By: lwalenius@ramadvisors.com
I've had quite a few ghostly experiences over my life, all of which have
been rather benevolent, Except for one that happened a few years back. I was
24, living with my mother, my sister and my 2 year old niece. One night I
woke up, and looked up into the darkness. This "thing" flew down from the
ceiling, straight at me with its arms out (I can still see it). It looked
like a cross between a gargoyle and an alien, it looked so evil. It sounds
silly, but I was so terrified, that I ran out of my room (screaming) into
the living room to be with my mother. I was shaking uncontrollably, and I
sat with her for quite a while before I could convince myself that it was
"just a dream", and I went back to bed with no further problems.
Well, a few months down the road, my sister was at home with her friend,
Kelly - who seems to have some sort of connection with the paranormal, like
her mother - and she sent her down the hall to get a towel for my niece (the
linen closet is down the hall in my mother's room). Kelly came back a couple
minutes later, white as a sheet. Now, my sister and Kelly are always talking
about stuff like this, but this is what really freaked me out. She said that
there was something in my mother's room, and it was a threatening presence.
She then went on to describe it: about 3 feet tall, gray, kind of a cross
between a gargoyle and something. I had never mentioned anything to my
sister, and the only thing I had told my mother is that something scared me.
I had never described what I saw to anyone.
In another related incident, prior to my "sighting", my mother was trying to
sleep one night in her room, and as she is about to fall asleep, something
breathed near her - kind of a sharp exhale "Hah" right in her ear. She woke
up the next morning with scratches on the middle of her back, and the freaky
thing is, she slept alone, and there were only three, long (about 6") thin
scratches on her back.
Needless to say, I am very happy to be out of that house!
Johnny
By: judy@earthlink.net
I'm not sure this qualifies as a ghost story, but it was more than an
ordinary dream.
My cat Johnny, my sweet silver badboy for 10 years, died at home of an
aggressive cancer in March. During the month between his diagnosis and
his death, I showered him with even more attention than usual so by the
time he passed away, we were closer than ever. On several occasions
(including at his grave just before burying him) I invited him to come
back and let me know he was ok.
A few nights after his death, I was aroused from a dream by the sound of
Johnny's meow coming from the direction of his special spot at the foot
of my bed (coincidentally, his grave is about 30 ft further in the same
direction). I waited with a mixture of hope and anxiety to feel him
walking up my body to my face, but it didn't happen. Instead, I became
aware of something tickling my left ear and tried to reach over to pet
him, only to find that I was paralyzed. That's when I panicked,
remembering all the scary ghost stories involving a period of paralysis,
and I finally awoke completely. Nothing was abnormal except for my
pounding heartbeat.
I know everything that happened could be explained away as just a dream,
including the inability to move, and perhaps that's all it was. But the
sound of Johnny's voice was so vivid and unrelated to the dream I was in
at the moment, that I can't help but wonder if it was real. Perhaps he
could only come to me in my dreams.
The Coal Shoot
By: ppolet@vanisle.net
After you read this experiance you might think I'm crazy or something but believe me, it was
the most terrifying night in my life and it has taken me alot of time to get over
it. Before I moved out (about a year ago) I lived in a 100 year old house. It had two
floors and my family only lived on the top floor. We barely ever went into the basement because
the floors were all rock and there were no lights down there. One day,
when I was about 15, I had a friend to sleep over and we thought it would be
cool if we slept in the basement and told ghost stories. We gathered up
our sleeping bags and our candles and went down to the basement. As soon
as I entered the room we were going to sleep in I immediatly felt as if we were
being watched and I told my friend that I thought that we should maybe sleep
upstairs, but she just told me to quit being a wimp and to set up my sleeping
bag. As we stayed up and talked and laughed (we never did tell ghost
stories) I felt more comfortable and fell asleep easily. In the middle of
the night (I remember this so clearly because it scared the s**t out of me so
bad and I'm absolutly positive I wasn't dreaming) I woke up to knocking coming
from one side of the house and slowly getting louder and closer and right when
it was so near that it was shaking the ground there was a big crash. and it went
away. I sat up straight in my sleeping bag and my whole body was
trembling. After I calmed down a bit a figure appeared at the foot of my
sleeping bag and I froze, I couldn't move I couldn't scream I couldn't do
anything. The figure was of a man dressed in rags that were covered in
coal He stared at me as if he recognized me from somewhere and then his
eyes widened and he exclaimed with a gasp Mary Beth! Mary Beth! Help me
I'm trapped and ran to the coal shoot frantically then dissapeared
with a flash of light. Apparently my friend had woken up right when he
disapeared and saw the flash of light. The next day I told my parents and
they said that they had felt a presence down in the basement earlier. I
read up on the history of our house and found out that the mistress of the house
was named Mary Beth and her picture resembaled myself One of her servants
had been trapped in the basement and tried to climb out the coal shoot without
succeeding and after being trapped for about three days he died in an unexplained
fire accident while in the basement. Thank you for taking your time to
read this.
The Ghost in the Venetian Palacio
By: sugarek@cbc.cc.tx.us
Hi! I have another ghost experience for you. In
March of 1994, my husband, oldest daughter, and I visited Venice. We booked
at room at an ancient palacio. We were assigned a room on the 2nd
floor overlooking a canal. The view was accessed by opening the
heavy wooden shutters which opened into the room. These had a metal
rod which fit into a u-shaped hook on the other window. Opening out were
double windows, also heavy, with numerous panes of glass. This room had
double beds with a narrow walkway between them.
About 3 times during our two days there, we would
hear footsteps start from approximately the middle of the room, march
smartly over to the windows, at which point the wooden shutters would
fly open. We would track this phenomenon with our eyes, but saw nothing
and felt no fear. The first time we rushed over to the windows to check them.
These shutters were so heavy that we felt it doubtful that a gust of wind was
blowing them open, and the glass paned windows remained shut and seemed
pretty air tight. The catch was not all that easy to work, either. My
daughter, then 14, remembers having to struggle with it to open it. Even my
oh-so-logical and mechanical husband looked over the shutters and could
come up with no good explanation.
The last night we were there, we retired for the
night with my husband and I in one bed, and my daughter in the other. She and
I could hold hands in the space between the beds, they were so close
together. Right after lights out, we heard the footsteps, this time walking
up between the beds to where our heads were. We could hear breathing. We were
both too scared to do anything, but we certainly compared notes the next
morning!
I wanted to ask as we were checking out if the
place was haunted but the only folks on duty that morning didn't speak
English and we don't speak Italian. But we'll never forget the place!
Quaker Cemetary
By: bpcoffey@gis.net
About ten years ago (when I still lived in Pennsylvania), a group of
friends and I took a joy ride out to the Quaker Cemetary just for a good
night's scare. It was a chilly, full moon-lit November night and there
were six of us there - 5 guys and me the only girl. It was the perfect
setting for a ghost. Now, I don't know how many of you readers have
ever been to this cemetary, but to describe the first time I saw the
place, I screamed and just about curdled my boyfriend's blood! The
crematorium scared me the most, I don't know, something about the way it
looks and what it was used for. Anyhow, back to that night - two of
the guys were acting like morons and jumping all over the place and
around the markers inside the cemetary. I was angry at their pure
disrespect for this very old place and so I tried telling them to stop,
but of course, as excited as they were getting, they wouldn't listen.
Me and this other guy were too chicken to go along with them, especially
because of the way they were acting, they were bound to disturb peace in
the cemetary, so we stayed by the car. We kept hearing a fake bird call
coming from the trees along the opposite side of the road and then I
started smelling lilacs. The lilac scent somehow wasn't disturbing,
even though it was November and none were blooming and also, there
weren't any fresh flowers placed on any of the very old graves. The
fake bird call almost scared the life out of us because it just sounded
SO unnatural and with each chirp sounded closer and closer. We decided
that we really needed to get out of there so we both sat inside the car
waiting for the others. I got myself in such a work-ed up state that
when I found a quarter on the ground I swore "In blood we trust"was
written on it, rather than the usual "In god we trust". My friend just
laughed at me. Thank you for listening.
The Man in the Cloak
By: Damien2078@aol.com
The story that I am about to relate to you took place when I was about eleven
years old. I am seventeen now, and most people whom I have conversed with
about this matter shrug it off as the hallucinations of a child.
It was the fall of about 1992 or 1993, maybe before, maybe after, I do not
honestly remember. I was living with my father here in Texas at the time
because my mother had hauled off to Arizona to take care of her father, who
had succumbed to a stroke. My father and I had gone to my Grandmother's
house for dinner. My grandfather was out of town as visiting relatives in
another part of the state.
My father, my Grandmother and myself were in the kitchen conversing about
things that I can no longer recall, because my memories of this occasion are
starting to fade and jostle in my mind. My father told me to go wash my hand
in the restroom, as my Grandmother had just finished making dinner and we
were about to sit and eat. I walked out of the kitchen and into the dining
room. As I looked in the general direction of the restroom, which was about
fifteen feet from where I was standing, I noticed two things immediately.
The toilet was making strange noises, which isn't uncommon in houses, and
there was what appeared to be a man in a shroud standing in the restroom with
his hands under the faucet, staring at me. I don't remember exactly what my
feeling were at the time, except for a bit of fear and a bit of awe at the
supernatural. (I am a big reader and around that time of my life I was
getting into ghost stories and other paranormal phenomena.) I then walked
back into the kitchen, and my father asked me if I had washed my hands. Of
course, being as frightened as I suppose I was, I told him that I had and
then I proceeded to eat my dinner, but the events of that night have never
entirely left me.
I had seen the man in the cloak on at least two other occasions since, but
those stories are for a later time. Thanks for reading, and goodnight.
Haunted Chicago
By: tsaltase@comcorpinc.com
This story was told to me by an ex-boyfriend, Mike, when we first
started dating. We were still getting to know each other, so when he
told me he was VERY afraid of sprits, I believed him, because it's not
the type of thing you'd say if you were trying to impress a girl. I
asked him why, and this is what he told me...
Mike's first encounter with "ghosts" was about 10 -12 years ago, when
he and his family (mom, dad, little brother George and Mike) were
living in a house in the Northwest side of Chicago. This particular
house had an attic, which was used to store the items that came with
the house when before Mike's family bought it. Nothing too unusual --
mostly furniture and such. At this time, Mike was probably 15 years
old, and his brother George was probably 9 years old. They were up in
the attic one afternoon, goofing around, pretending to be
acrobats/wrestlers etc. Eventually they got tired and George collapsed
on the floor, while Mike sat in an old recliner that came with the
house. The brothers continued talking until their mother called from
downstairs, announcing that dinner was ready. The boys had worked up
an appetite, so they bolted out of the attic. Mike was the last one
out and as soon as he shut the door behind him, he remembered that he
left the light on. Knowing his mother would be mad if he didn't turn
it off, Mike opened the door to the attic took one step in, and froze.
The recliner that Mike had been sitting in was slowly turning towards
him. Mike tried to command his body to run but he was so scared he
seemed rooted to the floor. The recliner turned enough so that Mike
could see the form of a knee, and it was at that point that Mike got
the strength to bolt out of the room and down to the kitchen. He told
his parents what he saw, and of course they didn't believe him, but
Mike refused to stay in the house any longer. He was so upset that his
parents made arrangements for him to sleep at his aunt & uncle's house
that night. Furthermore, that was the last time Mike ever stepped foot
into that house. He stayed with his aunt and uncle until his family
sold the house a few months later. Of course his parents objected to
his imposing on his relative's hospitality, but they were afraid to
force him to come back, fearing he would have some sort of breakdown.
The next house Mike's family moved into was still in Chicago, and not
too far from where the old house was. Everything was going fine until
one night when Mike's family had friends over for dinner. After
dinner, the adults and Mike sat around the island in the kitchen having
coffee and talking, while year old George played outside in the back
yard with the guests' little boy, Sam. At one point, George opened the
kitchen door and ran through the kitchen past all the adults and
straight into the adjoining bathroom. No one thought anything of this
until about ten minutes later, when Mike's dad questioned why George
was taking so long in the bathroom. Mike's dad knocked on the bathroom
door, asking George if everything was ll right. No answer. Mike's dad
tried to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. Everyone
started getting concerned, until the kitchen door opened again and in
came George and Sam. Mike's father aske George how he snuck back out
of the bathroom without anyone seeing him. You see, there is no other
way out of the bathroom -- if George came out, or even opened the door,
he would have been seen. In order to get back outside, he would have
to go through the kitchen again. George swore up and down that he had
not been to the bathroom at all -- he was outside playing with Sam the
whole time. Mike's father asked him to explain about the locked
bathroom door, but when they checked it again, it was not locked.
There were other strange incidents that happened in the house, mostly
to Mike, more than anyone else in the family. The last incident Mike
told me about was something that happened to him a few months before we
met, when he was about 22 years old. One night, as Mike was lying in
bed, he woke up with an uneasy feeling. He was lying on his side
facing the wall, and he felt as if someone was staring at him. It was
the middle of the night and pitch black in the room. Mike turned over
and opened his eyes and saw a black figure standing next to his bed
staring down at him. Mike shut his eyes and screamed for his mother
repeatedly. When she came storming in the room Mike told her what
happened. It seemed as if such occurences happened sporadically,
strangely enough when Mike was getting to the point of forgetting them.
Seems as if the spooks recognize this, and remind them of their
presence every now and again.
I was kind of skeptical when Mike told me this story, mainly because I
was just getting to know him, so I couldn't tell if he was a habitual
liar or something. But the way he acted and the way he told the
stories wa enough to make me wonder if he was a spook magnet. We only
dated a couple of months, and maybe that was for the best...
Haunted Dorm Bathroom
By: mt7318@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU
This is one of the many ghostly experiences I have had since childhood.
I live in a dorm that was built in the 50's. There have never been any
hauntings reported, but there does seem to have been one...at least for awhile.
It all began with a dream: I dreamed I got up out of my bed and walked down the
hall to the bathroom that I share with two other girls, and there standing with
her back to the sink, facing the door like she was posing for a picture with her
hands clasped in front of her was a girl. She had stringy, mousey brown hair and
a pale, acne scarred face. She wore a little white bouse, pale blue "poodle"
type skirt without the poodle, and saddle shoes. Her eyes were a pale, intense
blue. She looked at me with utter hatred, and then walked past me and
dissapeared. I woke with the knowledge that I had had this dream many times
before. I asked my friend Denise, who shared the bathroom, if she had ever felt
strange in there, and she confessed that every time she took a shower she felt
that someone was watching her and that the someone was not friendly. I began to
notice a hostile feeling every time I went into the bathroom. Sometimes, when I
was showering with the door locked I would hear the door open or the sound of
someone moving around outside the shower curtain. Once the water went from
comfortable to icy to scalding hot in a few seconds, then turned off abruptly. I
kept dreaming about the girl, who told me that her name was Bobbie, that she had
killed herself in that bathroom because "no one noticed me in my new blue
skirt." I gathered that shewas shy, lonely, and depressed. Her spirit was still openly
hostile. I would go into the bathroom to find that all my stuff had been thrown in the
trash or on the floor. I still wasn't sure if I was imagining things or not, so I decided
to do some research. Using a pendulum, I managed to find out the girl's last
name: Pagotti.
I went to the registrars office to see if there was any record of any girl by
that name having ever been in my dorm, since the University has records dating
back to the time the first dorms were built. I found out that my dorm was the
first one built on the campus, that it was meant only to house women attending
the "business college", and that it was built in 1956. But I looked through
dusty old annuals and crap all day with no result. The women in the records
office plainly though I was a nut, and after three hours I decided to give up.
As I was leaving, an older secretary was heading outside for her smoke break.
She pulled me aside and told me " You won't find any record of her, you know.
The university only keeps grade records, not enrollment records, and if she died
before the end of her first semester we don't have anything to prove she was
ever here." She seemed nervous about telling me this, and kept looking around to
see if anyone was listening. She spoke in "ifs", but something about her tone
made me think she knew exactly why I wanted what I wanted.
Denise and I started burning white candles and sage in the bathroom, and
asking the spirit to move on every time we went in. Eventually the dreams
stopped and the hostility ended. Still, I wonder, was it real or all in my
head?
Possible Apparition
By: mbminx@yahoo.com
I (and at least one friend) have each had odd experiences in hotel rooms
- ordinary, commercial hotels (the Adams Mark in Indianapolis, the
Columbus Ohio Convention Center), not some old place with any "real"
history. I can't speak much for James, but I can tell you about mine...
We were in our room - Dave, Arvil, My boyfriend Gene, and myself - all
asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night, when something touched my
hand. I sat up to see a black figure duck down between the beds. I
thought it might have been Dave bugging me, until I saw him asleep in
the other bed. Gene told me not to worry - that I was dreaming, and
should just go back to sleep. In the morning, however, he told me that
he believed what I had seen (and felt!!) because his friend James had
seen a black figure leaning over him in an empty room at an entirely
different hotel; he wouldn't say anything earlier in case I became
really frightnened and couldn't sleep.
I have never had that same experience since...
Ghost Sighting....
By: dre283@hotmail.com
Ever since I was a young child, we have lived in this house. The house was
built in the late 1800s and we are only the second family to own it. There
is one particular room that has always given me a feeling of a presence or
spirit. When I was younger, between 4 and 12, I could never sleep in the
room by myself. I never knew why at that point. I would always have bad
dreams and wake up crying and sweating, when I did sleep alone. I would hear
creeking noises and see sparkles. I was scared. Once I moved out of that
room and into the room next to it, I could sleep alright, but I had to close
the door to "the ghost room"(as my friends call it). And I still have to
close the door, mainly because when I am in the room or around the door I
feel as though there is someone standing behind me staring at me. The spirit
never leaves the room, rather stands in the doorway and seems to simply
stare at me. I feel very uncomfortable. I know that the man that lived here
before us had died in the backyard and that room had been the room he slept
in, and spend his last years in. I seem to be the only one in my family that
feels this presence. My brother's girlfriend seems to be the only other one
who understands and beleives my feelings to be real. The rest of my family
simply thinks that I am "crazy", as they say. But I know that there is a
ghost in that room. I was wondering, as well, how I could relieve him(so to
speak), and help him to pass on the after life.
Thank you for your time,
Evil Ghost
By: Numb7@aol.com
It seems that every story I read on your page has an un-canny familiarity to
it. I have actually had many experiences with ghosts and paranormal
experiences, however this one "runs in the family". I was 17 years old,
living in a large spanish estate in Lakeside, California. I am the youngest
of five and we all had our own bedrooms. I am basically a photo copy of my
mother in all aspects. I was sleeping in my room one night, and it was about
1:00 in the morning. I woke up with an incredible fear. Something so
terrifying that I had never experienced before. As I looked up there was a
very tall figure standing above my bed. He was dressed in a black suit, like
you would wear at a cemetary, with a black hat. This figure had a face of
complete evil. He was old, probably about 70, and his eyes were filled with
incredible rage. I was frozen with fear and could not move. The evil spirit
was slowly coming towards me, and after what seemed to be an eternity I was
able to speak. Not that I enjoying using incredibly foul language, but the
only thing that came out of my mouth at that moment in time was... Get the
f--k out of here! Within an instant the man left, completely vanished into
the air. I ran to the other side of the house into my moms room, crying in
complete histarics. I had never felt like I was in as much danger as that
moment in time. I told my mom about what had happend, and what the man
looked like. The look on her face was actaully begining to scare me more.
She began to tell me about when she was my age when she lived in Omaha. Her
bedroom was up in the attic of her mothers house. She began getting visits
from an evil old spirit who was identical to the spirit who visited my room.
He haunted her for over a year giving her an incredible fear. He would chase
her throughout her house, laughing when she ran out the front door to escape
his terror. She decided to confront him when she came home from school one
day. She told me she entered the house, and sat in the living room chair and
demanded that he appear. Within an instant this tall dark figure dressed in
black, and a black hat was running towards her. The only thing she could do
without being frozen from fear was to run out of the house as fast as she
could. She truly believes to this day that if she would have sat in that
chair until he reached her, that she would not be alive today. She said that
after that day his visits to her bedside became fewer and fewer. However it
seems that this spirit like to follow his victims children, and I just pray
that my two daughters don't get a visit from this evil spirit. I am actually
getting chills writing this down, and I hope that it doesn't bring an
invitation for this man to return into my life....
My Son's Visitor
By: AHill37197@aol.com
I've had quite a few encounters that I can't explain. I try to be
skeptical so as not to let my imagination run away with me. What follows is
more for the skeptics than any one else.
My maternal grandmother was anything but. Suffice to say she was not
a nice person. I grew up at the other end of the country from her and never
really met her until I was 14. At that time, when I tried to make
conversation with her, she made it clear she had a "favorite" grandchild and
I was not it. Hey, no skin off my nose! I just wanted to get to know her, but
oh well! She never spoke to me again. She died the following year. I felt bad
for my mother, but had no sense of loss at her passing. Never gave it another
thought.
When I was 21 I had a baby. On our very first night home, I was
nervous and not sleeping well.So when he woke for his bottle I was already
wide awake and hovering. (you mom"s know what I mean !) He suddenly smiled! I
thought,"How sweet! It's only gas but look at that face!" Seconds later he
puckerd up and started to cry. Gas, sure enough. Then I heard my grandmothers
voice clear as a bell say, "Don't cry honey, but Grandma's got to go." He
stopped whimpering as tho he heard her too. I can't explain this, she was not
in my thoughts, I hadn't wished that she could see him. She had never enterd
my mind during that period in my life. But I know what I heard, I was wide
awake. I saw my son's response.
It has always puzzled me why she would visit. We had no connection in
anyway. She was an utter stranger. Now my son is grown. In old pictures of my
grandfather, they could pass as twins.Could that have been it? I'll
never know.