First, you did see the “horror in three sentences“ contest, right?
Second, you also saw the pumpkin-carving contest, right?
OKAY GOOD.
Today, not a contest, but a question in theme with the ghoulish delights that the month of October seems to bring with it —
We’ve all had freaky things happen to us.
Ghost stories. Strange sightings. Inexplicable happenings.
Glitches in the Matrix, perhaps.
I’d like to hear about them. Hop down into the comments and let ’em fly. True stories! As true as you can recall them. And while not specifically a contest, I will choose three random commenters to receive a copy of my short story collection, Irregular Creatures, in e-book format.
Fatma Alici says:
There is a an old German ghost story, which I’m basing my costume on.
A man had been writing letters to a young woman, who agreed to marry him. On the day of the wedding she arrived, and was rushed away to change into a fine wedding dress. The one thing the man noticed besides her endless dark eyes was a velvet ribbon around her neck.. Through out the ceremony he could see no clash, no way it was attached. But, she was so beautiful, and her smile so sweet he decided to forget about.
However, the weeks passed, and he asked her. “Why do you wear that ribbon?”
“You mustn’t ever ask me that again.” She replied her face turning cold, and distant for the first time.
“Why not?”
“You mustn’t.” She replied. After the silence went on for a bit she went back to her warm smile.
The ribbon plagued him for that day on. She never took it off. It was always there as dark as eyes. After awhile it was all he could see. One day he could stand it no more. He waited until she feel asleep and crept in with a scissors and snipped the ribbon off.
To his horror her head rolled free of body. Her eyes flashed open, as her face paled. “You shouldn’t have.” Then, she died.
Be thankful for what you have, and do not ask for more.
October 13, 2013 — 8:17 PM
mark matthews says:
One moment of fear from my childhood is stuck deep in my brain. I was sleeping in my basement one night and was terrified by the thick black darkness. I started hearing noises that weren’t just noises, but like something breathing in the room. I was convinced we built our house on top of hell and thus by sleeping in the basement I was sleeping in hell. I slept under a blanket, hot and sweaty and shaking.
October 13, 2013 — 8:22 PM
Ashley Wolf says:
I actually have two which are connected to the same house. While growing up our neighbor had a son my brother’s age and we would often be over there playing, staying the night and just being kids. Well the coat closet in their living room was unique in that when they moved in there were this purplish maple leaf spot like someone used a stencil to paint it there, and no matter how many times they painted over it it would reappear… but in a different spot on that one wall in the closet up until he finally tore the drywall down and replaced it.
But that is mild in comparison to the fact that they also had a ghost living in the house. Your neighbors father had lived in that house with them for a time up until his death. And after he died he still showed up, walking from the kitchen into the living room and turning the lamp on around midnight every night if the light was not already on. If it was, then he would not show up.
I’m not sure if it still happens as we have since moved away and lost touch, but I can still remember it and being more than a little freaked out at the time, as one can imagine a young girl to be in such a situation.
October 13, 2013 — 8:24 PM
Mozette says:
When I moved into my current townhouse, I found it was haunted by the last lady who lived here. She was an old dear who had frizzy hair and kept on stealing my house keys and locked me out a couple of times (thankfully I had a spare key in my pocket when she did that).
By the third week or so, I had been woken up by her at 2am by her standing at the foot of my bed glaring at me… talk about freaky! I’d wake up, see her, fumble to turn on the light and by the time I did, she was gone! So, I asked some of the neighbours about who had lived in my house before me. Aparantly, there had been this old woman who had had a fall and was taken off to a respite care facility to recover, but she didn’t go so well… and ended up staying there. So, they had to rent out her place. Over the previous 3 months before I moved in, they had had 3 lots of people move in and they moved out within weeks of arriving – scared. They never gave a real reason of why they moved, they just didn’t want to stay… and didn’t even unpack enough to stay long.
So when I came along, and asked the neighbours, I asked them for a photo of the old woman and they showed me… confirming it was her scareing the crud out of anyone who lived there. She didn’t like it that people were trying to live where she had. So, she did what she thought was best – by scaring the crap out of them. This was until she encountered me… I don’t scare easily.
A few nights after figuring out why she was at my house again, I was woken up by her once more, didn’t turn on my light (so she didn’t disappear) and I walked to her in the dark and asked her why she was there. In not so many words, she ordered me to leave. I made her a promise that I’d care for this place as though it was my own, I’d never let any harm come to it as long I lived here and I’d do my best to make it look and feel like a home… and I have.
Then, I asked her if she had something to show me. She walked me to my spare room where my book collection is and where I’m working now and pointed to my computer in the corner. However, she was seeing ‘the light’… I said that there were better things for her there. So, after talking her into it, she left. I’ve never been locked out again, never had keys go missing and have had another ghost wake me up in the middle of the night again.
I do have other encounters… like I used to talk to Death in my dreams and the dead to used to come and ask me questions and chat to me (like my late-Grandmother, Heath Ledger and Patric Swayze – I kid you not!) but I’m not sure if you’d like what they have to say.
October 13, 2013 — 8:32 PM
Ruth Dupre says:
We were coming back from seeing a movie, ‘The Astronaut’s Wife’, I think it was. Husband, daughter, and me. And we were on a long stretch of road that runs through a park with soccer fields on one side. One streetlight was lit. No big deal. We’d traveled the road a thousand times.
As usual, my husband was hot footing it.
Up ahead I saw a girl, a teenager, starting to cross the road. She was wearing one of those prairie dresses and what looked like Doc Martens. Long hair. I couldn’t see her face but I wasn’t trying to either. She was just a girl, crossing the road.
So why wasn’t my husband slowing down? He never took his foot off the pedal, never even eased up. And the girl never stepped back, never slowed down. Just kept right on coming…
It freaked me out. I couldn’t even speak. There was no way he was going to miss her, no way… And he still didn’t slow down.
I held my breath.
She cleared the front of the car by inches and we sped past. My eyes followed her as she stepped up on the curb and headed into the dark field.
“Didn’t you see her?”
“See who?”
“That girl crossing the road.”
“I didn’t see a girl crossing the road.”
“In a prairie dress? Sort of galumping along? You passed within inches of her.”
My husband shook his head. “I didn’t see a girl. The road was clear.”
October 13, 2013 — 8:43 PM
Perrin Rynning says:
My family has lived in apartment houses and trailer parks for most of my memory. None of the houses were old enough to be haunted. I moved into a century-old two-bedroom house with my girlfriend of the time, and found out that one of the previous occupants had died in it. Only once, during the seven years we lived in that house, did I ever get the feeling that there was one more “presence” in the house than the living members. I caught a glimpse of what might have been a small, bare foot running from me, and perhaps a flash of a white nightdress. Is it selfish of me to wish that I had seen more, that she had done more? Or is it wrong to hope that she found her way to peace, sometime soon after that?
October 13, 2013 — 9:10 PM
Caitlin says:
The house I grew up in, i’m fairly sure, was haunted. That’s the only explanations for all the horrifying, bizarre nightmares I constantly had (that I still remember). At least I’m *hoping* they were nightmares! One of the strange dreams I had, that was creepy, (though not as terrifying as faceless shadows that laughed at me as they walked past my bedroom door!), was made even creepier by the fact that my brother had the EXACT same dream. Well, not 100% identical. There were minor differences in our dreams, but we both dreamt of these small gargoyle like creatures with glowing red eyes.
My brother and I used to tell each other our dreams. And so I told him of the one I had of the two small beings, brown as mud, with little horns, a tail, and pointed fangs. They sat glaring at me near the bottom of the stairs where I sat watching the Garfield cartoon. Garfield was lying in his bed with his blue blanket over him. Upstairs, my dad was frying eggs for me.
My brother said no, that’s not what happened! Not in his dream. He was watching Garfield, but Garfield was wearing his blanket like a cape. And instead, the small brown demon-ish things stared down at him from near the very top of the stairs, not the bottom. Upstairs, my dad was making scrambled eggs for him.
I continued with the rest of my dream. I was in a playground, and once again, there were the little brown creatures, watching me with glittering red eyes. I could feel their malevolence. My brother said, once again, no. They were watching him on a beach, not in a playground.
They didn’t do anything to us. They just watched. And that was almost scarier.
I don’t know what they wanted, or what they were doing there. If they were trying to tell us something from the dream-world.
I draw (or used to anyways) so with both of our input, from our dreams, I managed to re-create the little brown demon/gargoyle creature from our dreams. We never had the same dream again (at least as far as I know). Unfortunately, I don’t have the drawing anymore, otherwise I’d post it here. But it freaked the hell out of me, the fact that we both dreamt of these things… what could that mean. It has to mean something, right? It’s too bizarre not to…
October 13, 2013 — 9:20 PM
Alice Aisling says:
i have lots of ghost stories. Whenever I am in my room I KNOW there are things watching me. There have been days when I turn around and I have seen silhouettes, flashes of body parts, things of that nature. But the creepiest thing ever was this one day a few months ago.
I was alone downstairs getting ready for school. I had my headphones on while walking towards the couch. Suddenly something grabbed my hair, pulling some of it loose from my headband and knocking off my headphones. I turned around, but nothing was there. I then heard creaking on the steps, and saw a form in the darkness. It was staring at me, I swear. That same day, I heard a voice call my name. Right near my ear. I have never felt safe again. In fact, I’m in that room now, and it’s right behind me……
October 13, 2013 — 9:42 PM
Megan M. says:
I was visiting my aunt, who was very religious. I was twelve. We went to her church for an evening service, and there was a portion where the preacher invited everyone to get up and walk around, greet one another. I was (and am) very shy and since I didn’t know anyone, I stayed in my seat and just closed my eyes and prayed. I felt someone put their arm around my shoulders. Thinking it was my aunt, I opened my eyes. There was no one around me – everyone else was at least two rows away, talking, not even looking at me. But I know I felt someone hug me and comfort me.
October 14, 2013 — 12:21 AM
Smoph says:
That’s sweet and creepy.
October 18, 2013 — 4:45 PM
lkeke35 says:
I’m convinced that the house I lived in prior to my current one was haunted by an older woman. Once in the middle of the night I was convinced that there was a woman in a nightgown sitting on the edge of my bed. She patted my leg and I teased her about climbing the attic stairs at this time of night,what did she want and if she was okay. She didn’t answer but she seemed calm, comforting even, and I drifted back to sleep. In the morning I got out ofbed with the intention of asking my mother,very much alive, why she came to see me last night. But the privacy latch on my bedroom door was still latched and when I asked my Mom about it she said she’d never gone upstairs.
The house I live in now may be haunted by an older African American gentleman, who smokes. As I said, it’s just my Mom and me and neither of us smoke but on occasion there’s an overwhelming tobacco smell in my room and I get the impression that someone is in the room with me. I have the impression that hes watchimg over me as his presence is always comforting and never creepy.
October 14, 2013 — 12:58 AM
literarylottie says:
Ooh, okay. At the risk of sounding crazy, here are my ghost stories:
I lived in this one house between the ages of eleven and fifteen. The lady we purchased the house from was a widow whose husband had died some years previously, and from the moment we moved in my mom and I could both feel something “off” about it.
Not long after we moved in, I started hearing and seeing strange things connected with – no joke – the upstairs bathroom. Which happened to be MY bathroom. (This posed a bit of a problem, as you could imagine.) I frequently felt like I was being watched, and got to the point where I would check behind the shower curtain every time I went in there, and if I was *in* the shower, I would have to leave a gap in the curtain so I could watch the rest of the bathroom. Just in case.
I also saw, on multiple (dozen +) occasions, a black, shadowy mass moving up the stairs. It would appear on the landing, go up the stairs to the second floor, cross the hallway and enter my bathroom. On multiple (again, dozen +) occasions, I heard music playing at odd hours in the night. Classical music, always. It sounded like someone had left the radio on. I would always get up and check every single stereo in the house, but I could never find the source of the sound. (And it was definitely *not* just playing in my head. I could pinpoint where the sound was coming from – there just wasn’t anything for the sound to come *out* of.)
And finally, at one point a few months after I’d moved in, I pulled back the bathroom mat to reveal a small bloodstain on the tile floor. I hadn’t injured myself, and there was no blood on the mat itself. The bloodstain had not been there a few days prior. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I could never remove it.
Flash forward a couple of years. I’m thirteen, and talking to the mom of a friend, who works as an EMT. For some reason we’re discussing my house, and I mention the address. She looks surprised.
“Oh, I know that house. We were called out there when the old owner collapsed in the shower and hit his head. You know, he died right there in that second-floor bathroom.”
October 14, 2013 — 1:06 AM
literarylottie says:
Two smaller encounters:
The house we lived in prior to the haunted one was surrounded on three sides by woods – woods which went on for miles without a living soul. Yet, at several different points throughout the five years I lived in that house, I saw eerie green lights flash and flicker out in the distance in the middle of the night. Once, the green lights outlined a black figure that was human in shape – but when I examined the spot where the figure appeared in the light of day I realized the figure would have been far too tall to be a human.
I started sleeping with my blinds closed, after that.
I’m also fairly certain I was haunted by my cat. That was actually quite nice. My cat, Anna, had died quite suddenly and violently (we think she was poisoned by antifreeze, though we never knew if it was deliberate) a few days before Christmas when I was seven. I was understandably really upset. A couple of days after she passed, in the middle of the night, I felt the weight of something cat-sized settle at the foot of my bed. When I looked at the foot of my bed, I saw that the covers were indented slightly in a small, ovular shape – exactly where Anna used to sleep. This went on for a few weeks, until I started to get over her death and move on. She stopped coming – only to appear once again after we moved out of that house and into a new one. Then, in a different room in a different bed in a different town, in the middle of the night I felt a weight pressing down and saw the covers indented at the foot of my bed. She only stayed a week that time, but I kind of felt like she was saying “I know you’re upset about moving, but it’s okay – I haven’t gone away. I’ll always be here for you.”
It should be noted that I am a complete sap.
October 14, 2013 — 1:20 AM
Smoph says:
That story about Anna is sweet. I dream all the time about our family dog (she’s been gone about 4 years now) and they feel so real. Not the same I know, but it’s sad and comforting at the same time.
October 18, 2013 — 4:48 PM
Tam T says:
I’m a painter and I’d just finished a painting of a gecko getting a drink of water. I put it up for sale like I usually do. It was about 5:30 am, I am an early riser.
A friend of my housemate’s recently lost his youngest sister to cancer. She was my age. As I sat at my computer I heard her tell me to give him the gecko painting for his wife, who loves geckos. I was told that they needed some happiness in their life and that giving them the art would bring them some much needed joy, even if only briefly.
The thing is, I am not usually inclined to get communications from dead people. It’s just not something I look to take on. That kind of stuff creeps me out a bit and while I have had a few odd things happen, overall I don’t.
But I bagged up the painting and when my housemate was getting ready for work I asked her if she would take it and that if he wanted it for his wife he could have it. It was a great idea and I am all for the occasional good deed. I could easily argue that it was just an idea that came to my not quite awake brain, in fact.
But the thing is, the coincidences here are too many for me to just write it off. First of all when she got to work he and his wife were there, standing near their vehicle, so that it was easy for her to give them the painting. This might not seem odd, but they don’t always work the same schedule and his wife doesn’t work there at all.
Secondly, I decided to complete the painting pretty much on a whim and had literally just finished it. I started it a few months prior. And finally, I saw her and heard her. I don’t normally hear ideas in other people’s ‘voices’.
His wife loved the painting. And when my housemate told them I wanted them to have it because they needed some happiness at the moment, it almost made her cry. I don’t know if it was a ghost’s idea or mine, and I don’t really care, it worked out well.
**I did not tell them about her, I figured that it would be weird for them, not knowing their beliefs in such matters. And I didn’t want to bring back thoughts about their lost loved one, when there was no reason to. I don’t know if that was the right call or not, but that’s what I went with.
October 14, 2013 — 1:24 AM
garciamf95 says:
No one dreams like I do. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of a plot and when I fall back asleep, years have gone by. When I was in about 8th grade, I had this series of dreams where I met this boy and he showed me all the parts of his world, his world beyond black obelisk and its guards, the world beyond the fields next to where my old house used to be, the cobblestones streets filled with beings my eyes couldn’t focus on.
One night, however, I awoke in my bed, paralyzed. Footsteps crept around me, little voices echoing, poking and prodding at my face, saying, “She’s seen too much.” “Take out her lens!” I couldn’t see these creatures. Their figures evaded my mind. My heart raced, I couldn’t feel limbs until I broke free of their grasps and ran into my full length mirror at the end of my room arriving back in our cobblestone streets where I found him, scared.
I had seen too much. He’d said. We had to go, we had to leave, and together we ran. Slowly the figures I couldn’t make out on the cobblestone streets came into clarity, their heads turning towards me realizing I was not of their world, they saw me and I saw them in their grotesque forms. Their contorted limbs, they turned their heads and were aware.
We ran into a face of the black obelisk in my dream where once we came upon a lake in a field of rocks and sat, but now we were in a dark building. He told me how I wasn’t supposed to see this world, this world of dreams, of magic, of where his master reigned supreme. His master, his boss, the ruler of this sort of dream world was aware of my presence and was searching for him. For us. For both of us.
In a flash, I wasn’t aware, he had taken me to this type of portal that separate my mind from the world completely. He pushed me into the void and when I awoke, I had awoken in a cold sweat in my bed with a massive headache. I’d never seen him since.
And now when I dream, I cannot reach the purple forest I had explored past the fields of my old house. I cannot reach the cobblestone streets and the familiar contorted figures pay me no attention. All I can hope for, is that he’s okay.
October 14, 2013 — 1:32 AM
Mozette says:
My other ghostly encounter I mentioned… okay… here goes:
I was sound asleep (in my old double bed – before I bought my new Queen-sized one) and I felt the side of it move as though somebody was leaning on it. I tried to move and roll over so I didn’t roll out of bed, but they leaned on it more and kissed my cheek very softly. I felt hair touch my face and mumbled: “I’m trying to sleep” as I brushed my face with my hand (yeah, by this time, I was almost awake and could feel a presence in the room), but ignored it. I heard a woman giggle next to me and she kissed my mouth quickly and I snapped awake and looked at her… she was beautiful! Blond hair, almond eyes, long rainbow dress on, no shoes. I had seen her somewhere before!
She smiled at me, kissed me again and the rose to her feet and walked around the end of the bed and out the door… this was when I came to my senses and said to myself loudly: “YOU LIVE ON YOUR OWN!” jumped up, off the end of my bed and out the door, looking for this person who had broken into my house to sit and watch me sleep at 5am! I searched the house and found all the doors were deadlocked from the inside… just as I had left them before going to bed the night before.
I talked to a few spiritual friends about this weird person… and I told them I looked up my Tarot Cards and found her in amongst them… they were astounded that I had somebody so high up watching over me. I didn’t understand what they meant. They asked me if she did anything to me… I said she kissed me while I slept – waking me – and I told them whole story. They were jealous that I practically have an Archangel watching over me now… which when I’ve read up on it, they were right… creepy and uncomfortable way of finding out, but interesting.
October 14, 2013 — 1:41 AM
Kelly Ethan says:
In my early twenties I headed to England with my father. We toured around various tourist sites and ended up visiting Dover Castle and the tunnels underneath.
The tunnels had been around since medieval times but had been in use in World War one and two for a headquarters and for communication and other secretive actions. In fact some of the lower tunnels are still in use today and store classified materials.
A tour guide showed the upper areas first and then we moved into lower rooms and passages. Lighting was dim and sometimes non-existent. Atmosphere was somewhat suffocating but the tunnels were freezing cold. Everything looked like the operators had just walked out for a smoko and would be back any minute. An eerie feeling.
We moved with a group into a small room and the tour guide excused himself to speak to another staff member in the tunnel outside. Part of the room was roped off and full of old desks and communication equipment and lots of wires. My father and I were at the back of the group. By this stage I was tired and just wanted food and drink. I was counting the minutes down to the end of the tour.
I’m not claustrophobic but the tunnels had my teeth on edge from some reason. Bored, I looked over into the corner and saw an older man in a naval uniform with a small beard. He was in the shadows of the room but you could easily work out his face. I thought he was a mannequin until he nodded to me. Very serious man, no smile but not intimidating. I was impressed at the fact the guides had dressed up on the tour and mentioned it to my father.
He looked over but couldn’t see anything. When I turned back there was nothing there. A few minutes later the guide came back and gave us the spiel of the room. Apparently there’d been quite a few deaths in the room as the power would go off and people would accidentally walk into the wires and electrocute themselves. He then told us about a naval officer who had died there in the blackout. A gentleman with a beard.
I freaked out when I realized that’s who I’d seen. My father continued with the tour but I chose to head to the cafe.
Completely freaked out.
October 14, 2013 — 4:26 AM
Wendy Christopher says:
I live quite near Dover Castle, and I know from the stories I’ve heard that you’re far from alone in seeing that particular guy. In fact, many of the tour guides will tell anyone who’s seen him that they’re ‘lucky’ to have done so. Strange interpretation of ‘lucky,’ but there you go… ;^)
October 14, 2013 — 6:58 AM
Kelly Ethan says:
scared the wombat out of me. Was terrified lol.
October 14, 2013 — 5:28 PM
Soy says:
I’m going to come back and read these when I’m NOT just about to go to bed….
October 14, 2013 — 6:06 AM
summerstommy2 says:
When my mother died I lived a long way from my home. She died very suddenly and so the shock of it was immense. That night when I went to bed my mothers voice as clear as clear, came into my head, she was saying goodbye to me.
October 14, 2013 — 6:24 AM
Miranda says:
When my mom’s father died, she said that she half woke up, feeling as though he had come to sit on the edge of her bed (she was an adult, married and living hours away). She received the phone call that he died a few minutes later, but she already knew that it had happened.
October 15, 2013 — 11:21 PM
summerstommy2 says:
Thanks Miranda I have heard stories such as yours. I do believe something like that happens on many occasions.
I had no such experience when my dad died a year ago, i guess sitting with him and holding his as he passed was enough for him.
October 16, 2013 — 2:02 AM
Wendy Christopher says:
There was an old, abandoned house in a wood near my school as a kid that was rumoured to be haunted (yeah, I know – couldn’t be more cliched if it tried!) I mostly wasn’t bothered with it, but one time when I was ten I, a friend and my younger sister ended up there after playing in the woods. None of us really believed in the stories, but we thought it might be fun to explore the old house, so my sister and friend looked around the front while I snuck around the back on my own.
I didn’t even get as far as the back door before I heard the very angry snarling of a dog from a bush right behind me – and then the crash of leaves as something charged out of it. It didn’t sound like a huge dog – sort of Jack-Russell-sized – but it was snarling like The Hound from Hell and at that time I was scared stiff of dogs so I didn’t even turn around to look at it; I just legged it back round the front of the house. Even though I was running too fast to look back and see it I could hear it right behind me, and even feel a draught from its teeth as it tried to snap at my ankles. ‘Bricking it’ doesn’t even come CLOSE to describing the fear.
I carried on sprinting for my life until I saw my friend and my sister ahead of me. When they saw me they looked… puzzled. “What’s up?” my friend said.
What’s UP? What the bloody hell did they THINK was up?? And then I suddenly realised I couldn’t hear the dog anymore… I turned around and it was gone. Nothing there at all – not even a sign of a dog running back off into the undergrowth. I told them both that a dog was chasing me and asked them if they heard it. Neither of them had – and they didn’t see it behind me at any point either.
Well, I might’ve been scared of dogs but I wasn’t having THAT; I marched off to the back of the house again to see where that bloody hound had gone. Making me look like a right plank… I got to the same bush again and immediately heard the snarl and the sound of something bursting through the leaves towards towards me. On instinct I started to run again – but this time after a couple of yards I managed to look behind me. At the very same instant the snarling stopped – and there was nothing behind me again.
I have absolutely no explanation for it, even to this day. But we didn’t hang out there anymore after that.
October 14, 2013 — 6:53 AM
Carl Sinclair says:
In around 2001, I was working in the UK for Essex & Suffolk Water. They had offices in an old boarding school, which before that had been a nunnery. When I first started everyone told me the usual ghost stories. The old cross in the chapel (now a call centre) would come through the pain as a stain, no matter how much they pained it. All manner of other curses and stories, including wandering nuns, angered at the transformation of their sacred building. Quite frankly, I thought it was a load of bullshit.
Then one day I was up on the top floor (the nun’s quarters once upon a time) and walking along the empty corridor to a storage room at the end. I saw a woman, dressed as a nun in front of me. I have no idea how she got there, but she was there. I watched her walk (as I followed, carefully) down the end, to the storage room. I watched her pull a set of keys (on a brass keychain) open the door, walk in and shut it behind. I stood outside for like 5 minutes, finally unlocking it with my own key (it was locked). I walked in. The store room was totally empty, other than stock. There was nobody in there. Nobody hiding. No way out other than the way I came in. I know what I saw, and it happened.
Now, in saying that, I don’t believe I saw a ghost. I’m not against the idea, but I doubt they exist as some supernatural creature, out to haunt. I think instead it has something to do with time, our reality or something based in science that causes us to see things like this. I think that it was some sort of glimpse in time (via a wormhole type deal) or some flash of an alternative reality (I believe in the multi-earth idea).
So there you are. I saw something, maybe it was a ghost. I think it was more likely something we can explain in science once we understand the universe.
(I left out the part where I nearly pissed my pants & screamed – cause it makes me look like a puss)
October 14, 2013 — 7:15 AM
Reay Jespersen says:
Freakiest thing that happened to me was in my first apartment away from home, in the basement of a house.
There was a small but serviceable bathroom in it whose mirror would fog up quickly when I took a shower, so when I’d get out and be drying my hair (back in the days when I had enough hair to bother drying), it’d be with a very hazy, abstract reflection.
I noticed one morning in that steamy reflection that rather than being their usual dark selves, my eyes seemed to have a noticeable glow to them. Thinking it was a reflection of some odd light – though it had never happened before, and no lighting had changed – I moved to head around, and found that the glowing look to my (hazy) eyes followed the movements of my head. This was no reflection of some odd light that only worked at certain angles in the mirror’s reflection; it stayed with my eyes and behaved as true glowing eyes would.
It was cool and interesting, but I can’t lie: with imagination enough for ten people, I was also a bit freaked out by it. What was it? How could it be? Something external, surely, but… what if it wasn’t?
The glowing eye effect in the hazy mirror disappeared as quickly as it showed up maybe a month later. And a couple of decades later, I’ve still no clue what caused it.
But if any of you hear about some very weird event in the future that seems to have me at the epicenter, kindly keep this in mind and check into it, won’t you?
October 14, 2013 — 7:26 AM
Davide Mana says:
This was in 1992, and I was living in London – sharing an apartment with other students.
My flat-mates being somewhat insufferable, I started taking long strolls in the neighborhood to let off some steam – better go for a walk than get crazy and/or start a fight.
I used to walk without a purpose, often getting lost and having to trace my way back.
It was ok.
So, one night, late in May, I’m walking along this deserted street, and there’s one of those systems that use a sensor, and light the street lamps as you approach – so that only a small tract of sidewalk is illuminated, and that’s where you are.
Coming at a crossroads, I stop to decide which way to go, and here it happens – the street lights in front of me are lighting up in sequence, as if someone along the street was coming towards me. Only there’s nobody.
So there’s this weird Billy Jean sort of thing going – the sidewalk is being lit up, but there’s no Michael Jackson moonwalking towards me.
The street is deserted.
I stare for a a few secs, then look around in search of an explanation, and see I’m standing in front of a semidetached house with a big Egyptian Eye of Ra painted on the door and tinted church-like glasses at the window.
Years of reading Lovecraft kicked in.
I thought “Church of Dagon” and I ran away before the light reached me.
Never found an explanation, never went there again.
October 14, 2013 — 7:54 AM
Stefan says:
One time I was staying over at a friend’s place and just as I was falling asleep (that weird moment between reality and dreamland) I saw a woman in a floral dress in the corner of my eye – long greasy tresses covering her face.
Of course as a man of considerable testicular fortitude I screamed my lungs out.
In the end nobody was there, but my friend’s neighbor told me that there used to live a similar looking woman the in the apartment above my friend’s. She died of lung cancer.
October 14, 2013 — 7:56 AM
Emily Wenstrom says:
Oh fun.
I haven’t had many truly creepy things happen to me. But there’s been a few oddities, sure.
I used to live in this historic old building in Michigan. There were just two apartments in it, and it was pretty nice. The building was super old but the living space was newly renovated and had some cool exposed brick and such. We eventually found out that apparently the space was at one point a dentist’s office, and when they had started the renovations to make it living space, it still had the old rusty dentists chairs in it. So okay fine, it’s no murder scene, but it made me look at the exposed brick a little differently late at night.
So one night I’m reading in my bed and my cat comes in and starts just staring at the wall near my bedstand. Whatever, it’s a cat. Cats are freaking weird. But he just keeps staring. Not at me, but right next to me. After about 15 minutes or so of this, the cat suddenly hisses and goes into full panic mode–eyes dilated, tail straight up, hair raised all down his back–and then sprints out of the room at full speed.
I figured that was good enough for me and left too.
October 14, 2013 — 8:57 AM
Mikey Campling says:
One night I had a vivid dream that a close friend had died. It was so disturbing and realistic that I didn’t tell him for a few days. I told him over a beer, trying to make a joke of it but his face fell and he seemed genuinely upset. He explained that on the night I had the dream, his estranged father, after whom he was named, fell down the stairs and died. This memory has always made me feel uneasy even though I am completely sceptical about the ‘supernatural’.
October 14, 2013 — 9:56 AM
mittensmorgul says:
I was sitting in my Comfy Chair the other night, no one else in the house. Behind my chair is a Celtic lap harp. One moment all was silence. A moment later, a single, clear note rang out from the harp. One string was plucked, loudly and deliberately, by SOMETHING. Harps don’t play themselves, right?
October 14, 2013 — 10:34 AM
Aerin says:
Disneyland is, by many accounts, a pretty severely haunted place, and everyone I know who’s worked there has had at least one ghost encounter. I had two, both at the Opera House inside the theater.
The first time, I was sitting in the back, watching the movie and babysitting the audience. All of the sudden, something kicked the back of my chair. This might not seem weird, except the chair sat a couple of inches from the back wall–not close enough for it to be merely something from the office on the other side, but far too close for anything to be behind me. I thought it might be nothing, but it happened again. Okay, I thought, don’t bother me and I won’t bother you. It stopped.
The second time, I was exiting a show, and while I was giving the spiel, the doorknob behind me started jiggling. That little closet connected back through to the lobby, so I figured it was Javi trying to mess with me and thought nothing of it. Lobby doors open, audience comes in, and it’s time for us to switch places, so I asked him if he’d been backstage. He swore up and down that he hadn’t, and turned to look at the door behind him–just in time to see it swing open. It wasn’t a door that had problems staying shut, either; in three years of working there, that was the only time I ever saw it move on its own.
Our ghosts were all pretty chill, though, and occasionally helpful (like the one in the Matterhorn who would turn the work lights back on if you asked her nicely). Eternity at the Happiest Place on Earth is probably a pretty sweet gig.
October 14, 2013 — 10:34 AM
Nicole says:
I ran a 5K race through Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia this past weekend. That’s weird enough, right? My husband ran it with me–his only strategy was to beat the two giant breasts (not my own, thank you) running behind him through the graveyard: two people jogging together, each dressed as a single boob. I totally count this as a strange sighting, especially when we were running through an historic cemetery. ;p
The other oddity from the run: seeing an 1855 mausoleum with Egyptian symbols on it with very deep, very fresh cracks in the marble–almost as if someone were trying to push their way OUT. Yes, I ran a little faster at that point.
October 14, 2013 — 10:37 AM
deathfrisbee2000 says:
I give tours of an old, abandoned mine in Keystone, South Dakota, and even without possible hauntings, the place is creepy enough on its own. At the end of the mine, I turn the lights out and click on a lighter—it’s supposed to simulate what it would be like to work with just candles underground.
On this particular tour it was just myself and an elderly couple, but when I clicked on the lighter, there was a fourth person. A man dressed in 1890s mining attire, staring at the point in the wall where the gold vein is visible.
Needless to say the lights came on quick, and I finished the rest of my tour in record time.
But that’s not the creepiest part.
For about several weeks afterwards, electronics in my house began turning on and shutting off on their own, almost randomly. My wife told me that whatever I saw was trying to contact me. Part of me thought that was the coolest thing in the world, but a good chunk also didn’t want that to happen. At all.
Those few weeks of weird ended in a few minutes of sheer terror.
I was sitting at home, wife was gone at a friend’s, doing something nerdy—painting miniatures or something—when from the next room over I heard singing. It wasn’t a radio suddenly turned on or anything, it was—I swear—a woman singing.
Sad and beautiful, the song immediately caused two reactions in me. On one hand, I wanted to leap to my feet and follow the music, not out of a sense of curiosity about *why* music was playing, but I literally felt beckoned. At the same time, I was rooted to the spot with the greatest terror I have ever felt in my life. I knew, KNEW, that if I went into that room to see what was singing, I wouldn’t come back out.
After several minutes the singing ended. I got up, grabbed a coat, and joined my wife at our friend’s house. I did not sleep well that night.
October 14, 2013 — 10:45 AM
Guinea Pig says:
I was working in a pub in Cyprus in 2005 as a backing singer with my ex-husband and I was over by the pool table next to the bar waiting for our set to start
I was sat on a tall wooden stool and there was an identical wooden stool next to me that no one was sitting on.
I was just shooting the breeze with the bar staff when out of nowhere, the empty wooden stool next to me started rocking back and forth, like someone had knocked it. But no one had touched it. I hadn’t kicked it by mistake or anything and there was no one else nearby.
When I say it was rocking back and forth, it was violent, almost to the point of tipping over, like an earthquake was happening except that was the only thing being shaken.
I laughed, thinking someone must have been playing a practical joke with a piece of fishing line or something. I looked up expecting to see smiles on the faces of the bar staff behind the bar. But what I saw were white faces and shock. Two of the girls were clutching each other in fright.
It later transpired that the owner of the bar was involved in a car accident in which his girlfriend was killed and he believed that her spirit/soul/ghost was haunting the bar. Some of the bar staff refused to go into the kitchen (which was no longer in use) on their own because they said they felt “a presence” there.
I actually checked the stool for fishing line just to see if it was a very elaborate, convincing joke but there was no fishing line. Also, it would have been impossible to shake the stool that way with a length of fishing line.
To this day, although I remain an ardent skeptic about such things, I still have no explanation for what happened.
October 14, 2013 — 10:49 AM
KBSpangler says:
I was lost in the woods once….
(isn’t that how the scary stories always start?)
It was snowing, and I was in college, and my friend Jill and I had no sense so we went wandering through the woods at midnight. I think we wanted to appreciate the snow or something, but this quickly turned into “appreciating a nor’easter” and we were in serious danger. Like, branches were breaking from the weight of the snow, Jill saying we should lie down and rest for a while type-danger. Then we came out of the woods in the middle of a field, and we were so very happy because we knew where we were, and Look! There’s a person dancing way over there! We’re saved!
We set out across the snow drifts to meet up with this other person, but the closer we came… Well. It was still a figure, it was still dancing, but it was _not_ a person. Nor was it a snow cyclone or any natural phenomenon. It was pitch black, with no features other than a head, torso, and limbs, and somehow we still knew it was _looking_ at us. But we kept getting closer, because it was in the middle of our path home…
Jill and I got maybe within a hundred yards of it, then decided we were better off lost in the woods. We retraced our steps until they were lost under the new snowfall, and then we kept walking.
That’s not the weird part. The weird part was when we got back home (finally), we learned our boyfriends had gone out looking for us. They had ended up in a field where there was a figure dancing, way out in the distance…
October 14, 2013 — 10:49 AM
Sandra says:
I love this story! So weird and creepy, like a Dali painting!
October 25, 2013 — 3:04 PM
Kimberly Peck says:
This one is weird, but not exactly scary. It happened to my younger sister. One time when we were visiting my father we decided to go for a drive around some of the places we used to live. On our way towards “Stinkville”, called such do to the never ending stench of cow dung, we started passing some houses. My sister noticed a car was backing out of one of the driveways and wasn’t stopping. She began to alert my father about the impending collision since he seemed not to notice the danger, but then we passed by unscathed. Surprised, she looked back and saw that the car was still there, but now she could see through it! I looked at her funny, and asked her what was wrong to which she then told me this story. We refer to it as the ghost car. ^^
October 14, 2013 — 11:47 AM
feralbulb says:
Must have been around twenty. The Matrix was just one boring daily vacuum that kept repeating itself again and again and again because no one had quite got the hang of it. Living through different days that looked the same, repeating themselves forever with no hope showing and, besides, I’d never heard of Groundhog Day. Grey clouds. Grey clouds stuck between mountains North and South. The job. The boss. The Authority. No more. Not again. Only the rut. The rut only. Living in the city of grey. Walking back home. Forgot to get a newspaper, my newspaper. No computers. No mobiles. What year was that? Damn newspapers! I would have remembered the year. It’s their fault: them. Figure the year. Just when you think there should be news, you can’t lay your hands on the fucking paper. Newspapers are tricksters. The curse of the newspaper, ever heard of it? It happens. It happened to me like King Glory Shit happens. Know the feeling? Too late to walk back to the newsagent. Take the car and get the news from afar? Flying news? Mind reading news? There’s no car park on the way back after dark. Besides, it’s almost dark and I haven’t a cent on me.
Here you are dearest little white car, neatly parked, unused, sitting nicely and neatly by the clean and perfect pavement’s side (don’t you love pavements?). Hello dearie, had a nice day doing the street? Missed me? What’s that on your white roof? Today’s newspaper? Huh? You went and got it for me? Sure. I love you too. Just for me. The newspaper. Doh. Never mind the news, it’s the thought that counts.
October 14, 2013 — 12:00 PM
Bonita Chambers says:
My daughter’s babysitter lived in the House of 40 Doors, built in Ohio around 1840. The babysitter and her husband were a young couple with a young daughter of their own. They were restoring parts of this huge house and making part into an apartment to help them pay the mortgage. One afternoon when I picked up my daughter and was talking to the sitter, I heard heavy footsteps overhead.
“Is George home early,” I asked.
“No.”
“Oh. You rented the apartment?”
“No.””Then who is up there?”
“I don’t know.”
The footsteps continued as she informed me that she and her husband had gone up many times to check and never found anyone there or any reason for the footsteps. Another time as we were talking in the same room, a rocking chair began to rock. With no one in it. The babysitter just shrugged and said whoever was pacing must get tired and rock to rest.
Nothing sinister ever happened, but I’m not sure I could have lived there.
October 14, 2013 — 12:08 PM
Clwedd says:
Years ago my partner and I bought an 1870’s workers cottage and moved in. She worked shift at the time and I worked straight days so I was often home alone with our son in the evenings.
From the first week we moved in we started to notice odd sounds. It was an old timber house and it creaked and groaned and was drafty, so we wrote them off. Those were just the sounds of the house. However, I came to breakfast one morning and my wife asked me why I didn’t come all the way down to the basement the previous night. I had no idea what she was talking about. I generally got to bed at about 9:30. I was rarely up when she came home at 11:30. She said when she got home she went to the basement and started to fold some laundry. She was still wide-awake from working. Not too long later she heard me walk along the top floor landing where our bedroom was, walk down the first set of stairs, across the living-room directly above her, open the door to the basement and start to walk down the final set of stairs. But I only came halfway down the stairs. I never appeared at the bottom and I didn’t answer her when she spoke to me.
I hadn’t woken up that night. I don’t sleep-walk and I wake up very quickly so I’m not the groggy, have-a-conversation-in-the-morning-which-I-don’t-remember type. Our son was under a year old and couldn’t escape the cot. She went pale and said that this wasn’t a random creak. It was as clear as the sound I had just made coming down to breakfast. It wasn’t me. Following this she wouldn’t stay up if I wasn’t awake as well.
A few weeks later my sister came to stay with us for a month or so. Being 21 and unemployed she usually got up after everyone left for the day. On more then one occasion she would tell us that after we left and she was getting ready in the morning she couldn’t find something like her perfume or nail polish or other small items, but would later find them balanced on the headboard or bedpost in her room. Not in a place where she could miss it or fail to inadvertently knock it over. She didn’t think that the bottles was there when she go up. She was kind of freaked out.
I hadn’t encountered anything myself but I began to feel watch when at the top of the stairs outside the bedrooms, but never saw anything. Then one night I was sitting reading at about 9. I was alone in the house, the baby was sleeping and we didn’t own a TV. From my right there came the sound of a little girl giggling. It was bone chilling and clear. It sounded evil and as if she were only a yard away which just set me off. I could pinpoint the spot in the room where the sound came from. It was the first real thing heard or saw and it totally freaked me out. The baby was still sound asleep. I walked around the house for the next half hour talking to her/it saying things like “This is my home now. You are not welcome here any longer. I want you to leave.” I walked through every room talking in a clear confident voice. I was anything but confident, but I felt that I needed to put on a brave tone to show her/it that I wasn’t going to be frightened. I then stayed up and waited for my wife to come home from work, which I almost never did.
I can’t remember ever having events in the house again over the next four years of living there. True story.
October 14, 2013 — 12:09 PM
Johnny Park says:
Nothing “real,” but a few months ago I had this terrible dream that left me physically sick for days.
It started — I think, because dreams are messy affairs — with this weird white-and-neon-blue syringe. Not a very practical syringe; it looked like something out of a cyberpunk flick. Think GLaDOS or the Terran Adjutant from Starcraft. Just snapshots of it floating in absolute darkness (not OOH DARKNESS SCARY darkness, but there was nothing else. Just a perfectly neutral black background. What did feel wrong were the strange angles the snapshots were taken from. I remember being disturbed by the extreme closeups in particular. Maybe I’m claustrophobic, now that I think about it. Hmm.)
Now, you probably know how dreams are. Maybe it’s different for everyone, but the… general quality of the thing. The feel. When I try to preserve my dreams I want to compare them to movies, or otherwise something observed, easy to portray and understand. But they’re not usually like that. The most innocuous dream feels all fucked up, by simple virtue of being a dream. And so I forget the slippery little fuckers.
But this one really did feel like watching an old film reel, and it’s fucked up in a big, special way, and I obviously still can’t forget it. Cyberpunk syringe to snuff film material. Yeah, you can and should stop reading now, I’ve already ruined my day by drafting the next part.
The “camera” is inside a prison cell. Walls and bars flaked with rust.
Wait for it — zombies. Four of them, or maybe more, I don’t know.
Don’t laugh, these ones are different. Yellow, flayed. Not brainless, not evidently malicious. But you know that sense of detachment that makes horror (shit, non-horror) portrayals of hive-minds so unfailingly creepy? They don’t groan, they don’t shift. Utterly still. No audio, by the way.
Someone — maybe another one of the zombies, maybe living person but asleep — lying on a metal bed surrounded by the zombies. Male or female, child or small adult, doesn’t matter. I remember a hospital gown or a dress like it. They lift him/her, carrying him/her by the limbs, like a battering ram. The walk up to the wall at the head of the bed. Battering ram. Again and again.
Scratch, click. Next scene. Different, but the same. Best left undescribed. Next scene, next scene, next scene. Terrible, depraved acts that I can’t not watch (that I’ve mostly forgotten, what comes to mind are stills of the zombies in different positions in the room). Back to the syringe. Back to the movie.
I wake up. And that’s that.
Maybe the whole thing seems corny to you, or terrible and disturbing and indicative as my status as a budding serial killer or something, but it was less the violence of the acts than HAVING to watch them being committed, compounded by the utter lack of logic and emotion behind the whole thing. Throughout this writing the bad guy in Red Dragon kept popping up in my head and saying “do you see?” like an asshole. Maybe that’s where my subconscious got the lot of it, even though I last read the book years ago. Good book, by the way. I’m not usually into thrillers.
Shit, I dunno. I guess you have to have been there.
October 14, 2013 — 12:17 PM
Sam Witt says:
In a house I rented a few years back, there was a dead spot in the middle of the dining room that killed wifi, cell phone, and radio signals. It was about three feet in diameter and signals could pass through it, but any laptop, phone, or radio inside it simply could not send or receive a signal.
One night I left my laptop on the corner of the dining room table, which just overlapped the dead zone. To my surprise, when I came back for it, the laptop had a wifi connection. Huzzah – the dead zone was gone!
Except …the wifi network the laptop had connected to wasn’t mine. It was called HELLO. When I moved the laptop out of the dead zone, the network connection dropped and I was back to my normal home network. Laptop in the dead zone, back to the HELLO network.
The wifi connection to HELLO was slow, like 56kb modem slow. Images would load at a snail’s pace and video was a nonstarter. Weird.
Shorty after the HELLO network appeared, any time a cell phone or the house wireless phone passed through the dead zone, it would ring. If you stayed in the dead zone and answered the phone, you could hear dead air with occasional pops or clicks. If you said anything, you could hear your own voice, with a slight delay and an annoying echo.
The dead zone stayed there for the whole time we lived in the house, and the HELLO network was there for the last couple of years.
When I mentioned it to the new tenants when I went to fetch our mail, they couldn’t find the dead spot, at all.
October 14, 2013 — 12:23 PM
S.W. Sondheimer says:
Once, when I was a kid and sick with a fever that was high enough to make me uncomfortable but definitely not high enough for hallucinations), I woke up to see a little old man in blue robes sitting at the foot of my bed (foot of bed = theme in these stories I’ve noticed). He was wizened and not at all vicious, but I was… perhaps 11, so it was a bit freaky anyway. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just laid there and looked at him while he started at me. It wasn’t until one of my parents came to check on me that he spun in circles, whirred like a top, and exploded into a cloud of sparks.
I’ve often wished he’d come back so he could chat. It was erie to be sure, but I think he’s probably a lot of fun.
October 14, 2013 — 12:57 PM
Clwedd says:
A couple of years ago my wife and I were traveling around New Zealand’s South Island. We hired a little camper van and were planning to stay in caravan parks for the duration of the trip. On our first night on the road we traveled from Christ Church to Hokitika. It had been raining and it was getting dark as we pulled into town. There was a road sign for a caravan park so we headed to it. Turned out that it wasn’t a regular caravan park but a dormitory for a church set on the hill. The caretaker let us stay, as there was no one else there. We could either stay in our van or use one of the rooms. Either way we could use the kitchen and watch TV in the sitting room in the dorm building. We opted for the van, as it was our first night on the road of a grand adventure around NZ.
We had made on our dinner on the camp stove in the van. It was chilly our so we put the heater on and watch some TV in the lounge room. The wind had picked up and it was blowing rain against the windows.
The inside of the dorm building was truly bizarre. It was a rambling series of joined building and extensions, which had evolved over decades. It was also decorated with all the donations of the parishners. One room had all pastoral landscape paintings, another was Glam 80’s Pop Stars, and another was newspaper clipping of different events in NZ. Rooms would lead to one-another and sometimes they might meet up again in a loop. There were little cell like rooms with bedframes but no mattresses where you could imagine sad little orphans living out their lives.
My wife went to put the kettle on in the kitchen, where I had washed up after dinner. She came back and sat beside me. “Would you make the tea, I put the kettle on.”
“Ok,” I replied, “but it’s a freaky kitchen.” I had felt a little odd when I was in there earlier. Not one thing in the kitchen had been updated or changed since the 1950’s. A few months earlier we had watched The Orphanage, and this place had the same feeling. My wife refused to go into the kitchen more than that one time. It didn’t help that the caretaker would move around in the other half of the dorm building (which we were locked from) turning lights on and off without making any noise. Well, we assume that it was her.
We refused to go to the toilet alone. I would use one stall and my wife would use the other. Separate male and female toilets were too isolated for us that night. This was all before 8pm. In the middle of the night when we were sleeping in the van my wife decided not to go to the toilet alone so she woke me to go with her. I completely understood her feelings.
The next morning the sky had cleared and it was hard to imagine that the place was intimidating in the dark.
October 14, 2013 — 1:41 PM
Melanie Marttila says:
Tonsillitis is hell. The true infection, the one that leaves your four-year-old self screaming, the monster pain in your ears reaching back into your brain, your throat, latching on with needle-like claws, and shredding.
I remember that.
I don’t remember the inevitable tonsillectomy, but what I do remember is what happened next.
In the middle of the night, I woke, coughing, had trouble breathing, the air moving in and out of me with a rattling slurp, the sound of milk bubbling through a straw. The next cough shot a black spatter onto my pyjamas and sheets. I couldn’t summon the breath to call for my mom right away, my first attempt emerged a thready burble.
Each stuttering breath and cough produced a little more noise, until I was shouting, “Mom!”
The light switch flicked on, momentarily blinding me, but one look at the blood and I yelled again, despite the jagged burning in my throat, tried to crawl back from it, but it followed. I was covered in blood.
My stitches burst.
A frantic ride to the hospital and the doctor ordered me back into surgery and my parents were ordered out of the examination room, the male nurse assuring them that he could handle getting the intravenous inserted.
He sent Mom away. He tried to stab me. I showed him.
Mom and Dad were brought back in, allowed to hold my hand, held my legs down, while the newly bandaged nurse taped my arm to a block of wood and did his worst. In the moment, I hated them for that, for letting the nurse hurt me.
The road back from that second surgery was a long one. I’d ingested so much blood, I became incontinent in the most embarrassing way, my family doctor plucked clots of blood out of my ears, and nothing, not even ice cream, tasted good for weeks. I have a picture of myself right after the surgery, pale, skinny. It was Christmas, but I couldn’t smile. I wore a red housecoat, huddled underneath it.
What’s stayed with me the most was the dream.
My first night home, I dreamed of my bed, empty. The cheery yellow and white striped flannel sheets, the blue wool blanket turned down, the dark wood frame with the toy cupboard built in. Just the bed in a kind of spot light, the rest of the room dark. The image of the bed receded into the darkness and finally disappeared.
When I woke, I felt certain that I’d died. Calm and content, I recalled the dream, and I understood. The life I’d lived before was over. That was the dream of my sleeping self. I died in that world, and woke up in this. It made so much sense.
In many ways, that’s when I was born, in blood and darkness, emerging from a dream into a new life.
Here’s the blog post with a little more detail: http://melaniemarttila.ca/2013/02/24/a-life-sentence-with-mortal-punctuation-part-2/
The story related above was included in Spooky Sudbury http://www.amazon.ca/Spooky-Sudbury-Tales-Eerie-Unexplained/dp/1459719239
October 14, 2013 — 2:28 PM
Morag says:
My first paranormal encounter happened on a school trip to Inchcolm Island in the Firth of Forth. There’s an old abbey on the island that’s looked after by Historic Scotland and the school had arranged for us to visit it. Anyway we were all running about exploring the abbey and the island, it was a warm spring day but inside the abbey was quite cool except for one room. Only two of us felt the heat coming through the doorway and when we tried to go in we were both overcome with feelings of anger, not our own but directed at us. All the other girls were going in and out of the room quite happily but neither of us could cross the threshold. I can’t remember what the room was called but it was the only place the monks were allowed a fire and to essentially hang out and have free time. Years later I told my Mum about this experience and she said she had experienced the exact same thing. She’d gone with a boyfriend of hers who was [in her words} “a solid, dependable type not given to flights of fancy.” She also hadn’t been able to enter the room, he had but came straight back out saying the room felt “awfu unchancy” which is scots for I’ve just had the shit scared out of me and I need to change my trousers now please! There have been others over the years, notably one where I experienced the death of a young soldier boy but that was my first and it has always stayed with me.
October 14, 2013 — 2:48 PM
Stephanie says:
I was asleep and I heard a woman’s voice right next to my ear. She said, “Sarah Furner is going to die in a plane crash to Florida.” I didn’t budge or open my eyes, apparently she was annoyed because she said again loudly , “SARAH FURNER IS GOING TO DIE IN A PLANE CRASH TO FLORIDA!” I sat up in my bed and began to shake. I said ok! I got it!
Sarah was a RN that I worked with and when I came into work the next day I went looking for her only to learn that she wasn’t there. I told another coworker what I dreamed and she reached out and grabbed my wrist and said, “Oh my God! There is no way that you could have known this but yesterday we were in here talking and Sarah said that she was going to go to Florida next week.” Here came the shakes again!
In fact the both of us were shaking.
The next day Sarah came in to work and I asked her if I could tell her about my dream. She said yes and I proceeded to tell her what the woman said. She became emotional and began to tear up. She told me that her husband had been murdered the year before in a park and that it was still unsolved. She told me that they had a little girl and that she was her daughter’s only family. She gave me a hug and canceled her trip to Florida.
We never heard of an planes going down near that time frame, but who knows what could have happened if she’d boarded one headed for the sunshine state.
October 14, 2013 — 2:52 PM
gnashchick says:
My maternal grandmother died when I was 9 years old. She died suddenly in a different city from where we lived. It took several days for the hospital to release her and drive her home. When she arrived, my grandfather was devastated to discover that her wedding ring was missing. He assumed the worst – that it had been stolen by EMT or hospital staff. When my mother and my aunt flew in from across the country, they helped Papa search for the ring, but they never found it.
Southern funerals are legendary. There are certain rituals and observances that must be carried out in a particular order. My grandmother was a pillar of the community and the funerary rites took nearly a week to complete. After all was said and done, my relatives went back to their homes, leaving my grandfather and I to go through the hard part of getting on with life.
One night, I was in bed trying to sleep, when my bedroom door opened. My grandmother peeked in, then opened the door. She said that she couldn’t sleep either, because there was something important she needed to tell me. She told me to follow her down to the kitchen. When we got there, she pointed at the little drawer at the bottom of the spice rack and told me that her ring was inside that drawer. She couldn’t wear it when she kneaded bread, so she put it in there to keep from losing it. The ring was mine. She had always wanted me to have it.
I opened the drawer, took out her wedding ring, and when I turned around, she was gone. I didn’t tell my grandfather that I’d found it, out of fear that I would be accused of theft.
Months later, my grandfather was going through her shelf of cookbooks and came across her datebook. In the weeks before her death, she had written a list of items, titled “Inherit” that detailed her jewelry and luxury items (furs, handbags, and such) with names out to the side.
The last entry: Wedding Ring – SK
I still have it.
October 14, 2013 — 3:05 PM
Carmen Piranha says:
My story is kind of pedestrian, literally, compared with most of these, but it’s remained with me for close to 35 years.
My sister, mother and I were shopping at a large mall in SE Michigan, walking down the concourse and discussing something — our recent purchases, where we wanted to stop next, nuclear physics; who remembers at this point? What I do remember is that mid-sentence I stopped dead in my tracks, wheeled around and looked back over my right shoulder. It was as if someone had whispered, “Hey, you!” in my ear, although I had actually heard nothing. My eyes locked directly onto those of a man, about 45 years old, clear across the concourse and at least 40 feet away from me. The feeling of contact was so strong that I stood there staring at him, and he at me, until my sister asked what was wrong.
The only emotion I felt as we stared at each other was pure BACK OFF! aimed towards him. I turned and rejoined my mother and sister and never saw him again, and I still don’t have a clue what that was all about.
October 14, 2013 — 3:17 PM
M.A. Kropp says:
I had a Siamese cat for 11 years. We got Fudge from a local breeder when she was a kitten. She was as opinionated and delightful as any Siamese. When she was 11, she developed abdominal cancer that metastised to her liver. She became unable to eat from the nausea it caused, and we decided it was time to let her go. When we got her ashes back, I put them on the shelf with the other kitties we’ve lost over the years. (I am planning an memorial garden where they will all be placed eventually.) For a few weeks after we brought her ashes home, I would find the container with Fudge’s on the floor, several times a day. The shelf they are on is stable and wide, and the containers are not at the edge. The room is closed most of the day, so it was not one of the other cats getting up on the shelf. But that container was on the floor, time and time again. Finally, one day, I picked it up, sat in a chair, and told her I was sorry we had to make the decision we did, but it was the best for her, because she was so sick, and that I missed her terribly. Put the container back on the shelf, and to this day, it has not budged. Yes, I believe in ghosts, human and animal.
October 14, 2013 — 3:23 PM
RTAllwin says:
I was driving the subway in Stockholm. Just as I am closing the doors to leave the central station, an asian man wearing white sneakers, blue jeans and jean jacket comes limping toward the train. He reaches for the doors just as they go together and lock with him on the outside, fingers almnost touching the doors. I turn around and see the green ‘all clear’ signal light so I start the train. The time between him stretching his hand toward the doors and me getting the ‘all clear’ is about 1-2 seconds.
When I get to the next station and open the doors, he steps off the train – blue jeans and jean jacket, white sneakers, limp and all!
October 14, 2013 — 6:19 PM
gabidaniels says:
I was fourteen and home alone on a Saturday night watching my favorite movie at the time, Some Kind of Wonderful.
Watts was about to teach Keith how to kiss when the basement door slammed shut. And I mean SLAMMED, like it should have broken the door frame. A moment later something fell off the wall. I still can’t remember what.
What I do remember was the fear and trying to make sense of it. I finally settled on the only logical thing– a stranger was in the house. No one was. Not that I investigated. I sat in the same position on the couch. Didn’t even reposition myself when my feet, then legs fell asleep.
In my child’s mind, whoever or whatever it was would get me if I moved. It was that simple.
I have goose bumps writing this. God, that was some scary shit!
October 15, 2013 — 12:45 AM
Remi Jones says:
As I was drifting off to sleep in my grandmother’s bed when I was a little girl I heard a knocking on the wall. I woke her up to ask her what it was, which was stupid because even as a child I was fully aware that she wasn’t quite right in the head, in a harmless way of course. She told me that it was angels saying good-night. Satisfied with the answer I went back to sleep.
I thought of that conversation with her often over the following thirty years, maybe because it was a sweet moment. I don’t know. I do know that the knocking was most likely from the pipes in the wall, or perhaps it was a tree outside being blown in the wind.
Thirty years later my grandmother lay dying in a hospital about an hour away from my home. Everyone around me, which included some nurses and a few stray relatives that I did not know, assumed she would die that night. I was very sleepy but determined to stay until the very end, Around midnight I suddenly woke up and knew that I had to get home, and I did leave, much to the surprise of everyone around her bedside.
They told me not to worry that she would probably still be around the next day. I believed them because I didn’t have a choice. I just knew I had to get home.
Back at home I paid the babysitter (my husband was out of town), gave my sleeping kids kisses on the forehead and collapsed fully clothed onto my bed.
Around 2:00 according to the blinking light on the VCR (this was many years ago) my phone rang. My grandmother was dead. I put down the phone (landline) and heard the same knocking on my wall that I had heard in her bed as a a child. It went on for a good ten minutes and I was fully awake. Good-bye Grandma.
October 15, 2013 — 1:35 AM
Leifthesailor says:
So on our ship there is a legitimate ghost floating around. Supposedly, it’s a Chief Engineer from the eighties that got fried working on the main switchboard. We had a light off recently and pretty much everyone saw a figure in a blue boiler suit come and go. He was kind enough to fix the Mr. Coffee that had been broken for months for us. Now that the ship is tied up again he seems to be less active. Maybe he’s the ships guardian angel.
October 15, 2013 — 7:49 AM
Katy Mersino says:
I live in a stairwell apartment, Army housing. I’d never felt anything odd or spooky and despite a penchant for scary stories I’m not sure I believe in ghosts. The closest I’ve come to questioning that was last December.
My husband was deployed so there was just me, my 2 kids and our dog. The dog, a black Labrador, slept on my bed, gated in the bedroom to stop him wandering in the night. One night at around 2am he started whining at me, which was unusual. I told him to lie down but he wouldn’t quit and kept going to the gate, looking at me…he seemed agitated. Assuming he needed to go out to pee, I got dressed for the cold and opened the baby gate. Instead of going to the door though, he went into the main part of the house, to the windows, pacing around in a way I’d never seen before. I took him out anyway but he was so distracted and jumpy and didn’t seem to need to go. He was very on edge, guarding me. We came back in, I got back in bed and I started to go back to sleep. Then he started again….whining, wanting out of the room. I started to get a bit spooked…..I let him out and he did the same thing, eventually just sitting in the middle of the room looking at me. Not knowing what else to do I took him out again, but he wouldn’t pee and led me back to the front of the building and sat down under our window……in the middle of the night, in the dark. I coaxed him back in and he headed straight to my kids rooms, walked round each room, the bathroom, the kitchen and finally back to my bedroom. He paced awhile, then lay down next to the bed but wouldn’t get back on the bed.
The next night, I was setting the coffee machine before bed, had turned all the lights off apart from the kitchen. The dog was fast asleep on the couch. Next thing I know I hear him alarm barking, LOUD. I run into the living room to find him in the middle of the room barking at my recliner, teeth bared, low-growling, and backing away. I see nothing but the dog is very freaked out and after that, very jumpy and wouldn’t leave my side.
Next day, I notice that a set of Christmas lights I had on had stopped working. Figuring they are faulty I went to unplug them, only to find that they were already unplugged…..just the one set out of 2. I know I plugged them both in, the kids were at school and the dog doesn’t have opposable thumbs. Around this time I also find the dog standing in the living room watching something move around the ceiling, as well as chasing something around that I couldn’t see…..not just running around but actually following something that it seemed he could see.
Finally, a day or two later again in the middle of the night, I wake up to feeling tap-tap-tap on my foot, very distinct. I assumed it was the dogs tail until I realized that he was sleeping next to my head.
Then…..nothing. It’s never happened again. I tell myself it was just a series of slightly odd things that I would never have noticed had they not happened in the same week. Occasionally the dog does still growl and bark at empty rooms and walls. That’s normal, right?
October 15, 2013 — 7:58 AM
Mozette says:
I remember when my Pop (my Dad’s Dad) was very sick in hospital and near death, I didn’t want to go and see him (I don’t like seeing people when they are so close to dying; as I like to remember at their best in life; not when they’re about to pass away… it’s just something that’s been with me since I was little). Anyway, I went to see a movie – I don’t remember which one now – and halfway through it, I looked down at my watch and it read 2:45pm and I said, “Goodbye Pop: at which people around me shushed me. and I ignored them. I didn’t know why I looked at it as the movie was brilliant and loved it.
When I arrived home and parked the car in the backyard and put the cover over it (I lived at Mum and Dad’s place at the time), Mum was home. She called out the kitchen window that Pop had passed away. I asked what time he passed, she said, “Oh… around 3pm, a bit before.”
October 15, 2013 — 7:59 AM