Ghosts and other Supernatural/Paranormal Events

[Persephone]

I can sometimes sense when someone has died or is about to. My GGrandmother had been sick for some time and I was at their house one day. She was sitting at the kitchen table and when I looked at her, she had this hazy, out of focus look to her. Like she was fading. When I went to bed that night, I had a really bad headache. About 3 am the headache finally stopped. The next morning I found out she'd died in her sleep about 3 am.
The other one was a dream. I had recently moved to another city so I didn't have a phone yet. One night I was dreaming I was back at my dads house and everyone was there. I couldn't see everyone clearly but I kept hear the word "DA". I wake up freaking thinking something has happened to my dad. So I get to a pay phone and call. He answers the phone and I say "oh thank God, you're alright". He says "yeah, why?" I say "Who died?" He kind of stutters a bit and says "Your uncle had a heart attack and didn't make it". His name was Dale.
Never really had any obvious ghosts in any houses. Sometimes I've felt a presense, like I'm not alone.

[schmoosie]

Telling my ghost stories is hard for me to do. I've typed this story before. It's my most blatant ghost experience.

When I was a kid, I tended to make friends the easiest with those who were younger than I. Being 12, I'd made a semi-good friendship with a 10 year old. We got a long pretty well. I'd go hang at her house, her mom would make us cookies. Life was good.

One afternoon she, her brothers and I went through the alley down to a house of another friend of hers. Their dog had just had puppies. Everyone was playing with the dog and her offspring. The boys decided to try and gross us out by squirting dog milk at us via the dog's teets. I had noticed that there were two little boys in the back yard next door. One was playing on the ground with his back to me. The other was staring at me through the fence. Staring really isn't a good word for what he was doing. He didn't move much, just stared, unblinkingly. He watched me wherever I moved. There was something not right about him. He was pale, his eyes were strange...and he just watched. I had lost interest in playing with the other kids so I walked over to him and introduced myself. His brother kept playing with his back to me. I asked him if he wanted to come over and play with us. His gaze never wavered from my face. He said, "I can't. My father is in prison." I thought that was a rather odd response so I just shrugged and went back to playing with my friends. He kept watching me. We went around to the front yard from the side of the house near me...he followed. Not once did he step out of his yard. He stood as close to the edge of his property as he could....and stared and stared and stared.

My friend and I went back to see the puppies a week later. I asked the kids about the boys who lived next door. They said, "That house is empty. No one has moved in for a long time" I remember being a little freaked out so, that evening I brought my mom to the house and she was a little freaked out too...as I'd told her the story. Apparently, quite a few year prior a family lived in the house. The wife was going to leave her husband. When he found out, and while his wife was at work, he shot and killed his two sons, and probably was still in prison at that time.

I always wondered what would have happened if I'd gone over to him when he was standing in the front yard. When we spoke in the back yard there was a fence between us. Would he have vanished if I'd stood with him in the front yard? What if I had touched him?....I'm so glad I didn't touch him.

And now I have to take a vacation from this thread or I'll have a panic attack.

[Oxynia]

Mad Elf, that is intense!! You're the first person I know who has had an actual conversation with a "live" ghost like that. Freaky.

Persephone, I know what you mean about being able to tell when someone is going to die soon, like the hazy out-of-focus look. I remember when I was really young, my parents invited a neighbour to the house for Easter dinner...he was an old guy, I never saw much of him because he largely kept to himself. He sat across from me at the dinner table and at one point, I looked up at him and it looked like his face was melting. Like his features were all swimming into each other and sliding down his face. Hard to describe but that's what it looked like. He died three days later.

My sister had a premonition when my father's mother died. Three days before she died (there are those Three Days again), my sister was walking home from school and had to pass a funeral home. She was across the street from it but felt compelled to look at it. When she did, she saw my grandmother standing in the window looking back at her, dressed in a light blue frock. My sister freaked....our grandmother was in hospital with pneumonia at the time so she took it as a bad sign. My mother even summoned the priest when my sister told her that story.

Three days later, my grandmother died. My two aunts, who hadn't heard the story, went out to get a dress for her to wear and when we all arrived for the wake, my sister nearly fainted because my grandmother had been dressed in the same light blue frock she was wearing in the window.

I find it interesting that my father's mother has only appeared to my sister, who is named after her. And my mother's mother has only appeared to me, and I'm named after her. Strange.

[Britty]

Limey, Missouri is just full of spooklights. I grew up near this one.

My husband and I lived in a haunted house in Indiana. The old man that lived there before was hearing voices and seeing things. His son thought he was overmedicated or showing signs of dementia and moved him into assisted living. My husband has a habit of getting up in the middle of the night and eating cereal while watching tv. He was sitting on the couch when he noticed an old man sitting on the sofa. It freaked him out, and he came back to bed. He saw him again in the bathroom. The ghost would often rattle doors or knock things over, but I never saw the old man.

[january]

When I arrived home and was just putting the key in the door, I heard my grandmother's voice behind me clear as day saying the Greek equivalent of "It's OK now". I whipped around and of course, no-one was there. I just knew.

Oxynia, that story gave me chills, because something so similar happened to my dad. He never, ever believed in ghosts or anything supernatural whatsoever, which is why I completely believed him when he told me this story.

When my grandfather (my mom's dad) died last year, he was in a hospice facility, and some members of the family were there with him, including my parents. He had cancer for a long time, so his death was kind of a relief after a long period of suffering. Anyway, he passed away with everyone around his bed, and after it happened, they all just kind of sat around crying and comforting each other. My dad told me that he was sitting on the couch with his arms around my mom, and he heard, very distinctly, a whisper in his ear saying, "It's okay." In my grandfather's voice. He said it was like he was sitting right next to him. My dad was crying when he told me this story, which adds more credence to it, because he's not a very emotional guy. But in the days after my grandfather's death, as painful as it was, it was wonderful to have gotten that message...because it was okay.

I lived in a haunted apartment for about six months last year, and I have PLENTY of stories. Here are a few of them:

-- I came home from work on several occasions to find all the cupboards in my kitchen wide open, sometimes with stuff (food boxes, cans) on the floor. In the same vein, my drawers were all open one day and some of my clothes were on the floor. Weird. Unless my landlord was secretly coming in and going through my things, I can't explain that.

-- The curtains in the front room would open and close by themselves. I would close them, then come back five minutes later and they'd be open. Once, I was sitting in a car in the parking lot with my friend, and she got this confused look on her face and asked me if there was anyone in my apartment. I said no, and she swore up and down that she had seen someone pull aside the curtain and look out at the car.

-- Sometimes in the middle of the night, I would hear thumping sounds like someone was stomping on the floor in the living room.

-- By far the freakiest moment was when I was in the living room and I turned off the television, and in the blank screen I saw the reflection of someone (man or woman, I couldn't tell) standing behind the couch. When I turned around, of course it wasn't there. I thought I saw someone standing in the bathroom once, also, but that time it could have been because I was drunk. I'm not sure.

-- This wasn't my experience, but I'll share it anyway: I was sitting around in the living room with a couple friends once, and my guy friend suddenly got this terrified look on his face. We asked him what was wrong, and he said he'd seen a woman walk down the stairs, cross the room and walk through the couch I was sitting on before disappearing in the doorway to the kitchen. The rest of us hadn't seen anything, but he was completely petrified and wouldn't come in my apartment at night again for a while.

There was other little stuff, too, but this post is long enough. Whatever it was never seemed to want to harm me. I just got the feeling it was kind of curious as to why I was there. I never got an evil vibe, just a friendly one.

[mrpancake]

Aw, my stories will pale in comparison to some of these but:

When I was six years old, my great grandpa died. He was 92 years old, and had been in excellent health both mentally and physically, and, if I recall, he just died in his sleep. We were pretty close to him, we saw him often because he didn't live far, and I remember going to his house occasionally, but I remember very little about him. I don't really remember ever spending much time with him, and in a weird way, I was sort of scared of him, even though he was so nice. It was probably just because he was so old. Anyhow...I remember my dad on the phone one day, and it just sounded like one of his normal conversations, with one syllable responses. For some reason though, I knew my great grandpa had died and that's why he was on the phone. It was the weirdest feeling because I totally knew what he was going to say to me when he got off. It was just odd because I didn't consider myself especially attached to him.

Another has to do with me and my brother. My brother is disabled and has had many health problems involving long periods of hospitalization. One year, he went in for surgery, and got very sick. My parents sent my sister and me with our aunt and cousin on vacation while he was in the hospital and they were with him. He was in very poor health when I arrived back. I hadn't seen him in probably 6 weeks when I finally got back to California. I was probably about 10 or 11 when this happened, making him about 17. Well, I got to go into the ICU where he was though it was against the rules. When I walked in, my brothers stats improved and he honestly came to life for the time being. I didn't think much of it at the time, but my mom says now that it was quite a phenomenal sight, and other people in the ward witnessed it too. It was almost like when I got to hold his hand, he wasn't sick anymore. Very weird.

When my uncle died tragically of cancer before he was 40, his brothers and sisters will all with him. He had been sick for some time, and we got the call saying that "it would happen" in the next few days. One of my aunts from out of state had been up shortly before to say her goodbyes for whatever reason, so she couldn't be there when he actually did die. She was taking a SCUBA test when he died, and she knew exactly when it happened. She was underwater and felt compelled to go toward the light, and swam up to the surface at the moment he died. She called later and asked if he had in fact died, and if so, was it at that time. Of course, it was, so it was sort of eerie.

[Deleted]

Most of these stories are sweet, but they scare the crap out of me. I never saw or heard anything, thankfully.
My story is: my grandparents were married for something like 60 years when my grandmother died. Shortly after, my grandpa, who was perfectly healthy both physically and mentally, had a mild stroke and his health went downhill. My mom went to live with him to take care of him, but she worked many hours so she hired a nurse to be with him when she couldn't. One night the nurse went to my mother and said: Listen, last night there was a lady on your father's room... she was talking to your father and calming him down (he was very agitated before), and stroking his hair. My mother said no one was there last night except for the nurse and my grandpa... then the nurse described the woman to my mom, and the description match my grandma's to a tee.
Brrr.

[schmoosie]

Ghostly Story #2

For about 4 years I lived on the third floor of a triple decker. It was a 2 bedroom apartment. The building was built in 1870.

When I first moved in...I didn't notice anything except the closet in the bedroom by the bathroom was always cold. The room by the bathroom was the spare room were odds and ends got dumped. One day someone gave me a bunch of clothes I couldn't wear so I took the bag and put it in the corner of the room. A couple of days later I went in there and the bag was sitting in the middle of the room. I asked hubby if he moved it and he said no. I moved it back...eventually it was moved back to the center of the room. I knew there was some presence in the house, but I didn't feel anything.

One evening, I was sitting in the living room watching television when I heard the sound of a keyboard being pressed, well one key...over and over and over. I yelled, "stop that please!" and it did. I crept into the bedroom thinking that maybe someone was in the house (stupid I know...especially considering there wasn't a light switch. In order to turn on the light you had to pull a string in the middle of the room.) I turned on the light and something started hitting the key again...one note...over and over and over. I saw it moving up and down. I grabbed the little white keyboard and ran. I stopped in the center of the living room and was freaked. I could feel something stomping around me. I looked at the cat and the cat was watching something move back and forth around the room. Frightened, I yelled. "You better stop this or I will make you leave! The pounding continued and I could hear the downstairs outside door being swung open and closed and open and closed. I was seriously freaked so I grabbed the phone and called my mom. She calmed me down and told me to leave the thing alone. After that I felt lots of warm and cold spots. I could see someone out of the corner of my eye from time to time. I called him Fred. I came to feel that Fred quite liked me. I used to read outloud to him, sometimes talk to him. When I left I'd say, "Bye Fred see ya later".

Another episode with Fred came. We never used the front door. We kept it locked with a dead bolt. But the door kept popping open. All the time! We couldnt' figure out why. It was scary and rather irritating. The landlord came one day and rebuilt the back porch, the old one was very rickety. After the porch was replaced, the front door stopped opening. I think Fred just didn't feel it was safe for us to be going out the back way and was trying to tell us to use the front. When I had to use the front stairs, I'd hear him come down behind me.

One time, a friend of ours was talking about us moving out of the apartment. He went downstairs and outside to smoke. He came back with his arm all covered with blackish kinda grease. He said that he lit his cigarette then poof the flame traveled up his arm then back down and went out. The funny thing, he said, was that the flame wasn't even hot. I don't think Fred liked him.

One time I was baby sitting an infant. It was sound asleep in it's little portable bed. I went to take a shower, I closed the door so the sound of the water didn't wake the baby, thinking I'd be able to hear it. I was just about done when the door flung open. I could hear the baby crying. The door was closed well too, and was not prone to flinging open on it's own, so I think Fred opened it to let me know the baby was up.

My husband had a few encounters with a mean looking man a few times after we had fights. He didn't think that something that viewed him with such hatred could be nice as I insisted.

When we moved...I was leaving for the last time, no one else was home in the building. I looked back and said good bye. As I walked down the stairs I could hear a child crying in my apartment. I felt so bad. :-(

I live in an old apartment building now. Built in the 1700's, but I've experienced no strange occurences at all. So either there are no spirits here, or they simply keep out of our way. I don't talk to them. I don't think I'd like to have another Fred.....as friendly as he seemed sometimes, he still scared me.

[Oxynia]

Oooh, Fred sounded more lonely than anything else.

I hope the new tenants enjoyed his company!

[schmoosie]

The new tenants are the people from the 2nd floor who were terrified at the thought of Fred. I hope he gives 'em hell because they were loud all the time.

Fred used to like to play with my computer too.

My first car (a 1969 VW bug), was haunted, and not in the Christine way. I can't explain why. The lights would go on for no reason. It would get mad at me and flip the accelerator so I'd have to turn off the engine. One time it kept me from being rear ended by accelerating. Once it stalled at the beginning of an intersection, just long enough to keep me from moving forward and getting run over by a semi-truck. There were several little incidents with it. I miss that car.

Am I telling too many ghost stories? I see I'm the only one posting repeatedly.....it has me worried.