Haunted house

In reply to poopshovel again :

Groaaaaan.....

Jerry, is that you groaning... OR IS IT COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE?! 

In reply to jstein77 :

You think YOU'RE disappointed!? I had to read a whole page of ghost stories only to find all they're good at is rearranging furniture/shrubberies. 
 

I should be so lucky! We're living in a house built in the early 1900's that multiple people have died in, and I still can't figure out how to arrange the damned oddly-shaped dining room.

Come to think of it...I couldn't find a pair of fingernail clippers this morning though! (Cue X-files music....)

I previously said my only experience with this sort of thing was at an old hotel in England. I was wrong. I was discussing this extremely interesting thread with Annie (yes, I told her we discuss more than cars on this forum), and she reminded me of a couple other events.

The first was during our honeymoon, Oct. 1986, at The Cape Arundel Inn in Kennebunkport, ME. We had a second floor room just below the turret attic. Around 3:00 am, after we had fallen asleep (ahem, ahem), we were awakened by loud noises above in the attic. It sounded like people moving furniture, and heavy steps walking around. There seemed to be a lot of work going on up there. It eventually subsided and we fell back sleep. Next morning, we mentioned our experience at the front desk, and we were told that there was no staff on duty the previous evening, and that nobody ever goes into the turret attic. And the only access to the attic was through our room. Hmmm.

The next event, in Dec. 2012: We were staying at The Willows in Palm Springs, CA. I think the structure was built in the early 20th century. I was sound asleep. Annie woke up and saw two "indigenous people" standing by the bed looking down at us. They looked benign, she didn't feel threatened, and they eventually disappeared, just faded away. I never witnessed it, but she did tell me about it the next morning. It was very real to her. Later the next day, we mentioned to some locals where we were staying, and they told us that the place was haunted. Hmmm.

Last night at 11:02 pm, I received a text message from my sister-in-law Cindy, asking "Are you awake?"  I wasn't, having fallen asleep a few minutes before that.  She next texted my wife, and the two had a long conversation.  After several phone conversations this morning between all of us, we pieced the story together.  I should note here that Cindy is an intelligent, level-headed woman who has never had delusions.

Between 10 and 11 last evening, my mother-in-law was watching a TV program called SWAT, in which one of the characters was relating how he had lost his wife to Alzheimer's.  Of course, this resonated with Mom, which caused her to cry a little in sympathy.  At the same time, Cindy was on a ladder at their home in Palm Bay (about 16 miles from here) painting a bedroom, while Rob and my niece were asleep.  As she describes it, something insubstantial passed between her and the wall, startling her.  Moments later, she clearly heard a voice from the hallway saying, "Cindy, check on Mom."  She climbed down from the ladder and went into the hall to see who said that.

There was no one there.

And it also seems that our house is not immune.  Later in the evening, my wife saw a blue glow and several flashes of blue light in our hallway.

_ said:

FYI, if you believe in "spirits", then you believe in demons, you believe In Demons, you believe in god, you believe in god, get down and pray.

None of that remotely follows by any possible stretch of logic, even considering the topic at hand.

I grew up in an old stone house in southeastern Pennsylvania, built in the early 1800s.  Local mythology alleged that it had been a stop on the Underground Railroad.  It definitely had some odd, small, semi-concealed spaces in the basement.

My mother claimed to have seen (on several occasions) a woman walking silently along the little hall from the top of the basement stairs to the foot of the upper stairs.  Both stairs were enclosed, but the little hall had a wide opening on one side that connected to the living room.  I never had any experience like that, despite spending a lot of late-night-little-kid alone time exploring the house or dozing on the couch.

For myself, my only experience that even slightly fits this bill was one day about 15 years ago.  I was driving along a boulevard in our everyday small city.  On my side is a small berm between the sidewalk and an adjacent parking lot.  The berm is maybe 10 feet high, 30 feet wide, and 100 feet long.  It is grass, and scattered with middle-aged maple trees.  There is a bus stop about halfway along on the street side.

On this fall afternoon, the leaves were bright yellow, some still on the trees and some on the ground.  It was probably 55 degrees and sunny.  There were maybe 8 people waiting for the bus.

And behind them, dancing along the berm between the trees, was an extremely elfin girl.  She was pale, slim, not tall, with long blond hair and a long dark green dress.  She was spinning around each tree, touching it, before moving on to the next one.  She was barefoot.  Not one of the people waiting at the bus stop appeared to even notice her, even though she was not far away from them.  To this day I have no explanation.

But perception and memory are very strange things, particularly during emotional times.

I'm a realist when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I have had a few encounters over the years that were beyond strange that I can't explain. I'll go into a few of them:

-I vaguely remember this one, but my older sister remembers it 100%. When I was little, I was playing with my toys in the living room. She was babysitting me with a friend. I started yelling, "Get away from my toys! Little boy, get away from my toys!" and started crying. No one was in the room but my sister, her friend, and I, but I kept crying and telling her about a little boy who was trying to play with my stuff. We left the room, and she calmed me down, and all was good. Years later, we found out that the previous owners had a little boy who had died when he was my age. Was it him? Who knows.

-Speaking of my parents' house, we are all convinced it is haunted. It's a split level ranch, and the basement is the living room. One of the things that happens sometimes is that we will be in the living room and we each hear someone call our name from upstairs. It's happened twice that I can remember: once with my sister, her ex-boyfriend and I hearing my mom calling us (they were away on a trip at the time, not possible) and another time my mom, dad, and sister all heard a different one of us calling us from upstairs. I heard my mom, my sister heard my dad, and my parents heard me.

-Another one from my parents' house: they had a friend over once, and  while they were having coffee, she saw a guy in an old trench coat and hat (like a 1930's private eye looking guy) walk up the stairs, take his hat off, and walk right through the kitchen walls. Uhh.. ok then!

-I was playing a gig once at the old Living Room club in Providence, RI. This place was BERKED. It was an old brothel/nightclub that had been falling apart for years that they had shows in before they tore it down. The place gave me a real bad vibe, and I wasn't alone. Anyway, I was on stage in the middle of a set, and I felt something yank one of my drumsticks out of my hand and my arm went cold! I've dropped sticks before, but this was different. Something yanked it away! Never had that happen before, or since.

-The craziest incident I've seen was at my uncle's old house. He lived in a big, old, beautiful stucco house right on the ocean, and it was built as a summer house for an old business tycoon. During the Great Depression, it became a boarding house for a while, and then a private residence again until my uncle bought the place in the 70's. Anyway, one winter night back in the mid-1990's, my sister and I were bringing some leftover dinner to my grandmother, who also lived with them. My cousins were off to college, my aunt and uncle were away, and she was alone at the house. We turned down the street toward the house, and we saw an odd sight: a lady in all white in what appeared to be a turn-of-the century sundress and a big, floppy hat was walking near the house. She was almost glowing and very pale; really odd. As we drove closer, she started running. She then turned into my uncle's driveway and into the yard. Now, this old stucco house was surrounded by a stucco wall, and the backyard was fenced in with a chain-link fence and only one way in: a gate between the side stairs and the garage. We got out of the truck, and raced toward the backyard. Remember, it was winter, and there was snow in the yard. Not a single footprint in the snow. We searched the house (it had 3 floors and a lot of rooms) and found no one there. She had vanished. My grandmother, an old Italian lady from the old country, said not to worry. She was completely unfazed.

Years later, long after my grandmother had passed, we were having a party at the house as a send-off, as my uncle (now living alone there) was downsizing. We were on the porch drinking good wine with my cousins and some of their old friends, and someone started talking about paranormal stuff. I chimed in with this story, and they all looked at me and said "You saw the Lady in White too?"


Yeah, she had been around. One of them said they were afraid to sleep over the house when they were kids because they would always see this pale lady wearing all white and a big, floppy hat walking around the house. Another one kept saying he would see her in the windows as he walked by the house back in the day. One of my cousins was visibly shaken by the conversation and just started drinking more wine.

drinking good wine...talking about paranormal stuff...drinking more wine.

HOLY E36 M3! IT'S THE WHITE LADY!!!!

poopshovel again said:

drinking good wine...talking about paranormal stuff...drinking more wine.

HOLY E36 M3! IT'S THE WHITE LADY!!!!

My cousin is a BAD MF'ER. He saved his family once when their house burned to the ground carrying them out of the place as it went up. Seeing him turn pale white when talking about whatever the berk that thing was shocked the hell out of me! 

MORE WINE PLEASE

We jokingly have a "ghost pet" in our apartment.  It seemed to only happen when either of us went to nap alone, it felt like something would jump up on the bed and get comfy at the foot of it.  

Now that the dogs are allowed to nap in there with us, I don't really notice it happening anymore.  Hope we didn't scare it off...

Current house is newer construction neighborhood is ~20 years old. Nothing threatening just lots of things that make you go hmmm. 

Many times I would hear my bedroom door knob jiggle thinking my son was coming to climb into my bed, but I would open the door and nobody was there. My son would be asleep in his bed.

We'd hear footsteps upstairs when we were all downstairs. 

My sister and son were playing legos on the dining room table and a wooden toy street lamp turned 90 degrees on its own.

Other sister was visiting and sleeping on the couch, she woke up in the middle of the night to see a thin stick like figure wrapped in yellow. Said she wasn't afraid and felt peaceful. 

Towels in a bathroom with no open windows had fallen in the opposite direction one would expect.  

A couple times I would be downstairs cleaning up for the night and out of the corner of my eye I would see what I thought was my son, but he would answer me from upstairs or be asleep upstairs. 

Other people had experiences here similar to the above without prior knowledge of the other occurrences. My ex hated to stay here alone, many times she would hear someone moving about the house only to later find out nobody was home. 

I had my friends father do a Native American cleansing and the frequency died down. Stuff still happens occasionally.