Ghost stories, part 9
1) not-so-scary - There is a sundial that stands near the front campus. Four times, I have seen a friendly-looking gentleman in a tux standing by the dial waiting for his date to appear, or so it seems. Occasionally, he is holding flowers. He or I sometimes smile or wave at each other. The thing is, no one else can see him unless they are in physical contact with me. Even then, sometimes he'll be there, but if we glance away for a second, he will be gone. I have never been able to approach closer than 30 feet before he disappears, and haven't seen him in two years. I do, however, have independent confirmation of what he looks like from my girlfriend, who also saw him once while holding my hand.
2) bothersome - One night, around 2 AM, the two of us are awakened by a scream from upstairs, and upon reaching the next floor, find two of her friends in the hall, shrieking and waving a photo. Turns out they were asleep in the same bed, doors locked, when they were awakened by a flash of light and a thump. They jump up, and discover that her Polaroid camera had just been moved, and that a picture was printing out of it. Two minutes later, when the picture had developed itself, we could see that it was of the two of them, asleep on the bed, with the camera positioned about 6 feet above. It turns out that an art student, who specialized in photography, had died on campus after living in that room about 10 years before, and a number of previous students had claimed it was haunted, to the point that this was the first time in 3 years the room had been used. Being a brave soul, the girl didn't move out (though she never left her camera out again), and never had any more trouble.
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When my parents got married, there was a blending of faiths.
My dad's Roman Catholic, and my mom was non-practicing Lutheran. She was mildly into Tarot and stuff. She wasn't a New Age Wiccan Aquarian or anything, but she fooled around with divination for fun. My dad asked her to stop, and she did.
She did, however, hold onto a carved African idol that her brother brought her from actual Africa. I mean, it was a touristy thing, but it was cool... a carved wooden idol that was mostly a giant mask-face-thing and a vague body. My dad asked her to put it away because it was an idol, a representation of another God. My mom said don't be silly, it's just a touristy carved thing, and put it on a shelf right near the entrance to the kitchen. My dad shrugged and didn't push it. It wasn't, like, a bone of contention between them or anything... he'd made it clear he didn't want the thing on display, she put it on display, whatever.
Once she put it on that shelf, it began throwing itself at peoples' heads as they walked past. The entrance to the kitchen is the width of 2 1/2 - 3 doors, maybe a little more. No matter where in the entrance you walked, the thing would fly off the shelf and hit you on the head. It did this to everyone... except my mom.
I started leaping past the shelf to avoid getting conked on the head by the thing. After a few years, we got new appliances in the kitchen, which meant that everything was packed up while the delivery guys made their delivery and hooked everything up. I have no idea where the idol is now.
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I often go to my friend's house in CT which is over 100 years old, and I usually sleep in the living room. This one night, we were sitting in his living room watching TV and his brother was talking about how their dad is an undertaker and their weird basement. After about a half hour of harassing him about taking me down to his basement, he finally said I could go if I wanted, but that the rest of his family refuses to go down there, even his dad.
I walked over to the door and he said I couldn't go down alone, so we both walked down together. When I got down to the bottom, I saw that the wall (which was stone and obviously hadn't been touched since the 1800's or early 1900's) was being dug up in a certain place. I asked him about it and he said it was part of the Underground Railroad and that his brother was trying to dig it up... but for some reason stopped because it was way too scary. So we stood there for a while and I was saying it wasn't as scary as he and his brothers were making it seem, so he told me to look in the far left corner.
I cannot even begin to explain the darkness in that one corner. It wasn't just a shadow either, it was an unworldly darkness and I ended up breaking into a cold sweat. I felt the kind of fear where I couldn't talk and I was too scared to walk back up because I'd have to turn my back on it. Well, I did walk upstairs and not only was I freaked out by that, but I also discovered that the rest of their house is also haunted. I refused to go into a certain room in their house because every time I did, I couldn't move from fear. I've also witnessed many exorcisms, which are disturbing as well.
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(story)
So. You know that urban legend that you heard when you were in fourth grade at band camp, about the kid who scared himself to death looking in a mirror? Yeah, it happened a little differently. I know what really happened.
The kid was real, and he was about eight or nine. Kind of frail and sickly, was in and out of the doctor's office a lot. His dad was a big cheerful guy, the dad type who wore big squishy white tennis shoes with jeans.
Well this kid's health issues kept getting worse. And he'd have these episodes of mental fragility as well, where he'd only vaguely recognize his dad, and do a lot of talking to people who weren't there. "I'm sorry," he'd say to these people, his face blank, his eyes flat. "I can't ever change it. I'm so sorry. Leave me alone, I can't help you."
His dad was, understandably, deeply concerned about his son. He made sure that they spent a lot of time together, especially outside. They both loved the outdoors, even though the kid wasn't usually in a shape to enjoy a lot of activities. They went on a lot of walks.
One winter, the kid's health was especially bad. The cold really made his circulation sluggish, and when outside on his walks with his dad, he'd lose all feeling in his hands and feet. To the doctor's they went. The heat of the office during the wait to be seen, however, enlivened him, and you can't troubleshoot a problem that isn't there. So before examining him, the doctor suggested that he and his dad walk around the nearby park until the problem recurred, then trot back in and get examined.
The winter landscape was bleak; there wasn't much snow, so the ground was slushy black mud, and the bare trees scraped the sky as if they were auditioning for an Edward Gorey drawing. There was one lovely feature of the park: a small lake, frozen solid. Ideal for ice-skating, although there were no skaters to brighten the scene. The kid and his dad headed for the lake.
As they approached the lake, the dad saw that it wasn't nearly as nice as he'd thought it was; the ice near the shores was thin and treacherous, black water moving sluggishly underneath. He paused for a moment to find a stick to prod the ice with; it didn't break easily, but it wasn't safe to walk on. He turned to call his son back from the lake.
The kid was collapsed in a bony little snow-parka-covered heap where the icy water met the dark muddy shore. He'd found something, a bottle of little girl's play nail polish, the kind that barely tints your nail light pink. The bottle was plainly old, the liquid within nearly gelatinous with age. The kid had taken his gloves off and opened the bottle and was desperately trying to cover his hand with the stuff as if to hide himself somehow, smearing it over his skin, his eyes wide and blank, his breath fast and shallow, and he was whispering in a high little voice to himself, over and over.
"They're coming for me. They're coming for me. They're coming for me. They're coming for me."
The dad scooped up his son and bolted for the nearest help. A neighborhood bordered the park, and a house with windows lit against the winter dusk was far nearer than the hospital.
He pounded on the door, frenzied with fear; the boy's whispering had stopped, and he had his eyes tightly closed, shivering convulsively, barely breathing. The door swung open: a startled woman, her hand to her throat. "Yes, of course... come in, I'll call 911."
The dad laid his son down on the couch. He was beginning to hear whispers, darting little sibilants on the edge of his hearing, and the air around himself and his son seemed dark with motion, shapes that weren't there crowding close. Frustrated and terrified, he shouted at them to leave his son alone... deal with him if they wanted, but leave his son alone!
He turned aside just for an instant to snatch a blanket off the arm of the couch, and the whispering increased to a hissing crescendo. He heard his son gasp, and whipped back around. The kid was staring at the ceiling, his mouth and eyes open just slightly, as if he was about to speak to somebody, and he was dead. He had died during that fraction of a second.
Snatching up his son again, the dad turned to race out of the house, having some grief-crazed idea of running as fast as he could back across the park to the hospital. But when he faced the door, he saw something he hadn't seen before, a mirror mounted on the back of the front door. And when he saw what was in the mirror, he screamed, appalled.
The kid's head, in his reflection, wasn't lying limply as it did in real life. It was held up, and his eyes and mouth were both obscenely wide, the corners of mouth and eyelids pulling down and away as if his flesh was trying to crawl away from whatever was coming at it. His eyes were locked straight forward, his face frozen, and in his reflection, he was still screaming.
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When I was 16, I was up at about 3 AM, lights on, listening to Anthrax's Persistence Of Time album. I felt a strong pull, almost magnetic, from across the room. I turned my head and saw a black shape sitting on my desk. It was like a black hole sucking in all the light in the room. About 2 feet tall, with no features and wide horns. I looked at it for what seemed like forever and finally looked away and then immediately back, and it was gone.
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About 5 years ago I was living in Lewiston, Maine.
I had moved into a fairly good sized two bedroom apartment - Me and my girlfriend in one room, my best friend Dave and his girlfriend in the other. Seemed a good arrangement at the time - the girls didn't know each other too well, but seemed to get along okay. The place was a steal - rent was about half the price of any other place we checked out, and with four of us splitting it, it was ridiculously cheap. It was the back bottom apartment in a huge old house split into six apartments. Definitely worth more than the landlord was asking. It needed some work, to be sure, but minor things mostly. Most notably, it had old heavy wood-framed windows with counter weights in the walls. One of the window's weights were severed - It took Dave and I lifting together to get the thing high enough to put a cinder block under it. In the winter, they all swelled completely shut, so opening them was an impossibility. Which was fine, since who the fuck wants to open the window during a Maine winter? So we had an old house, but it was cheap.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
Well, we found out why it was so cheap soon after moving in - turns out that the year before the previous tenant's estranged boyfriend broke in, and they had a big fight. Which ended with him killing her. With an axe.
The landlord hadn't been able to get anyone to rent it since, so had been dropping the price. Heh. I'm a cheap bastard - I didn't care.
A few months after we moved in we discovered just how much in common the two girls had: BOTH were drama queens, and both loved pushing people's buttons. Dave and I should have gotten Nobel fucking Peace Prizes for the number of fights and arguments we defused before they got out of hand.
We also noticed some weird shit going on in the house. The girls would be fighting in the living room, and one of us would escape to the kitchen and find the cabinet doors hanging open, or drawers pulled out. Things that you could always explain away by blaming someone of being very lazy. Except none of us were likely suspects. This shit would only happen when people were arguing. Kind of eerie, but nothing we put any real thought into. We joked about how the ghost of the girl didn't like fights any more than Dave and I.
Eventually, we were all on the long road of relationship ruin. Tensions in the apartment were running high. One night in February, we all had an enormous fight. The girls were screaming. I was yelling (it takes a LOT for me to lose control enough to really yell), and even Dave was starting to shout - an unheard-of occurrence. We were all in the kitchen, screaming at each other. My girlfriend started throwing things.
Just at the peak, when the air in the room was practically red with anger, with everyone screaming, and with things about to get really out of control, a window in the living room threw itself open. It flew up with such force that it broke the glass. It hung there for a second, then slammed down, shattering the panes and throwing glass everywhere. Everything became very, very quiet.
We all forgot about fighting. We checked out the living room - and yup - the window without any counterweights was broken, with a cold winter wind blowing through.
It was weird, none of us were particularly scared, but felt more... disrespectful than anything else. We took care not to fight in the house much after that.
Once the lease was up, I moved up to the apartment above. Dave found a different place, and the girls... meh, they could be dead now, for all I really know. (I'm pretty sure my ex-girlfriend is dead now. Or maybe she's a leper. Or a carnie. Yeah, that'd be good!) I got a new roommate, and a girl moved in downstairs by herself.
One night early on, she was banging on our door. She stayed the night (sorry, no sexxor) because she was too freaked to sleep in her place. She was on the phone with an ex-boyfriend, arguing. When she hung up on him and went back into the living room, she said she found all her action figures (G.I. Joe, transformers, etc.) arranged in a circle on the floor facing each other.
I had to tell her all about the window after that.
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Also, people who mention rooms where they feel uneasy as soon as they step into them: a magnetic force can cause this sensation. A magnetic force such as that from, for example, a ceiling fan. Turn the thing and you will instantly feel the room getting bigger, like someone has opened a window. Also, your eyeballs can start to resonate to the frequency of the fan, or other machine, causing the famous corner-of-eye sightings.
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hahhahah
My friend lives in a haunted house. He says at night, you can hear people screaming and crying, and the sound of skin slapping. Supposedly, back in 1959, a mass murderer lived there and slaughtered hundreds of people. One day, he was looking in the mirror, and behind him he saw the images of an old man. He jumped back, and when he looked back at the mirror, he was gone. I didn't believe him at first, so one night I slept over. I didn't see anything the whole night, but when I woke up, my butt really hurt, so I think my friend has a gay ghost in his house.
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Moving right along, I've noticed that a lot of folks here have an inherent aversion to mirrors.. perhaps my story will help alleviate that fear...
I came home to my room in the barracks late one night and decided as I was winding down, that I'd like to wash my face. I did just that, and as I began to slough the water off of my face, I looked into my mirror for a moment. For whatever reason, I decided to just pause a moment and look at my face reflecting back at me. As I did so, I observed that the face reflected in the mirror was changing subtly and constantly. It was like watching my own face's reflection becoming the faces of a multitude of other people. I wasn't disturbed by this whatsoever. In fact, it piqued my curiosity and was amusing the hell out of me for a good several minutes.
Then it happened...
Up until this point, the faces I was observing in the mirror were all of people who I cannot recall having ever met within the span of my life, and I knew that even with all these visual deviations going on, that it was still somehow myself looking back at me. But that final face I saw differed highly from those prior... It was that of a person I had met recently who went by the name Jost. This in and of itself wasn't really frightening.
That was until I looked at the eyes......
The eyes I then saw looking back at me bore the same shape, texture, and coloration of my own, but the gaze they bore upon me was totally devoid of any emotion or humanity. It was as if they were looking at me, regarding me like I was nothing more than a piece of meat. Yet, it was also like they were looking straight through me and into my own soul like a hungry animal. I got the most insane chills at that moment and got THE fuck away from that mirror right then and there.
I had another similar (albeit, less frightening) incident several weeks later. Same drill, seeing my face change in to that of others, but one face that kept popping up in the mix was that of a man horribly burned. If any of you have seen what a severe burn victim looks like, then you know what I'm talking about. This didn't bother me very much at all this go-round, because the eyes looking back at me were still mine... but it was still highly fucked up..
Here's lookin' at you, kid.... right?
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------->>>
This is a commonly recorded phenomenon. It's a psychological thing. See, the brain uses a sort of shorthand to record faces (and other complex objects, actually) and the emotions on them at a glance. However, the longer you simply just look at a face, the more minor features begin to pop out, and... well, next thing you know, a stranger is staring back at you in a mirror. The non-caring is usually probably due to the expression you're wearing on your face... I mean, fuck, you're just looking at yourself, right? Why should you put on any facial subtleties just to impress yourself?
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Fredericksburg Battlefield
We decided to go visit my aunt and uncle in VA one weekend. They hadn't seen the kids in some time, and as an added bonus, my grandmother was coming up. So some shopping expeditions were planed, and with my being somewhat into Civil War history, they thought it would be fun to visit one of the battlefields and have a picnic at one of the parks. It was a fun day, but not for my wife.
Everything seemed fine until we arrived at the Visitors Center to begin our walking tour of that portion of the battlefield called The Sunken Road. She was uneasy pretty much the entire time, but especially so when we ended up behind the Confederate defensive position. That's when she turned to me, ashen-faced, and said "I have to go. They don't want me here." Intrigued and not realizing that she was picking anything up, I asked, "Who?" "The soldiers. The want me to leave." Somewhat taken aback, I asked her if they told her that, and she said, "No, it's just a feeling. I don't belong here and they want me to leave. Now."
With that said, we gathered everyone up and went off to have our picnic elsewhere. My relatives were unaware of what happened and no one other than her and me discussed it.
On a side note, my uncle wanted us to see the Meade Pyramid, and run down to Jackson's position, the far right of the Confederate line. As we were driving by my wife made this offhand remark: "Huh, so that's where they were coming from." I was like, "Wha..." but didn't say anything to her until we had checked out Jackson's position (she stayed in the car) and was returning. There we pulled off to the side of the road to read a marker, which indicated that this indeed was the location of the only Union breakthrough of that battle. I didn't say anything to her, as my look of "Holy shit" was evident on my face.
Oh, and as to why she felt that overwhelming feeling of being unwelcome? The only thing we can think of is that she is from New Jersey, and quite a few men from her family fought with the Irish Brigade.
My relatives want us to go up to the Gettysburg this summer. My wife is horrified at the thought.
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Last spring, I was too broke to get a ticket home for Easter, but I didn't want to stay in residence. A friend of mine invited me to go home with her, because we could get a ride there, and because all of her family was away on a trip to Europe and she wanted the company. I happily accepted.
Her house was quite new, large, very nicely decorated, nothing appeared creepy in the least. We took up residence in the large family room in the basement, using sleeping bags on couches instead of messing up any bedrooms. On the second or third night, I awoke with a start. I didn't move other than to open my eyes slightly, and looked at the entrance to the room, which was an opening from the hallway at the bottom of the stairs rather than a door in a frame. I vividly saw a man standing there. He was heavyset, of an indiscriminate age (but not really old or really young) dressed in modern, casual, sort of sporty clothes. He wore a yellow ballcap, and had glasses. He slowly turned his head and looked at me, then walked into the adjoining computer room, which again lacked a door.
The man looked so real that at first I assumed it had to be one of my friend's uncles coming over to do something, as she had mentioned that might happen. I looked at my watch, and the time was 5 AM, so I realized that was ridiculous. My next conclusion was that it was some sort of prowler, even though we had armed the alarm system. I wanted to wake up my friend, but thought it would be safer to avoid letting the man know that we were awake. So, I closed my eyes again and stayed dead still. When I posted this story months ago, some criticized me for this: "You thought there could be an intruder in your friend's house and you didn't fucking do anything?" But in all honesty, had it been an intruder, somehow it doesn't seem like it would be the safest course of action for two young women to try to be heroes. So, I maintained my facade of sleep, listening intently... I didn't hear a damn thing. There was no exit from the room I'd seen the man enter. I know I was awake, because it took me a damn long time to fall asleep again.
This was a scary situation, not so much because I felt threatened (though I did initially) as it is that it was such a "What the fuck is going on???" moment. I've never told my friend. She does have to live there, after all.
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When I was a kid between the ages of 7 and 10, my dad was the pool manager for the Kiwanis swim club in Parkville (part of Baltimore). Being the adventurous bunch he and the other lifeguards were, we would often stay at the pool well after closing time (I was usually asleep when they did this). There was an old pre-Civil War era house that served as the offices and supply areas for the pool, as well as a mechanic who kept a shop on the upper level of the house. One night, the alarm system on the mechanic's garage went off, and the cops showed up with dogs. The mechanic asked if there was any sign of a forced entry, and the cops said that everything looked fine. Then, there was a loud banging, like something had been knocked over in the garage. The mechanic opened the door, and the cop released the dog. The dog took about two steps, whimpered, and went behind the cop with its tail between its legs. The mechanic asked the cop if he was going to check it out, to which the cop replied, "Buddy, if he (the dog) is afraid to go in there, I definitely ain't goin' in there."
Another time, same place. My dad was doing some work around the old house one day, and moved some wood that was piled up against the wall. Behind the wood was a hole. After closing time, Dad and some of the lifeguards went exploring. Turned out what he had found were tunnels dug by the slaves that had been kept in the house. They really didn't find much, but it was still creepy.
Same Place. My parents and some of the other lifeguards decided to check out some of the other places in the house that were not frequented by anyone. I was curious, so I went along. When we got to the attic of the house, we turned on the lights, and wandered in. There was only one light switch, and no one was near it. You can guess what happened next. We never went up there at night again (except to lock up).
Every night, the place would be locked up (every window closed and locked, all doors locked) and every morning, without fail, the attic windows would be wide open. There were also a few other creepy things about the house. In one room, there were still the rings in the walls where the slaves would be chained up, doors would slam and lock themselves, or unlock themselves, and things would occasionally move.
That’s really all I can remember about that place. The woman who owned the house before the Civil War was not a very nice person. Someone researched the house, and the woman was reportedly unusually cruel to her slaves and workers.
Bad mojo, I guess.
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When I was a teenager, my girlfriend and I would "park" behind this middle school in Harford County (Maryland). We had been going up there for a couple of weeks when one night, while we were in the back of the car (really going at it), we hear this ungodly growl coming from under the car.
We freaked out, got dressed and got the hell out of there (there was no one else to be seen anywhere near us). After that, we talked to some friends about the experience, and it turned out we were not alone. Several other friends had told us a bout seeing weird shit around there. I even saw something up there one night I had no desire to ever talk about, but this was just too weird to not mention.
I saw what looked like a gorilla’s body with a wolf's head. Others claimed to have seen it too, like a corner of the eye kind of thing, but it was a little more realistic than that. Others said they saw what looked like armless figures moving around on the athletic fields on some nights, and yeah, I'd seen it too.
One of my girlfriend’s friends got a chance to look at some of the old survey maps of the area and other old records, and it turned out that where the school's athletic fields are, used to be a cemetery.
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I spent 4 years of my life living in a very old house, the oldest one by far on my block, which ended in a cemetery. The cemetery, as far as I know, wasn't very old, it was greenlawn and very tastefully done, but it had been their first in the area and housed many early 20th-century dated mausoleums and graves.
I was a morbid little boy, partially obsessed with death, dying, and the dead. I loved this cemetery... I used to go there to do my homework. I also used to sneak out of my house at night and challenge my friends to go to the cemetery with me. Most people were too chicken shit to actually enter the place, but this particular instance happened to myself and my friend K. This would be the first, and last, time that K would accompany me.
It happened in mid-January of my sophomore year of high school, which would have been 1997. I grew up in Bakersfield, CA, and January sees a great deal of fog. This fog isn't just ground fog, or light mist type fog... we're talking a wall of fog so thick you can't see your hand sometimes in the mornings. Now change morning to 1 in the morning, with little flashlights gripped in our 16-year-old hands. By the time we climbed in through a weak section of the fence, we'd already almost been run over once by some drunken idiot, and K was already scared.
K was one of those punk "everyone sucks, nobody's smart enough to hang out with me and I like to fight" guys. He liked Marilyn Manson before Manson became "cool," then promptly hated him. He loved Nirvana... and he even knew what Nirvana was, although he didn't know anything else about Buddhism.
The site I wanted to look at that night was a particularly old mausoleum dated with the earliest burial being dated 1907. This particular cemetery had several small ponds and mini-rivers running through it with bridges spanning. I usually walked through the small rivers to get around at night so that any type of guard wouldn't see my light. They posted a guard at the front gate, and I'd snuck in here several times previously and he'd never noticed me, but I didn't want to take chances. K, however, didn't want to trust my direction instinct to get us down in to the rivers and not one of the lakes. So we crossed one of the bridges to get in to the internal area.
The bridge sounded odd at night. Maybe it was just this particular night, but the bridges had always felt sturdy and sounded relatively like a stone walkway should. Tonight, however, the bridge seemed insignificantly small, like it might break under our combined weights at any moment, and it sounded hollow. We've all heard the way that feet sound on stone or pavement; the sound of us walking across the bridge sounded like it was echoing off of walls all around us, it rang out remarkably loud and clear. It was the first sign that something wasn't right, and I should have seen what was coming.
We had our lights turned off, and in the fog, this meant that we were feeling our way forward by the guardrails. I had a pretty good idea of where we were going, despite the inability to see anything. We moved slowly after the bridge, because we couldn't risk a light in the open and we had to make sure that we stayed on the path. Without light, the path was the only way that we could tell where we were going.
After about 10 minutes of slowly walking forward, hunched over so that we could watch the walkway in the dark and fog, we came upon the mausoleum. It was a giant and somewhat old crypt: it had started to crack in places, but still managed to seem impressive. In the dark and fog, it looked like a foreboding tower amidst a series of headstones, and we both must have felt its presence. We walked up, and I found the headstone I was looking for. I've fully repressed the name of that particular marker, so I'll just refer to her as "Molly," and she had died in 1907. I loved this kind of stuff: it was a test of my wills every time I inched my way through the cemetery to see whether or not I could do it, and other people just made it better.
I was considering sneaking away from K while he looked at the impressive piece of stonework, then jumping at him from the fog and scaring him to death. We couldn't risk the noise, however. I had wanted to come, make my way through the cemetery, look at this particular mausoleum and then back out. I was hoping to get some kind of supernatural occurrence, as had happened to me previously, on the way there. K, however, had different plans. From the little pack that had held his flashlight, he produced something else: a can of spray paint.
I understand some people's urge to do stupid things; I've followed that urge myself on occasion. Vandalizing a grave, however, just seemed to be tempting fates a little. I pointed this out to K, who called me a sissy and popped the cap. I told him that if he spraypainted this tomb, I'd tell the guard. That made him think for a second, but then said it would be on my head, too (which it would have) and started to shake the can. I told him that I'd leave him, alone, in the fog. He didn't know a way out. This shook him up a little more, but at this point, he wanted to be the strong man. I turned on my flashlight, hoping to attract the guard's attention.
We almost immediately noticed a light come on a little ways off in the fog. I told K the guard had seen us, but he said we had enough time to spray and run. Then another light came on, next to the other one. It suddenly occurred to me that the fog had taken the form of a woman. I stared, dumbfaced, while K got ready to spray his message... I nudged him in the side, and this time he got mad at me. He noticed my expression, though, and looked where I was looking.
The fog had receded around us. For the first time that night, I could see my feet through the mists. The fog had grown denser, somehow, and taken form. In front of us was a nondescript woman. Her eyes were like burning coals, and her mouth was bent in the most furious expression that I had ever seen. She travelled straight through me and after K, who had dropped his can and taken off at a run. I heard him splash into a pond and start swimming for the edge of a cemetery.
Minutes later, I saw a car which must have been his drive off down the road at break-neck speed, heading towards the freeway. A few minutes after that, the guard found me, my face frozen in an expression of sheer terror, still looking at where the ghost had been. He didn't even notice the can of spray paint; he looked at me, muttered "My God" under his breath, and walked away. I grabbed my flashlight, and slowly made my way out of the cemetery, towards my home.
K called me the following day, and told me that the ghost had chased him all the way to the edge of the cemetery, screaming things at him in his head the whole way. She quit when he climbed the chain link fence and threw himself to the other side. He told me I was a fucked-up individual, and that if I ever went back to the cemetery, it would be without him.
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About two years ago, my friends and I were searching for rural places to do illegal things like use explosives and shoot things. We found the perfect place, about thirty miles away from any city. Let's call this place "the haunted mine." After further exploration in this area, we find an abandoned house, which for some reason still has power.
My friend Matt and I head up to this house on a cold December night. We were equipped with four flashlights, candles, a batch of fake blood, and an axe. We bring everything into the house and light up the living room. Matt smears a good amount of fake blood on one of the walls and I jam the axe into an adjacent wall. If you are wondering why we are doing this, we asked two other friends to come up to the house the next night (hopefully we'd scare the shit out of them). We both set up candles on the floor in a pentagram about three feet wide and three feet long. I pack up the lights and I follow Matt back to my truck, then I drive us back home.
The next day
At night, the four of us drive up to the gate and get out of Matt's car. Matt and I lead the way and tell the other two that the house is close. I can see Matt trying to hold back laughter already, so I punch him and keep walking. We get to the door of the house and walk in and head towards the kitchen (which is to the left, the living room is straight ahead). Our two friends walk into the living room, turn on the light and scream, in turn Matt and I both start laughing as they run out the door.
Matt walks into the living room to get the axe (since it was his anyways). The look on Matt's face is something I will never forget. I run into the living room and almost fall over. On the fake blood wall, written into the fake blood was "I will find you." I almost shit myself and then I looked at the other corner of the room and saw a shadowy figure. The noise this figure made was horrid and still scares me today, the best way to describe it would be a very low-pitched scream mixed with some evil sounding whisper.
Matt pushes me out of the room and we both sprint back to his car, where the two others are waiting. I never looked back after that, I'm not sure if it followed us or not. Scary.
=================
Hot, hot 2 ghosts on Karma action:
The Location: Northwood Drive, about a block and a half north of Lane Ave, Columbus, Ohio. OSU campus.
The Time Period: 1997-1998.
The Cast: Karma "My real name isn't Karma" Enforcer
Karma's future fiancé, also known as Karma's future ex-fiancé. Also known by several other extremely less-flattering names.
Several freakshow roommates of varying proclivities and sanity states.
Prologue:
I had lost a lot of myself in the previous years. Bad shit in the service. Too much drinking. So I got myself dismissed from service posthaste and returned to good old Ohio. I failed to find employment, and my otherwise benevolent parents booted me out. So I went where you go when you're homeless in Columbus. OSU campus. Met a girl. It wasn't love at first sight. Lust, maybe. But she took me in. Fed me. Gave me a warm place to sleep without placing any real demands on me. So I settled in. This was a big place. Full house. Basement. First floor with two large living room type areas, a sprawling kitchen, bathroom, and dining room. Second story was four bedrooms and a full shower and a bath. The attic was finished and furnished. I never went up there. The reasons should become obvious. The place had also been a link in the underground railroad, and there was a crude patch in the basement that sealed a tunnel into our neighbour's basement.
Anyway, I settled in and lived as idyllically as one can when they're mentally and emotionally fucked up. But I loved and was loved, and was relatively happy. About 7 months in, I had returned home to my future fiancé from a night of sitting around the local coffee shop (Insomnia on 13th and High for you who know the area) with the local clique of gutterpunks and homeless goth kids who thought they were vampires and shit. My future ex-fiancé is in our room, huddled under her blankets and shaking like she'd wet the bed while wrapped in a shorted electric blanket.
Chapter 1: SNAFU
"What the hell is wrong with you?" I asked with a bit more concern than I'm sure it sounds like.
"I'm okay. I'm just scared."
"Of?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? Seems kinda silly to be shaking like a leaf while being scared of nothing in particular. I understand the concept, but it could eventually be economic downfall of the country if we all did it." I'm not real good at dealing with freaked out women (only one sibling, a brother... and my female cousins have always been too far away for me to have to shoulder their problems), so I tend to revert to levity and try to get them calmed down enough to explain clearly what happened.
"Someone was running down the steps."
"Probably just Gio. He's pretty spastic." John (alias Redbird, alias Giovanni, alias Gio) was one of my roommates at the time. He was a bisexual goth who lived with his compulsive kleptomaniac cross-dressing boyfriend in the room diagonal from ours. Hey, I was on OSU campus hanging out in the goth scene and didn't have a lot of choices in roommates.
"Gio isn't home, [Karma]. He wasn't home then. It started in the attic and went down to the basement like the devil himself was chasing it. But there was no one here." Okay. I've gotten some uncool vibes from the place, but this is pretty weird. However, on the balance of things, my girl at the time was Irish, and as if the natural Irish flamboyance and love for drama wasn't enough, she was from a family of actors and actresses. So I wasn't ready to start jumping around shouting: "Boogedy boogedy, we've got a haint in the shed!" I proceeded to do my best to calm her the fuck down, with only moderate success.
Interlude:
Okay, so let me just fill you in on a bit more about me so I'm not interrupting myself anymore than I must. I don't claim to be a psychic. But I think all people have connections to whatever other plane of existence there is. Call it what you will. The ether. The astral plane. The collective unconscious. Bob and Gerdy's place down the way. Whatever. I've noticed in the years since that I have certain reactions to that connection, if something is there to really kick it up. My skin dances. Not prickles, but it's like that. Only it moves around more erratically. Like electricity. Kinda jumps around the hairs on your arms making them stand up. My guts turn to icewater. Maybe it's all subconsciously driven. I can't say for sure. I just know that certain places make my skin dance and provokes a strong "Fight or Flight" reaction. However, my father is a diehard skeptic about, well, everything. And so I make sure to carefully examine my situation and try to find the logical solution. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I succeed, but I don't fool myself. Anyway, on with the show.
Chapter 2: TARFU
Some weeks later, I've totally forgotten the previous incident and have just written it off as "My girlfriend is a spaz." I've staggered into the shower to clean up after a delightful game of "Who's Your Daddy." I'm feeling good. I love a shower so hot it leaves me 2 layers of skin from the "Transparent Person" model they have at COSI (Center of Science and Industry. Cool museum / education thing in Ohio.) Anyway, I'm enjoying the shower when....
CRACK!
Okay. I'm now fucking cold. My guts are suitable for leaving bottled draft beer floating in during the frat party. But through the water, I'm shivering and my skin is hopping around like it's making a mad dash from whatever the fuck that was. While my subconscious starts doing its diagnostic routine and making sure that everything is still attached and functional, I start looking.
What... the fuck.... IS THAT?!?!?
No. It's not the ubiquitous ghostly figure. its fingerprints in the steam on the other side of the glasslike panel of the shower.... Freaky, no? No. It wasn't. It was the fingerprint shaped rivulets of blood running down MY side of the glass that freaked me the fuck out.
I've been shot.
No. Wait, I haven't been shot. What the fuck is going on.
My subconscious reports in all systems green and operating within their normal parameters, but that they all want to curl up into a ball and hide from whatever the fuck is going on.
Alright. It's time to be proactive about this. Someone is pulling some sort of goddamn stunt, and as soon as I'm not buttnaked, they're due for their forty thousand-mile attitude readjustment. I do a cursory rinse of my hair to get the shampoo out, and in one catlike motion, I step out of the shower, grab my towel, and wrap it around my waist.
Okay. Not quite. I slip on the steamy tiles. But if that's all, why the fuck is my foot suddenly screaming code red?
Oh. I stepped on my razor and somehow managed to take a lovely flap of flesh off my foot. Oh well. I didn't need that bit for anything but walking on anyway. So I grab my towel and wrap it around my waist with less than my previously-hoped-for catlike grace, and proceed to sit down on the toilet to perform ghetto surgery. (wrapping a towel I don't like very much around the wound and tying it into place with dental floss, in this case.)
It had to be John. This is just the sort of fucked-up bullshit he'd set up for his own amusement. Alright. We've got our tarsal emergency stanched. It's time to go and kick his scrawny ass from here to.... that razor was flung at the shower door hard enough to scratch it. But Gio is a scrawny dude. No way could he put enough force on that razor to scratch the plastic-glass of the shower door. No.... No. Someone needs to get their as kicked so I can feel less like a pussy. We'll work on the assumption that it was Gio and if terror causes him to explain who it was, then they'll be it.
John wasn't home. The girlfriend was still in bed and our door was halfway to closed, the exact way I left it.
I obviously had some sort of post-coital hallucination brought on when the razor fell. The scratch must have already been there. Go back to bed. Lie down, and forget about it.
Chapter 3: FUBAR
Okay. Been a great fucking week. Jenn is saying that she's finding shit thrown around the bathroom. The stomping down the steps has started to become a regular occurrence. I can no longer write this off as some sort of hallucination. Time to go check the attic and see if there's anything up there that will clue me in as to what is going on.
Great plan. As I begin to try to climb the steps, it starts again. My guts have started to slosh as glacial ice floes make their way through my intestines. My skin is doing its damnedest to hide behind me and peek over my shoulder like Roger Rabbit, only leaving me (if possible) more gruesome than Bob Hoskins. My eyes start to water and tear up. My subconscious is on vacation in Aruba with a note left on its desk saying, "Will return if you survive this. Don't wait up!"
Fuck THAT plan. The attic is more than welcome to attempt some sort of anatomical impossibility on itself. Whatever is there HATES me. HATES. Not like, "That guy is a real dick. I hate him," but "I want to do things to you that will make war reporters from Somalia queasy" hatred.
Yeah, it could be all in my head. Who knows. Protracted period of stress from a goofy relationship resulting in blah blah blah. All I know is what I felt. And that was what I can only imagine hatred distilled and strained and purified must feel like.
So fuck the attic. Let's start with someplace I've been before. To the basement.
Now, there's a "room" in the basement. Was it filled with bodies, or clean-picked bones, or even Yog-sothoth? Nope. Just a feeling of immense sadness. Childlike, "where did Acruffy go and why isn't he ever coming back" sadness. Loss, grief. Everytime I'd had to go to the basement for anything, I always ended up feeling depressed, but I'd never paid any attention to it, since "Depressed" is pretty much nominal for me. But now, my eyes are watering, not from terror, but tears. Someone has the audacity to run electricity up and down my arm and back skin. At least I've had a cold glass of water recently. When was that? Here I stand, in what is essentially two wooden partitions in the basement of a house, bawling. Like my dog died. Like my best friend was moving to Phoenix and I'd never see him again. Heartbroken.
So, I did what any totally rational person does in these circumstances. I fell back on superstition and faith. I drew a line across the doorway to the basement and the attic in salt. The ancients (possibly as far back as 1960 or something) believed that the geometric nature of crystalline salt would entrap spirits, preventing them from causing you harm. In a spiritual version of the Nazi defense at Normandy, I set up great big bunkers of sand at those doorways. I fanatically replenished my little sodium defenders.
What do you know? It worked, inasmuch as all the freaky shit stopped.
Epilogue:
The house was bought from our landlord the next month, and our lease was not renewed. OH NO! We bailed with a total lack of disappointment and moved on with our lives. Brief recon later indicated that the house was rented out to sorority chicks. Good. Hope they forgot the salt. As for me, I've come to the conclusion that there's more in the world than what I can make physical contact with. What it is, I don't know. Did my Morton's Magical Army actually work magic? I don't think so, but my belief of what DID is a whole other thread in and of itself. This is, to the best of my recollection, the truth of what happened there, inasmuch as I can define truth as "what I perceive." And that's always a suspicious source for information, even if it's all I have.
==================
Since I came across this thread, I thought I would add my experiences in my house. Most of the time, people think I'm bullshitting. They haven't quite been as freaky as most of the stories that I've just read.
The house I live in now was built in 1898. From what I understand, the same family lived here until 1999 when the daughter of the original owner died. It had sat vacant for 2 years before it was put up for sale. My family and I moved in last May. I had already owned it for a year, but it needed a LOT of work. The bathtub is one of those old-school clawfoot tubs, the trim is the original cape cod style, and the nails are even those weird shaped old-school ones. No insulation whatsoever. original clapboard siding, original oak / pine floors. A lot of the insulation was cracked, and the furnace was pretty much shot. It pretty much needed some TLC. The structure itself is the old-school sawmill lumber that isn't even made anymore. The supporting beams are about 12" by 12" solid wood. All in fairly good shape, just a little worse for wear. I was a big Bob Villa fan when I was growing up, so it was like a dream come true. I ended up doing extensive renovations / restoration to the upstairs and downstairs. It's pretty much still an ongoing project. Before I did a lot of the renovations, I took a lot of pictures so I could have a before / after portfolio.
On to the weird stuff. Me and my wife have both heard voices. Usually it happens when we aren't really paying attention. We've heard a woman's voice call both our names on several occasions. It happens to me more often. I'll pop out and say "What?" And my wife will say "I didn't say anything." Sometimes when I'm doing the dishes or something, I'll hear the same voice. I can only describe it was really far away, but in the same room. Most of the time I can't really make out anything intelligible, but I hear it.
The first time I started thinking something weird was going on was when one night I was stepping down the back staircase to go outside while I was reading a book. I got this weird feeling like I stepped out of my body, and a bunch of paragraphs in the book looked like they were highlighted. Then the book went back to normal. It all happened in probably about 1/10th of a second but it took forever in my mind. Then on another night, I was going upstairs to go to bed. As I was passing by my son's room, I noticed a white figure leaning over his bed. As soon as I looked, the figure stood up, and dashed out of the room to the staircase, and as soon as it was in my peripheral vision, it was gone. Again, this probably happened in 1/10th of a second, but it seemed to take forever.
Another night at about 2 AM, I was in my backyard smoking a cigarette (I don't smoke in the house). The downstairs bathroom is in the back of the house so you can kind of see through the window. The light was on, and I looked at the back of the house, and I saw an outline like someone walked out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. I was the only person awake that late, and when I asked my wife if she had gotten up to use the bathroom, she said she hadn't. The last notable event that comes to mind is one night when my wife was taking my son up to bed, and she felt someone coming up behind her. Sometimes I sneak up the stairs behind her and grab her butt when she gets to the top like a joke, so she thought it was just me. When she got to the top, she looked back and no one was there.
Later on I found out that when me and my brother were working on the house together over the weekends and sleeping on the floor (before we moved in), he heard a woman's voice too. He never said anything about it because he thought he was just imagining things.
My wife and I have never felt threatened or anything, but sometimes it gives me the creeps if I think about it. She's a lot more flipped-out about the whole thing than I am. She's a Pentecostal Christian, so to her it's all demons and devils. Personally, I feel it's more of an energy imprint leftover from the previous people who lived here, and somehow my brain is interpreting it in a sensory fashion.
Back to the pictures: after we moved in and this stuff started happening, I went back through all the pictures I had taken during renovations and I found some kind of out-of-place things. Just shapes, globs, and things of that nature. I have some more recent pictures that I had taken when I stayed up late to "ghosthunt," but I don't think they are as good. It's almost a rule that I get something on camera when I do this, so I have quite a few of them. It's just that I think the best ones are the older ones. I don't have any server space, but if someone is willing to host them, I'd be more than happy to share them.
2) bothersome - One night, around 2 AM, the two of us are awakened by a scream from upstairs, and upon reaching the next floor, find two of her friends in the hall, shrieking and waving a photo. Turns out they were asleep in the same bed, doors locked, when they were awakened by a flash of light and a thump. They jump up, and discover that her Polaroid camera had just been moved, and that a picture was printing out of it. Two minutes later, when the picture had developed itself, we could see that it was of the two of them, asleep on the bed, with the camera positioned about 6 feet above. It turns out that an art student, who specialized in photography, had died on campus after living in that room about 10 years before, and a number of previous students had claimed it was haunted, to the point that this was the first time in 3 years the room had been used. Being a brave soul, the girl didn't move out (though she never left her camera out again), and never had any more trouble.
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When my parents got married, there was a blending of faiths.
My dad's Roman Catholic, and my mom was non-practicing Lutheran. She was mildly into Tarot and stuff. She wasn't a New Age Wiccan Aquarian or anything, but she fooled around with divination for fun. My dad asked her to stop, and she did.
She did, however, hold onto a carved African idol that her brother brought her from actual Africa. I mean, it was a touristy thing, but it was cool... a carved wooden idol that was mostly a giant mask-face-thing and a vague body. My dad asked her to put it away because it was an idol, a representation of another God. My mom said don't be silly, it's just a touristy carved thing, and put it on a shelf right near the entrance to the kitchen. My dad shrugged and didn't push it. It wasn't, like, a bone of contention between them or anything... he'd made it clear he didn't want the thing on display, she put it on display, whatever.
Once she put it on that shelf, it began throwing itself at peoples' heads as they walked past. The entrance to the kitchen is the width of 2 1/2 - 3 doors, maybe a little more. No matter where in the entrance you walked, the thing would fly off the shelf and hit you on the head. It did this to everyone... except my mom.
I started leaping past the shelf to avoid getting conked on the head by the thing. After a few years, we got new appliances in the kitchen, which meant that everything was packed up while the delivery guys made their delivery and hooked everything up. I have no idea where the idol is now.
==========
I often go to my friend's house in CT which is over 100 years old, and I usually sleep in the living room. This one night, we were sitting in his living room watching TV and his brother was talking about how their dad is an undertaker and their weird basement. After about a half hour of harassing him about taking me down to his basement, he finally said I could go if I wanted, but that the rest of his family refuses to go down there, even his dad.
I walked over to the door and he said I couldn't go down alone, so we both walked down together. When I got down to the bottom, I saw that the wall (which was stone and obviously hadn't been touched since the 1800's or early 1900's) was being dug up in a certain place. I asked him about it and he said it was part of the Underground Railroad and that his brother was trying to dig it up... but for some reason stopped because it was way too scary. So we stood there for a while and I was saying it wasn't as scary as he and his brothers were making it seem, so he told me to look in the far left corner.
I cannot even begin to explain the darkness in that one corner. It wasn't just a shadow either, it was an unworldly darkness and I ended up breaking into a cold sweat. I felt the kind of fear where I couldn't talk and I was too scared to walk back up because I'd have to turn my back on it. Well, I did walk upstairs and not only was I freaked out by that, but I also discovered that the rest of their house is also haunted. I refused to go into a certain room in their house because every time I did, I couldn't move from fear. I've also witnessed many exorcisms, which are disturbing as well.
===========
(story)
So. You know that urban legend that you heard when you were in fourth grade at band camp, about the kid who scared himself to death looking in a mirror? Yeah, it happened a little differently. I know what really happened.
The kid was real, and he was about eight or nine. Kind of frail and sickly, was in and out of the doctor's office a lot. His dad was a big cheerful guy, the dad type who wore big squishy white tennis shoes with jeans.
Well this kid's health issues kept getting worse. And he'd have these episodes of mental fragility as well, where he'd only vaguely recognize his dad, and do a lot of talking to people who weren't there. "I'm sorry," he'd say to these people, his face blank, his eyes flat. "I can't ever change it. I'm so sorry. Leave me alone, I can't help you."
His dad was, understandably, deeply concerned about his son. He made sure that they spent a lot of time together, especially outside. They both loved the outdoors, even though the kid wasn't usually in a shape to enjoy a lot of activities. They went on a lot of walks.
One winter, the kid's health was especially bad. The cold really made his circulation sluggish, and when outside on his walks with his dad, he'd lose all feeling in his hands and feet. To the doctor's they went. The heat of the office during the wait to be seen, however, enlivened him, and you can't troubleshoot a problem that isn't there. So before examining him, the doctor suggested that he and his dad walk around the nearby park until the problem recurred, then trot back in and get examined.
The winter landscape was bleak; there wasn't much snow, so the ground was slushy black mud, and the bare trees scraped the sky as if they were auditioning for an Edward Gorey drawing. There was one lovely feature of the park: a small lake, frozen solid. Ideal for ice-skating, although there were no skaters to brighten the scene. The kid and his dad headed for the lake.
As they approached the lake, the dad saw that it wasn't nearly as nice as he'd thought it was; the ice near the shores was thin and treacherous, black water moving sluggishly underneath. He paused for a moment to find a stick to prod the ice with; it didn't break easily, but it wasn't safe to walk on. He turned to call his son back from the lake.
The kid was collapsed in a bony little snow-parka-covered heap where the icy water met the dark muddy shore. He'd found something, a bottle of little girl's play nail polish, the kind that barely tints your nail light pink. The bottle was plainly old, the liquid within nearly gelatinous with age. The kid had taken his gloves off and opened the bottle and was desperately trying to cover his hand with the stuff as if to hide himself somehow, smearing it over his skin, his eyes wide and blank, his breath fast and shallow, and he was whispering in a high little voice to himself, over and over.
"They're coming for me. They're coming for me. They're coming for me. They're coming for me."
The dad scooped up his son and bolted for the nearest help. A neighborhood bordered the park, and a house with windows lit against the winter dusk was far nearer than the hospital.
He pounded on the door, frenzied with fear; the boy's whispering had stopped, and he had his eyes tightly closed, shivering convulsively, barely breathing. The door swung open: a startled woman, her hand to her throat. "Yes, of course... come in, I'll call 911."
The dad laid his son down on the couch. He was beginning to hear whispers, darting little sibilants on the edge of his hearing, and the air around himself and his son seemed dark with motion, shapes that weren't there crowding close. Frustrated and terrified, he shouted at them to leave his son alone... deal with him if they wanted, but leave his son alone!
He turned aside just for an instant to snatch a blanket off the arm of the couch, and the whispering increased to a hissing crescendo. He heard his son gasp, and whipped back around. The kid was staring at the ceiling, his mouth and eyes open just slightly, as if he was about to speak to somebody, and he was dead. He had died during that fraction of a second.
Snatching up his son again, the dad turned to race out of the house, having some grief-crazed idea of running as fast as he could back across the park to the hospital. But when he faced the door, he saw something he hadn't seen before, a mirror mounted on the back of the front door. And when he saw what was in the mirror, he screamed, appalled.
The kid's head, in his reflection, wasn't lying limply as it did in real life. It was held up, and his eyes and mouth were both obscenely wide, the corners of mouth and eyelids pulling down and away as if his flesh was trying to crawl away from whatever was coming at it. His eyes were locked straight forward, his face frozen, and in his reflection, he was still screaming.
===============
When I was 16, I was up at about 3 AM, lights on, listening to Anthrax's Persistence Of Time album. I felt a strong pull, almost magnetic, from across the room. I turned my head and saw a black shape sitting on my desk. It was like a black hole sucking in all the light in the room. About 2 feet tall, with no features and wide horns. I looked at it for what seemed like forever and finally looked away and then immediately back, and it was gone.
===============
About 5 years ago I was living in Lewiston, Maine.
I had moved into a fairly good sized two bedroom apartment - Me and my girlfriend in one room, my best friend Dave and his girlfriend in the other. Seemed a good arrangement at the time - the girls didn't know each other too well, but seemed to get along okay. The place was a steal - rent was about half the price of any other place we checked out, and with four of us splitting it, it was ridiculously cheap. It was the back bottom apartment in a huge old house split into six apartments. Definitely worth more than the landlord was asking. It needed some work, to be sure, but minor things mostly. Most notably, it had old heavy wood-framed windows with counter weights in the walls. One of the window's weights were severed - It took Dave and I lifting together to get the thing high enough to put a cinder block under it. In the winter, they all swelled completely shut, so opening them was an impossibility. Which was fine, since who the fuck wants to open the window during a Maine winter? So we had an old house, but it was cheap.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
Well, we found out why it was so cheap soon after moving in - turns out that the year before the previous tenant's estranged boyfriend broke in, and they had a big fight. Which ended with him killing her. With an axe.
The landlord hadn't been able to get anyone to rent it since, so had been dropping the price. Heh. I'm a cheap bastard - I didn't care.
A few months after we moved in we discovered just how much in common the two girls had: BOTH were drama queens, and both loved pushing people's buttons. Dave and I should have gotten Nobel fucking Peace Prizes for the number of fights and arguments we defused before they got out of hand.
We also noticed some weird shit going on in the house. The girls would be fighting in the living room, and one of us would escape to the kitchen and find the cabinet doors hanging open, or drawers pulled out. Things that you could always explain away by blaming someone of being very lazy. Except none of us were likely suspects. This shit would only happen when people were arguing. Kind of eerie, but nothing we put any real thought into. We joked about how the ghost of the girl didn't like fights any more than Dave and I.
Eventually, we were all on the long road of relationship ruin. Tensions in the apartment were running high. One night in February, we all had an enormous fight. The girls were screaming. I was yelling (it takes a LOT for me to lose control enough to really yell), and even Dave was starting to shout - an unheard-of occurrence. We were all in the kitchen, screaming at each other. My girlfriend started throwing things.
Just at the peak, when the air in the room was practically red with anger, with everyone screaming, and with things about to get really out of control, a window in the living room threw itself open. It flew up with such force that it broke the glass. It hung there for a second, then slammed down, shattering the panes and throwing glass everywhere. Everything became very, very quiet.
We all forgot about fighting. We checked out the living room - and yup - the window without any counterweights was broken, with a cold winter wind blowing through.
It was weird, none of us were particularly scared, but felt more... disrespectful than anything else. We took care not to fight in the house much after that.
Once the lease was up, I moved up to the apartment above. Dave found a different place, and the girls... meh, they could be dead now, for all I really know. (I'm pretty sure my ex-girlfriend is dead now. Or maybe she's a leper. Or a carnie. Yeah, that'd be good!) I got a new roommate, and a girl moved in downstairs by herself.
One night early on, she was banging on our door. She stayed the night (sorry, no sexxor) because she was too freaked to sleep in her place. She was on the phone with an ex-boyfriend, arguing. When she hung up on him and went back into the living room, she said she found all her action figures (G.I. Joe, transformers, etc.) arranged in a circle on the floor facing each other.
I had to tell her all about the window after that.
============
Also, people who mention rooms where they feel uneasy as soon as they step into them: a magnetic force can cause this sensation. A magnetic force such as that from, for example, a ceiling fan. Turn the thing and you will instantly feel the room getting bigger, like someone has opened a window. Also, your eyeballs can start to resonate to the frequency of the fan, or other machine, causing the famous corner-of-eye sightings.
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hahhahah
My friend lives in a haunted house. He says at night, you can hear people screaming and crying, and the sound of skin slapping. Supposedly, back in 1959, a mass murderer lived there and slaughtered hundreds of people. One day, he was looking in the mirror, and behind him he saw the images of an old man. He jumped back, and when he looked back at the mirror, he was gone. I didn't believe him at first, so one night I slept over. I didn't see anything the whole night, but when I woke up, my butt really hurt, so I think my friend has a gay ghost in his house.
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Moving right along, I've noticed that a lot of folks here have an inherent aversion to mirrors.. perhaps my story will help alleviate that fear...
I came home to my room in the barracks late one night and decided as I was winding down, that I'd like to wash my face. I did just that, and as I began to slough the water off of my face, I looked into my mirror for a moment. For whatever reason, I decided to just pause a moment and look at my face reflecting back at me. As I did so, I observed that the face reflected in the mirror was changing subtly and constantly. It was like watching my own face's reflection becoming the faces of a multitude of other people. I wasn't disturbed by this whatsoever. In fact, it piqued my curiosity and was amusing the hell out of me for a good several minutes.
Then it happened...
Up until this point, the faces I was observing in the mirror were all of people who I cannot recall having ever met within the span of my life, and I knew that even with all these visual deviations going on, that it was still somehow myself looking back at me. But that final face I saw differed highly from those prior... It was that of a person I had met recently who went by the name Jost. This in and of itself wasn't really frightening.
That was until I looked at the eyes......
The eyes I then saw looking back at me bore the same shape, texture, and coloration of my own, but the gaze they bore upon me was totally devoid of any emotion or humanity. It was as if they were looking at me, regarding me like I was nothing more than a piece of meat. Yet, it was also like they were looking straight through me and into my own soul like a hungry animal. I got the most insane chills at that moment and got THE fuck away from that mirror right then and there.
I had another similar (albeit, less frightening) incident several weeks later. Same drill, seeing my face change in to that of others, but one face that kept popping up in the mix was that of a man horribly burned. If any of you have seen what a severe burn victim looks like, then you know what I'm talking about. This didn't bother me very much at all this go-round, because the eyes looking back at me were still mine... but it was still highly fucked up..
Here's lookin' at you, kid.... right?
==============
------->>>
This is a commonly recorded phenomenon. It's a psychological thing. See, the brain uses a sort of shorthand to record faces (and other complex objects, actually) and the emotions on them at a glance. However, the longer you simply just look at a face, the more minor features begin to pop out, and... well, next thing you know, a stranger is staring back at you in a mirror. The non-caring is usually probably due to the expression you're wearing on your face... I mean, fuck, you're just looking at yourself, right? Why should you put on any facial subtleties just to impress yourself?
==============
Fredericksburg Battlefield
We decided to go visit my aunt and uncle in VA one weekend. They hadn't seen the kids in some time, and as an added bonus, my grandmother was coming up. So some shopping expeditions were planed, and with my being somewhat into Civil War history, they thought it would be fun to visit one of the battlefields and have a picnic at one of the parks. It was a fun day, but not for my wife.
Everything seemed fine until we arrived at the Visitors Center to begin our walking tour of that portion of the battlefield called The Sunken Road. She was uneasy pretty much the entire time, but especially so when we ended up behind the Confederate defensive position. That's when she turned to me, ashen-faced, and said "I have to go. They don't want me here." Intrigued and not realizing that she was picking anything up, I asked, "Who?" "The soldiers. The want me to leave." Somewhat taken aback, I asked her if they told her that, and she said, "No, it's just a feeling. I don't belong here and they want me to leave. Now."
With that said, we gathered everyone up and went off to have our picnic elsewhere. My relatives were unaware of what happened and no one other than her and me discussed it.
On a side note, my uncle wanted us to see the Meade Pyramid, and run down to Jackson's position, the far right of the Confederate line. As we were driving by my wife made this offhand remark: "Huh, so that's where they were coming from." I was like, "Wha..." but didn't say anything to her until we had checked out Jackson's position (she stayed in the car) and was returning. There we pulled off to the side of the road to read a marker, which indicated that this indeed was the location of the only Union breakthrough of that battle. I didn't say anything to her, as my look of "Holy shit" was evident on my face.
Oh, and as to why she felt that overwhelming feeling of being unwelcome? The only thing we can think of is that she is from New Jersey, and quite a few men from her family fought with the Irish Brigade.
My relatives want us to go up to the Gettysburg this summer. My wife is horrified at the thought.
=============
Last spring, I was too broke to get a ticket home for Easter, but I didn't want to stay in residence. A friend of mine invited me to go home with her, because we could get a ride there, and because all of her family was away on a trip to Europe and she wanted the company. I happily accepted.
Her house was quite new, large, very nicely decorated, nothing appeared creepy in the least. We took up residence in the large family room in the basement, using sleeping bags on couches instead of messing up any bedrooms. On the second or third night, I awoke with a start. I didn't move other than to open my eyes slightly, and looked at the entrance to the room, which was an opening from the hallway at the bottom of the stairs rather than a door in a frame. I vividly saw a man standing there. He was heavyset, of an indiscriminate age (but not really old or really young) dressed in modern, casual, sort of sporty clothes. He wore a yellow ballcap, and had glasses. He slowly turned his head and looked at me, then walked into the adjoining computer room, which again lacked a door.
The man looked so real that at first I assumed it had to be one of my friend's uncles coming over to do something, as she had mentioned that might happen. I looked at my watch, and the time was 5 AM, so I realized that was ridiculous. My next conclusion was that it was some sort of prowler, even though we had armed the alarm system. I wanted to wake up my friend, but thought it would be safer to avoid letting the man know that we were awake. So, I closed my eyes again and stayed dead still. When I posted this story months ago, some criticized me for this: "You thought there could be an intruder in your friend's house and you didn't fucking do anything?" But in all honesty, had it been an intruder, somehow it doesn't seem like it would be the safest course of action for two young women to try to be heroes. So, I maintained my facade of sleep, listening intently... I didn't hear a damn thing. There was no exit from the room I'd seen the man enter. I know I was awake, because it took me a damn long time to fall asleep again.
This was a scary situation, not so much because I felt threatened (though I did initially) as it is that it was such a "What the fuck is going on???" moment. I've never told my friend. She does have to live there, after all.
===============
When I was a kid between the ages of 7 and 10, my dad was the pool manager for the Kiwanis swim club in Parkville (part of Baltimore). Being the adventurous bunch he and the other lifeguards were, we would often stay at the pool well after closing time (I was usually asleep when they did this). There was an old pre-Civil War era house that served as the offices and supply areas for the pool, as well as a mechanic who kept a shop on the upper level of the house. One night, the alarm system on the mechanic's garage went off, and the cops showed up with dogs. The mechanic asked if there was any sign of a forced entry, and the cops said that everything looked fine. Then, there was a loud banging, like something had been knocked over in the garage. The mechanic opened the door, and the cop released the dog. The dog took about two steps, whimpered, and went behind the cop with its tail between its legs. The mechanic asked the cop if he was going to check it out, to which the cop replied, "Buddy, if he (the dog) is afraid to go in there, I definitely ain't goin' in there."
Another time, same place. My dad was doing some work around the old house one day, and moved some wood that was piled up against the wall. Behind the wood was a hole. After closing time, Dad and some of the lifeguards went exploring. Turned out what he had found were tunnels dug by the slaves that had been kept in the house. They really didn't find much, but it was still creepy.
Same Place. My parents and some of the other lifeguards decided to check out some of the other places in the house that were not frequented by anyone. I was curious, so I went along. When we got to the attic of the house, we turned on the lights, and wandered in. There was only one light switch, and no one was near it. You can guess what happened next. We never went up there at night again (except to lock up).
Every night, the place would be locked up (every window closed and locked, all doors locked) and every morning, without fail, the attic windows would be wide open. There were also a few other creepy things about the house. In one room, there were still the rings in the walls where the slaves would be chained up, doors would slam and lock themselves, or unlock themselves, and things would occasionally move.
That’s really all I can remember about that place. The woman who owned the house before the Civil War was not a very nice person. Someone researched the house, and the woman was reportedly unusually cruel to her slaves and workers.
Bad mojo, I guess.
============
When I was a teenager, my girlfriend and I would "park" behind this middle school in Harford County (Maryland). We had been going up there for a couple of weeks when one night, while we were in the back of the car (really going at it), we hear this ungodly growl coming from under the car.
We freaked out, got dressed and got the hell out of there (there was no one else to be seen anywhere near us). After that, we talked to some friends about the experience, and it turned out we were not alone. Several other friends had told us a bout seeing weird shit around there. I even saw something up there one night I had no desire to ever talk about, but this was just too weird to not mention.
I saw what looked like a gorilla’s body with a wolf's head. Others claimed to have seen it too, like a corner of the eye kind of thing, but it was a little more realistic than that. Others said they saw what looked like armless figures moving around on the athletic fields on some nights, and yeah, I'd seen it too.
One of my girlfriend’s friends got a chance to look at some of the old survey maps of the area and other old records, and it turned out that where the school's athletic fields are, used to be a cemetery.
============
I spent 4 years of my life living in a very old house, the oldest one by far on my block, which ended in a cemetery. The cemetery, as far as I know, wasn't very old, it was greenlawn and very tastefully done, but it had been their first in the area and housed many early 20th-century dated mausoleums and graves.
I was a morbid little boy, partially obsessed with death, dying, and the dead. I loved this cemetery... I used to go there to do my homework. I also used to sneak out of my house at night and challenge my friends to go to the cemetery with me. Most people were too chicken shit to actually enter the place, but this particular instance happened to myself and my friend K. This would be the first, and last, time that K would accompany me.
It happened in mid-January of my sophomore year of high school, which would have been 1997. I grew up in Bakersfield, CA, and January sees a great deal of fog. This fog isn't just ground fog, or light mist type fog... we're talking a wall of fog so thick you can't see your hand sometimes in the mornings. Now change morning to 1 in the morning, with little flashlights gripped in our 16-year-old hands. By the time we climbed in through a weak section of the fence, we'd already almost been run over once by some drunken idiot, and K was already scared.
K was one of those punk "everyone sucks, nobody's smart enough to hang out with me and I like to fight" guys. He liked Marilyn Manson before Manson became "cool," then promptly hated him. He loved Nirvana... and he even knew what Nirvana was, although he didn't know anything else about Buddhism.
The site I wanted to look at that night was a particularly old mausoleum dated with the earliest burial being dated 1907. This particular cemetery had several small ponds and mini-rivers running through it with bridges spanning. I usually walked through the small rivers to get around at night so that any type of guard wouldn't see my light. They posted a guard at the front gate, and I'd snuck in here several times previously and he'd never noticed me, but I didn't want to take chances. K, however, didn't want to trust my direction instinct to get us down in to the rivers and not one of the lakes. So we crossed one of the bridges to get in to the internal area.
The bridge sounded odd at night. Maybe it was just this particular night, but the bridges had always felt sturdy and sounded relatively like a stone walkway should. Tonight, however, the bridge seemed insignificantly small, like it might break under our combined weights at any moment, and it sounded hollow. We've all heard the way that feet sound on stone or pavement; the sound of us walking across the bridge sounded like it was echoing off of walls all around us, it rang out remarkably loud and clear. It was the first sign that something wasn't right, and I should have seen what was coming.
We had our lights turned off, and in the fog, this meant that we were feeling our way forward by the guardrails. I had a pretty good idea of where we were going, despite the inability to see anything. We moved slowly after the bridge, because we couldn't risk a light in the open and we had to make sure that we stayed on the path. Without light, the path was the only way that we could tell where we were going.
After about 10 minutes of slowly walking forward, hunched over so that we could watch the walkway in the dark and fog, we came upon the mausoleum. It was a giant and somewhat old crypt: it had started to crack in places, but still managed to seem impressive. In the dark and fog, it looked like a foreboding tower amidst a series of headstones, and we both must have felt its presence. We walked up, and I found the headstone I was looking for. I've fully repressed the name of that particular marker, so I'll just refer to her as "Molly," and she had died in 1907. I loved this kind of stuff: it was a test of my wills every time I inched my way through the cemetery to see whether or not I could do it, and other people just made it better.
I was considering sneaking away from K while he looked at the impressive piece of stonework, then jumping at him from the fog and scaring him to death. We couldn't risk the noise, however. I had wanted to come, make my way through the cemetery, look at this particular mausoleum and then back out. I was hoping to get some kind of supernatural occurrence, as had happened to me previously, on the way there. K, however, had different plans. From the little pack that had held his flashlight, he produced something else: a can of spray paint.
I understand some people's urge to do stupid things; I've followed that urge myself on occasion. Vandalizing a grave, however, just seemed to be tempting fates a little. I pointed this out to K, who called me a sissy and popped the cap. I told him that if he spraypainted this tomb, I'd tell the guard. That made him think for a second, but then said it would be on my head, too (which it would have) and started to shake the can. I told him that I'd leave him, alone, in the fog. He didn't know a way out. This shook him up a little more, but at this point, he wanted to be the strong man. I turned on my flashlight, hoping to attract the guard's attention.
We almost immediately noticed a light come on a little ways off in the fog. I told K the guard had seen us, but he said we had enough time to spray and run. Then another light came on, next to the other one. It suddenly occurred to me that the fog had taken the form of a woman. I stared, dumbfaced, while K got ready to spray his message... I nudged him in the side, and this time he got mad at me. He noticed my expression, though, and looked where I was looking.
The fog had receded around us. For the first time that night, I could see my feet through the mists. The fog had grown denser, somehow, and taken form. In front of us was a nondescript woman. Her eyes were like burning coals, and her mouth was bent in the most furious expression that I had ever seen. She travelled straight through me and after K, who had dropped his can and taken off at a run. I heard him splash into a pond and start swimming for the edge of a cemetery.
Minutes later, I saw a car which must have been his drive off down the road at break-neck speed, heading towards the freeway. A few minutes after that, the guard found me, my face frozen in an expression of sheer terror, still looking at where the ghost had been. He didn't even notice the can of spray paint; he looked at me, muttered "My God" under his breath, and walked away. I grabbed my flashlight, and slowly made my way out of the cemetery, towards my home.
K called me the following day, and told me that the ghost had chased him all the way to the edge of the cemetery, screaming things at him in his head the whole way. She quit when he climbed the chain link fence and threw himself to the other side. He told me I was a fucked-up individual, and that if I ever went back to the cemetery, it would be without him.
=============
About two years ago, my friends and I were searching for rural places to do illegal things like use explosives and shoot things. We found the perfect place, about thirty miles away from any city. Let's call this place "the haunted mine." After further exploration in this area, we find an abandoned house, which for some reason still has power.
My friend Matt and I head up to this house on a cold December night. We were equipped with four flashlights, candles, a batch of fake blood, and an axe. We bring everything into the house and light up the living room. Matt smears a good amount of fake blood on one of the walls and I jam the axe into an adjacent wall. If you are wondering why we are doing this, we asked two other friends to come up to the house the next night (hopefully we'd scare the shit out of them). We both set up candles on the floor in a pentagram about three feet wide and three feet long. I pack up the lights and I follow Matt back to my truck, then I drive us back home.
The next day
At night, the four of us drive up to the gate and get out of Matt's car. Matt and I lead the way and tell the other two that the house is close. I can see Matt trying to hold back laughter already, so I punch him and keep walking. We get to the door of the house and walk in and head towards the kitchen (which is to the left, the living room is straight ahead). Our two friends walk into the living room, turn on the light and scream, in turn Matt and I both start laughing as they run out the door.
Matt walks into the living room to get the axe (since it was his anyways). The look on Matt's face is something I will never forget. I run into the living room and almost fall over. On the fake blood wall, written into the fake blood was "I will find you." I almost shit myself and then I looked at the other corner of the room and saw a shadowy figure. The noise this figure made was horrid and still scares me today, the best way to describe it would be a very low-pitched scream mixed with some evil sounding whisper.
Matt pushes me out of the room and we both sprint back to his car, where the two others are waiting. I never looked back after that, I'm not sure if it followed us or not. Scary.
=================
Hot, hot 2 ghosts on Karma action:
The Location: Northwood Drive, about a block and a half north of Lane Ave, Columbus, Ohio. OSU campus.
The Time Period: 1997-1998.
The Cast: Karma "My real name isn't Karma" Enforcer
Karma's future fiancé, also known as Karma's future ex-fiancé. Also known by several other extremely less-flattering names.
Several freakshow roommates of varying proclivities and sanity states.
Prologue:
I had lost a lot of myself in the previous years. Bad shit in the service. Too much drinking. So I got myself dismissed from service posthaste and returned to good old Ohio. I failed to find employment, and my otherwise benevolent parents booted me out. So I went where you go when you're homeless in Columbus. OSU campus. Met a girl. It wasn't love at first sight. Lust, maybe. But she took me in. Fed me. Gave me a warm place to sleep without placing any real demands on me. So I settled in. This was a big place. Full house. Basement. First floor with two large living room type areas, a sprawling kitchen, bathroom, and dining room. Second story was four bedrooms and a full shower and a bath. The attic was finished and furnished. I never went up there. The reasons should become obvious. The place had also been a link in the underground railroad, and there was a crude patch in the basement that sealed a tunnel into our neighbour's basement.
Anyway, I settled in and lived as idyllically as one can when they're mentally and emotionally fucked up. But I loved and was loved, and was relatively happy. About 7 months in, I had returned home to my future fiancé from a night of sitting around the local coffee shop (Insomnia on 13th and High for you who know the area) with the local clique of gutterpunks and homeless goth kids who thought they were vampires and shit. My future ex-fiancé is in our room, huddled under her blankets and shaking like she'd wet the bed while wrapped in a shorted electric blanket.
Chapter 1: SNAFU
"What the hell is wrong with you?" I asked with a bit more concern than I'm sure it sounds like.
"I'm okay. I'm just scared."
"Of?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? Seems kinda silly to be shaking like a leaf while being scared of nothing in particular. I understand the concept, but it could eventually be economic downfall of the country if we all did it." I'm not real good at dealing with freaked out women (only one sibling, a brother... and my female cousins have always been too far away for me to have to shoulder their problems), so I tend to revert to levity and try to get them calmed down enough to explain clearly what happened.
"Someone was running down the steps."
"Probably just Gio. He's pretty spastic." John (alias Redbird, alias Giovanni, alias Gio) was one of my roommates at the time. He was a bisexual goth who lived with his compulsive kleptomaniac cross-dressing boyfriend in the room diagonal from ours. Hey, I was on OSU campus hanging out in the goth scene and didn't have a lot of choices in roommates.
"Gio isn't home, [Karma]. He wasn't home then. It started in the attic and went down to the basement like the devil himself was chasing it. But there was no one here." Okay. I've gotten some uncool vibes from the place, but this is pretty weird. However, on the balance of things, my girl at the time was Irish, and as if the natural Irish flamboyance and love for drama wasn't enough, she was from a family of actors and actresses. So I wasn't ready to start jumping around shouting: "Boogedy boogedy, we've got a haint in the shed!" I proceeded to do my best to calm her the fuck down, with only moderate success.
Interlude:
Okay, so let me just fill you in on a bit more about me so I'm not interrupting myself anymore than I must. I don't claim to be a psychic. But I think all people have connections to whatever other plane of existence there is. Call it what you will. The ether. The astral plane. The collective unconscious. Bob and Gerdy's place down the way. Whatever. I've noticed in the years since that I have certain reactions to that connection, if something is there to really kick it up. My skin dances. Not prickles, but it's like that. Only it moves around more erratically. Like electricity. Kinda jumps around the hairs on your arms making them stand up. My guts turn to icewater. Maybe it's all subconsciously driven. I can't say for sure. I just know that certain places make my skin dance and provokes a strong "Fight or Flight" reaction. However, my father is a diehard skeptic about, well, everything. And so I make sure to carefully examine my situation and try to find the logical solution. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I succeed, but I don't fool myself. Anyway, on with the show.
Chapter 2: TARFU
Some weeks later, I've totally forgotten the previous incident and have just written it off as "My girlfriend is a spaz." I've staggered into the shower to clean up after a delightful game of "Who's Your Daddy." I'm feeling good. I love a shower so hot it leaves me 2 layers of skin from the "Transparent Person" model they have at COSI (Center of Science and Industry. Cool museum / education thing in Ohio.) Anyway, I'm enjoying the shower when....
CRACK!
Okay. I'm now fucking cold. My guts are suitable for leaving bottled draft beer floating in during the frat party. But through the water, I'm shivering and my skin is hopping around like it's making a mad dash from whatever the fuck that was. While my subconscious starts doing its diagnostic routine and making sure that everything is still attached and functional, I start looking.
What... the fuck.... IS THAT?!?!?
No. It's not the ubiquitous ghostly figure. its fingerprints in the steam on the other side of the glasslike panel of the shower.... Freaky, no? No. It wasn't. It was the fingerprint shaped rivulets of blood running down MY side of the glass that freaked me the fuck out.
I've been shot.
No. Wait, I haven't been shot. What the fuck is going on.
My subconscious reports in all systems green and operating within their normal parameters, but that they all want to curl up into a ball and hide from whatever the fuck is going on.
Alright. It's time to be proactive about this. Someone is pulling some sort of goddamn stunt, and as soon as I'm not buttnaked, they're due for their forty thousand-mile attitude readjustment. I do a cursory rinse of my hair to get the shampoo out, and in one catlike motion, I step out of the shower, grab my towel, and wrap it around my waist.
Okay. Not quite. I slip on the steamy tiles. But if that's all, why the fuck is my foot suddenly screaming code red?
Oh. I stepped on my razor and somehow managed to take a lovely flap of flesh off my foot. Oh well. I didn't need that bit for anything but walking on anyway. So I grab my towel and wrap it around my waist with less than my previously-hoped-for catlike grace, and proceed to sit down on the toilet to perform ghetto surgery. (wrapping a towel I don't like very much around the wound and tying it into place with dental floss, in this case.)
It had to be John. This is just the sort of fucked-up bullshit he'd set up for his own amusement. Alright. We've got our tarsal emergency stanched. It's time to go and kick his scrawny ass from here to.... that razor was flung at the shower door hard enough to scratch it. But Gio is a scrawny dude. No way could he put enough force on that razor to scratch the plastic-glass of the shower door. No.... No. Someone needs to get their as kicked so I can feel less like a pussy. We'll work on the assumption that it was Gio and if terror causes him to explain who it was, then they'll be it.
John wasn't home. The girlfriend was still in bed and our door was halfway to closed, the exact way I left it.
I obviously had some sort of post-coital hallucination brought on when the razor fell. The scratch must have already been there. Go back to bed. Lie down, and forget about it.
Chapter 3: FUBAR
Okay. Been a great fucking week. Jenn is saying that she's finding shit thrown around the bathroom. The stomping down the steps has started to become a regular occurrence. I can no longer write this off as some sort of hallucination. Time to go check the attic and see if there's anything up there that will clue me in as to what is going on.
Great plan. As I begin to try to climb the steps, it starts again. My guts have started to slosh as glacial ice floes make their way through my intestines. My skin is doing its damnedest to hide behind me and peek over my shoulder like Roger Rabbit, only leaving me (if possible) more gruesome than Bob Hoskins. My eyes start to water and tear up. My subconscious is on vacation in Aruba with a note left on its desk saying, "Will return if you survive this. Don't wait up!"
Fuck THAT plan. The attic is more than welcome to attempt some sort of anatomical impossibility on itself. Whatever is there HATES me. HATES. Not like, "That guy is a real dick. I hate him," but "I want to do things to you that will make war reporters from Somalia queasy" hatred.
Yeah, it could be all in my head. Who knows. Protracted period of stress from a goofy relationship resulting in blah blah blah. All I know is what I felt. And that was what I can only imagine hatred distilled and strained and purified must feel like.
So fuck the attic. Let's start with someplace I've been before. To the basement.
Now, there's a "room" in the basement. Was it filled with bodies, or clean-picked bones, or even Yog-sothoth? Nope. Just a feeling of immense sadness. Childlike, "where did Acruffy go and why isn't he ever coming back" sadness. Loss, grief. Everytime I'd had to go to the basement for anything, I always ended up feeling depressed, but I'd never paid any attention to it, since "Depressed" is pretty much nominal for me. But now, my eyes are watering, not from terror, but tears. Someone has the audacity to run electricity up and down my arm and back skin. At least I've had a cold glass of water recently. When was that? Here I stand, in what is essentially two wooden partitions in the basement of a house, bawling. Like my dog died. Like my best friend was moving to Phoenix and I'd never see him again. Heartbroken.
So, I did what any totally rational person does in these circumstances. I fell back on superstition and faith. I drew a line across the doorway to the basement and the attic in salt. The ancients (possibly as far back as 1960 or something) believed that the geometric nature of crystalline salt would entrap spirits, preventing them from causing you harm. In a spiritual version of the Nazi defense at Normandy, I set up great big bunkers of sand at those doorways. I fanatically replenished my little sodium defenders.
What do you know? It worked, inasmuch as all the freaky shit stopped.
Epilogue:
The house was bought from our landlord the next month, and our lease was not renewed. OH NO! We bailed with a total lack of disappointment and moved on with our lives. Brief recon later indicated that the house was rented out to sorority chicks. Good. Hope they forgot the salt. As for me, I've come to the conclusion that there's more in the world than what I can make physical contact with. What it is, I don't know. Did my Morton's Magical Army actually work magic? I don't think so, but my belief of what DID is a whole other thread in and of itself. This is, to the best of my recollection, the truth of what happened there, inasmuch as I can define truth as "what I perceive." And that's always a suspicious source for information, even if it's all I have.
==================
Since I came across this thread, I thought I would add my experiences in my house. Most of the time, people think I'm bullshitting. They haven't quite been as freaky as most of the stories that I've just read.
The house I live in now was built in 1898. From what I understand, the same family lived here until 1999 when the daughter of the original owner died. It had sat vacant for 2 years before it was put up for sale. My family and I moved in last May. I had already owned it for a year, but it needed a LOT of work. The bathtub is one of those old-school clawfoot tubs, the trim is the original cape cod style, and the nails are even those weird shaped old-school ones. No insulation whatsoever. original clapboard siding, original oak / pine floors. A lot of the insulation was cracked, and the furnace was pretty much shot. It pretty much needed some TLC. The structure itself is the old-school sawmill lumber that isn't even made anymore. The supporting beams are about 12" by 12" solid wood. All in fairly good shape, just a little worse for wear. I was a big Bob Villa fan when I was growing up, so it was like a dream come true. I ended up doing extensive renovations / restoration to the upstairs and downstairs. It's pretty much still an ongoing project. Before I did a lot of the renovations, I took a lot of pictures so I could have a before / after portfolio.
On to the weird stuff. Me and my wife have both heard voices. Usually it happens when we aren't really paying attention. We've heard a woman's voice call both our names on several occasions. It happens to me more often. I'll pop out and say "What?" And my wife will say "I didn't say anything." Sometimes when I'm doing the dishes or something, I'll hear the same voice. I can only describe it was really far away, but in the same room. Most of the time I can't really make out anything intelligible, but I hear it.
The first time I started thinking something weird was going on was when one night I was stepping down the back staircase to go outside while I was reading a book. I got this weird feeling like I stepped out of my body, and a bunch of paragraphs in the book looked like they were highlighted. Then the book went back to normal. It all happened in probably about 1/10th of a second but it took forever in my mind. Then on another night, I was going upstairs to go to bed. As I was passing by my son's room, I noticed a white figure leaning over his bed. As soon as I looked, the figure stood up, and dashed out of the room to the staircase, and as soon as it was in my peripheral vision, it was gone. Again, this probably happened in 1/10th of a second, but it seemed to take forever.
Another night at about 2 AM, I was in my backyard smoking a cigarette (I don't smoke in the house). The downstairs bathroom is in the back of the house so you can kind of see through the window. The light was on, and I looked at the back of the house, and I saw an outline like someone walked out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. I was the only person awake that late, and when I asked my wife if she had gotten up to use the bathroom, she said she hadn't. The last notable event that comes to mind is one night when my wife was taking my son up to bed, and she felt someone coming up behind her. Sometimes I sneak up the stairs behind her and grab her butt when she gets to the top like a joke, so she thought it was just me. When she got to the top, she looked back and no one was there.
Later on I found out that when me and my brother were working on the house together over the weekends and sleeping on the floor (before we moved in), he heard a woman's voice too. He never said anything about it because he thought he was just imagining things.
My wife and I have never felt threatened or anything, but sometimes it gives me the creeps if I think about it. She's a lot more flipped-out about the whole thing than I am. She's a Pentecostal Christian, so to her it's all demons and devils. Personally, I feel it's more of an energy imprint leftover from the previous people who lived here, and somehow my brain is interpreting it in a sensory fashion.
Back to the pictures: after we moved in and this stuff started happening, I went back through all the pictures I had taken during renovations and I found some kind of out-of-place things. Just shapes, globs, and things of that nature. I have some more recent pictures that I had taken when I stayed up late to "ghosthunt," but I don't think they are as good. It's almost a rule that I get something on camera when I do this, so I have quite a few of them. It's just that I think the best ones are the older ones. I don't have any server space, but if someone is willing to host them, I'd be more than happy to share them.
Labels: bob, computer, corey, david, death, friends, gay, ghost stories, grace, halloween, matt, maxed-out tags limit, mom, music, parents, photos, sick, snow, something awful, weird stuff
posted by Flami at 12:27:00 PM
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