Ghost stories, part 13

I figure I can add this story now, since it has been a while since I last even thought of it.

I was raised in a small town in Oklahoma. It is just a few miles outside of Tulsa. My family owned land that was right by a pretty big forest. I would often go walking in the woods with my cousins, or just alone. Well my cousins and me got a great idea to go out and shoot fireworks off in a small clearing what was in the woods on the 4th of July.

When my mom got wind of our ideas, she told me to not go, and to just stay away from that area on the 4th. I asked her about it, and she told me that the woods were haunted, and that the 4th of July seems to be the worst day for it. I laughed at her and wrote it off.

So the 4th comes around... my cousins and me get our stuff: about ten gallons of water (in case we started a fire), some blankets (mostly in case of fire), fireworks, hammer, flashlight, a lantern, some food, and other small things. So we start the trek out to the woods: it is about two hours until the sun goes down. It takes us about an hour to get to the clearing normally, so this gives us time to get there, set up, and eat.

When we first walk into the woods, we all shuddered, you know that weird cold chill that goes down your back. I figure we all shrugged it off since we didn't mention it. As we start to walk towards the clearing, I start to hear the sound of other things in the woods, like trees falling and making that weird groaning noise. I run up and get closer to my cousins, and start to tell them what my mom told me. They laughed at me, and said that their parents said the same thing: they figured that the parents were telling us this just to keep us from getting hurt.

After some walking, we reached the clearing. It took us longer than expected to get there, so we had to set up everything before it got dark, and set up an order in things: that way, we didn't have to carry someone out of the woods on that one-hour trek. After we finished setting everything up, we start to eat: nothing all that great... just some cold hotdogs and soda.

After we finished eating, we decided that it was time to light some fireworks. We did this for about thirty minutes, when one of my cousins told us all to stop. He pulls out one of those huge rockets and puts in the piece of pipe we had been using to launch. He takes a few extra rocks and puts in on the board that the pipe was nailed to (just in case the rocket was too heavy or something).

He lights the rocket, and we all do the normal teenage thing and run away. The rocket fires, and goes straight up, leaving a nice golden streak, and that is where it started to go wrong. For some reason, the rocket randomly decides to go Pearl Harbor on us. It does a 180 and comes straight where we are. We scramble to get out of the way, and it lands in a big pile of dead leaves. The rocket explodes, and blinds us all for a few seconds. When we regain our vision, we notice that the rocket started a fire.


We quickly dunk the blankets in the water and then throw it on the leaves. It is put out rather quickly, and we all kind of laugh about it, and make fun of my cousin. We decided that we need a bit more light in the area, since it was not becoming real dark. My cousin lights up his lantern, and sets it in the middle of where we are standing.

It is after he puts the lantern down that we see the first of them. We see a rider all in white on horseback. His horse is also covered in a white mask, and white robe; on his saddle is a rifle; he has a rope in his hands. He rides by, not seeing us, and on the end of his rope is a body. The body is horribly destroyed... I can barely even tell if the thing was a human or some kind of weird animal.

My cousins and me let out a collective "Fuck!" and begin to run. We have each lived our entire lives out by these woods... we knew every inch of them like the backs of our hands,,, we knew where every thorn bush, hole, stream, and the like was. This time, though, the woods had changed. It was like we had never even been in them. We tripped, ran into trees, into thorn bushes, and all of that.

I remember a few things on the run back, I remember falling, and feeling like something had cut into my leg. I looked up and before me stood a man in white robes with a white mask, just like the one I saw riding the horse. Using my good ankle, I launched myself into him... not trying to tackle him, but just trying to knock him down. I knocked nothing down, I never even hit him. I just went right through him, as if he wasn't even there, I didn't ask any questions, I just ran.

As I came closer to the edge of the woods, I could see my cousins in the moonlight. It was really weird, I was in nearly pure darkness, using my memory to guide me on where to go, yet my cousins who were on the outside of the woods were in full moonlight. The woods never blocked the moon... you could come out on the night of a full moon and see where you were walking. I ran harder, I could feel pain in my chest, ankle, and my head.

When I reached the end of the woods, I fell down right in front of one of my cousins. He carried me back to my uncle's house. I was catching my breath, sitting in my uncle's living room, wrapping my ankle, and listening to him and my cousins talk.

He said that these woods are an old meeting place of the KKK. By "old," he means back when they were actually big. He said that on the 4th of July, the KKK would have a huge Independence Day celebration, take a few blacks out to the clearing (where we were), and hang / stab / shoot / burn them. He told us that on the 4th, the woods always have an odd smell, and if you look into them... he says you can see lights far off into them.

Yea, that's my story. Lovely KKK ghosts who ride horses.
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I was a little kid at the time, approximately six or seven at the time. Whenever my family and I were visiting relatives in Virginia, we would visit several historical places throughout the Virginian countryside. It is a weird fetish my mother has of history. Sure, a lot of the history is trite, a lot of the countryside is banal, but once every so often, you see something truly magnificent, and this night was one of those.

We were passing through a desolate road in the Virginian countryside, Highway 5 to be exact. Off this historic road, the Berkeley Plantation lies, home of one US president and one signer of the Declaration of Independence. It has quite an illustrious history behind itself, as well as a haunted history of a little drummer boy who purportedly (and truthfully) still haunts the grounds of Berkeley.

It's the middle of the night and we're pretty much lost: me, my mother, my grandmother, and my brother. We're heading down the lonely road looking at blackness with just the lights of our car illuminating the path. Once every so often, we manage to see two lights from an approaching car, a sign of some civilization, we hoped. As we spotted a solitary light, we assumed it was a motorcycle. One nuance separated this light from any normal light from a machine: it contrasted the normal path of the headlights, this light stayed equidistant from us, in the opposing lane. As we are witnessing this lone light, we become slightly spooked as the light neither comes close to us, nor does it distance itself from us. Suddenly, the light comes over to our lane: while a good 100 yards away from us, it was still a bright, luminous light. By this time, we are frightened that perhaps it is a drunk driver and we continue to drive, still apprehensive about this light. As we continue to drive, the light that's now in the other lane remains the same distance throughout the stretch of this road. For a good thirty or so miles, the light just stays distanced from us, neither coming closer to us, nor distancing itself. As we approach civilization and head past the grounds of Berkeley Plantation, the light suddenly vanishes.

The following day, we decided to visit ("we" = my mother) Berkeley Plantation to become engrossed in its rich history. Mind you, I was a little tyke then with a loose tongue, and I couldn't help but share my experiences we had the previous night with the tour guide and our group and everyone else. The lady seemed spellbound by the explanation, thanks in part to the fact she probably did not comprehend a single word I spoke; while at the same time, my brother slowly backed away from me as if he had no relation to his now-retarded brother speaking of some unfathomable crap. Suffice to say though, if anyone ventures Highway 5 in Virginia at night, let's hear if you had such an encounter.

Edit: Hell, another historical side note here too: the woodlands behind my house were used by the Confederate troops as a camping ground during the Civil War. That has actually been verified by the kin of the original owners of the acreage before it became a neighborhood. I've yet to see anything moderately scary back there, except for a light reflecting off the creek path late one autumn night. I didn't venture near the rock outcroppings then, but this thread really does spur some "I need to go wake up the possible dead" feelings. Keep up the good work, lads... and maybe I might get ballsy enough to go record some sounds late at night by the creek.
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Look out in the living room. The house was all one level, and my parents' room was just down the hall from where we were sleeping. Being the rambunctious little shits that we were, we would often wake up my parents with our laughing and talking. At about midnight on this night, I heard my mom coming down the hall to tell us to shut up and go to sleep. We quieted down when we heard her coming, and she emerged from the hallway. She stood roughly 8 feet away from where we were lying. It was completely dark in the room and I couldn't see her face, but my eyes were adjusted enough to make out her white nightgown. But she didn't say anything.

"We'll be quiet, I promise," I said to her after a second or two. No reply. "Mom?" I said. No reply. This was extremely weird, as my mom is a very no-nonsense person who doesn't goof around. I must have laid there looking over at her for a good 45 seconds. Then she turned around and walked into the kitchen, out of our view. The house being dead quiet, we could hear every little sound she made. We heard her open a drawer and take something out of it. Then we heard the sound of something metal banging against the sink / faucet. The banging stopped after about 30 seconds and she came out of the kitchen, walked past us, and went back to her bedroom (I tried talking to her again as she walked past us).

Jason said to me something along the lines of: "Dude, your mom is weird." I stayed still for a minute or so to try to wrap my mind around what she could possibly have been doing, and why she didn't answer me. She didn't have a history of sleepwalking, but it was the only thing I could think of. My curiosity took over and I went to her room. I gave a quiet knock as I opened the door. A small lamp was on and she was propped up in her bed reading a book. I startled her when I came in.

"Oh, you scared me!" she said, chuckling and trying to whisper (my dad was asleep next to her). I paused for a moment.

"What were you doing just then?" I whispered.

"Reading."

"No, I mean in the kitchen." She looked confused.

"I wasn't in the kitchen," she said. "I've been in here reading for about three hours."

I sheepishly said "okay" and went back to the living room. I explained to Jason what my mom had said. He didn't believe me until the next day when he asked her himself.

To this day, I have no clue who / what we saw that night.
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I think my cousin's on drugs, or she's losing her marbles. She just revealed to the family that she can see dead people - relatives, especially.

Remember that thread I posted about my dad's wife succumbing to meningitis? Well, for those who didn't view it, my dad's (second) wife came down with it, then passed away after about a week (God bless her). Of course... my dad, his 2-year-old boy, and 4-year-old girl have been distraught, but managing. The funeral service wasn't anything out of the ordinary. The most heartbreaking part was when my dad had my half-brother and half-sister in each arm, kneeling down, with my brother on his left and me on his right. When the casket was being lowered, he quietly said, "Say goodbye to mommy..." "Bye, mommyyy..." the kids said.

Enough of those details - back to my cousin. My dad called me a few days ago, saying this:

Him: "Did I tell you about Melissa?"
Me: "No. What is it?"
Him: "Kinda like that movie... She can see dead people."

Then it hit me like a bucket of water. My cousin always claimed she could, but this was when she was about 11 and I was 10. I thought she was lying, and so did everyone else. First, she claimed that HER aunt could see dead people when wearing a certain veil, and that the people she could see "were really nasty." The remnants of various accidents, I suppose.

Then, not too long ago her mom told us, "Well, when she was younger, I'd always hear her talking to someone while she was having a bath."

Fast forward to the recent funeral, my cousin tells my dad that the deceased was among us throughout the whole day. She said that my dad's wife stood up at the front, casual facial expression, normal attire. During the funeral, the deceased's kids started crying for their mom, even though it was a closed casket. My cousin said that while my dad was comforting the kids, the ghost of his woman walked over to stand beside them.

Whenever someone stepped up to the podium to express their memories of her, she'd stand next to them, my cousin said. Whenever someone dropped flowers or kissed the casket in the cemetery, she'd stand behind them.

This cousin sat right in front of me during the funeral. Now that I think of it, all she kept doing is looking at vacant parts of the premises. I disregarded it at the time, but it's fucked up even thinking about it. She even said that at one point during the funeral, my dad's wife was standing next to his brother who died about 7 years ago from AIDS. Freaky...
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My father was a military man. Retired back in '95 from the Navy after 20 years of proud service to our country. But before that, we moved often... every 3-4 years or thereabouts we'd pack up and get shipped somewhere new. Early 1989, a wonderful opportunity arose and dad took it. A 16-hour flight later, and we were stationed at N.A.S Sigonella, Sicily. I guess I was about, ohhh, 10 or 11 at the time. Those years were blurred, save those pinpricks of memory that still haunt me. That still plagues my dreams from time to time.

Our first home there was an apartment in a complex called "Bellavista" far from the Naval base. There was a waiting list to move into Base Housing that generally ran for about a year and a half's wait. Until your time to move, you had to live amongst the locals wherever you could. Bellavista was a beautiful place... we lived on the upper floor of the complex and had a wonderful view of the countryside off our back balcony. At night, one could look up at the night sky and see a thin trail of fiery red lava slowly ebbing from still active Mt. Etna. And in the morning, everything left out in the open was often found to be blanketed ever so slightly in volcanic ash, almost like a light dusting of snow.

But naturally, as perfectly nice as Bellavista was, it wasn't meant for us for long. The landlord's daughter was pregnant, engaged... and homeless. Guess who got the boot? So we moved, with the landlord's assistance, into another home. Motta S. Anastasia, a little cobblestone-streeted town near Catania, and much closer to the Navy base. The day we drove up to the new place, I felt ill. Of course, nothing was thought of this at the time, but I'd swear in retrospect I was being told something. The place was a 3-story house with an apartment on each floor. I really don't remember the neighbors, but both were similarly Navy families. And I can imagine I pissed them off a lot with the screaming.

Dad unlocked the door and proceeded into the small entryway. The cobblestone street gave way to a marbled floor entrance and a matching set of marble stairs up to the second floor, which was our new home. The place was stunningly beautiful. Marble floors... glass French doors into the living room area... balconies attached to nearly every room, save the one that was to be mine. Claw foot bathtub... bidet... all the modern conveniences expected of a home in Europe.

I walked into the room that was going to be mine. Small, simple, square, and quite cold. To the left, at the end of the wall was a door covered with a "Persiana." Basically, a form of window blinds made from heavy horizontal flaps that was operated via a cloth strap attached to the wall. I pulled it up to see that the door was mostly glass and beyond it was a very small "room" lined with brick along the floor and walls. I opened the door and stepped into the room, and looked up to discover the room extended all the way up through the third floor and up to a hole in the roof. There was no covering on the hole, either... it went straight into open air. The shaft allowed a fair amount of light to shine into the only room in the house without a window in it, which I thought was pretty damn cool initially.

The chill seemed to come from the room, despite the glaring sun nearly directly overhead. It was then I heard the first whispers. Like... if you were to take a wire brush and softly rub the stiff bristles against your jeans. At the time, I attributed it to echoes off the brick... but I couldn't help but feel weird about it. It wasn't coming from any discernable direction or source... but it surrounded me like a blanket, as if sound could be tangible and touchable. It pressed in gently on my ears like pressure on an aircraft ascending or descending. I turned to leave, and I noticed a glinting drain in the middle of the floor. It was obviously for rainwater to drain away, but my nausea increased when I saw it. My stomach gnawed at itself as I ran out of there, and I swear I saw the drain cover jiggle a bit on my way out. I lowered the Persiana quickly and rejoined the family in the living room, shaking and sick as a dog.


Ungh. I'm gonna take a quick break. I feel nauseous anytime I start to remember this crap. Bear with me... I know it's pretty long thus far, and truth be told it's probably me subconsciously trying to avoid this. Ick.

Now granted... a little brick room was far from the norm for paranormal ghosty stuff. But try telling that to whatever was in there. Christ. For weeks and weeks, I'd get up the nerve to open the Persiana in broad daylight and risk a peek... only to stumble back from the door sick as all hell to my stomach and trembling. I tried telling my parents of course... but an 11-year-old's ramblings about a scary brick room generally get chalked up to too many Freddy and Jason movies. The whisperings rarely stopped at night. They were persistent from the time I laid down until I finally forced myself into slumber. Often, I'd wake up in the middle of the night to silence, and then the whisperings would start up again, as if it was waiting to make sure I was awake.

There was never any real words to the whispering... just a hollow "ksssh sshhhaww hissssshhhhh haaahhh ooooshhhh aaashhhhh" that seemed to repeat, but never in the same cadence. There was no emotion behind it either that I can remember. It wasn't angry, it wasn't sad, nor was it happy. Just there. Always fucking there.

One night, after about 2 months of this, I was awoken by a particularly horrifying dream. I seemed to start having those dreams after we moved in... I had never had constant nightmares prior. But I awoke from the dream with the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Immediately, my eyes darted to the door... and saw that the Persiana was up. Now, European goons with experience, back me up... Persianas are about the noisiest damn things to have in a house. They're generally metal slats hooked in with metal hooks that grind and squeak loudly in protest as they're pulled open. There was no way in hell that the Persiana, which was always closed, could have been opened without waking up everyone in the house. But sure enough, it was open about 3/4 of the way up the damned door. A bit of moonlight reflected off the bricks in the shaft and into my room with a dull bluish tone. I lay there for hours, paralyzed in my bed, but unable to look away from the door, lest there be something there when I looked back. Eventually, I just conked out...

The next morning crept up finally and I was freed from my paralysis. I ran to the door amidst a wave of nausea and pulled the Persiana shut as fast as I could. There was a light dusting of volcanic ash on the brick floor and I'd swear I could make out footprints or scuffing in it. Mom, still asleep at the time, yelled at me from across the hall after hearing the noise, but I couldn't care less.

Over the course of the next 3 months, it was the same routine. The whisperings never faltered. The Persiana would be found at least 2 to 3 times a week opened, and the blackness of the room would stare out at me in my bed. Then one night, it was different. I still have nightmares of this incident and it makes me cringe and want to curl up in a ball still whenever I conjure it up. I had awoken again in the midst of a terrible nightmare. And sure enough, the Persiana was up, but this time it was all the way up. The moonlight was barely filtering in that night, but I'd swear I could make out something there in the room. It felt like I was at just the right angle for me to see whatever it was, and if I were to move the slightest bit, I'd lose sight of it. It was a small sphere that shimmered like a soap bubble does. But it was so faint, I could barely make it out. I watched as it hovered there for the longest time. It began to shrink like some TVs used to do when you turned them off... shrink into a tiny dot of light.

But before it winked out, it flashed and expanded. It did so at an alarmingly fast rate and solidified into the form of a woman. She looked to be in her early to mid thirties, dark curly hair... definitely a local Sicilian. When she became "whole" and a solid image, she began shrieking and pounding on the glass doors with both fists. Her head swiveled wrong on her neck, shaking back and forth like if you put a teakettle on a stick and shook the stick around. Her eyes were completely black and full of anger and hatred... The skin around her mouth flapped loosely, giving me glimpses of her teeth and tongue and her hair was tossing around violently. Some sort of liquid oozed in small spurts from the corners of her mouth and flecks of whatever it was flew as she shrieked. Her screaming was horrific and nonsensical, and all I could do was scream back. My dad charged into the room to my bed, thinking I was having a nightmare. She shrank back from the door and... ugh. She slithered down the drain somehow. She twisted and distorted and I'd swear I could hear her bones splintering and cracking as she wound herself down into it. It was awful and to this day, Dad says he's never heard anyone scream so inhumanely before. I often ask him jokingly if he meant from me or her.
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Here's a story my dad used to tell:

When he was a boy, his parents lived on a farm. Not the same farmhouse with the basement, but a different place. For the first years of his life, he was a farmer, tending the fields and the animals in virtual isolation from the outside world.

When he was eight, he got his own room. It was a fair-sized room with dark wood walls, and a thick wood ceiling. The curtains were kinda see-through and cheap, so they would never block the sun, but always make the room look yellow.

The interesting thing about this room was that it was under the attic. The attic didn't cover the whole upstairs, but just his room and the bathroom. It was small and had been sealed since his parents moved in, so no one really cared to use it.

His first night in his own room was exciting to him. He had a hard time going to sleep, and only around midnight or so did he start to get drowsy. As he was drifting to sleep, he heard something from the attic. It wasn't wind or the house settling, but footsteps, all over the attic. He laid quietly as the footsteps slowly marched all around the attic, and eventually stopped over his bed. Thinking the noises had stopped, he tried to close his eyes and rest until tomorrow when he could tell his parents what he heard. Then he heard the scratching.

Slow, rhythmic scratching from the attic floor, right above his face. Never changing pace, never getting louder, or quieter. Whatever it was kept scratching for an hour, and then stopped for the night.

He told his dad what he heard, and his dad opened up the nailed wooden planks on the attic door opening in the hallway. When the doorway was open, his father looked around so he could see what kind of animal had been scratching, and where it got in. After an extensive search of the basement, his father could find nothing, and told my dad he was dreaming the whole thing. My father knew better, but seeing the heavy planks get nailed back up over the door made him feel more secure.

That night the same scratching happened again. And the night after that. And the night after that. And for the rest of the week.

His parents noticed that he was pale and wasn't eating, and the became very concerned. My dad couldn't eat or sleep because he was so afraid of what has happening in the attic above his room. His father had enough of this silliness and went up to the attic, removed the planks, took my father into the attic, and pointed to the space above my father's room, where there were finger-sized grooves in the attic floor.

My father says he always remember being scared out of his mind because he didn't know what was in the attic with them now, but his dad didn't panic. His dad just picked him up, calmly left the attic, sealed the attic door again, moved my father's stuff out of his room, and sealed the room; all within five minutes. His dad never panicked or acted afraid at all, and after the room was sealed, he came downstairs and said to his mother: "We're leaving this week. Pack your stuff, we're moving somewhere else, and I'm getting a new job."

Then he moves into the house with the hidden basement, but that's not really his fault, I guess.
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Damn, this thread is freaky. My ghost stories pale in comparison to these. I've never had any real encounters with ghosts, but I'm convinced that there's one in my bedroom. The first real sighting I had was one night when a friend of mine was sleeping over. I woke up in the middle of the night and looked up, and it appeared that my friend, Carol Ann, was sitting up in bed because I could see her long hair and a solid figure in front of me. I squinted and blinked, and it came into focus. Carol Ann was sleeping, and standing over her was a long-haired figure with its head bent, seemingly watching her sleep. I just basically whispered, "Oh shit" and pulled the covers over my head and went back to sleep.

I will occasionally see these things floating around in my room that look like little orbs of heat waves. I was laying on my bed one day and I saw one of the orbs floating in the direction of my bathroom, but I didn't pay much attention as I was so used to seeing them at that point. But soon after I noticed that the orb had disappeared around my bathroom, the sink cupboards slammed shut. I've had my TV and the lights shut off or come on at completely random times. My brother claims he saw a dark figure walking across my room, but when he went in to check things out, it was gone. My other brother claims to have gone into my room and watched a dark figure jump behind my chair, but when he went to look behind the chair, there was nothing there.

This ghost has never tried to bother me or talk to me or anything, it just seems to hang out in my bedroom. I also get the feeling that my bathroom has some significance to the ghost.. The lights are always going on and off in there and I always feel like I have to close the door at night or something bad will happen. It's weird, but I always make sure to close that door. I'm scared to find out what would happen if I didn't.
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If you want to visit a graveyard, make sure you go to a fairly public one. Make sure the road that the graveyard is on has steady traffic, and that the graveyard isn't in total isolation. Make sure people know where you are. I learned the hard way why people can have picnics in some, and disappear in others.

There is a hidden graveyard in one of the few "forests" in the middle of Illinois. Since it didn't show up on any current maps, and the only road to the place was what was left of the gravel path laid down decades ago, you had to hear about the place from someone you knew. Fortunately, the grandmother of one of my friends knows where this place is, and made the mistake of telling us where it is.

She called it a "quiet place," where the residents don't like to have their peace disturbed. Most of the people that were buried there were criminals that committed social crimes like stealing food in the Depression. Some were executed, killed by the owners of what they were trying to steal, or they died of some disease that would be easily treatable if there was enough money for a doctor. Some of the victims were buried there along with the criminal that attacked them in sort of a eternal peace offering that all was forgiven. People rested in peace there because the hectic conflicts of their lives were finally over, and all had been forgiven.

Apparently they wanted to keep it that way.

The grandmother said that there were good people there, bad people that had no choice but to be bad, and bad people that hurt others for no reason. Now they get along because they are sorry for what they did, the good people accept that, and everyone rests in harmony. When asked how she knew that, she said "Since you're going to go anyways, just take some time to notice how quiet it is there. If just one person didn't like another, there wouldn't be that peace."

It was quiet in the woods.

The gravel road led to double door iron bar gates that were connected to an iron bar fence. The gate was at least 12 feet at its sweeping pinnacle, and the iron fence was about eight feet with a spiked crown. Luckily, the gate was open.

As my three friends and I walked the graveyard, we noticed that it was still very well kept. The grass was still low on the ground, and there were no signs of vandalism. The graveyard had been abandoned for about 30 years, so it was confusing how it could look so nice.

There were various types of gravestones from the simple flat in the earth kind, to large monuments with the Virgin Mary adorning the top. Mausoleums were in the back of the graveyard mostly, and there was a small chapel in the middle of the cemetery. It was a nice contrast between the large, rectangular mausoleums and sharp, barn roof chapel, and they looked to be in perfect condition.

The fence surrounded the entire cemetery and a large portion of woods in the back. The woods were unused for anything that seemed to be part of the graveyard, but they were fenced in. The woods pressed flush against the fence on all sides, and it was impossible to see through the trees. The cemetery was perfectly isolated from any unintentional visitors.

We arrived at sundown on a clear September day. The heat was low, the wind was light, and the night was clear. Aside from our occasional whisper, the only noise was the gentle rustling of the dark forest that surrounded us.

After an hour of quietly observing the grounds, we began to talk more. The conversations grew louder and louder, and we began to become more comfortable with our new surroundings. Someone suggested that we try the door to the chapel (since we were no longer scared), and we all went to the door of the building. The chapel door faced the entrance to the gate, and we all gave a quick look to make sure it was still open before we tried the door.

It was locked, and my friend kept trying the knob. He shook the door to see if they were just stuck, and pounded on them as well. We convinced him to give up, and we retreated to the back of the graveyard to look at the mausoleums more.

We had made a mistake. Stupidly, we had broke the silence.

Walking back to the mausoleums, I noticed something was in the trees. I told my friends to hold up, and come check out what I was looking at. As we walked parallel to the tree line, what it was came into focus.

What appeared to be a thin man was standing there, perfectly still. He was in a black suit, with a black tie, and had short black hair slicked back on his head. His face was pale and his mouth was closed, but there was something very wrong with his eyes. They were at least three to four times larger than normal eyes, and they were wide open. He looked like someone tried to represent what a human looks like, but made a mistake. It was wrong, it wasn't real.

He started walking towards us.

At first we thought the expression was that of shock, but we realized it was intense anger. We all yelled "RUN!" and ran back to the front of the graveyard to the gate. As we were running, I looked behind me and saw that it was running too, and gaining on us. I was the last one out, and two seconds after I slipped through, I heard a loud WHAM on the iron gates behind me. The gates weren't closed, but something had hit them so hard after I left that they were shaking.

We piled in the car and took off down the road when one of my friends, the one who shook the doors, realized he had dropped his wallet and money back there. Apparently, his pants caught a tree branch outside of the gate, ripping his pocket and sending his stuff everywhere. He finally convinced us to turn around so he could at least check outside of the fence for it.

We parked about 30 feet away from the gate and let him get out. We were not going to risk ourselves. As he gets out, he runs to the gate, looks to his left, and then slides in between the trees and the fence, out of our sight. 10 seconds later we see him, holding his wallet, and slowly walking along in between the trees and the fence, and staring into the graveyard.

Right on the other side of the fence, no more than a foot away, the thing that chased us is walking right in front of him, matching his speed and staring right into his eyes. He finally gets to the road and runs back to the car, and as we speed away, we saw the ghost staring right at us. A wind picked up and moved a tree branch in front of our view for just a second, and the ghost was gone when the branch cleared our view.

I know I can avoid the watcher if I stay away from his graveyard, but I don't know what other watchers I may accidentally disturb...

... Even in my own house.
============

We used to move around a lot when I was younger because my dad was in the army, so living in different houses became the norm. Although different houses have different "feels" to them, I can't remember anything un-natural until my dad got a job that didn't require so much moving around, and we bought out first house after years of living in army accommodation.

From the very beginning, it didn't feel right: there was a constant sickly sweet smell that never ever left. You get used to the smell of a new house and it eventually goes... but not there.

I would also be terrified to go upstairs by myself for no reason (I was about 7 or 8 at the time, maybe younger), I can't explain why... it just seemed wrong, as if something bad would happen if I went up there. It was so bad that most nights I would fall asleep downstairs and my dad would have to carry me to bed once I was sleeping. even then, I would wake up screaming for no reason more often than not, and there were also a lot of sleepwalking episodes, which had never happened before or since.

In the spare bedroom, we had a pool table set up, and almost nightly, I would hear the sound of the balls hitting each other (sorry, I tried to think of a better way of putting this, but I couldn't). One time, I was in this room and saw my friend walking up the street. I waved at him and when he arrived, he asked me where the other person was who had been standing behind me at the window. I have no brothers or sisters, and my parents weren't upstairs at the time.

I never managed to get the nerve to bring this stuff up with my parents... I think my logic was that if I denied it to myself then it would go away. After a couple of years we moved out, and I still don't know why. After all, this was supposed to be our first stable home after years of moving around. Physically, there was nothing wrong with the house that would cause us to move and my parents have never said anything about it. Maybe they witnessed events of their own and didn't want to tell me because I was so young. I did, however, find out a couple of years ago that a man had died in the hallway before we moved in...
=============

For those of you that happen to be from the lovely Fargo-Moorhead area, you are aware that we have a habit of flooding. 1997 was no exception. How many of you are familiar with the book The Mothman Prophecies? No, not the movie. But the book. A quick background story about it: odd lights were seen in the sky in and around Point Pleasant, odd "people" were seen around the area, and just plain flat out weird shit went down, leading up to a bridge collapsing in Point Pleasant. What made it all even more weird is that it was all proven to be true. While no one could figure how everything happened, it was proven to happen.

Well, turns out this happens all over the world right before large disasters. I think you can see where this is going. Around the Fargo-Moorhead, and Grand Forks metro areas, these same things happened. Odd phone calls to random people with odd noises in the background. Odd people visiting random people. Odd lights in the sky. And the topper? Odd creatures being seen in farm fields. This kept building up, until the day the dikes broke in Grand Forks. Then in Fargo-Moorhead. What's even odder? There is NO DOCUMENTATION of this happening.

I myself saw a lot of these odd things when I was fighting the flood. I just happened to be on a dike that broke in Fargo. And I was out in a flooded field by Grand Forks the night before the dikes broke. The light show was breathtaking. Even weirder? You could hear an unearthly scream that I can only describe as inhuman. I suggest you all go and read the Mothman Prophecies. When you do, keep telling yourself.. this shit happens.

Also, Concordia College here in Moorhead is infested with random ghosts.
==============

My friend Chris knows of a haunted house that's only about half an hour away from here. He refuses to take me, though, after what happened to him and his friends in the house. They apparently went in with a camcorder in the middle of the night and came out scared as shit with ruined videotape. The video was completely gone, and the audio was... well, disturbing. The tape's been locked away in someone's house for a few years. That's what Chris says, anyway. I've always figured he was full of shit.

So I figured he was full of shit the night he suggested driving to a "haunted" bridge.

They were his friends, guys who had come over to his apartment to party. Chris is my upstairs neighbor, a nice coincidence since I've known him for the past seven years. I don't remember everyone's name, but one of the guys who hadn't been drinking suggested that we all go out driving. He'd drive, we'd be passengers. He wanted to go see his girlfriend; she lived out in the middle of nowhere. Sure, we said. It sounded like fun.

We got there and she wasn't home. "What the fuck are we going to do out in the middle of the country?" someone asked. Everyone gave an idea or two, but it was Chris who finally said the words which silenced everyone.

"Why don't we go to Monkey Dog Bridge?" Everyone shut up; everyone knew what he was suggesting. Except me, of course.

"What the fuck kind of name is that for a bridge?" I asked, laughing. Nobody laughed along with me. I assumed they were just trying to scare me.

"Well, supposedly a long time ago a circus train crashed over in the woods, and a monkey escaped," Chris explained. "There's a story that people tell where..."

"I bet the monkey fucked a dog and had some sort of horrible monkeydog child," I said, laughing. "Oh no, the monkeydog! It terrorizes people and it's a horrible monster that's scary as hell! OH NO! MONKEYDOG!"

"Yeah," he said. "But you won't laugh when you get out on the bridge."

"Okay," I said. "Let's go. I want to see MONKEY DOG BRIDGE!"

We drove out to an unlit road; I'm pretty sure it was a dirt road. Even the drunk people really didn't want to go out there. On the way over, they told me a story about how some local high school kids had tried camping out there as some sort of a school project, but they'd wound up leaving early in the night because of the noises. Right, sure. Oh no, not scary wood noises!

We parked on the middle of the bridge. The driver turned off the lights and turned off the car. We rolled the windows down. I was about to yell for the monkeydog when I heard the first noise.

It was a growl.

Okay, I think. A big dog's out there somewhere. Maybe it's a wolf or something. Who knows? A growl can be explained easily. But there are no other sounds; no birds, no insects, nothing. The growl stops.

"What the fuck," I start to say, but someone cuts me off. "Shut the fuck up," he says, "and listen. You wanted to come out here, now you're going to listen."

But there's complete silence. Still no insects, no birds, no...

Suddenly, there's a huge crash. It sounds like Paul Bunyan's stepped on a tree, and it sounds close. A lot closer than the growl sounded. Smaller crunching sounds follow as if someone's trampling fallen branches. We all listen, and one thing is obvious to me - whatever it is, it's getting closer.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," I say. The driver agrees and turns the key.

The car won't start.

The growling comes again, closer this time, near the edge of the bridge.

"What do you mean, it won't start?" I shout, assuming he's fucking with me. I lean over into the front of the car and check - car's in park, everything looks right. I turn the key and hear the engine trying to turn over, but it just won't. Everyone's rolling up their windows now as the panic starts to set in. If the growling's getting closer, I sure as hell can't hear it.

The driver swats me away and shouts "START, GODDAMMIT!" He punches the steering wheel; the horn honks. He turns the key and the car finally starts, roaring to life. He drops it into drive and punches it off the bridge as fast as he can. He pulls a quick three-point turn and rushes back the way we came, turning on the lights as he does so.

As we shoot over the bridge we see something - a shadow moving toward us - in the trees by the bridge. A big shadow, a shadow moving close to the ground.

"Jesus fucking Christ," someone shouts, "get us the FUCK out of here!" The driver did, and none of us looked back.

We didn't feel like drinking anything the rest of the night, and I haven't bugged Chris to take me to the haunted house since that night.
================

All right, the cemetery in my apartment complex.

The building in the picture is the laundry room / office / clubhouse building. You can see just how close it is to the office; the "future resident parking" sign is right in front of the office. The gate in the far left of the picture is the cemetery.

The outside of the cemetery; it's gated with plenty of bushes and trees around. Apparently they think that if they grow enough big pretty bushes around the wall, nobody will notice that it's there. Everyone notices, though, because the playground's right behind it. That's right - that's the playground behind the wall.

That's the child's headstone in front of the tree. It was a little creepy this time around because after I took the picture I looked up and saw a child standing behind the far wall and staring right at me. She wasn't a ghost, though, just a kid playing.

There are only five tombstones in the whole cemetery, and here are four of them. The little girl wouldn't leave me alone to take pictures, and I didn't want to hop the wall and have her follow me in for a wide variety of reasons, the main two of which were not wanting to see her get hurt and not wanting to be accused of child molesting. She told me how her friends go in there all the time and jump on the stones. "The stones?" I asked her, looking around for stones. She nods, pointing to the headstones. "You jump on THOSE?" She nods again. "That sounds like a pretty bad idea," I say. She shrugs, not really caring.

I look around and notice a lack of garbage, seeing only one or two pieces. Everything looks extraordinarily clean. "Do your friends ever throw trash in there?" I ask her. "No!" she says as if I've lost my mind. "We clean it up!"

Just what I used to do. Interesting.

The oldest headstone in the cemetery is dated 1836. I couldn't zoom in any more and I couldn't get a closer picture without going into the cemetery. This was the first headstone I ever paid any attention to, and I cleared away a lot of dirt at the base so that all of the words would be exposed. The dirt's built back up again; maybe it's time for me to go clear it away again.

Anyway, that's it for the cemetery. I can take more pictures if anyone wants me to.
============

The Graveyard Terror

High school was terrifying and completely horrible. This was due to the homework and the large, Jamaican men who liked shooting people. The graveyard that was right beside my high school was also terrifying and completely horrible. This had absolutely nothing to do with homework or large, gun-toting Jamaican men. It had to do with the thing that lived there.

Every day, I had to walk to a friend's house and wait to be picked up after my parents got off work, which was usually three or four hours later. Mostly every day, I would do this with two friends. The graveyard was, as I mentioned, directly beside my high school. The graveyard, in turn, was right beside a giant pit, which was overgrown with briars and lots of overgrowth. This is detailed in the shitty drawing below.

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| | | (sorry this is fucked up)
| | |
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| Graveyard | Pit |
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| | |
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Sidewalk
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My first encounter with the graveyard came on one of my many trips walking past it. This particular time we were accompanied by one of my friend's girlfriends, who was a stupid goth girl with -34 charisma in every single way. She had a shaved head; you get the point. She wanted to go look around in the graveyard. It would be fun, she said.

I followed her and my other friends into the graveyard. It was a rather pleasant graveyard, insofar as a place with dead people can be pleasant, and I kept myself occupied by looking around. There were many rows of grave stones and those square box things for above-ground burials, and a large, stone building that seemed to be abandoned in the middle of the graveyard. When I saw this building, I got a very bad feeling. I figured it was the old embalming place or whatever the hell they do to bodies before they bury them (there was a smaller one on the other side of the graveyard), and dismissed the feeling. As we got closer and closer to the building, however, the little bit in the back of my mind that supplies feelings was becoming more and more persistent in telling me I should not be getting closer and closer to the building.

You can guess where bald gothie was going to take us. Go on, Guess. Yes. That's right.

They went up to the front doors of the building and tried to get in. While they were doing this, I kept having a horrible feeling as though someone was watching me. I kept looking around to try and figure out where it could possibly be coming from, and I kept getting the feeling that there was something above the front overhang. The longer I stood there, the longer I started to feel the slow, creeping chills become stronger and stronger as they moved over me, and became significantly terrified. Then they found a way in through a window, and I quickly moved into the building.

The interior of the building itself was not all that horrifying. It seemed as through it was the old body preparing place, and it was a single-floor place with a stone interior, and various gardening implements and other such things lying around in rough piles. It was dirty and dark, but I started to calm down enough to not be shitting my pants anymore. I still had a persistent feeling of badness, though.

As we looked around the rooms, we discovered that there was another room behind the smaller ones in the front. It was a relatively large room with several stone slabs and many broken wooden shelves, with random things lying across them. One of my friends decided to stay in the front rooms, and I followed my friends into the larger room. As soon as I entered, I did not want to be there. I was about to mention this when I felt a horrible, cold wind jut across my back, and this time, all of my friends stopped and felt it too.

I then saw something move very, very quickly out from behind one of the slabs and out the doorway we came through. It was like a slightly illuminated shadow which flowed across the walls and the floor. Then my friend from out in the smaller rooms screamed.

I ran out and saw her on the ground, with her face scratched and bleeding and her shirt ripped open and her skin beneath scratched to a lesser extent. She was still screaming and talking incoherently with a look of pure terror on her face, when one of my other friends screamed out and said "I saw something!" from inside the back room.

Two of us grabbed my scratched friend off the ground and started to make our way out of the building when all the shit strewn across the rooms started sliding across the floor, with a terrible screeching sound emanating from everywhere around us.

Terrified, we made our way out of the building as fast as possible and made our way across to the high school. Once there we tried to calm down and, after calming her down, asked the scratched girl what had happened. She said, still terrified, that she had been looking through some of the things on the ground when she had felt something behind her. As she turned around to see if it was me, all she saw was a terrible, deathly, mangled face moving towards her before she was attacked and fell to the ground. After that, she said she was so shocked and terrified that she only remembered us holding her and moving through the high school parking lot.

After investigation, she had several bleeding, but not too horrible, scratches across her face / several across her chest / a large, red handprint across her stomach. She said it burned, like something very, very cold had touched her. It took months to heal, and she refused to ever walk beside the graveyard again, and said she felt something watching her if she even got close.


Going To The Graveyard, The Fun Winter Adventure, Part II

About a month later, I told my friend Aron about what had went on in the graveyard. He, of course, wanted to go take a look around. I said no, as I had vowed never to return. He then bribed me with lunch, and I convinced myself that vows were very relative things anyway, and we went to revisit the place.

After looking around the grounds a bit, we headed directly for the building of pure terror. As we got closer and closer, I found that I wasn't experiencing any additional terror, aside from the memories from the last time. This didn't make me feel better, but it helped my sanity slightly.

We got into the place through the same window everyone had previously gotten in through. After a few minutes, we moved out of our "Ready To Run Like A Crack Fiend" stances, as we hadn't been attacked yet, and started to look around. We explored and I showed him where things happened last time, and absolutely nothing creepy happened at all. It was wonderful. I was elated, as I was getting lunch and no longer having a source of nightmares.

Then Aron said "Hey..", and I looked over. He was looking out the windows (they were partially broken and near the ceiling), and looked somewhat bothered, so I looked up as well.

It had been a bright, sunny Floridian day. As I looked out the window, it was getting dark. Quickly. I saw a tree outside one of the windows and it was doing something I can only call *changing*. It was still a tree, but it wasn't the same tree. It definitely wasn't the same tree. It was changing into something darker, and you could see branches disappearing and partial branches appearing in other places. It was entrancing.

I snapped out of it when I saw a shadow move across the wall right below the window, and I screamed at my friend that we should get the fuck out of here, and we both started bolting for the front entrance. I was only focused on getting the hell out, but as we passed the walls, I could see shadows moving quickly across them and I could feel the temperature dropping below any winter temperature in Florida should I ever remotely experience it. I could see my breath. That alone scared me.

We jumped out the door and saw a large portion of the graveyard, as well as the building we were in, all changing in scaryass ways. Everything was becoming darker, and everything was changing, to a different time, or place, or something. IT WAS NOT FUCKING NORMAL.

The sky was yellowed and getting darker and darker, and everything around us was changing into a different, EXTREMELY not nice place.

We bolted for the street and as we ran I could feel the most horrible feeling behind me, like something was mentally pulling me backwards into that hellish graveyard.

We made it onto the streets and ran and ran down the streets farther away and farther into the city, until we couldn't run anymore and stopped and tried to catch our breath / sanity / heart / etc.

Everything looked perfectly normal everywhere where we stopped, as far as the eye could see.

We couldn't see the graveyard anymore, otherwise I'm not sure I'd be able to say that, or be able to type this. It was horrifying.

After we made our way to my girlfriend's house and reported what had happened, my girlfriend's parents looked quite disturbed and said that the same thing had happened to them in England in Dartmouth Park, when they drove down into it to get kissy kissy. They said it felt like they were being slowly taken into hell.

The only prologue I can offer is that I googled it the next day and found that in Dartmouth Park there's been many, many disappearances that are completely unexplained, and very few reports of some really fucky sights there. In my own little graveyard, there's been a number of unexplained disappearances (A jogger, a dating couple, a groundskeeper, among others) and that no one is allowed to be buried there anymore that doesn't already own a plot.

And there you go.
============

I was sitting in my living room thinking after just getting off the phone with a girl. Let me explain now that I have always been a sensitive person. I always get a horrible feeling before something bad is about to happen and I trust these feelings. Anyways, the entire time I was talking to this girl, I had a bad feeling about something. I figured she was about to tell me she didn't quite like me all that much anymore or something equally negative, but the conversation never took a negative turn. I couldn't shake the feeling even once I hung up the phone.

I was sitting there wondering what it could be when I got this intense feeling that something was coming after me. I stoop up to walk back into my room where my sister was because I was starting to get scared. The way my house is set up, you can see straight into the dining room from the living room. Anyways, right after I stand up, I hear this deep loud growl. It sounded just like a huge dog growling. I stood kind of shocked for a second before I looked over into the dining room.

The best way I can describe what I saw was a huge black dog with almost a beak. Instead of a maw like a dog, it was smooth and arched down a little. It still looked the same color as the rest of it though. It was a greyish black, kinda like the color of ash. It was standing on its haunches staring at me. This thing looked about the size of a bear, I shit you not. It growled again and I fucking ran like a little girl. I ran into my room, slammed the door behind me, and told my sister we needed to leave. She asked me why, and I just stood there staring at her... not quite able to explain what I had just experienced.

It gave me a really really odd feeling. It's tough to explain. It's almost like the feeling you get after waking up from a dream, how it forces you to dwell on it and think about it. For some reason I felt like it wasn't going to hurt me, almost like it was trying to scare me away. I know it's not a ghost story exactly, but it scared the ever living fuck out of me.
=============

I do not recall how old I was when this happened. I was between seven and eleven years old, though, as that was how old I was during the period in which I resided in the house where this occurence took place. This house was a little over a hundred years old, and is located in Pitman, New Jersey if anyone is curious.

When I was at this age, I was a fucking brat. I came into my house and wanted my mom for something. I gave the classic "MOM!" yell. When that yielded no reply, I said it louder. When I still received no answer, I got so frustrated that I started screaming "Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!" in a repeated fashion, like a broken record. I did this while walking up the stairs to the second floor. As you ascend about three quarters the way up the stairs, you have a full view of the half-circle-like hallway that was the top floor.

My shouting came to a halt when I was told, rather firmly, to "Shut up!" The source of this command was from a man, who appeared to be anywhere from his mid-sixties to early eighties, dressed in a brown suit, and wielding a cane.

Albeit surprising, I didn't find it scary at all. My mother likes to collect antiques, especially during the time when we lived in that house. "Antiques" is as specific as I can get, as she enjoyed having anything from old cupboards to cigar-boxes. I figured it was one of her guests, a member of the historical society that she belonged to, or someone she was entertaining the idea of purchasing an antique from. Regardless, I said "sorry." I looked away briefly; when I looked back, he was gone. I would have remained frozen in place, trying to fathom what the hell had happened, but a few seconds later, my mom emerged from her room, asking what all the yelling was about. I do not know why, but I forgot about that event entirely moments later, until just now when it resurfaced.
============

If it's late at night, and the lights are off (say, you were just watching TV in the main room bit down the foyer), as you come up the stairs you'll suddenly feel... kind of a feeling, if you catch my meaning. You just get the impression that there's something that feels for you only pure and utter malevolence... it wants you dead.

About a second or two after that feeling, you hear the footsteps of something that appears to be running / stomping out of the laundry room towards you, on the stairs. Naturally, most people start to run, and just as they reach the top couple stairs, they feel a sharp pain in their back, like a dagger, and they fall. Keep in mind, this happens EVERY SINGLE TIME someone goes up the stairs at night, if it's dark. There's no lasting harm, but it honestly feels, for all intents and purposes, like you've been stabbed.

One night, though, my friend (who's a hell of a lot braver than I am) decided that she would just continue to walk up the stairs when she heard the footsteps, and not run. This time, when the footsteps came, they were slower and more measured, and I reached the top of the stairs without incident. The footsteps came up the stairs towards my friend, slower and slower. By this time, she'd stopped and was looking back. Later, she told me she thought she could see the impression of feet as they came towards her (by the light of the nightlight in the kitchen upstairs).

Now, I swear to you, this next part is true. As the footsteps grew nearer and nearer to my friend, they stopped. I looked down and I could see her waist jerk back, like it was being pulled. She looked up at me with an expression of pure terror, before she began to fall back. Now, these aren't small stairs, so there was a definite possibility of injury when she landed. I rushed forward and managed to grab her shirt before she fell, but she was already unconscious. I pulled her up the rest of the stairs into my living room, where she woke up shortly. She told me that she thought she had fallen all the way, where she'd seen a clean-shaven, handsome-looking man, brandishing a large knife. He'd then stabbed her several times in the stomach. Then, according to her, I'd come down the stairs, grabbed her, and carried her into the living room, where she was now.

I try not to go in my basement anymore...