Tell me a ghost story

[mollyringle]

On that survey I filled out two days ago, there was a question about whether I believe in ghosts. My answer basically is that I haven't ever seen one, but some part of my mind thinks they're possible. Or, rather, hopes they're possible, because it would suggest life after death and all kinds of interesting physics-related things.

When ten_fifteen filled out the survey, she alluded to a few experiences she couldn't quite explain away. She and her husband (alltimeqb) are rational, reliable people, as far as I know, so I prodded her into relating some of these experiences, and they are genuinely creepy and pretty difficult to account for.

So, the rest of you: do you have any such encounters? Let's do a forum on this. I want only first-hand ghost stories, stuff you personally experienced, not a tale handed down from your grandfather or your mother-in-law (even though those may be cool). Also, feel free to do your best at explaining it - e.g., "But then, I was looking through a pane of glass, so I suppose it could have been a reflection..." - just to make this as scientific as possible.

Banshees, poltergeist, telekinesis, and other strange earthly phenomena are fair game, too; it doesn't have to be an actual visible "ghost." But let's leave Bigfoot and UFO's out of it. We'll do that another time.

P.S. Kev or Kim, say the word and I'll remove that link (and/or your names). You needn't be an exhibit if you don't want to be. :)

Comments

I've been lurking around for a while, just thought I ought to contribute for once.

[meretia]

I'm also a little bit late to the topic, I hope you don't mind. I just can never turn down an opportunity to talk about the house where I grew up. I'm 24 in August and I still can't stay there alone after dark. We don't get on well, the house and I.

I can think of half a dozen or more weird things that I've seen there, but I don't want to clutter up this thread, so I'll just get to the root of it as best I can.

We first moved there in June of 1989, my parents and sister and I. It's a fairly new (it can't have been built before 1970) ranch house with a full basement. Most of the basement is taken up by the finished rec room, but there's a bedroom directly across from the foot of the stairs. Just to the left is the laundry room. When we first moved in, we were using the bedroom to store boxes and things that hadn't been unpacked yet. One day I went down there to find something, and I happened to look up at the mattress that was leaning against the wall near the door. There was some kind of thing on top of it, walking through the wall into the next room. I only saw the back half of it, but it was pure black and had a low, slinky body like a weasel or a jaguarundi, and a cat's long tail. I ran around the corner into the utility room, but there wasn't anything there. The thing that frightened me about it was that it gave off such a malevolent, evil feeling. I never saw the cat-thing again, but that room has always felt evil. To this day I will not go in there, and I have to close the bedroom door if I'm in the rec room for any length of time. Even the rooms that adjoin it, the landry room and the ones above the downstairs bedroom, I usually feel like I'm being watched by something angry if I'm in there alone.

I've also seen what appears to be a tall, pale young man in clothing from the mid-to-late 19th century on or near the basement stairs three or four times. Mostly I leave him alone and he leaves me alone. He's only ever been upset enough to try to frighten me once (and I'm not completely convinced I didn't dream that), but he seems to like to watch TV with me. If I'm watching a movie in the den above the basement rec room, he usually stands at the top of the stairs and looks at the TV until I notice him out of the corner of my eye and turn toward him. My computer at home is in the downstairs rec room, and once while I was working on it, I watched the guy (I don't know for sure what it/he is, so I'm hesitant to call him a ghost) come down the stairs and go into the bedroom. I don't know what connection he has to the angry thing in there, but I'm not entirely sure if I'd want to know what it was anyway.

When I was in the fifth grade, some friends and I held a "seance." We couldn't have been any less adept at it if we'd tried--we lit some candles and talked in spooky voices, and that was the extent of it--but on the third try to reach something, the candles flared up and started to flicker. Our house is very drafty, and we were sitting in front of the sliding glass patio door which lets the slightest bit of wind into the house. And I'd been seeing things before that. But there's always been some corner of my mind that wonders, though, if we might have let something in that should have stayed out.

Re: I've been lurking around for a while, just thought I ought to contribute for once.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

That's the first ghost-animal anyone has mentioned. I was wondering if there were such encounters out there. I'd heard of ghost dogs or the occasional ghost horse (accompanied by rider) in stories, but not from real life.

The guy on the stairs, or behind you during TV-watching, would get quite unnerving too. Glad he doesn't usually seem malevolent...