Ghost stories, part 6
It started when I was three years old. One night I awoke to find a small child-like figure in my bed with me. He was about 2 feet tall and had the features of a small child, but its head was swollen well beyond a normal size. It was wearing a blue gown with the hands not visible at the end of the sleeves. It was moving its mouth and talking in gibberish. The figure was as real as I was, and it was surrounded by a kind of glowing haze. I ran to my parents' bedroom and woke up my dad, but, of course, he told me to go back to sleep. So I returned to my room and now the figure was standing on my bed. I grabbed a pillow and covered my face and jumped on the bed. It was gone. That started something that would last the next 26 years.
I'll condense the years up until 1990. Those appearances, while still frightening, never really made me feel threatened. During this period, which included teenage years, I saw the figure with the same frequency. My bedroom is located at the end of a hallway with 2 other bedrooms before mine. At the other end of the hallway is a landing that blocks the view to the steps. From my bed, I could look out my door and down the hall to the landing and the top of the steps. I always knew right before the figure would appear, because the hair on the back of my neck would stand up and I would get uncontrollable chills. The figure would then appear either on top of the landing or come around the base of the landing and start down the hall toward my room. It never seemed to pay any attention to the other rooms at all. I would normally panic and either shut my door or run into my parents' room and sleep on the floor. Imagine finding your 18-year-old son curled up on your bedroom floor when you wake up in the morning. My parents and sister didn't really fully believe that I was seeing this apparition. I also would stay up late, being the night person that I am, and watch TV. In my living room, we have the stairs that lead up to the 2nd floor. It has a wooden railing on it that goes the length of the last 4 steps. I would often see the figure on the steps watching me from the 3rd or 4th step and then disappear. The only real changes during this time period were that the figure was losing its color and becoming more transparent.
Now things will change drastically. A neighbor, with some knowledge of this sort of activity, told me to confront the figure and tell it to leave and never come back. I was to tell it that I was its power source and I was shutting off the power. I did this and enjoyed about a year of no sightings. Around this time, I told the story to my girlfriend of the time. She thought that its description sounded like a baby with water on the brain and still wearing its gown from the hospital. She thought that it was a lost soul trying to contact me to help it with some task, so that it could finally rest in peace. I started to look into the house's history and my family's. The house sits on land that was farmland and a dirt road only 150 years ago. The land was owned by one man and he had his farm and homestead around the area of my house (the main house of his estate is one block from my house and is still standing) My house is 40 years old and we are the 2nd family to live in it. The couple before us had no children that we know about. I have a sister 3 years younger than me and no other siblings. I have asked my parents if they had a child that died that I was unaware of, but they didn't. So after all my checking, I found nothing that could explain the apparition.
After a week of thinking about the interpretation my girlfriend had given, guilt from banishing the figure overcame me. I asked it to come back one night, and told it I would help it. The very next night, the sightings started again, but with much greater intensity. I can say now, NEVER do what I did, once it's gone, let it stay gone. The sightings would happen more frequently and sometimes they would terrify me. The figure looked the same but something was very different. I was sure what it was, but now there was another force in addition to the familiar figure. I began to see small black colored creatures which I can only describe as imps. They were solid black, 1-2 feet tall and ran around on all fours. They appeared mostly in the living room and coming from the hall closet.
Now, to explain the rest of the house setup that pertains to the story. The man that lived here before us started to dig out a basement, but he never completed it. All that remains is a 3-4 foot crawl space accessible from outside the house. The hall closet was to be the stairs down to the basement. He had started making the stairs going down but he boarded it all up when he stopped digging the basement. The stairs going up to the 2nd floor are directly over the would-be basement step and the hall closet. So there are 2 ways from inside the house to access the crawl space, if you really wanted to: rip up the 3rd or 4th step of the stairs or knock out the back of the closet. I began to make the connection between where the figures appeared and where the access ways were.
The sightings got more intense, and sometimes they even drove me from my house. Normally, my dog would sense the small figure and act funny when it was around, but now when the imps appeared, my dog would be in a very deep sleep and I could never wake him up. I would leave the house and stay over at a friend's. Sometimes I would be knocking on her door at 2 AM, terrified. Other times, if I was able to get between them and the steps, I would make a run for it to my room or my parents' room, because even these creatures would not venture in the bedrooms. My mother was noticing my moods and I had told her about the new happenings, so she told me to get her the next time I saw the figure or imps. The next time I saw the figure upstairs coming down the hall, I ran into her room and woke her up. I led her out into the hall where the figure still was. I pointed to it, and it began to back away and go down the steps. I chased it down to the 3rd step where it vanished. While she could not see it, she could tell by my eye movements that I was watching something moving across the hall and steps. I think that's when my family started to believe a little.
I became used to these new additions because they never did any harm, but they did make me feel very uneasy. The figure was becoming even more transparent. Certain lamps in the house would go on and off by themselves, often with other witnesses around. I would hear the TV go on in the middle of the night when I knew no one was downstairs. I had theorized that the figure needed help to appear because it was slowly fading away. I assumed the imps were helping him, but the figure was still fading. I was waiting for a new addition to the cast, so the figure could still appear, since I still hadn't figured out what it wanted me to do.
The sightings stopped again for a few months. I spoke with a parapsychologist, but then decided to leave well enough alone. I didn't want things getting worse. I decided to go into the crawl space and check out the area under the stairs. I took my dog down there with me and I crawled to the area. There had not been anyone under there for years before this. I found an Old Maid playing card with not a bit of dust on it right under the 3rd step. We have wall-to-wall carpeting, so this did not fall through the joints. I hadn't seen that deck of cards for over 20 years, but here was one card from the deck. It had one corner that looked like it had been dipped in acid, but the rest was in good shape. I took it and put in a pocket Bible, and put it in my car.
The sightings started again, only very small. I would call my girlfriend on the cordless phone and tell her it's happening again and then walk upstairs while still on the phone with her. The next time was the worst of all. The figure appeared very bright, like it did years ago, but it didn't look very happy. The imps appeared again but they were more bold this time. Then a 7-foot tall man-shaped black figure appeared. It looked like it was either made of smoke or some liquid. It looked semi-solid and you couldn't see through it. At the same time, the room was filled with imps and a bearded old man's face took shape on the wall and started mumbling. The face was about 6 foot high and 4 foot wide. The familiar figure looked like it was sorry for doing this to me. I left the house and sat in my car until dawn.
I knew I had to confront this new entity and try to drive it away. I also figured that if it wanted me, it was going to get me either way, so I had nothing to lose. My sanity, life, and maybe my soul were on the line and I honestly believed this was the only way to stop it before it branched out. I was the original power source, so I was going to shut off the power. The next night I prayed for protection and the strength to drive this evil away. I had a Bible handy, as I sat up as usual listening to my CD's. About 2 AM, I noticed my dog was in one of those deep, deep sleeps and I began to look around. The figure and the tall black figure appeared along with the rest of the apparitions. I informed them in the calmest voice I could get at this time, that I was taking away their power and they had no hold on me or power over me. I told them I, my family, and house was protected by God and they could not harm us. I walked right past the tall figure and the imps moved out of my way. I walked right up the steps and never looked back.
That was about 2 years ago and I have not seen them since. We placed a Bible on the stairs and a cross in the closet to block off their entrances. I still feel there is a presence there that tries to get me to let in it. I still hear bumping and walking around, but the apparitions are gone, banished to the crawl space.
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In the 60's, when my mom was 16, she started studying the Bible and learning about God from my aunt. My aunt taught her that playing around with the occult and ghosts and such was wrong and can be very dangerous... fast forward a little while. My mom is at a sleepover with 5 other girls and one of them brings a Ouija Board and they decide to play with it. At first they can't get it to work, but when they pass it to two other girls, it starts moving by itself. They ask the name of the spirit and it spells out E-V-E.
My mom, remembering what my aunt had taught her, starts to get really scared and asks if they can do something else. When they refuse, she goes in the other room and starts praying. After an hour or so, one of the girls comes and gets her, and tells her that they had put it away. When she gets back to the other room, no one is very talkative and no one seems to be having any fun. She asks what happened and no one says anything, until finally one of the girls speaks up and says that they were asking where "Sarah" would be in the year 2000 and it spelled out D-E-A-D. They asked where "Jane" would be in the year 2000 and it spelled D-E-A-D. After it did the same with the third girl, I guess no one else wanted to play with it any more. Nothing like a little mortality check to kill the mood of your slumber party.
Anyway... fast forward to present. My mom says that of the 3 girls the spirit foretold would die, she kept in contact with two as she got older, and as we speak, they are in fact, dead. One from cervical cancer and one in a car accident. It gave me the willies when she told me this story.
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At Uni - chilling out between lectures after dinner, lying on bed, half-listening to the TV with my eyes closed:
I heard breathing..... imitating mine. I was incredibly intrigued. I kept holding my breath at random intervals, trying to catch it out, and sure enough, the breathing continued for a second or two before stopping. All the time, the sound became louder and louder, and the feeling of the presence in the room became stronger.
I had just stopped breathing again, and caught the entity out.... and there was silence..... All of a sudden, this thing was over me. It breathed out on my face - I felt the warmth, the smell..... and the force of the exhalation.... and that’s when all the shit started to happen....
All that I can remember is that I was completely paralysed, with my back arched... I was unable to scream, cry out, but was very strong in trying to block the attack. My stomach was bubbling... so much so that bile was shooting out of my open mouth.....
This lasted for about a minute.... when I finally let out a scream, and the entity just gave up and disappeared. I was a mess after that... white, shaking....
I had some serious healing and protection after that incident - crystal healing with one of the southwest's best healers.... as soon as I walked into her house, she and her colleague said "I can sense the presence - can't you?" .... (this was before I had explained what had gone on)....
I had been stupid, and done shit that had attracted the entity to me. Luckily for me, I have a strong soul and a strong will.... he was no match for me. :)
This happened (along with many other similar, but less fucked-up experiences) when I was 23... With each generation, there are many people who are becoming "spiritually aware" during their 20's, yet do not understand and can not control what is happening to them.
What I can suggest to you is to seek help - I saw many people from vicars to priests, Paganists and occultists to Scientologists.... including friends that I could trust. The healing for me came within two hours of my experience. My landlady was a total disbeliever, but she had a friend who believed in spirits etc., and phoned her. She phoned some other people, and got me the address of this lady in the same city... who was completely awesome. The healing gave me a lot of protection.
What you can do now is try not to be scared. These things do exist, but they are relatively weak. Their main weapon is fear.... and if they work on you, night after night, they can get you into a state that makes your will weak.... that happened to me during another time (which is too personal to share in detail).... Think of a more toned-down version of The Exorcist.....
Be strong. Think of an aura around your body of white light.... the light is warm, strong... and is like a spiritual condom. Close your eyes, and imagine this.... this aura is 100% protection... nothing can enter it.
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1991
It's odd that past experiences haven't really affected me today. I can look back to two of the strangest possible things that happened in my childhood, have a beer, and laugh about it - as though it either never happened, or was supposed to have happened, and my subconscious has brushed it off.
I was thirteen years old, disinterested in anything paranormal. I had also stumbled into an almost unheard-of situation: One of my best friend's parents had left town for the evening to attend a basketball game in Dallas - and he had the house to himself. This meant, of course, a night's worth of mainlining Mountain Dew and playing Techmo Bowl. We spent the evening blowing dust from the well-used innards of the Nintendo, and trading lies about non-existent hand-jobs out in back of the Whataburger with that girl from Civics class.
The bright LCD clock had just switched over from PM to AM, and I had just capped off a 12-play, clock-killing drive to win my fifth straight game. My hands were sweaty, my thumbs raw, as I stood up to walk to the bathroom - ignoring the cries of "cheater!" from my friend Andrew. I wiped my hands on my Ocean Pacific T-shirt, and casually glanced out the window. Off on the dark horizon, there was a light - to the casual observer, it would have just been another airplane - but I had grown up in an aviation family - I, myself, had been flying for two years at that point - and I knew that there was no airplane that emitted a bright orange beam as it flew. I kicked the bean bag chair closer to the window, and knelt down, hoping to get a better view over the distant treetops.
"Hey Drew, come here..." I whispered. He put the game on pause, and started with a pathetic attempt of "Straight outta Compton, crazy motherfucker named..."
"Shut the fuck up and come here..." I cut him off. He looked up from the NWA CD that he was wiping on his shirt, and looked out the window.
"What?"
"Over there..." I pointed at the orange light in the distance. I wasn't sure if it was moving, or if the flutter was some distortion of the hot Texas air.
"The airplane?" he asked.
"It's not..." I replied, and he looked at me quizzically. Andrew fell into position beside me, and we gazed out over the swaying oaks, at that ball of light in the distance.
"What the fuck is it?"
"I don't know..." and I really didn't. All the analytical parts of my mind had failed - I was looking at a streetlight suspended over a backwoods Texas forest, silently shining at 12:08 AM.
"It's getting bigger..." Andrew whispered, his voice betraying alarm.
"No", I answered, my voice creaking, "It's coming towards us."
We sat in stunned silence as the light came closer, closer... so close that it appeared to be a police searchlight, shining directly on the two young faces staring blankly out of the second floor window of a Texas farmhouse - all the while, the only noise disturbing the peaceful night was the steady cadence of thousands of crickets in the damp grass below. The light crested over the roof of the house, and it was only in that second's blocking of the blinding light that we were able to see the object - no more than thirty feet over our house. It was a large, dark circle - blocking out the night - at least 100 feet in diameter. A single, rectangular opening in the center - accented by a faint blue light - was the only thing that disturbed the perfect uniformity of the object. We kneeled there, mouths agape, until the object silently coasted over the house and out of sight.
"Outside, now!" I yelled - impulsively springing to my feet.
"No FUCKING way!" Andrew screamed - yet his body betrayed his common sense, and scrambled down the staircase behind me. I leapt to the front door, and out over the porch railing, looking up in the sky. As Andrew came up beside me, my face sank as I realized that I was looking up to nothing more than the clear night sky - the bands of the milky way stretching from treeline to treeline. Nothing.
"What the fuck?" he asked.
"I have no fucking clue..." I replied, disappointed. We remained outside for a good five more minutes, two scared boys, alone in the night - then I decided to turn around wordlessly and head inside. We both took off our now wet socks, and closed the front door.
Wait. I looked up suddenly and looked around the living room. To the casual glance, nothing was wrong - the house was just as we had left it. But there was something wrong. I glanced over at Andrew - the size of his eyes showed me that he felt it too. Something was.... off. I closed my eyes for a minute, and tried to read my senses - ignoring the rushing beat of my heart. There... and again. It was as if somebody was squelching a cheap AM radio in the house. Whiny interference, and under that... a faint murmur that was almost... a voice? The first thing that immediately sprang to mind was the Imperial Probe Droid from Empire Strikes Back - a repeating code, but almost sub-aural... like I had to feel it - and it was words. Kind of like one of those tin-can to a string experiments, I was hearing a faint voice. But was it in my head?
"You hear..." Andrew started, but he choked back the rest as I held up my hand... I had no idea what to do... the terror in my chest felt inescapable. But I summoned up enough gusto to clear my throat slightly, and call out to the house...
"Hello?"
Silence... even the crickets were no longer making their presence known. A second passed, and another. A small bead of sweat trickled into my eye...
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
It wasn't a voice... at least not in the technical definition of the word. It was as if you had taken all the car crashes from all the history of mankind, sampled them over each other, then modulated that noise to form one word of utter despair. Twisted metal, broken glass, all these sounds cascaded through the house - reverberating in the walls for what seemed like an eternity. My friend's dog - who was sleeping soundly on the living room couch - arose with a dart and began a shrill howl as it scampered for the relative safety of the basement. Then, just as suddenly as it started - it was over. Nothing but the ringing of my ears, the pounding of my heart. I looked over at Andrew, his face white with fear.
"GO!" I screamed, and started running for the kitchen. If I had to pick a place that the sound had originated from, it sounded like upstairs - and I needed to get as far away from that shit as possible. We arrived in the kitchen, and Andrew started for the back door.
"NO, FUCK, NO!" I yelled at him. I was not going outside at that point. But I didn't want to stay inside. "BASEMENT!" he suggested, out of breath. I nodded, and we careened down the steps - slamming the door behind us.
So that's where we stayed that night. Huddled underneath the steps of the cellar - each trying to convince each other that we were not crazy, that what happened actually happened. A few hours later, we ventured out into the house, went upstairs, outside, everywhere possible - and there was nothing wrong. The house appeared exactly as it had been when I last savored the taste of Techmo-victory some three hours before. We even got the courage to sleep a bit - in shifts - while the other one stood guard with a Swiss-Army knife, scanning Headline News for anything abnormal in the world - and constantly glancing out the window into the rapidly brightening sky.
1993
A thousand miles and a lifetime away, I sat around a campfire - smoking a cigarette, careful to hide it from the adults that had taken us on this camping trip. I was perhaps the world's worst Boy Scout, 15 years old and rebellious. I went on camping trips because I genuinely cared about teaching the younger kids how to survive in the wild - but I loved camping, and the freedom that it afforded me. I was one of the elders of the group - most of the other kids were 12-13 years old, and were off this cold, starry night running around in the woods, trying to scare each other to death. A few of my older friends and I - too cool for spooky tales and child's play - were sitting around a roaring fire - trading stolen cigarettes and a stale pouch of chewing tobacco - talking about fast girls, fast cars, and whose dad had the finest porn collection. Life was fine, the events of just a few years before were still a very vivid memory - but pushed aside in the light of fonder thoughts.
It was roughly 11 PM when the first kid came tearing through the woods into our clearing. His face was the definition of shock as he fell down next to us, panting and whining like a whipped dog.
"There's a light in the field over there and it's CHASING US!" he screamed.
I looked up at the other two guys, who kinda snickered a bit.
I glanced back down at the kid, "It was just a possum or something... their eyes get bright..."
As I said that, three other kids came tearing out of the woods, running over to our campfire.
"No!" the kid yelled. "It wasn't a possum..."
"It was in the sky!" screeched yet another child. I once more looked up at the guys. One of them rolled their eyes and made a little "come here" gesture. I stood up and grabbed my flashlight.
"We'll look..." I said, walking over towards the treeline. My past history was not on my mind at all, but I still felt an odd chill as I walked towards the trees. My friend behind me called, "You've got a point...", and I nodded, holding the flashlight up and walking into the woods. Once again, it was completely silent, aside from the dried pine needles crunching beneath my sure footsteps. Five yards into the woods, ten yards... the tree branches fell so thick in front of my face that I could scarcely see more than a nose length in front of me. I fought back one more broad branch with the flashlight's butt - and stepped into a small clearing.
The light shone into my eyes for a second, and I tried to blink away the blindness. I glanced all around - it was a moonless night, everything was hopelessly obscured. The blotches in my vision slowly faded - and I glanced directly in front of me.
I could see them there. Three people, no more than ten feet away - moving towards me... walking? It was really difficult to make them out - I had to almost look to the side to see them, bypassing the light impression still burning the front of my pupils. I then remembered the flashlight - and brought it quickly to shoulder level. But...
There was nothing there. There were three people walking directly in front of me, but there was nothing there. I could make out the intricate details of the trees surrounding them, but when the light shone directly on their "faces," it was like a shadow. No definition, no glaring eyes, no gnashing teeth - simply darkness. A blank, black, face.
My previous experiences came flooding back to me as I stared into the face of nothing... my heart began to pound, the blood cascading past my eardrums in a sickening staccato. Three shadows stood silently in front of me, each one moving slightly, so as to give the impression that they were alive - intelligent. Yet featureless, like a spectre, a void of light and contour staring blankly at me. For the second time in my life, I stood in terror and forced out a question.
"Hello?"
Then I heard it... the beating of my heart was replaced with short bursts of... speech.
"I... remember..." I swore I was going crazy, that it was a figment of my imagination. The voice wasn't aural, but I felt it throughout my body, repeating in time with the beat of my heart.
"I... remember... you..."
I froze in fear. From behind me, I heard the shuffling of feet. My friend who had accompanied me had fled. I stood alone in the clearing. Then, just as soon as it began, the voice stopped. The three entities slowly started backing away... travelling silently, passing through tree branches, clipping through a large trunk, but never slowing - just floating away, through anything and everything - until I was the only thing left, standing in the woods, a tear forming in my eye - too scared to do anything but just stand there and listen.
The ending is boring. I ended up walking back to the campsite, and we all just huddled around the campfire, not talking, not enjoying ourselves - just freaking out. I was the only one who heard the words - but my other friend had heard something. Come a few years later, he would deny it ever happened - a horrible memory that his brain decided it was better off without.
But I still tell the story - normally in the company of many friends. This is about the first time I've ever thought about it alone, and it made me shudder as I sat here writing it out.
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About 5 years ago right before I went off to college, all my friends and I got into a Ouija board binge. The first time we did it in my friends haunted house (it's a well known haunted house around town). So anyways... when we asked to have a sign that a spirit was with us... a book fell off the bookcase. While clichéd, it is actually what happened. Didn't really freak us out, though. Eventually I believe the entity told us it was a slave that was murdered by knife. I live in Mississippi, so that's entirely plausible. And DAMN, do we have some ghosts around here... you guys want to come do some serious Ghost hunting? Come to the Mississippi Delta where I'm from... haunted like a mofo.
Anyways, the freakiest Ouija Board experience I had was the second night at my friend's house. Now I'm a SERIOUS skeptic of those things. I believe most of the time, it's the collective moving the glass. However, with a lot of people, you don't really realize you're moving it due to the dispersion of necessary forces... or something. Anyways, it keeps talking about some weird shit... nothing too freaky.. but I don't believe it... I believe a friend is moving it. So I say.. okay ... if you're REALLY a spirit, you don't have to go through a Parker Bros. Ouija Board... I'm gonna take my hands totally off of the board. Then I'm going to go the other side of the room. I get over there (my friends are still on it). And I say, "Okay, ghostie.. I want you to read my mind and spell out the name I'm thinking." It did... exactly. I was kinda freaked. I mean, I wasn't even touching it. I was across the fucking room. But I think it's a coincidence. I tell the ghost to spell the second thing I was thinking. It did. Exactly. Now THAT freaked me out.
There was no board flying across the room, or big black creature outside the window. The thing that was frightening is that it wasn't something that could be explained away. It couldn't have been a hallucination. There wasn't anything really to hallucinate. It wasn't a sound that could have been produced by misfiring neurons or something. It was, to me and my friends, just proof that there was something on "the other side." And the implications and thoughts that that produced were far more frightening and intriguing than any big black shadow. It's more "real world" terror than something out of Hollywood.
So anyways, that's my story. Another explanation is that it was MY subconscious that was moving the board. Which is cool also. Also I made sure to pick names of people I was not really involved with or really knew so my friends couldn't just make an educated guess.
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I had something strange happen to me in college. It was a chilly, wet November afternoon, a Tuesday, and most of the leaves had already changed color and fallen from the trees. I had no classes and decided to take a drive up into the mountains and go hiking - I was training to hike the Appalachian Trail at the time, and regularly hiked 10 and 20 mile sections of the trail with a 40-pound pack on my back. That day, I planned to climb a popular 2-mile trail which led to an overhanging rock with a gorgeous view of the Shenendoah valley. Of course, in the rain, there was no view but I needed to get accustomed to being wet and cold. I won't mention the name of the trail for now.
I drove past the old homesite high on the ridge where colonial families lived, and pulled into the parking area to begin my climb. I did not see a single other car, bike, hiker, or person the entire drive up and the muddy parking lot showed only one set of tire tracks - mine. The climb up was tedious and I slipped twice, getting completely covered in mud and banging up my knee. When I was about 3/4 of the way to the top I entered a cloud- my entire world was reduced to a foot of visibility in a milky white / grey vapour.
Standing atop the rocks at the top, I entered a meditative mindset and sat down on a rock to take in the experience. It was cold and wet and I couldn't see a thing, but somehow it was very tranquil and beautiful - all alone on a rock in a cloud. Then, I got the willies.
A feeling of fear passed over me in a wave and I stood up suddenly, tense and rigid. Silence. The most silent you'll ever be - not a bird or a car, just an occasional puff of wind. And then, I hear a cackling woman's laugh and a chorus of voices, children's voices, giggling in a sing-song carefree way. The voices were coming from below, then from above (impossible), and suddenly all around me as if I were in a circle. I was utterly terrified because somehow the voices were coldly indifferent or malicious, like the predatory call of a wild animal, and they definitely shouldn't have been happening there.
I quickly shouldered my pack, nervously fingered my knife to make sure it was within reach, and hauled ass down the mountain, certain that at any moment a little kid would dart out of the mist and scare me or do something worse - I don't know, but I was scared as hell. I reached my car in record time after sliding on my ass down a slick steep slope and hurriedly stashed my gear and started up the engine. As I was pulling out, I noticed that there were no other wheel tracks in the mud of the lot, and I hadn't seen a single other person on the descent. The voices continued to giggle and laugh the whole way down the trail, all 45 minutes of it. There was no one else on the mountain that afternoon and I can still think of no good reason why I would have heard those voices. I know they were there, and I know that I heard them - but it was impossible.
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I used to live in northern New Jersey, and for my first camping trip, my best friend (we were both about 7) and our dad's took us to some forest way south of us. When we pulled into the area we would be camping out in, I could swear I saw something moving around in the bushes a short distance away, but I shrugged it off as deer or something. So the rest of that day is normal camping activities, followed by s'mores and a nighttime walk to look at the stars (the trees formed a canopy where we were camped, so you had to walk a short ways to actually see anything upwards). So we go and look at the stars, and as we're walking back, my friend's dad spots something riling through one of the tents. So we all start running towards the site making as much noise as possible, thinking it would scare anything off. When we get to the tent it was in, the sleeping bags that were in there were ripped to pieces, and the cooler that the food was in was gone, but the lid had been ripped off.
Our dads let us use their tents and they decided to sit up for a little just in case whatever it was should come back. I'd guess it was about two hours later when they woke us up and quietly told us to grab everything and get into the car as quickly as possible. We packed up in a flash and my dad drove like a bat out of hell. To this day, I can't get him to tell me what happened, and the last time I spoke to my friend, he said his dad turns white if he brings it up. Nothing really direct there, but it still freaks me out to think about. Especially since, if it were just a wild animal, why wouldn't they tell us? (often when I tell this story, people say, "Oh, you must've seen the Jersey Devil!" which I find a crock of shit as I've always hated that legend and I'm fairly certain we weren't in the right forest even if that thing is real).
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Right, so a few years ago I get hired for the night shift at a server farm. Sit around, scratch balls, so the company can say they have staff on site 24 hours a day. First day (well, night), the guy showing me around blurts out: "Oh, and the place is haunted!" Miles of corridor lit by flickering lights, server rooms with elevated floors, dozens of computers with screensavers so you keep seeing movement out of the corner of your eye, I'll be alone, and now you tell me that the place is haunted? Thanks, you fuck. I figure the guy is messing with me.
Then I start noticing the office next to mine, which is only used during the day, is showing signs of occupancy. The chair seems to move, the door opens or shuts... one night I went by and the screensaver had turned off - you know, like when you move the mouse. OMGWTF? Back to my office, connect to the motion-sensor cameras... nobody in the building but me. I search for motion over the previous six hours. Nada. I decide to ask what's going on with this haunted story when I see the morning shift.
Anyway, back in the day, one of the employees had croaked at his desk. Some blood vessel let loose in his brain, he croaked, the door was closed, and everyone assumed he was hard at work on an all-nighter. They found him the next morning.
I'll call him Jim, because that was his name.
Jim was apparently the OMFG SERVER GOD at this place. All the scripts and half the manuals either reference Jim or have his name in the comments somewhere. But Jim can't let go. He still haunts this place. The morning shift guys say they don't believe in Jim, but the last two night shift guys that worked there believed in Jim.
"Well," I say, "were they friends with Jim?" I get some funny looks. "No, Jim was dead before they were hired." "No. Were they friends with his ghost?" "No. Ghosts aren't real." Yeah, but you don't work the night shift, asshole.
So that night, I'm going by Jim's office. "Hey, Jim! Howzit going?" Work the rest of the night, no problems. I started having half-conversations with Jim. Sports, weather, hot chicks he might want to haunt, server problems, the works. I still see a few signs of Jim-haunting, but it's cool.
So, one night, the servers go apeshit. I totally lied on my resume, this is way over my head. So, I'm on the phone with a few of the day techs trying to figure out what's going on, when the day techs just chill. "Hey - whatever you just did fixed it." Huh? "Yeah, servers seem fine now."
I'm a little freaked. I go down to the server room that's been giving us problems. Humming away. I login to the Unix box. Check the uptime.
It's just been rebooted.
"Thanks, Jim!" I say, but I'm really freaked. Later, the morning shift all show up and start giving me mad props. I say, "No, it was Jim." People look at me really funny.
I installed CS and UT on the computer in his office and gave him a login later the next night.
I didn't give him a email address... frankly, I didn't have the balls.
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I have quite a few ghost stories, nothing evil or sinister happening to me, but I do think I see and feel a lot more of this shit than the average guy. My current house has "Ed" milling about. Ed was the guy that handbuilt our house, and lived there for 50 years. Ed died in my bedroom and rotted for a week before being discovered... he had almost no family, and was a real quiet guy. My parents lived in the neighborhood with Ed from 1972, until he passed away. He likes to think he is still living in the house. I can feel and see weird things in my room at night, light where it shouldn't be, temp changes. Lights going on, or off, alarm getting shut off, etc. One night when the XGF was over, we heard a pounding on my wall at 3 AM. Nobody else was at home, the power was out, so it wasn't any household electrical device. I told her it was the house settling, hehehe.
Sometime later I heard a light switch turn on... ya know those old switches that are really loud? Then walking around in the attic, over my room, the bedroom, and the hall. I went back to bed, and the next day asked my brother if there are lights, and a switch in the attic, and if there is a hardwood floor, he confirmed this, and asked how I knew that, since I have not set foot in the attic.
He also moves tools, opens doors, walks around.. nothing scary, but it can be unnerving at times.
I have a buddy with tons of stories: he claims to have the ability to see ghosts. He explains it this way: "Humans are on a channel, and they only see things on the same channel. Some people can see the next channel, also.. I can do that. I see both channels at the same time, and have seen, and still see crazy things." He pretty much said it took him many, many years to learn how to block it out, somewhat, and deal with that ability.
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1) My mom and stepdad pulled funds and teeth to purchase the house. It was the first house my mom had ever owned. It was pretty ugly on the outside and in, but nothing a new paint job couldn't fix. It was a pretty small home at that, single floor, no basement, an unfinished attic, one bathroom 3 bedrooms. The people that stayed there before us were into occult and different paranormal type stuff. Proof of this came from the different paraphernalia we found upstairs and threw away. We were in the house for no more than two days when things started happening. Apparently, we were unwelcome guests in our own home. The first came from the storm. In particular, a lightning bolt. Paranormal? Maybe not, but it was definitely odd considering the night it happened, it was the only lighting bolt of a pretty big rainstorm. The tree it struck took out a big chunk of the new fence we put up the day before. Only ONE bolt, folks. We clean up the tree with the assistance of the city cleanup crew. Luckily, the fence wasn't too damaged and was repaired the next day.
2) More fence shenanigans. Within the next week, about 1/3 of the wooden fence would end up being torn off, each time we found pieces taken off we would put them back on. My stepdad attributed it to an animal or two causing a ruckus. I would later find out he told us this to keep us from freaking out. I woke up early to mow the lawn one Sunday and was the first one out back. Sure enough, more fence pieces were removed. As I take a closer look at the wood though, I noticed something. Nothing. No claw marks, no footprints, no nails... no nails, I thought? Obvious reaction, Oh, someone is taking these things out with a hammer. Good conclusion, except that I myself had put different nails in and these things were embedded in the wood to where a hammer end couldn't get them out. More so, the planks of wood were about 6.5 feet high. If someone yanked them from top or bottom, it would leave splinters or something. There was nothing, though. Just fence being taken out with no explanation. This would continue for a year or so... it also went on without our motion sensor lights coming on.
3) Older brother sees my mom. Well, not exactly. I woke up because my brother (who was on the top bunk) got out of bed and went out of the room. I hear him say, "Mom?" and then walk down the hall. He comes back a couple minutes later, and my mom walks out of the room across from ours. She wonders why he's up so late. He then freaks out and tells her what happened. He followed my mom from the bedroom area, down the hallway, through the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. The whole time, she wouldn't answer him. When he went into the kitchen, she disappeared. There is no way for Mom to get from the kitchen to our bedroom area without passing him on her way back up.
4) Weight lifting and the attic. My brother rob decided to take his stuff in the room and move it upstairs into the unfinished attic. It was evenly divided into two sections by a doorway with no door. Our attic area did not have steps, it had a pull hatch / ladder setup. The first room was setup to be a weight room for my stepdad. He laid some old throw rug down, enough for the bench to sit on, the rest of it was just floor boards, and crappy ones at that. Anything that went on upstairs could be heard downstairs. We were all downstairs watching Naked Gun 33 1/3 at the time and having a great family night. Out of the blue, we hear the weights being dropped in the attic. It happens once, and my stepdad gets a little annoyed because it was making so much noise. Then a louder boom from the weights. He yells up at Rob to stop lifting weights. At that it kind of just hit me. "Mike? Rob is out with his friend Jeremy." He looks at me, and my mom looks at me too. We go and take a peek and the weights are scattered all over the room. We decided to take the movie over to Grandma's and watch it over there.
5) After watching an episode of Sightings (what an awesome show!) we gained some information on ghost type of stuff. Rob and I thought it would be cool to try and communicate with whatever was in our house. We set up a tape recorder with new batteries and a 45 minute tape. We set the tape up in the attic, and said, "If there is an entity or being that would like to make itself present, then please feel welcome to do so." At that, we left and went to our Friday night Roller Skate. My mom didn't know we did this. We get home and the tape is recorded full through. We listened to the tape. 10, 15, 20, 35 minutes... nothing. We waited with hearts pounding. At about 42 minutes, we hear "haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..." To better give you an idea of it, it sounded like the sound you make when steaming your glasses to clean them. Except it lasted about 7 seconds or so.
6) I was engaged in conversation. I was in the shower washing my hair. I had the longer grunge style hair back then and had shampoo in it. I hear the door open and then I hear "Hello..." Me not caring Mom is there. "Oh hey! Did anyone call for me today?" "Nottt tooooday..." "If Brian calls, can you come and get me? It's important..." "Why certainly.... Okay... I'll see YOU later..." Alrighty. It kind of struck me as odd the way Mom said "you," but I finished washing my hair and face and about 5 minutes later (while I was washing my nuts, nonetheless) my mom comes in again. I think that Brian has called. "Hey Mom, is Brian on the phone?" "No, why, are you expecting a call?" "Yeah Mom, I just told you that a few minutes ago..." "Huh?" "Seriously Mom, I just talked to you... stop BS-ing me..." "I haven't been in for an hour... I have been doing yardwork..." At that I always locked the bathroom door after that.
7) Fast Forward time about 6 years: we hadn't had so much as a peep from ghostly McSpookencaster. I now have a 4-year-old little brother. He comes running in from the kitchen freaked, eyes wide open, he is crying like crazy. I ask him what is wrong. He said that Mom just tried to grab him and said she was going to kill him. WTF. I could tell he wasn't lying by how he was shaking, I set him behind me waiting for my psycho mom to come looking for him, ready for a short rumble. Nothing. I tell him to come with me... maybe she was only joking. We go to the dining room and he is trembling. Nothing. I call around for Mom. Nothing. I look out to the back yard and she is in the pool (above ground) sitting in her floating chair. I look to my brother and ask him what happened. He came from his bedroom and was going to get an apple or something from the fridge. Mom was sitting at the dining room table kind of rocking, like a nervous person would. He called to her... "Mom?" She just kind of sat there. He walks closer and is about to grab her robe to get her attention... at that time she turns her head with evil insane eyes and reaches for him, yelling she is going to kill him. There is no way Mom could have done that and got into the pool without me hearing the water splash. He was in no way lying.
8) The last straw. We were all in the dining room playing a board game as it was a rainy day. We hear the front door open. So I get up and close it... the wind blew it open. I sit back down, a couple minutes later it opens again. This time I think it's the wind again, and I must not have closed it all the way. So I close it shut hard. I sit back down. Rinse and repeat 3 more times. I figured a neighborhood kid was being a jerk, and this time I lock the door with both the deadbolt and the chain. I sit back down. This time we hear the door open with a crash. Someone had opened it, and opened it hard. Both locks were intact and someone had to have opened them from the inside. The wall had a hole chunked out of it where the handle hit it. We all investigate, as there has to be someone in the house. When I take a look at the door, the molding on the door that is put there for decorations was warped really bad. It was fucking raining out, and there was no sun outside that could have caused this. We finally took action and had the house blessed.
9) First priest bailed on us. He took a couple of steps into the house and got a really really really worried look on his face. He stayed for all of 2 minutes and said that there was nothing wrong. FUCK THAT.
10) Peace at last. We got a cat. We had the cat for about a week, no problems. Just in case, we called a priest to have him bless the house. This priest came in, did his ritual of blessing all of the rooms, doorways, windows, and all areas of our property. That was 7 years ago, and we have not had a problem since.
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A late response to some of the dream stuff, which reminded me of another scary story I have: I died in a dream once. It can happen, and obviously I am not dead since I'm posting about it. Also, the dream was insanely fucked up and totally different from most of my dreams. Here is the dream:
As far as I remember, it began with me being in the woods. I was looking at this small cabin outside of which a man and a woman in their early 20's had an unidentifiable body on the ground. They had made an incision on its chest and were pulling its ribs out, not pulling out the entire rib cage, but grabbing ribs and snapping them off. They had several dead bodies next to them and a large pile of ribs. After they finished killing this person, they took all the ribs and made a gigantic picture frame out of them. Inside the frame, they placed various bloody body parts from the victims. I was in full camo and had a walkie talkie, but no weapons... I was apparently some sort of reconnaissance person. I radioed in to my walkie talkie that I had found the suspects. Within seconds, two large cargo planes flew overhead and dropped about 40 soldiers. They were parachuting on the cabin's location.
The couple outside the cabin placed the picture frame on the ground face up and began chanting. A beam shot out and completely engulfed the paratroopers. At first, it appeared to do nothing, then all of their parachute cables snapped and their rate of falling accelerated to a ridiculous amount like they weighed 1000 pounds each. One by one, they hit the ground with insane force... they all died very graphically, I saw leg bones being pushed up through torsos, bodies hitting the ground so hard they just sort of fell apart, etc.
Then my dream did one of those weird unexplained things where you are in a completely different place and the situation is different, but you somehow know everything that happened in between. I was standing in my backyard with my entire family. Apparently the killer couple were my brother and sister (not my real brother and sister, just according to the dream). We had somehow hunted them down as a family and had them contained in a metal cage. As we were trying to decide what to do with them, I wandered too close to the cage, and my brother pulled out a knife from somewhere and stabbed me in the gut. I fell to the ground and bled to death. I saw my spirit rise from my body, and I saw my family beat my brother and sister to death when they saw what happened to me.
This is the only dream I ever had like this. I do have nightmares often, but they're usually more like aliens are attacking my school and I have guns from Resident Evil sort of things. I have never had a dream with such explicit gore and death before. The only thing that tied this dream to me at all was when we were in my backyard, it actually was my backyard in my house. My family did not look the least like any of my real family. It felt like it was a dream meant for someone else who used to live at my house.
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There are a few ghost houses in my area, but nothing that's ever affected me because I never visited them at night. About 4 years back, they put in a few houses where a corn field used to be, which is bordered by this "haunted house." A kid about my age moved in, and we started talking. Since we live in a very rural area, he wanted to know: "Where do all the organ noises come from?" and I had no clue what he was talking about... I've lived here for 16 years and never heard any organs. I put it out of my mind for a year or so, then one of my best friends was at the other kid's house, and he was telling me about the organs they heard playing, coming through the woods bordering that house. They went to explore, the organs stopped, and the next morning, his dog turned up missing. They heard the organs again that night, and went looking for his dog, and heard it barking. It was crudely chained to the back of this haunted house...
The one that was strangest to me personally happened about 2 months ago at work. I never have the chance to stand around and do NOTHING but talk at work, but we were extremely dead (I work in a pizza place) and there were 5 of us standing around talking. The place is an old building back from the turn of the century, and whenever someone would die, my boss would buy up their neighboring rooms, tear down the walls, and expand our kitchen. Well, we were just pointing this out, and laughing about it, because a few people that work there have seen this ghost. An old man with glasses in a suit, and he's always walking in this one general area of the store, he's been spotted at least 5 times. I claimed this as bullshit, but who cares, we're getting paid to BS. The boss' daughter (omgwhattahottie) was saying how the previous night, she closed alone and heard something in the back, and got freaked out and ran out of there. We were laughing about that, and she was in the middle of telling the stories of the ghost when all of a sudden, the cover to the thermostat on the wall falls off and somehow lands face up, without bouncing or anything. No one was near it, it's never fallen off before, and there's really no way it can "fall" off, it locks in place. It's hard plastic, so it should've bounced when it hit the tile floor, but it didn't. Just somehow leaped off the wall, went 3 feet to the side, and landed in between us all. All of our jaws dropped, and then we were all freaked out.
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When I was younger, I had about a 2-foot long open area between the head of my bed and the wall, used to store toys, mags, my skateboard, whatever. As I grew older, it emptied out until it was completely empty by high school. One night, I woke up around 2 AM and turned over onto my stomach, flipping my left arm over my head to hang over the edge of the bed, into that space.
Something grabbed my left hand and squeezed. Hard. And would not let go.
I do not know how long I struggled to pull my hand out of its grasp, but it seemed forever. I thought I had yelled for my parents to wake up, but it must have come out a whimper, if at all, as they told me they didn't hear anything. I began to bang my hand against the wall, hoping I could force whatever it was to let go of me. Finally, I pulled my hand away, used my now free hand to flip on the light, and peeked over.
There was nothing there. Whatever had had a death grip on my left hand had vanished.
I took a quick scan of the room, flipped onto my back, and lay there letting my body relax from the adrenaline rush it had just gone through. My mouth was so dry, my tongue was stuck to its roof, and my heart was beating faster than I thought possible. While I was laying there, I began to feel incredible tingles all the way through my right arm. They became stronger and stronger until it was almost unbearable and I realized what had happened.
I had been sleeping on my right arm, causing it to "go to sleep" SO bad that I had lost feeling in the entire thing. When I flipped my left hand over the bed, it must have hit my right hand causing a nervous reaction which made my right hand clamp down on my left with all its strength. Since my right hand was so asleep, it was completely numb to me which is why I did not feel it gripping my left, or feel it when I bashed it against the wall (I felt it in the morning though).
I'll condense the years up until 1990. Those appearances, while still frightening, never really made me feel threatened. During this period, which included teenage years, I saw the figure with the same frequency. My bedroom is located at the end of a hallway with 2 other bedrooms before mine. At the other end of the hallway is a landing that blocks the view to the steps. From my bed, I could look out my door and down the hall to the landing and the top of the steps. I always knew right before the figure would appear, because the hair on the back of my neck would stand up and I would get uncontrollable chills. The figure would then appear either on top of the landing or come around the base of the landing and start down the hall toward my room. It never seemed to pay any attention to the other rooms at all. I would normally panic and either shut my door or run into my parents' room and sleep on the floor. Imagine finding your 18-year-old son curled up on your bedroom floor when you wake up in the morning. My parents and sister didn't really fully believe that I was seeing this apparition. I also would stay up late, being the night person that I am, and watch TV. In my living room, we have the stairs that lead up to the 2nd floor. It has a wooden railing on it that goes the length of the last 4 steps. I would often see the figure on the steps watching me from the 3rd or 4th step and then disappear. The only real changes during this time period were that the figure was losing its color and becoming more transparent.
Now things will change drastically. A neighbor, with some knowledge of this sort of activity, told me to confront the figure and tell it to leave and never come back. I was to tell it that I was its power source and I was shutting off the power. I did this and enjoyed about a year of no sightings. Around this time, I told the story to my girlfriend of the time. She thought that its description sounded like a baby with water on the brain and still wearing its gown from the hospital. She thought that it was a lost soul trying to contact me to help it with some task, so that it could finally rest in peace. I started to look into the house's history and my family's. The house sits on land that was farmland and a dirt road only 150 years ago. The land was owned by one man and he had his farm and homestead around the area of my house (the main house of his estate is one block from my house and is still standing) My house is 40 years old and we are the 2nd family to live in it. The couple before us had no children that we know about. I have a sister 3 years younger than me and no other siblings. I have asked my parents if they had a child that died that I was unaware of, but they didn't. So after all my checking, I found nothing that could explain the apparition.
After a week of thinking about the interpretation my girlfriend had given, guilt from banishing the figure overcame me. I asked it to come back one night, and told it I would help it. The very next night, the sightings started again, but with much greater intensity. I can say now, NEVER do what I did, once it's gone, let it stay gone. The sightings would happen more frequently and sometimes they would terrify me. The figure looked the same but something was very different. I was sure what it was, but now there was another force in addition to the familiar figure. I began to see small black colored creatures which I can only describe as imps. They were solid black, 1-2 feet tall and ran around on all fours. They appeared mostly in the living room and coming from the hall closet.
Now, to explain the rest of the house setup that pertains to the story. The man that lived here before us started to dig out a basement, but he never completed it. All that remains is a 3-4 foot crawl space accessible from outside the house. The hall closet was to be the stairs down to the basement. He had started making the stairs going down but he boarded it all up when he stopped digging the basement. The stairs going up to the 2nd floor are directly over the would-be basement step and the hall closet. So there are 2 ways from inside the house to access the crawl space, if you really wanted to: rip up the 3rd or 4th step of the stairs or knock out the back of the closet. I began to make the connection between where the figures appeared and where the access ways were.
The sightings got more intense, and sometimes they even drove me from my house. Normally, my dog would sense the small figure and act funny when it was around, but now when the imps appeared, my dog would be in a very deep sleep and I could never wake him up. I would leave the house and stay over at a friend's. Sometimes I would be knocking on her door at 2 AM, terrified. Other times, if I was able to get between them and the steps, I would make a run for it to my room or my parents' room, because even these creatures would not venture in the bedrooms. My mother was noticing my moods and I had told her about the new happenings, so she told me to get her the next time I saw the figure or imps. The next time I saw the figure upstairs coming down the hall, I ran into her room and woke her up. I led her out into the hall where the figure still was. I pointed to it, and it began to back away and go down the steps. I chased it down to the 3rd step where it vanished. While she could not see it, she could tell by my eye movements that I was watching something moving across the hall and steps. I think that's when my family started to believe a little.
I became used to these new additions because they never did any harm, but they did make me feel very uneasy. The figure was becoming even more transparent. Certain lamps in the house would go on and off by themselves, often with other witnesses around. I would hear the TV go on in the middle of the night when I knew no one was downstairs. I had theorized that the figure needed help to appear because it was slowly fading away. I assumed the imps were helping him, but the figure was still fading. I was waiting for a new addition to the cast, so the figure could still appear, since I still hadn't figured out what it wanted me to do.
The sightings stopped again for a few months. I spoke with a parapsychologist, but then decided to leave well enough alone. I didn't want things getting worse. I decided to go into the crawl space and check out the area under the stairs. I took my dog down there with me and I crawled to the area. There had not been anyone under there for years before this. I found an Old Maid playing card with not a bit of dust on it right under the 3rd step. We have wall-to-wall carpeting, so this did not fall through the joints. I hadn't seen that deck of cards for over 20 years, but here was one card from the deck. It had one corner that looked like it had been dipped in acid, but the rest was in good shape. I took it and put in a pocket Bible, and put it in my car.
The sightings started again, only very small. I would call my girlfriend on the cordless phone and tell her it's happening again and then walk upstairs while still on the phone with her. The next time was the worst of all. The figure appeared very bright, like it did years ago, but it didn't look very happy. The imps appeared again but they were more bold this time. Then a 7-foot tall man-shaped black figure appeared. It looked like it was either made of smoke or some liquid. It looked semi-solid and you couldn't see through it. At the same time, the room was filled with imps and a bearded old man's face took shape on the wall and started mumbling. The face was about 6 foot high and 4 foot wide. The familiar figure looked like it was sorry for doing this to me. I left the house and sat in my car until dawn.
I knew I had to confront this new entity and try to drive it away. I also figured that if it wanted me, it was going to get me either way, so I had nothing to lose. My sanity, life, and maybe my soul were on the line and I honestly believed this was the only way to stop it before it branched out. I was the original power source, so I was going to shut off the power. The next night I prayed for protection and the strength to drive this evil away. I had a Bible handy, as I sat up as usual listening to my CD's. About 2 AM, I noticed my dog was in one of those deep, deep sleeps and I began to look around. The figure and the tall black figure appeared along with the rest of the apparitions. I informed them in the calmest voice I could get at this time, that I was taking away their power and they had no hold on me or power over me. I told them I, my family, and house was protected by God and they could not harm us. I walked right past the tall figure and the imps moved out of my way. I walked right up the steps and never looked back.
That was about 2 years ago and I have not seen them since. We placed a Bible on the stairs and a cross in the closet to block off their entrances. I still feel there is a presence there that tries to get me to let in it. I still hear bumping and walking around, but the apparitions are gone, banished to the crawl space.
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In the 60's, when my mom was 16, she started studying the Bible and learning about God from my aunt. My aunt taught her that playing around with the occult and ghosts and such was wrong and can be very dangerous... fast forward a little while. My mom is at a sleepover with 5 other girls and one of them brings a Ouija Board and they decide to play with it. At first they can't get it to work, but when they pass it to two other girls, it starts moving by itself. They ask the name of the spirit and it spells out E-V-E.
My mom, remembering what my aunt had taught her, starts to get really scared and asks if they can do something else. When they refuse, she goes in the other room and starts praying. After an hour or so, one of the girls comes and gets her, and tells her that they had put it away. When she gets back to the other room, no one is very talkative and no one seems to be having any fun. She asks what happened and no one says anything, until finally one of the girls speaks up and says that they were asking where "Sarah" would be in the year 2000 and it spelled out D-E-A-D. They asked where "Jane" would be in the year 2000 and it spelled D-E-A-D. After it did the same with the third girl, I guess no one else wanted to play with it any more. Nothing like a little mortality check to kill the mood of your slumber party.
Anyway... fast forward to present. My mom says that of the 3 girls the spirit foretold would die, she kept in contact with two as she got older, and as we speak, they are in fact, dead. One from cervical cancer and one in a car accident. It gave me the willies when she told me this story.
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At Uni - chilling out between lectures after dinner, lying on bed, half-listening to the TV with my eyes closed:
I heard breathing..... imitating mine. I was incredibly intrigued. I kept holding my breath at random intervals, trying to catch it out, and sure enough, the breathing continued for a second or two before stopping. All the time, the sound became louder and louder, and the feeling of the presence in the room became stronger.
I had just stopped breathing again, and caught the entity out.... and there was silence..... All of a sudden, this thing was over me. It breathed out on my face - I felt the warmth, the smell..... and the force of the exhalation.... and that’s when all the shit started to happen....
All that I can remember is that I was completely paralysed, with my back arched... I was unable to scream, cry out, but was very strong in trying to block the attack. My stomach was bubbling... so much so that bile was shooting out of my open mouth.....
This lasted for about a minute.... when I finally let out a scream, and the entity just gave up and disappeared. I was a mess after that... white, shaking....
I had some serious healing and protection after that incident - crystal healing with one of the southwest's best healers.... as soon as I walked into her house, she and her colleague said "I can sense the presence - can't you?" .... (this was before I had explained what had gone on)....
I had been stupid, and done shit that had attracted the entity to me. Luckily for me, I have a strong soul and a strong will.... he was no match for me. :)
This happened (along with many other similar, but less fucked-up experiences) when I was 23... With each generation, there are many people who are becoming "spiritually aware" during their 20's, yet do not understand and can not control what is happening to them.
What I can suggest to you is to seek help - I saw many people from vicars to priests, Paganists and occultists to Scientologists.... including friends that I could trust. The healing for me came within two hours of my experience. My landlady was a total disbeliever, but she had a friend who believed in spirits etc., and phoned her. She phoned some other people, and got me the address of this lady in the same city... who was completely awesome. The healing gave me a lot of protection.
What you can do now is try not to be scared. These things do exist, but they are relatively weak. Their main weapon is fear.... and if they work on you, night after night, they can get you into a state that makes your will weak.... that happened to me during another time (which is too personal to share in detail).... Think of a more toned-down version of The Exorcist.....
Be strong. Think of an aura around your body of white light.... the light is warm, strong... and is like a spiritual condom. Close your eyes, and imagine this.... this aura is 100% protection... nothing can enter it.
======================
1991
It's odd that past experiences haven't really affected me today. I can look back to two of the strangest possible things that happened in my childhood, have a beer, and laugh about it - as though it either never happened, or was supposed to have happened, and my subconscious has brushed it off.
I was thirteen years old, disinterested in anything paranormal. I had also stumbled into an almost unheard-of situation: One of my best friend's parents had left town for the evening to attend a basketball game in Dallas - and he had the house to himself. This meant, of course, a night's worth of mainlining Mountain Dew and playing Techmo Bowl. We spent the evening blowing dust from the well-used innards of the Nintendo, and trading lies about non-existent hand-jobs out in back of the Whataburger with that girl from Civics class.
The bright LCD clock had just switched over from PM to AM, and I had just capped off a 12-play, clock-killing drive to win my fifth straight game. My hands were sweaty, my thumbs raw, as I stood up to walk to the bathroom - ignoring the cries of "cheater!" from my friend Andrew. I wiped my hands on my Ocean Pacific T-shirt, and casually glanced out the window. Off on the dark horizon, there was a light - to the casual observer, it would have just been another airplane - but I had grown up in an aviation family - I, myself, had been flying for two years at that point - and I knew that there was no airplane that emitted a bright orange beam as it flew. I kicked the bean bag chair closer to the window, and knelt down, hoping to get a better view over the distant treetops.
"Hey Drew, come here..." I whispered. He put the game on pause, and started with a pathetic attempt of "Straight outta Compton, crazy motherfucker named..."
"Shut the fuck up and come here..." I cut him off. He looked up from the NWA CD that he was wiping on his shirt, and looked out the window.
"What?"
"Over there..." I pointed at the orange light in the distance. I wasn't sure if it was moving, or if the flutter was some distortion of the hot Texas air.
"The airplane?" he asked.
"It's not..." I replied, and he looked at me quizzically. Andrew fell into position beside me, and we gazed out over the swaying oaks, at that ball of light in the distance.
"What the fuck is it?"
"I don't know..." and I really didn't. All the analytical parts of my mind had failed - I was looking at a streetlight suspended over a backwoods Texas forest, silently shining at 12:08 AM.
"It's getting bigger..." Andrew whispered, his voice betraying alarm.
"No", I answered, my voice creaking, "It's coming towards us."
We sat in stunned silence as the light came closer, closer... so close that it appeared to be a police searchlight, shining directly on the two young faces staring blankly out of the second floor window of a Texas farmhouse - all the while, the only noise disturbing the peaceful night was the steady cadence of thousands of crickets in the damp grass below. The light crested over the roof of the house, and it was only in that second's blocking of the blinding light that we were able to see the object - no more than thirty feet over our house. It was a large, dark circle - blocking out the night - at least 100 feet in diameter. A single, rectangular opening in the center - accented by a faint blue light - was the only thing that disturbed the perfect uniformity of the object. We kneeled there, mouths agape, until the object silently coasted over the house and out of sight.
"Outside, now!" I yelled - impulsively springing to my feet.
"No FUCKING way!" Andrew screamed - yet his body betrayed his common sense, and scrambled down the staircase behind me. I leapt to the front door, and out over the porch railing, looking up in the sky. As Andrew came up beside me, my face sank as I realized that I was looking up to nothing more than the clear night sky - the bands of the milky way stretching from treeline to treeline. Nothing.
"What the fuck?" he asked.
"I have no fucking clue..." I replied, disappointed. We remained outside for a good five more minutes, two scared boys, alone in the night - then I decided to turn around wordlessly and head inside. We both took off our now wet socks, and closed the front door.
Wait. I looked up suddenly and looked around the living room. To the casual glance, nothing was wrong - the house was just as we had left it. But there was something wrong. I glanced over at Andrew - the size of his eyes showed me that he felt it too. Something was.... off. I closed my eyes for a minute, and tried to read my senses - ignoring the rushing beat of my heart. There... and again. It was as if somebody was squelching a cheap AM radio in the house. Whiny interference, and under that... a faint murmur that was almost... a voice? The first thing that immediately sprang to mind was the Imperial Probe Droid from Empire Strikes Back - a repeating code, but almost sub-aural... like I had to feel it - and it was words. Kind of like one of those tin-can to a string experiments, I was hearing a faint voice. But was it in my head?
"You hear..." Andrew started, but he choked back the rest as I held up my hand... I had no idea what to do... the terror in my chest felt inescapable. But I summoned up enough gusto to clear my throat slightly, and call out to the house...
"Hello?"
Silence... even the crickets were no longer making their presence known. A second passed, and another. A small bead of sweat trickled into my eye...
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
It wasn't a voice... at least not in the technical definition of the word. It was as if you had taken all the car crashes from all the history of mankind, sampled them over each other, then modulated that noise to form one word of utter despair. Twisted metal, broken glass, all these sounds cascaded through the house - reverberating in the walls for what seemed like an eternity. My friend's dog - who was sleeping soundly on the living room couch - arose with a dart and began a shrill howl as it scampered for the relative safety of the basement. Then, just as suddenly as it started - it was over. Nothing but the ringing of my ears, the pounding of my heart. I looked over at Andrew, his face white with fear.
"GO!" I screamed, and started running for the kitchen. If I had to pick a place that the sound had originated from, it sounded like upstairs - and I needed to get as far away from that shit as possible. We arrived in the kitchen, and Andrew started for the back door.
"NO, FUCK, NO!" I yelled at him. I was not going outside at that point. But I didn't want to stay inside. "BASEMENT!" he suggested, out of breath. I nodded, and we careened down the steps - slamming the door behind us.
So that's where we stayed that night. Huddled underneath the steps of the cellar - each trying to convince each other that we were not crazy, that what happened actually happened. A few hours later, we ventured out into the house, went upstairs, outside, everywhere possible - and there was nothing wrong. The house appeared exactly as it had been when I last savored the taste of Techmo-victory some three hours before. We even got the courage to sleep a bit - in shifts - while the other one stood guard with a Swiss-Army knife, scanning Headline News for anything abnormal in the world - and constantly glancing out the window into the rapidly brightening sky.
1993
A thousand miles and a lifetime away, I sat around a campfire - smoking a cigarette, careful to hide it from the adults that had taken us on this camping trip. I was perhaps the world's worst Boy Scout, 15 years old and rebellious. I went on camping trips because I genuinely cared about teaching the younger kids how to survive in the wild - but I loved camping, and the freedom that it afforded me. I was one of the elders of the group - most of the other kids were 12-13 years old, and were off this cold, starry night running around in the woods, trying to scare each other to death. A few of my older friends and I - too cool for spooky tales and child's play - were sitting around a roaring fire - trading stolen cigarettes and a stale pouch of chewing tobacco - talking about fast girls, fast cars, and whose dad had the finest porn collection. Life was fine, the events of just a few years before were still a very vivid memory - but pushed aside in the light of fonder thoughts.
It was roughly 11 PM when the first kid came tearing through the woods into our clearing. His face was the definition of shock as he fell down next to us, panting and whining like a whipped dog.
"There's a light in the field over there and it's CHASING US!" he screamed.
I looked up at the other two guys, who kinda snickered a bit.
I glanced back down at the kid, "It was just a possum or something... their eyes get bright..."
As I said that, three other kids came tearing out of the woods, running over to our campfire.
"No!" the kid yelled. "It wasn't a possum..."
"It was in the sky!" screeched yet another child. I once more looked up at the guys. One of them rolled their eyes and made a little "come here" gesture. I stood up and grabbed my flashlight.
"We'll look..." I said, walking over towards the treeline. My past history was not on my mind at all, but I still felt an odd chill as I walked towards the trees. My friend behind me called, "You've got a point...", and I nodded, holding the flashlight up and walking into the woods. Once again, it was completely silent, aside from the dried pine needles crunching beneath my sure footsteps. Five yards into the woods, ten yards... the tree branches fell so thick in front of my face that I could scarcely see more than a nose length in front of me. I fought back one more broad branch with the flashlight's butt - and stepped into a small clearing.
The light shone into my eyes for a second, and I tried to blink away the blindness. I glanced all around - it was a moonless night, everything was hopelessly obscured. The blotches in my vision slowly faded - and I glanced directly in front of me.
I could see them there. Three people, no more than ten feet away - moving towards me... walking? It was really difficult to make them out - I had to almost look to the side to see them, bypassing the light impression still burning the front of my pupils. I then remembered the flashlight - and brought it quickly to shoulder level. But...
There was nothing there. There were three people walking directly in front of me, but there was nothing there. I could make out the intricate details of the trees surrounding them, but when the light shone directly on their "faces," it was like a shadow. No definition, no glaring eyes, no gnashing teeth - simply darkness. A blank, black, face.
My previous experiences came flooding back to me as I stared into the face of nothing... my heart began to pound, the blood cascading past my eardrums in a sickening staccato. Three shadows stood silently in front of me, each one moving slightly, so as to give the impression that they were alive - intelligent. Yet featureless, like a spectre, a void of light and contour staring blankly at me. For the second time in my life, I stood in terror and forced out a question.
"Hello?"
Then I heard it... the beating of my heart was replaced with short bursts of... speech.
"I... remember..." I swore I was going crazy, that it was a figment of my imagination. The voice wasn't aural, but I felt it throughout my body, repeating in time with the beat of my heart.
"I... remember... you..."
I froze in fear. From behind me, I heard the shuffling of feet. My friend who had accompanied me had fled. I stood alone in the clearing. Then, just as soon as it began, the voice stopped. The three entities slowly started backing away... travelling silently, passing through tree branches, clipping through a large trunk, but never slowing - just floating away, through anything and everything - until I was the only thing left, standing in the woods, a tear forming in my eye - too scared to do anything but just stand there and listen.
The ending is boring. I ended up walking back to the campsite, and we all just huddled around the campfire, not talking, not enjoying ourselves - just freaking out. I was the only one who heard the words - but my other friend had heard something. Come a few years later, he would deny it ever happened - a horrible memory that his brain decided it was better off without.
But I still tell the story - normally in the company of many friends. This is about the first time I've ever thought about it alone, and it made me shudder as I sat here writing it out.
=========================
About 5 years ago right before I went off to college, all my friends and I got into a Ouija board binge. The first time we did it in my friends haunted house (it's a well known haunted house around town). So anyways... when we asked to have a sign that a spirit was with us... a book fell off the bookcase. While clichéd, it is actually what happened. Didn't really freak us out, though. Eventually I believe the entity told us it was a slave that was murdered by knife. I live in Mississippi, so that's entirely plausible. And DAMN, do we have some ghosts around here... you guys want to come do some serious Ghost hunting? Come to the Mississippi Delta where I'm from... haunted like a mofo.
Anyways, the freakiest Ouija Board experience I had was the second night at my friend's house. Now I'm a SERIOUS skeptic of those things. I believe most of the time, it's the collective moving the glass. However, with a lot of people, you don't really realize you're moving it due to the dispersion of necessary forces... or something. Anyways, it keeps talking about some weird shit... nothing too freaky.. but I don't believe it... I believe a friend is moving it. So I say.. okay ... if you're REALLY a spirit, you don't have to go through a Parker Bros. Ouija Board... I'm gonna take my hands totally off of the board. Then I'm going to go the other side of the room. I get over there (my friends are still on it). And I say, "Okay, ghostie.. I want you to read my mind and spell out the name I'm thinking." It did... exactly. I was kinda freaked. I mean, I wasn't even touching it. I was across the fucking room. But I think it's a coincidence. I tell the ghost to spell the second thing I was thinking. It did. Exactly. Now THAT freaked me out.
There was no board flying across the room, or big black creature outside the window. The thing that was frightening is that it wasn't something that could be explained away. It couldn't have been a hallucination. There wasn't anything really to hallucinate. It wasn't a sound that could have been produced by misfiring neurons or something. It was, to me and my friends, just proof that there was something on "the other side." And the implications and thoughts that that produced were far more frightening and intriguing than any big black shadow. It's more "real world" terror than something out of Hollywood.
So anyways, that's my story. Another explanation is that it was MY subconscious that was moving the board. Which is cool also. Also I made sure to pick names of people I was not really involved with or really knew so my friends couldn't just make an educated guess.
=======================
I had something strange happen to me in college. It was a chilly, wet November afternoon, a Tuesday, and most of the leaves had already changed color and fallen from the trees. I had no classes and decided to take a drive up into the mountains and go hiking - I was training to hike the Appalachian Trail at the time, and regularly hiked 10 and 20 mile sections of the trail with a 40-pound pack on my back. That day, I planned to climb a popular 2-mile trail which led to an overhanging rock with a gorgeous view of the Shenendoah valley. Of course, in the rain, there was no view but I needed to get accustomed to being wet and cold. I won't mention the name of the trail for now.
I drove past the old homesite high on the ridge where colonial families lived, and pulled into the parking area to begin my climb. I did not see a single other car, bike, hiker, or person the entire drive up and the muddy parking lot showed only one set of tire tracks - mine. The climb up was tedious and I slipped twice, getting completely covered in mud and banging up my knee. When I was about 3/4 of the way to the top I entered a cloud- my entire world was reduced to a foot of visibility in a milky white / grey vapour.
Standing atop the rocks at the top, I entered a meditative mindset and sat down on a rock to take in the experience. It was cold and wet and I couldn't see a thing, but somehow it was very tranquil and beautiful - all alone on a rock in a cloud. Then, I got the willies.
A feeling of fear passed over me in a wave and I stood up suddenly, tense and rigid. Silence. The most silent you'll ever be - not a bird or a car, just an occasional puff of wind. And then, I hear a cackling woman's laugh and a chorus of voices, children's voices, giggling in a sing-song carefree way. The voices were coming from below, then from above (impossible), and suddenly all around me as if I were in a circle. I was utterly terrified because somehow the voices were coldly indifferent or malicious, like the predatory call of a wild animal, and they definitely shouldn't have been happening there.
I quickly shouldered my pack, nervously fingered my knife to make sure it was within reach, and hauled ass down the mountain, certain that at any moment a little kid would dart out of the mist and scare me or do something worse - I don't know, but I was scared as hell. I reached my car in record time after sliding on my ass down a slick steep slope and hurriedly stashed my gear and started up the engine. As I was pulling out, I noticed that there were no other wheel tracks in the mud of the lot, and I hadn't seen a single other person on the descent. The voices continued to giggle and laugh the whole way down the trail, all 45 minutes of it. There was no one else on the mountain that afternoon and I can still think of no good reason why I would have heard those voices. I know they were there, and I know that I heard them - but it was impossible.
=====================
I used to live in northern New Jersey, and for my first camping trip, my best friend (we were both about 7) and our dad's took us to some forest way south of us. When we pulled into the area we would be camping out in, I could swear I saw something moving around in the bushes a short distance away, but I shrugged it off as deer or something. So the rest of that day is normal camping activities, followed by s'mores and a nighttime walk to look at the stars (the trees formed a canopy where we were camped, so you had to walk a short ways to actually see anything upwards). So we go and look at the stars, and as we're walking back, my friend's dad spots something riling through one of the tents. So we all start running towards the site making as much noise as possible, thinking it would scare anything off. When we get to the tent it was in, the sleeping bags that were in there were ripped to pieces, and the cooler that the food was in was gone, but the lid had been ripped off.
Our dads let us use their tents and they decided to sit up for a little just in case whatever it was should come back. I'd guess it was about two hours later when they woke us up and quietly told us to grab everything and get into the car as quickly as possible. We packed up in a flash and my dad drove like a bat out of hell. To this day, I can't get him to tell me what happened, and the last time I spoke to my friend, he said his dad turns white if he brings it up. Nothing really direct there, but it still freaks me out to think about. Especially since, if it were just a wild animal, why wouldn't they tell us? (often when I tell this story, people say, "Oh, you must've seen the Jersey Devil!" which I find a crock of shit as I've always hated that legend and I'm fairly certain we weren't in the right forest even if that thing is real).
=====================
Right, so a few years ago I get hired for the night shift at a server farm. Sit around, scratch balls, so the company can say they have staff on site 24 hours a day. First day (well, night), the guy showing me around blurts out: "Oh, and the place is haunted!" Miles of corridor lit by flickering lights, server rooms with elevated floors, dozens of computers with screensavers so you keep seeing movement out of the corner of your eye, I'll be alone, and now you tell me that the place is haunted? Thanks, you fuck. I figure the guy is messing with me.
Then I start noticing the office next to mine, which is only used during the day, is showing signs of occupancy. The chair seems to move, the door opens or shuts... one night I went by and the screensaver had turned off - you know, like when you move the mouse. OMGWTF? Back to my office, connect to the motion-sensor cameras... nobody in the building but me. I search for motion over the previous six hours. Nada. I decide to ask what's going on with this haunted story when I see the morning shift.
Anyway, back in the day, one of the employees had croaked at his desk. Some blood vessel let loose in his brain, he croaked, the door was closed, and everyone assumed he was hard at work on an all-nighter. They found him the next morning.
I'll call him Jim, because that was his name.
Jim was apparently the OMFG SERVER GOD at this place. All the scripts and half the manuals either reference Jim or have his name in the comments somewhere. But Jim can't let go. He still haunts this place. The morning shift guys say they don't believe in Jim, but the last two night shift guys that worked there believed in Jim.
"Well," I say, "were they friends with Jim?" I get some funny looks. "No, Jim was dead before they were hired." "No. Were they friends with his ghost?" "No. Ghosts aren't real." Yeah, but you don't work the night shift, asshole.
So that night, I'm going by Jim's office. "Hey, Jim! Howzit going?" Work the rest of the night, no problems. I started having half-conversations with Jim. Sports, weather, hot chicks he might want to haunt, server problems, the works. I still see a few signs of Jim-haunting, but it's cool.
So, one night, the servers go apeshit. I totally lied on my resume, this is way over my head. So, I'm on the phone with a few of the day techs trying to figure out what's going on, when the day techs just chill. "Hey - whatever you just did fixed it." Huh? "Yeah, servers seem fine now."
I'm a little freaked. I go down to the server room that's been giving us problems. Humming away. I login to the Unix box. Check the uptime.
It's just been rebooted.
"Thanks, Jim!" I say, but I'm really freaked. Later, the morning shift all show up and start giving me mad props. I say, "No, it was Jim." People look at me really funny.
I installed CS and UT on the computer in his office and gave him a login later the next night.
I didn't give him a email address... frankly, I didn't have the balls.
===================
I have quite a few ghost stories, nothing evil or sinister happening to me, but I do think I see and feel a lot more of this shit than the average guy. My current house has "Ed" milling about. Ed was the guy that handbuilt our house, and lived there for 50 years. Ed died in my bedroom and rotted for a week before being discovered... he had almost no family, and was a real quiet guy. My parents lived in the neighborhood with Ed from 1972, until he passed away. He likes to think he is still living in the house. I can feel and see weird things in my room at night, light where it shouldn't be, temp changes. Lights going on, or off, alarm getting shut off, etc. One night when the XGF was over, we heard a pounding on my wall at 3 AM. Nobody else was at home, the power was out, so it wasn't any household electrical device. I told her it was the house settling, hehehe.
Sometime later I heard a light switch turn on... ya know those old switches that are really loud? Then walking around in the attic, over my room, the bedroom, and the hall. I went back to bed, and the next day asked my brother if there are lights, and a switch in the attic, and if there is a hardwood floor, he confirmed this, and asked how I knew that, since I have not set foot in the attic.
He also moves tools, opens doors, walks around.. nothing scary, but it can be unnerving at times.
I have a buddy with tons of stories: he claims to have the ability to see ghosts. He explains it this way: "Humans are on a channel, and they only see things on the same channel. Some people can see the next channel, also.. I can do that. I see both channels at the same time, and have seen, and still see crazy things." He pretty much said it took him many, many years to learn how to block it out, somewhat, and deal with that ability.
==================
1) My mom and stepdad pulled funds and teeth to purchase the house. It was the first house my mom had ever owned. It was pretty ugly on the outside and in, but nothing a new paint job couldn't fix. It was a pretty small home at that, single floor, no basement, an unfinished attic, one bathroom 3 bedrooms. The people that stayed there before us were into occult and different paranormal type stuff. Proof of this came from the different paraphernalia we found upstairs and threw away. We were in the house for no more than two days when things started happening. Apparently, we were unwelcome guests in our own home. The first came from the storm. In particular, a lightning bolt. Paranormal? Maybe not, but it was definitely odd considering the night it happened, it was the only lighting bolt of a pretty big rainstorm. The tree it struck took out a big chunk of the new fence we put up the day before. Only ONE bolt, folks. We clean up the tree with the assistance of the city cleanup crew. Luckily, the fence wasn't too damaged and was repaired the next day.
2) More fence shenanigans. Within the next week, about 1/3 of the wooden fence would end up being torn off, each time we found pieces taken off we would put them back on. My stepdad attributed it to an animal or two causing a ruckus. I would later find out he told us this to keep us from freaking out. I woke up early to mow the lawn one Sunday and was the first one out back. Sure enough, more fence pieces were removed. As I take a closer look at the wood though, I noticed something. Nothing. No claw marks, no footprints, no nails... no nails, I thought? Obvious reaction, Oh, someone is taking these things out with a hammer. Good conclusion, except that I myself had put different nails in and these things were embedded in the wood to where a hammer end couldn't get them out. More so, the planks of wood were about 6.5 feet high. If someone yanked them from top or bottom, it would leave splinters or something. There was nothing, though. Just fence being taken out with no explanation. This would continue for a year or so... it also went on without our motion sensor lights coming on.
3) Older brother sees my mom. Well, not exactly. I woke up because my brother (who was on the top bunk) got out of bed and went out of the room. I hear him say, "Mom?" and then walk down the hall. He comes back a couple minutes later, and my mom walks out of the room across from ours. She wonders why he's up so late. He then freaks out and tells her what happened. He followed my mom from the bedroom area, down the hallway, through the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. The whole time, she wouldn't answer him. When he went into the kitchen, she disappeared. There is no way for Mom to get from the kitchen to our bedroom area without passing him on her way back up.
4) Weight lifting and the attic. My brother rob decided to take his stuff in the room and move it upstairs into the unfinished attic. It was evenly divided into two sections by a doorway with no door. Our attic area did not have steps, it had a pull hatch / ladder setup. The first room was setup to be a weight room for my stepdad. He laid some old throw rug down, enough for the bench to sit on, the rest of it was just floor boards, and crappy ones at that. Anything that went on upstairs could be heard downstairs. We were all downstairs watching Naked Gun 33 1/3 at the time and having a great family night. Out of the blue, we hear the weights being dropped in the attic. It happens once, and my stepdad gets a little annoyed because it was making so much noise. Then a louder boom from the weights. He yells up at Rob to stop lifting weights. At that it kind of just hit me. "Mike? Rob is out with his friend Jeremy." He looks at me, and my mom looks at me too. We go and take a peek and the weights are scattered all over the room. We decided to take the movie over to Grandma's and watch it over there.
5) After watching an episode of Sightings (what an awesome show!) we gained some information on ghost type of stuff. Rob and I thought it would be cool to try and communicate with whatever was in our house. We set up a tape recorder with new batteries and a 45 minute tape. We set the tape up in the attic, and said, "If there is an entity or being that would like to make itself present, then please feel welcome to do so." At that, we left and went to our Friday night Roller Skate. My mom didn't know we did this. We get home and the tape is recorded full through. We listened to the tape. 10, 15, 20, 35 minutes... nothing. We waited with hearts pounding. At about 42 minutes, we hear "haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..." To better give you an idea of it, it sounded like the sound you make when steaming your glasses to clean them. Except it lasted about 7 seconds or so.
6) I was engaged in conversation. I was in the shower washing my hair. I had the longer grunge style hair back then and had shampoo in it. I hear the door open and then I hear "Hello..." Me not caring Mom is there. "Oh hey! Did anyone call for me today?" "Nottt tooooday..." "If Brian calls, can you come and get me? It's important..." "Why certainly.... Okay... I'll see YOU later..." Alrighty. It kind of struck me as odd the way Mom said "you," but I finished washing my hair and face and about 5 minutes later (while I was washing my nuts, nonetheless) my mom comes in again. I think that Brian has called. "Hey Mom, is Brian on the phone?" "No, why, are you expecting a call?" "Yeah Mom, I just told you that a few minutes ago..." "Huh?" "Seriously Mom, I just talked to you... stop BS-ing me..." "I haven't been in for an hour... I have been doing yardwork..." At that I always locked the bathroom door after that.
7) Fast Forward time about 6 years: we hadn't had so much as a peep from ghostly McSpookencaster. I now have a 4-year-old little brother. He comes running in from the kitchen freaked, eyes wide open, he is crying like crazy. I ask him what is wrong. He said that Mom just tried to grab him and said she was going to kill him. WTF. I could tell he wasn't lying by how he was shaking, I set him behind me waiting for my psycho mom to come looking for him, ready for a short rumble. Nothing. I tell him to come with me... maybe she was only joking. We go to the dining room and he is trembling. Nothing. I call around for Mom. Nothing. I look out to the back yard and she is in the pool (above ground) sitting in her floating chair. I look to my brother and ask him what happened. He came from his bedroom and was going to get an apple or something from the fridge. Mom was sitting at the dining room table kind of rocking, like a nervous person would. He called to her... "Mom?" She just kind of sat there. He walks closer and is about to grab her robe to get her attention... at that time she turns her head with evil insane eyes and reaches for him, yelling she is going to kill him. There is no way Mom could have done that and got into the pool without me hearing the water splash. He was in no way lying.
8) The last straw. We were all in the dining room playing a board game as it was a rainy day. We hear the front door open. So I get up and close it... the wind blew it open. I sit back down, a couple minutes later it opens again. This time I think it's the wind again, and I must not have closed it all the way. So I close it shut hard. I sit back down. Rinse and repeat 3 more times. I figured a neighborhood kid was being a jerk, and this time I lock the door with both the deadbolt and the chain. I sit back down. This time we hear the door open with a crash. Someone had opened it, and opened it hard. Both locks were intact and someone had to have opened them from the inside. The wall had a hole chunked out of it where the handle hit it. We all investigate, as there has to be someone in the house. When I take a look at the door, the molding on the door that is put there for decorations was warped really bad. It was fucking raining out, and there was no sun outside that could have caused this. We finally took action and had the house blessed.
9) First priest bailed on us. He took a couple of steps into the house and got a really really really worried look on his face. He stayed for all of 2 minutes and said that there was nothing wrong. FUCK THAT.
10) Peace at last. We got a cat. We had the cat for about a week, no problems. Just in case, we called a priest to have him bless the house. This priest came in, did his ritual of blessing all of the rooms, doorways, windows, and all areas of our property. That was 7 years ago, and we have not had a problem since.
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A late response to some of the dream stuff, which reminded me of another scary story I have: I died in a dream once. It can happen, and obviously I am not dead since I'm posting about it. Also, the dream was insanely fucked up and totally different from most of my dreams. Here is the dream:
As far as I remember, it began with me being in the woods. I was looking at this small cabin outside of which a man and a woman in their early 20's had an unidentifiable body on the ground. They had made an incision on its chest and were pulling its ribs out, not pulling out the entire rib cage, but grabbing ribs and snapping them off. They had several dead bodies next to them and a large pile of ribs. After they finished killing this person, they took all the ribs and made a gigantic picture frame out of them. Inside the frame, they placed various bloody body parts from the victims. I was in full camo and had a walkie talkie, but no weapons... I was apparently some sort of reconnaissance person. I radioed in to my walkie talkie that I had found the suspects. Within seconds, two large cargo planes flew overhead and dropped about 40 soldiers. They were parachuting on the cabin's location.
The couple outside the cabin placed the picture frame on the ground face up and began chanting. A beam shot out and completely engulfed the paratroopers. At first, it appeared to do nothing, then all of their parachute cables snapped and their rate of falling accelerated to a ridiculous amount like they weighed 1000 pounds each. One by one, they hit the ground with insane force... they all died very graphically, I saw leg bones being pushed up through torsos, bodies hitting the ground so hard they just sort of fell apart, etc.
Then my dream did one of those weird unexplained things where you are in a completely different place and the situation is different, but you somehow know everything that happened in between. I was standing in my backyard with my entire family. Apparently the killer couple were my brother and sister (not my real brother and sister, just according to the dream). We had somehow hunted them down as a family and had them contained in a metal cage. As we were trying to decide what to do with them, I wandered too close to the cage, and my brother pulled out a knife from somewhere and stabbed me in the gut. I fell to the ground and bled to death. I saw my spirit rise from my body, and I saw my family beat my brother and sister to death when they saw what happened to me.
This is the only dream I ever had like this. I do have nightmares often, but they're usually more like aliens are attacking my school and I have guns from Resident Evil sort of things. I have never had a dream with such explicit gore and death before. The only thing that tied this dream to me at all was when we were in my backyard, it actually was my backyard in my house. My family did not look the least like any of my real family. It felt like it was a dream meant for someone else who used to live at my house.
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There are a few ghost houses in my area, but nothing that's ever affected me because I never visited them at night. About 4 years back, they put in a few houses where a corn field used to be, which is bordered by this "haunted house." A kid about my age moved in, and we started talking. Since we live in a very rural area, he wanted to know: "Where do all the organ noises come from?" and I had no clue what he was talking about... I've lived here for 16 years and never heard any organs. I put it out of my mind for a year or so, then one of my best friends was at the other kid's house, and he was telling me about the organs they heard playing, coming through the woods bordering that house. They went to explore, the organs stopped, and the next morning, his dog turned up missing. They heard the organs again that night, and went looking for his dog, and heard it barking. It was crudely chained to the back of this haunted house...
The one that was strangest to me personally happened about 2 months ago at work. I never have the chance to stand around and do NOTHING but talk at work, but we were extremely dead (I work in a pizza place) and there were 5 of us standing around talking. The place is an old building back from the turn of the century, and whenever someone would die, my boss would buy up their neighboring rooms, tear down the walls, and expand our kitchen. Well, we were just pointing this out, and laughing about it, because a few people that work there have seen this ghost. An old man with glasses in a suit, and he's always walking in this one general area of the store, he's been spotted at least 5 times. I claimed this as bullshit, but who cares, we're getting paid to BS. The boss' daughter (omgwhattahottie) was saying how the previous night, she closed alone and heard something in the back, and got freaked out and ran out of there. We were laughing about that, and she was in the middle of telling the stories of the ghost when all of a sudden, the cover to the thermostat on the wall falls off and somehow lands face up, without bouncing or anything. No one was near it, it's never fallen off before, and there's really no way it can "fall" off, it locks in place. It's hard plastic, so it should've bounced when it hit the tile floor, but it didn't. Just somehow leaped off the wall, went 3 feet to the side, and landed in between us all. All of our jaws dropped, and then we were all freaked out.
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When I was younger, I had about a 2-foot long open area between the head of my bed and the wall, used to store toys, mags, my skateboard, whatever. As I grew older, it emptied out until it was completely empty by high school. One night, I woke up around 2 AM and turned over onto my stomach, flipping my left arm over my head to hang over the edge of the bed, into that space.
Something grabbed my left hand and squeezed. Hard. And would not let go.
I do not know how long I struggled to pull my hand out of its grasp, but it seemed forever. I thought I had yelled for my parents to wake up, but it must have come out a whimper, if at all, as they told me they didn't hear anything. I began to bang my hand against the wall, hoping I could force whatever it was to let go of me. Finally, I pulled my hand away, used my now free hand to flip on the light, and peeked over.
There was nothing there. Whatever had had a death grip on my left hand had vanished.
I took a quick scan of the room, flipped onto my back, and lay there letting my body relax from the adrenaline rush it had just gone through. My mouth was so dry, my tongue was stuck to its roof, and my heart was beating faster than I thought possible. While I was laying there, I began to feel incredible tingles all the way through my right arm. They became stronger and stronger until it was almost unbearable and I realized what had happened.
I had been sleeping on my right arm, causing it to "go to sleep" SO bad that I had lost feeling in the entire thing. When I flipped my left hand over the bed, it must have hit my right hand causing a nervous reaction which made my right hand clamp down on my left with all its strength. Since my right hand was so asleep, it was completely numb to me which is why I did not feel it gripping my left, or feel it when I bashed it against the wall (I felt it in the morning though).
Labels: andrew, bible, brian, cards, computer, corey, death, dreams, family, ghost stories, halloween, history, jane, jeremy, maxed-out tags limit, parents, phone calls, sleep, something awful, weird stuff
posted by Flami at 10:20:00 AM
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