even around my neighbors yards. Nothing not
a thing.
I am a believer in ghosts, but I never thought cats. Then I remembered,
nubee was cremated, and her ash was in a tin box in our living room, directly
above my room in the basement.
by T.Hurrell@kingston.ac.uk
Hi
I've always had an open mind about ghosts etc. but had had no real
experience of them, apart from a seeing a figure dressed in
seventeenth century farm clothing in wide open Sussex countryside,
until a couple of years ago. I was in digs, sharing a house with a
colleague who was, and is, a good friend; she divorced her husband
and, after he moved out, I moved in on a strictly business nature as
part of the deal was that I baby sat for her son whilst she built up
some kind of social life again. It was a good deal as I had been
going through an awkward patch myself, and I had two rooms at the
back of the house for my use. The husband died about three months
after I moved in and, though it was obviously a troubled time there
was no hint of anything amiss until about a year later.
I' d been out that evening and after returning sat up watching late
night TV - always an imsomniac, this sometimes forces me to bed -
and eventually turned in some time after 0200; I didn't sleep at all
well, getting more and more nervous as the night grew old. I was also
very cold and, my landlady had an awesome use of central heating,
starting to shiver. Finally I was so cold I couldn't move but it
wasn't just that...I was scared rigid - I've led a varied life, had a few
close scrapes but I've never had the terrors like this; the sensation in
the room was one of pure hatred. Whatever it was seemed to be in the
corner of the room between the window and a built-in wardobe, there
was nothing to see but plenty to sense; the room itself became much
colder and with it the sense of loathing and malevolence grew more
intense. It wanted me out of there and wasn't worried about how.
I was so scared I couldn't even shout out, in fact I was finding it very
hard to breathe under the weight of this malignity.
After a while - I've no notion of a timescale for this - the
atmosphere began to lighten and eventually faded away completely; the
room warmed up and so eventually did I - not that I stayed in there
for the rest of that night.
A couple of months later, my landlady happily back in the
swing of things, she wanted the room back. I didn't argue the toss.
Neither did I tell her what occurred that night; I had my thoughts on
the matter but they were best left unsaid.
On a happier note, I now live a pleasant little cul-de-sac by the
River Thames, being well-lit I've no qualms about walking down the
centre of the road. Which I was doing the other evening on a breezy
summer night when I walked into the scent of a cigar; it was such
a nice smell that I stopped and breathed in deeply before walking on.
You know you sometimes get a feeling of `weirdness'; I'd gone on
another 20 foot or so before it dawned that the smell hadn't
dissipated in the wind whilst I inhaled it so I walked back to where
I originally stopped. The smell of cigar, good quality cigar, was
still there just in this one spot, I walked through it, around it and
stood in it. It had a boundary, a couple of steps in any direction
and no smell; I searched the ground for butts, manhole covers, no-one
was up, no house lights were on and, if I moved away, no smell.
Puzzled I walked a long way off and then came back - still there.
Not there in the morning though as I went to work. The funny thing
is it was such a friendly, homely smell I couldn't help but smile
when breathing it in (yes, I know what it sounds like!)...no terrors
with this at all!
Hope you find these interesting, they've certainly enlivened some
evenings for me