Have you ever met a ghost?

Do you have any ghost stories you'd like to share? Did you ever have any actual encounters?

• I would die of a heart attack if I ever saw one.

• I wonder if there aren't more ghost stories because the people who see them just instantly drop dead.

• I was walking through a supermarket by my house which is located off a major highway and this girl was walking ahead of me. This was in the early 1990's and before bell bottoms made a comeback in fashion. She was wearing really dirty bell bottoms and had long hair. She was pretty disheveled and stood out of place there. There was no one eles in the aisle with me. She turned around and smiled at me and she had some teeth missing. I just knew for some reason that she was a ghost...her pallor was almost yellow and her face had flecks of dirt on it. I turned around and walked away very fast. I later found out that a prostitute had been picked up at this supermarket and was murdered and thrown in a ditch in the early 70's. Gives me shivers writing about this.

• I believe you, R3, and have had a similar incident. In my case, the girl had on 70's clothing as well with I swear, a greenish, unearthly pallor. She also had bits of what looked like dirt or perhaps spots of rotting flesh on her face. Here's the worst part: she knew my name! When I turned my head for just a split second and looked back up she was gone--as in nowhere, nothing. Your ghost was probably asking for help, or sympathy.

• Everyone has a video camera on their phone these days. One would think we'd start to see some verifiable captured footage. Or at least something truly unexplainable. Wouldn't one? Or can they not be photographed?

• I've had a few episodes in two different locations that defy logical explanation. One had to do with the power in my apt, and only my apt, going off one morning when I was using almost no power that could've caused any "surge" -- my circuit breakers were all ON, no juice at all. The super went to the basement, finding ONLY my apt switched to OFF on the master board, in an area that was locked by a padlock that showed no signs of being tampered with at all. Basically, that switch was for deliberately cutting power during planned electrical work, and would NOT have been "tripped" even if I'd run every socket in my place -- that's what circuit breakers are for! The super was very, very ... confused about the whole thing. I had another episode in that NYC apt that I'll post if anyone's interested.

  The%20Haunted%20One

• A g-g-g-g-g-ghost!

• oh lord. How old are you people, 6? (or do you just live in Alabama?)

• I am ancient and have never learned anywhere NEAR Alabama -- next question?

  R%206

• We had one in our old house for about twelve years. To me, he was pale, bald, and had long boney fingers. Other people said that he had a green glow. I never saw a glow. I'd catch glimpses of him peripherally during the day. At night, I'd spot him staring at me from the attic cut-out or peeking at me from behind slightly ajar doors. I'd freeze and time would stand still until...nothing. He'd no longer be there. My cousins refused to use our main floor bathroom alone because his top half would materialize above one of the sinks. All of this ended after a house fire. Once we rebuilt, he never showed up again.

• JINKIES GANG!!!

• he's very friendly

  J.%20Lopez

• no. please dont. nobody is interested in your lesbian fiction, R6.

• Has anyone noticed with r3,r4,r6 and r10 that all the ghosts they described have a greenish glow with flecks of dirt on them. I think I'm detecting a pattern here. r10 your post confirmed my belief that ghosts can be gone with fire.

• Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today I wish, I wish he’d go away...

• R5 here is a video about the Hampton Court ghost supposedly caught on CCTV.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D7sjzjyfPJqA

• Whore's don't get a second chance!

  Timmay

• When i was about 11 years old i was sleeping in my brothers bed. He was at college. I woke up during a thunder and lightning storm and saw a spirit. Or ghost floating about 6 inches off the ground in front of the dresser. It has a large mirror on top.(mom still has it in the same place). It was similar to what you would picture a ghost as, like a halloween costume. But it floated and the color was like a dirty white. It was about 5 feet in length max. It didn't have features but i knew it was looking at me. I tried to scream, but nothing would come out. I closed my eyes and opened them and it was still there. When lightning lit the bedroom it vanished in the light. But only for the second or two the room was lit. It stood or floated for a long time and i could see through it barely. It was made of a thick mist that moved like a smoke around it. But like I said the shape was as a halloween costume ghost. Just fluid though. I,d never been so scared and finally closed my eyes and rolled over hoping it would leave. About 2 years later, i was about 13. I finally got a bed of my own.(my dead grandmothers) in the same room, where my two brothers and I slept. It was across the room in front of my brothers bed. Woke up and the spirit.ghost was standing.floating right next to my bed at the end of it. Tried to scream again and nothing came out. Again and again I tried but nothing. Closed my eyes tight and when I opened them it had moved to just in front of the door about seven feet away from the bed. My older brother came upstairs seconds later and turned on the light and I took off running downstairs. That was the last time I,d seen it.

• R18 that was interesting!

• There is no such thing as a ghost. People who believe in such nonsense need to be viciously slapped by the living.

• I fucked one... Oh Wait... I thought you said Goat.

• Yes. Bothwell Hotel, Sedalia, Missouri. I didn't know the place was famously haunted, and a black form in the shape of a man wearing a hat came from the hotel room door to the foot of my bed. And it wasn't just the visual - I could feel the thing, menacing and cold. I had never experienced anything like it. On a second stay (I stayed 30 miles from where a meeting was just because I was fascinated) I didn't see or "meet" anything, but something started growling in one corner of the room, like a large angry dog. No fright on my part, but especially with the specter, it left a long-standing sense of unease. Again, like nothing I have felt before. I reported the experiences to the staff, who told me about the history and showed me their "record book" of incidents. Some staff are petrified to stay the night - the whole rather large (and beautifully maintained - it's perfect) old hotel has different things going on in different parts of the place. As in, when I described the man, the clerk said to another staffer, "He's usually up on 7." AND the Mormon (I didn't know) owners HATE the whole thing, and are in denial and do not try to capitalize on the hauntings. For what it's worth.

• R3. if I were a ghost a fucking supermarket would be the last place I'd hang out.

• [quote]Everyone has a video camera on their phone these days. One would think we'd start to see some verifiable captured footage. Or at least something truly unexplainable. Wouldn't one? Maybe not. Sometimes you can be so startled by something that you don't think about a photo until it's too late. Other times, something can be gone before you even realize what you saw.

• r22, that's crazy!

• Never saw a "ghost" but I lived in a house growing up that I always felt threatened in. The closest neighbor was about 1/2 mile away. I always felt there was something out there in the dark watching me. I couldn't sleep alone until I was in my teens. There were native American hieroglyphics on stones on the property. I dreaded nightfall.

• why dont you bitches try talking to it and see if it talks back. arent you the least bit curious? (otherwise, im sure half of you could bore it to death and IT would be the one running or flying off screaming into the night.)

• Yes, he lives in a firehouse with his buff boyfriend.

  Casper%27s%20Nemesis%20

• My sister works in vet ward at a hospital, and on many occassions obviously has had patiebnts who died in her care. She reported on more than one occassion of ghosts sighting all around the hopsital lounge areas. She said there's even been some ghostly spirits who have been discovered sitting at the piano, playing.

• Spirit tawks to me and mostly just wants you to know they are at peace and with yooze. You know when the flowers wuh late for your weddin' and then showed up? That was your mutha who passed and attendin' your weddin'

  Theresa Caputo

• r29 that was fascinating.

• I've experienced a lot of things ever since I was a child. Most are uneventful or casual but there have been a few scary times.

• Read "Spook" by Mary Roach. I now take ghost stories with a grain of salt. Exposure to electromagnetic fields can create hallucinations that mimic ghostly sights and sounds and feelings.

• People often times see ghosts. Gin really enhances the effect.

• Thanks r33 I'm going to look into it.

• Back in the year 2000 I was sleeping in a London hotel room and had the window open. I was lying on my back with the window directly in front of me when I saw a little girl in a white dress floating in front of the window. There was no sound at all, her dress looked Victorian and she had long blonde hair that was flowing like it was in zero gravity. She looked about 8 or 9 years old and had a brilliant white glow all around her. I was paralyzed with fear, and then she just suddenly disappeared. It was the most frightening experience of my life. It took me a long time to get back to sleep that night. I swear this story is true, I would never make something like this up.

• stop trying to make FEMALE ghosts happen, R36. It is embarrasing and mysangist.

• R36, please. That was just Princess Eugenie of York after one of her helium treatments. A pediatric weight-loss therapy that obviously didn't work.

  Former%20valet/ball%20scratcher%20to%20HRH%20Prince%20Andrew

• damn r10.

• Wow, r10! I would flip the fuck out if I saw what you did.

• All cultures, all over, cite ghosts. And people sure do die a lot. Perhaps there's some kind of spillage. Seems like an apple falling up, though.

• r3 I believe your story about the prostitute who was murdered but I don't believe the woman you saw was her. How can you possibly make that leap? The only way to prove it was the same girl is if you had a photo of the victim. I'm sorry, but I just do not believe in ghost. Think about it this way, we all will die. Do you want to believe that you'll be haunting this earth and eternal stuck in the same place where there was a significance to your death?

• Maybe its an energy imprint we leave behind?

• I wouldn't be surprised to learn that more people in the US believe in ghosts than believe in evolution. The stupid. It hurts.

• Ordinarily, I'd be skeptical, too. But if you ever have had experiences with ghosts, there is nothing the naysayers can say. I know what I experienced, so frankly, I don't give a shit what you say or think.

• I work nights in a nursing home, and yes, some people get confused and hang around awhile. On my one wing, in room 17, there used to be a little woman in the bathroom - grey and white 'bob' haircut, sort of curled in the corner. She seemed scared to death, and was not at all frightening to the staff. One night, she just ceased to be there, and I felt relieved for her.

  Big%20Nurse

• My late cat, Simon, was suffering from kidney failure. Right after the vet had delivered the shot to euthanize him, she nodded her head at me to indicate that Simon had passed. At that moment, all of the lights in the little OR turned off for perhaps 3 or 4 seconds and then came back on. There is no doubt in my mind it was my friend saying good-bye although the vet didn't seem to show any reaction to it.

• In the 80's I ran a movie theater. We always got out from 11:00pm or later. I had different ways to get home and one was an short highway trip and the exit was on a quiet desolate road. Almost every night I took that route, I would pass a woman walking rather quickly on the side of the road. She wore a black cape and you could see her up the road. Rain or shine. I don't know why I never thought to stop in bad weather, but I didn't. I never saw her from the front. I always left last, but one night the only employee who lived in my town stayed behind and as we were leaving, he asked which way I was going and he said "Oh you pass the Ghost Woman, don't you?". I was kinda floored and asked what he was talking about and he described the same exact woman I had seen. We never left the same time, so it was weird he would see her too in the same spot. A couple of weeks later I'm going to work for the matinee and coming up to the entrance ramp I see her ahead, back to me as usual but was in broad daylight. This time she is on the median, not on the side of the road. Cool, I thought, first time in daylight and I'd finally get to see her face. As I pass, I turn left and crossed over to the entrance ramp, as I passed I was watching the mirrors and I saw nothing. I got to the ramp and stopped, remember this was a desolate road so I could stop, got out of the car, she would have been only maybe twenty feet away, and she wasn't anywhere, there was absolutely no where to go. I never saw her again.

• Omg, that's a chilling story r48. I'm glad you weren't hurt.

• .

• [r26] Whore's what? Please continue.

  Non%20ESL

• On Halloween night about five years ago we went on a tour of the Winchester Mystery House at midnight. Fun and interesting tour, took lots of pictures. In one photo in the night garden there are dozens of glowing, floating orbs. In another, in one of the rooms, a shadow is in the shape of a human profile.

• R52 I knew someone that used to work there as a guide. She used to tell me about some of the really odd, freaky, and mysterious things that would go on.

• Yes, everyday....when I look in the mirror.

  Emotionally%2C%20spiritually%2C%20and%20physically%20dead

• Nurse Marian loves to flicker the lights in the dead-cat rooms to freak the mourning owners. So funny.

• I had a family reunion a few years back, where about 25 of us visited the local cemetery to put fresh flowers on the grave and to remember everyone. It was about 5:30 in the afternoon, and the sun was about to set in 30 minutes or so. As we were pulling away in the car, I looked out the back window and saw my dead uncle, dead aunt, and some unknown woman with a baby carrier dressed in 1950s clothes standing over each other their graves. No one else saw them. People didn't believe me at first, but I described what my uncle and aunt were wearing, and everyone gasped because they were wearing the clothes they were buried in. I had no way of knowing since I was too young to go to their funerals. But the great mystery is who was the woman in black with the baby in a baby carrier? Was she a family member? Did she just want to say hello?

• The stories that really bother me are the ones where someone goes to a haunted location and something follows them home.

• Yes, I've had experiences with "other" people all my life. I don't know if I'm just receptive or what but Since I was a little kid they have been around. The earliet was at two or three when a woman would visit me in afternoon when I was napping. Years later I saw her photo and was informed that she died in our house a long time ago. She was jilted and died of self poisonong. Rented an apartment after grad school and the whole damn house was infested with spooks. I wasn't the only person to see them but I was the first to move out. Women who floated down the hallway in old-fashioned dresses and footsteps and banging noises and a ruckess in the attic did me in. I bought a very early house in upstate NY that was haunted by a little boy. His name was Robert Allen Clark and he died shortly before the Civil War. I found his burial place and records. He terrorized the house when renovations started and workmen would not return. I finally consulted a parapsychologist at a university up there and he helped with a "reading". I still have a tape recording of the session but won't listen to it. The person told me so many things about the house and the boy that became true through research. I found a secret place for hiding stuff and his initials in chalk on a piece of lathe. A carved name on a piece of wood in a closet. Just to name a few. I stayed there three years and had enough. Moved out and my lawyer sold the house for me. I never met the new owners. I still have stuff from that house that I could never let go of for some reason. The carved wood, the lathe with initials, tape, etc. Most of all seven Polaroids of an emerging face that can't be explained. It's the face of a little boy. I sent them to several experts at Kodak and at Polaroid and they were at a loss as how it happened. Also one photo of the house with a face in the window upstairs looking out. There have been many more but its late and I'm tired. My partner and I own two old houses now. The one we live in is pretty benign but there is a little "energy". The other is out in the Shenandoah Valley built about 1820. Big old brick thing that just pulled us to it. The house was in danger of being torn down and we couldn't get it of our minds. We have done basics just to keep it from falling down and we'll sell it if we can find someone to restore it. It is loaded with "energy" but its only a feeling. There's something there. You can feel someone watching you. The last owner died in the house and its also right next to a Civil War battlefield. I have to go but I'll add some more storie later especially when I lived in Baltimore and Ellicott City. I only post when its free. Please excuse typos.

  Ma Joad

• R58, Please post more! Can you post the photos on flickr and give us a link?

• One of these days I will. I have to find someone to help us. We're eldergays. I hiss, he hums.

  Ma Joad

• In the 90s, my ex and I rented this house in the Long Beach neighborhood of Michigan City Indiana. It was up in the Dunes on Lake Shore Drive, right across from Lake Michigan. We rented it for the fall and winter. This was a very very old summer cottage owned by a psychologist from Chicago. The houses across from us and next to us were larger summer homes that were empty for the winter. So it was mostly just us and the raccoons, up a steep hill, surrounded by trees. When we rented it, the guy and his wife made a joke about "watch out for the ghost". We laughed it off. The house also had crucifixes up in every room. As soon as we moved in, I took the crucifixes down b/c they creeped me out. Maybe that was kept the things at bay, b/c soon after all hell broke loose. We would here someone rolling a ball upstairs and playing with our ferret. We would see ghostly feet run up the stairs. His kids spent the weekend, and we heard them talking about seeing something. The bedrooms were upstairs in a converted attic. We woke up a couple nights to loud clanging of bells and chimes and horns in the walls. We kept the curtains open b/c it was so isolated, and one night I saw this red ball float past the window. I could tell it "saw" me, and then it backed up, and "stared" at me before moving on past the window. A figurine collection would "move around". Sticks would be thrown against the side of the house. The worst was when I woke up and saw what I swear looked like lightning and smoke trying "take shape" in the hallway. It got so bad that if one of us got home before the other, we would wait in the drive for the other one. We were grown ass men! The atmosphere of the house and the grounds felt "thick", that is the only word I have for it. We ended up taking the mattress down into the front room and sleeping there. Finally, we moved out early ,breaking the lease b/c we couldn't take it. We found out later that a guy who had rented it the winter before had also ended up sleeping in the front room and used plastic sheeting to close off the stairs to the attic. I don't believe in the paranormal, but that place was something else, and I get the chills just thinking about it.

• I've wrote about this before, but about 2 years ago My friend and his wife had moved to Helena, MT, it was my first drive to them and I had underestimate them time it would take me to get there, so I stopped in at a guest house on the MT/SD border. I had text my friend to say I wouldn't be there 'til morning, then got the room and went to bed, I was wide awake and my friend text me back to confirm my text, as I was putting my phone on the locker I suddenly felt out of nowhere the anticipation of being touched then a voice said "I see you." It was so horrible and weird, screechy but the best way I can describe it is as a whispered scream. I got a fright and looked all round, I always sleep with the blinds drawn so the room was sorta bright, I tired to dismiss it as maybe the tv in the next room, but part of me knew that wasn't a sufficient answer. I lay back down and almost immediately it sound and felt like a freight train rolling across the room above me, I though WTF's going on up there, not 5 mins later it happened again, but this time I noticed the sound was not coming from the room above me, but the banging was on my ceiling itself, from in my room. I followed the thump as it went across the ceiling over to the wall and that's when I saw a man, I sat up, he was so ordinary looking, he was just so normal, in a striped pajamas, but he looked with just a smug, threatening look, I felt really intimated, like I was been cornered my a group of thugs or bullies, I just felt really threatened and intimated, and he looked at me and he said "I see you." but it was loaded with such malice, I ran for the door and when I turned back he was gone, but the room stank, like burning rotten cabbage. I hovered in the hallway for a second before I plucked up the courage to go back in to et my things, I only did this by proper in the door open with a chair, I was terrified it would slam shut behind me, I grabbed my stuff and bolted. Before this I was atheist, I was raised atheist and I still haven't told my folks about this experience, I doubt I will, but it was a truly terrifying experience.

• A woman, black, on welfare lost her FOURTH child to gun violence in Chicago yesterday. Hmmmm. What is it about black people on welfare make that possible.

• Casey Anthony is declaring bankruptcy. She blames the Jon-Benet Ramsey for it.

• Caspar the racist ghost The raciest ghost you know Though blacks all might Look at him with fright Whites all love him so He always says it's great If you love to hate Without saying it goes How much he really hates those Negroes Black folk don't understand Why whites love him the most He'll burn a cross Toast the Holocaust Caspar the racist ghost.

• You always hear these "mediums" say that ghosts are just regular people who don't know they've passed on but do you think some of them just choose to hang around because they enjoy being able to spy on and scare the living?

• R62, I have never something more scary.

• I wonder if that house is still around R61.

• I met a roast

• I ain't 'fraid of no roast!

  Aretha

• .

• bump

• .

• I ain't fraid of no ghost!

• Hi Ray Parker Jr!

• Never seen one. But I believe people who say they have.

• Threads like this are so depressing. It's sad to know that so many people are so childishly credulous. Ghosts don't exist, because when people die all brain function ceases -- and THEY'RE DEAD. There's no such literal thing as a "soul" or "spirit" or whatever else Oprah taught you. Have any of you deep-thinkers seen Santa and his reindeer?

• [quote]Have any of you deep-thinkers seen Santa and his reindeer? Yes. Christmas Eve. I was seven. Peeked out the window and saw a red glow over the roofs on the next block. I know it was Santa.

• I know a gay couple who talk about seeing ghosts. They're both mentally defective.

• I've never "met" a ghost, but I've had two creepy encounters in my life: 1)My ex and I lived in an apartment that butted up against a wooded area where teenagers and homeless people liked to trespass and drink. To combat this, my apartment company installed several motion activated floodlights that trip anytime someone walked back in the wooded area behind our patios. Pretty annoying, but it beat the possibility of getting mugged or harassed. One night, I woke up to the sound of footsteps crunching through the woods right underneath our bedroom window (the windows were open) and heard three voices discussing something. They definitely weren't speaking English, but they also weren't speaking any other discernible language. It was guttural, slow, and well...demonic sounding. I elbowed my bf awake and we listened for several minutes and argued about whether to call the cops. The weird thing was, even though we could clearly hear them moving around, we couldn't actually see them, nor did they trip the motion lights in the backyard. The officer sent to check it out couldn't find anyone or see any evidence of people hanging around, either. 2) I was a music major in college, so spent quite a few late nights practicing in our conservatory building. The best piano was in our very old recital hall, so I snagged it whenever possible for practice. Above the recital hall there was a balconied room that had been converted from a piano studio into a little viewing area for faculty and guests. The story was a piano instructor had died there in the early 1900s and haunted the conservatory. I never saw her, but one night while practicing, I cursed in frustration and banged my hands on the keyboard. As soon as I did that, the curtains on the balcony snapped open and closed. I called out to see if anyone was around, checked the other practice room, and finding no one else in the building, got a bit skeeved out and left. When I came to class the next day, the recital hall had been closed for repairs. One of the big pipes on wall above the pipe organ (next to the piano where I was practicing) had fallen out of its supports and landed on the floor next to the piano. No one had any clue how it had happened, because the pipe would've had to have been lifted up first before it could've fallen and it would've taken at least a handful of people on ladders to make it happen. Very, very creepy, and I always wondered if my little outburst triggered the wrath of an old ass piano ghost.

• [quote]Ghosts don't exist, because when people die all brain function ceases -- and THEY'RE DEAD. There's no such literal thing as a "soul" or "spirit" or whatever else Oprah taught you Not that long ago, people thought the world as flat, that there were no "cells" or "DNA" or "electricity", and that there were only 3 (4 if you count time) dimensions. And they were every bit as assured in the correctness of their opinions as you are, R77. My point is this: we don't know what we don't know. I never said that I saw a "ghost" or "something paranormal" or "Santa Claus", but whatever I experienced was definitely out of the realm of what is currently considered normal experience.

  R61

• I ain't 'fraid of no Toast!

• R62 wins.

• [quote]The story was a piano instructor had died there in the early 1900s and haunted the conservatory Brings to mind the ghost at Elizabeth Hall, the music building at a campus my friend attended. He had some strange ghostly tales.

• R84, You should post them!

• How interesting, [R84]. I grew up in a small college town with a building named after Elizabeth something (Robertson or Robinson), and it was rumored to be haunted, too. This definitely wasn't the same college (ours was an all-girls' school), but it's funny to see the same tropes repeated all over.

• Play practice in the auditorium an we heard the clamor and banging on the bleachers in the neighboring gym. A loud banging of the large bleachers. We all ran in from across the hall and inspected. No one around. That side of the school was haunted. Supposedly built over graves. There were stories from custodians, students, and gym teachers, one who was a close family friend.

• R61 - I know someone who grew up in Long Beach and my boss has a summer home there. Which house is it?

• When I was very young my family took a vacation to L.A. which included a visit to the Queen Mary in Long Beach. On the tour we went down into the bowels of the ship into some tiny area with a very narrow hallway. I couldn't tell you where it was, I was too small to care about those things. Anyway, I became very bored, as a small child would, and decided to walk away from the group back down the tiny hallway. When I turned around, a very handsome military man in an older-style uniform smiled at me and then turned and walked towards the right. I got a weird feeling from him--I knew he was something special and I wanted to follow him. When I traced his steps I found that what he had walked towards was just the walls of the ship! There was no door there, no hallway--it was just a dead end. Later at the hotel I wanted to tell my family but something compelled me not to--as if I would be breaking someone's confidence or something. He was friendly and sweet but also gave me a knowing look, as if to "keep this a secret." This ghost that I met occurred long before there was any mention of hauntings on the Queen Mary released to the public, and before any psychics had begun to investigate the ship.

• Met one? I live with one!

  Catherine%20Zeta-Jones

• I was staying in a motel room with my parents in Midland, Michigan. I was like 13 or 14. This was in 1976, I think. When you turned out the lights, it was pitch, pitch black. You couldn't see your hand 2 inches from your face. We all commented on how dark it was before going to sleep. And your eyes didn't adjust either. 20 minutes later it was still completely pitch black dark. I awoke suddenly and was surprised to see that I was looking down at my pillow - and actually more surprised that I could SEE the pillow and the bed below me, before I realized that it was strange that I was somehow floating above the bed. I distinctly remember looking below me toward my feet to see who was holding me up (by the ankles?) Of course there was no-one there. Then I became worried. I looked to my right, in the direction of my parents (who I could see perfectly well asleep in their bed), and toward the entry to the motel room. In that short hallway leading into the room there was a male figure. Clearly outlined and clearly a man. However, the inside of that outline was red and orange - like he was totally comprised of fire. Obviously, this startled me. He then moved into the room, and moved alongside my parents bed, toward the head of the bed - on the opposite side of them. He stopped and then reached toward me, over my sleeping parents. In the terror of this, I had the impression that he was pointing a gun at me, although I don't think there was such an object, it's just what my mind immediately assumed. I let out a scream of sorts (very constricted) and I immediately fell back onto the bed. When I opened my eyes again (again, very difficult to do) there was nothing/no one there. I preceded to try to scream again, but had a very difficult time making sound - but I succeeded enough to wake my parents. I could see them sitting up and heard them wake each other up "I think he's having a bad dream. Wake him up." I could see my mother (closest to me) reaching and trying to find the light switch. The room was illuminated during all this, btw. My dad finally came over to me and when he touched me there was quite an electrical shock (to both him and me) and I apparently jumped a good foot off the bed. But then I was completely up and awake and I immediately started talking a mile a minute about what had just happened. They were quite alarmed and tried to calm me and get me to go back to 'sleep'. Next day, they attested that when I woke them up, it was still pitch black in the room - yet I saw and described their every move. They really did not want to talk about what I was telling them. A year or so later they finally revealed to me that just a couple weeks before my 'experience' my sister (who was in college) had called home frantic describing events very similar to mine (the darkness, the levitating, the malevolent ghost-like figure, and other details that for brevity's sake I really couldn't go into here). At the time, they chose not to share this with me because they were afraid that it would frighten me. Yet, that night in Midland, MI they were freaking out because what I was describing was remarkably similar to what my sister had described just a couple of weeks earlier.

• I was in my apartment in San Francisco about ten years ago and a ghost stood in the doorway of my living room.

  Boo

• R91-- Since then, did you discuss it with your sister? Did she have any theories about what/who it was?

• r91, that was chilling. Did you find out what it meant?

• When I was little our TV was black-and-white and when the wind blew the roof antenna a little out of position the TV had ghosts. I saw them with my own eyes.

  Anomynous%20

• Is anyone here a member of a spiritualist church? And if so, could you write a little abot yor experiences?

• One of my maternal aunts died when I was 6. Her two sons were in the military and they decided not to sell her house right away. They got another cousin to move into the house to maintain it. When I was 9, my family stayed with her during a family event. One night I went into the bathroom and right when I turned the light on, my aunt appeared to me in the mirror. It really scared me and I never told any of my relatives about it. My cousins sold the house a few years later. At times, I have thought about asking the other cousin who lived in the house if she ever had similar experiences.

• Whether or not they exist, I enjoy a good ghost story. Keep them coming!

• I agree--keep them coming! I don't have any of my own. I once spent a weekend at the much-bruited about haunted plantation called the Myrtles in Louisiana, but nothing happened. Certainly, it felt creepy in the way that old houses sometimes do, but I slept like a baby.

• I don't know why they don't make more movies with scared black people in 'em.

  S.%20Sugarbaker

• .

• good stories!

• R102 I know right. I'm hooked.

• R81: No, dear, what you experienced is something that you *interpreted* to be outside of the realm of normal experience. All of those things that you listed, they are explicable, and so is whatever happened to you. My point is similar to yours: we don't know what we don't know, but everything we've ever learned throughout all of history has turned out NOT to have been supernatural or mystical or other-worldly.

  R77

• Just remember we do not know where we go, if we do go on after we are dead. Anything believed today is just made up to elleviate the fear of death. Our energy might go on, it might not. No one knows.

• My point exactly.

• I recently bought a ghost for the children to saunter with. How ethereal, it's a vision watching my ghost's pure white apparition dart to and fro as the little one's laugh and try to catch it. I did spring for a top quality, Native American ghost as I have heard horror stories about inferior ghosts. Obviously, the cheeper posters on this thread are regretting the greenish tints on their inferior banshee. I know that a soul is a large price to pay, but my ghost has been my best investment yet. Namaste!

  www.goop.com

• bump

• Bump

  anonymous

• bump in the night.

• The poster who described the air in a haunted house as "thick" was very accurate. That's exactly what it feels like. There can also be an overwhelming sense of unease too. When I was still a kid-- about 10 or so-- family friends of ours came to stay with us while house-hunting in the DC area. We went with them to look at houses, and one house in particular made me incredibly uneasy. It was in the Mount Vernon section of Alexandria. I don't have any adequate way to describe it except to say that the house felt all "wrong" for lack of a better word. But wrong in a very significant and frightening way. The longer I stayed in it, the greater the sense of dread. It was worse in the basement, which was spacious, well-lit, and contained the family room. They ended up buying it and moving in, but moved a year later. I'm not sure why though, but wonder if it had something to do with the creepy feeling. The house they moved to a the same size and only two streets over. I've since been in a couple other houses like that one and my skin has crawled.

• My cousin grew up on a street that had a weird house. If you even walked by it you just sensed this weird energy. I don't know what kind of paranormal experience was going on, but no tenant in the house would stay more than two years. The first new tenant killed himself. The second new tenant after that killed her husband. The tenant after that tried to kill her daughter and the final tenant tried to kill herself. My cousin's family moved away after that so I don't know if anything else continued to occur at that house.

• P112, Where was the house? City/state? And when did all the killings happen?

• R111, Were you the only one that sensed the "creepiness" at the time?

• I'm often visited by the ghost of an eldergay with the most terrifying hissss!

• R111 I can relate to the thick air and feeling of uneasiness. I have a couple of unexplained events from when I was a kid. When I was maybe about 12, I was out on this enclosed deck that was attached to the house. The door from the deck into the house had a deadbolt lock. I was sitting out there on a chair just reading when all of a sudden the door closed and the lock turned. The moment it did that I felt a thick fog and a complete sense of uneasiness. I then heard what sounded like an older male laughing. It was sort of a menacing laugh. I wanted to scream, but couldn't. The next minute the deadbolt turned back the other way and the thick air disappeared. I immediately ran through the house thinking that one of my brothers was playing a joke on me, but nobody else was home. A few years later, my sister told me that she was taking a shower and shampooing her hair. When she had rinsed the shampoo, she caught something out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head and looked through the shower curtain (it was one of those clear ones) and she saw a man standing at the sink looking at himself in the mirror. He then turned his head towards her and smiled. She pulled the shower curtain away and whatever was there was gone. She also mentioned that the air felt thick and as though she could barely move through it.

• Why are ghosts scary? Why do we inherently fear them?

• R114, I honestly don't recall as it was so many years ago. A few years after that, I saw the old black and white version of the Haunting of Hill House. There were scenes in that movie where doorways seemed askew (Mary! What a word, but you know what I mean) and hallways too lengthy, etc. That's what this house *felt* like to me. Distorted and wrong. I've told the story here before of something that happened a few years ago when my mother, sister-in-law, and I went to look at a house for sale down the street from me. We all fled from that place with our skin crawling. It was a perfectly cute house, but had the most horrific vibe. It felt like it was a portal to hell... and I don't even believe in hell. None of us said anything to each other while we were in there, but we all practically ran over each other to get out of the front door. Once we were on the sidewalk and walking back to my house, we all started expressing relief that we were out of there. Turns out we'd all had the exact same strong impressions and that it felt strongest in the closet in the front upstairs bedroom, and at the top of the stairs to the basement. My sister-in-law had a very stolid and phlegmatic personality, so I was pretty surprised that she'd been as freaked out as Mom and I were. That house was purchased, and then completely renovated and enlarged by a husband and wife, and they had little kids. I ran into her at her place of employment a year ago, and almost asked her what her experiences were in that house, if any. I didn't want to scare her if she hadn't felt anything, though, so kept mum. Just found out she recently bought another house and moved. I dunno, I guess some people pick up on these things and others just don't. I'm generally a pragmatist and a skeptic, but I know what I felt. Oddly, it still makes me uneasy thinking or writing about it.

  R111

• You hear stories about dark energies surrounding a place but do "ghosts" create it or does the negative energy draw ghosts or whatever to that place?

• OP, "met" is the wrong choice of word. You don't "meet" ghosts. You encounter or see ghosts.

• [quote]I'm often visited by the ghost of an eldergay with the most terrifying hissss! That's so funny! Do you also post as Helen Lawson?

• bump

• Groundhog Day bump

  Punxsutawney Phil

• Don't know how it is in the US, but the world of mediums and Ghost Societies is stuffed with Gays of all ages. Also a class issue - people at the top and bottom of society entertain the idea of spooks. Sceptics are usually socially insecure middle classes obsessed with identifying social faults. Not realising they are lighting themselves up. There again, as we know, there is no class structure in the USA.

• I follow Chip Coffey on Twitter but strangely he never(or rarely)posts about anything psychic or spirit related. What are some of the more famous "Ghost caught on film" videos. I tried looking it up on YouTube but all you get are those jump scare videos.