Ghosts and other Supernatural/Paranormal Events

[emoiguess]

I haven't clicked on the links, but even the idea of those dolls is scaring the crap out of me.

I'm a pretty cynical person in other areas, but I'm a firm believer in ghosts and spirits. All the women in my family have a sensitivity to weird paranormal stuff.

I've seen this one spirit for as long as I can remember. She's very, very old, and hunched over (think Julia Childx10), and she'd walk with me around the woods by my house, or sit on the porch with me, telling me stories. My mom swears up and down it's got to be my great-great grandmother, but who knows.
When I was around 7, I stopped seeing her. She just kind of vanished, and I began to have this almost constant feeling of dread. Then one day when I was walking home from school, I heard footsteps behind me. I look around, and there's this man following me, but he looked really off - his clothes were all torn, his face didn't seem quite right and was all gnarled and twisted. And he seemed not solid. Not transparent, but just not quite 'there'. So, obviously, I freaked out and ran all the way home, not looking back. Then over the course of the next month or so, I kept seeing this thing. He'd be in my driveway, or just sitting on the sidewalk on our street. Then, one night, I woke up to see him sitting in my room. Just sitting, staring at me. I distinctly remember the room feeling just filled with complete malice - it was awful. I screamed and screamed, and he vanished right when my mom opened the door. The next night, I woke up again, but I saw the old woman sitting in my room, watching me and smiling. It was very comforting, and I saw her in my room every night for a long time after that. I like to think that she was protecting me from whatever malevolent thing was hanging around me. I still catch glimpses every now and then of her just hanging out around my house. And interestingly, my 4 year old cousin has started talking about an old lady who sits and tells stories to her at night. So, the weirdness lives on I suppose.

[Shalamar]

One of my mom's friend's husband told us that our old high chair was haunted. But he was a nutcase.

Hee hee ... that reminds me of another Simpsons ep.

Grandpa: Ahhh! Death!
Lisa: That's Maggie.
Grandpa: Death!
Lisa: That's a lamp.
Grandpa: Death!
Lisa: That's Maggie again.

Gotta say, that Robert doll is extremely creepy looking. Ew.

[vegasusa555]

And interestingly, my 4 year old cousin has started talking about an old lady who sits and tells stories to her at night. So, the weirdness lives on I suppose.

Cool! Looks like she has a gift to.

You guys' stories make me not feel so weird! Thanks! Anyway, something really creepy happened to me recently. I had a dream about two weeks ago where I was talking to a woman in a white blouse, black pants, and she had curly hair in a bun. Well, the dream itself wasn't partcilularly interesting, but she kept talking about how she was worried about how her kids viewed her. I woke up going WTF? Here's where it gets creepy...

A week ago, I was taking a nap and when I woke up, I saw the woman again in my room with the same outfit but her hair was covering her face and she was looking down (like she was looking at her feet) and as soon as I blinked she was gone. I turned on the news later and the lead story was about a woman that was murdered and her family had been living with her corpse for a week (I think the husband murdered her). They showed the woman's picture and it was the same person in my dream! I had never seen/met this person in my life, so I don't know how I could have seen her face so perfectly in my dream!!!

Maybe when she said that she was worried about how her kids viewed her, she was worried about them seeing her dead body. The news stations said the babies were 2 and 3 so I guess they would think she was "sleeping" or "sick" .

[Wol]

I took a course called "Folk Life and Folk Culture" with a notoriously nutty anthropologist in college as one of my blow off social science requirements. It was such a great course. We did three weeks on ghost stories. So many people had them, and most of them were people from the east coast living in old houses (places in Vermont, Maine, etc.).

Personally I've had two run ins. A friend was working at the Royal Court Theater in London and I went to visit. She mentioned she'd heard about an old female ghost who shows up occasionally. Sure enough one day we were sitting around the lobby and someone ran in and said "She's in the balcony!" So we all ran up and there was a gray haired woman with that "not quite there" look to her. A guy asked "Can I help you?" and she looked frightened and moved faster than any human being I have ever seen move (let alone a person of advanced age) up the stairs and into the hallway. We (a bunch of energetic twentysomethings) ran into the hallway and she had just disappeared.

I was staying with friends at their apartment in Denver in one of those old Victorian houses. These were two guys who were very open to all things psychic and supernatural. Anyway, they'd befriended their ghosts and named one of them Jane (I forget what they called the other one, but it was male). Jane and her buddy used to like to move their cigarette lighters around. They left a lighter near a lamp in the living room and we all went out to lunch. Came back and the lighter was on the mantel. The ghosts' point of entry was the hallway between the living room and the bathroom. The hallway was always chilly, colder than the rest of the apartment, like a little wind tunnel. I had a particularly favorite dress with a billowy black skirt and as I walked through the hallway one end of my skirt was suddenly pinned to the wall, at about waist height. I wasn't touching it, nothing was, it just went whoosh - up and out and stayed there as if something were holding it up. I said "Jane, could you please let go of my skirt?" and my skirt dropped.

[marywebgirl]

I'd just like to thank everyone for completely freaking me out with the premonition stuff. A couple weeks ago my husband said he just felt "worried" about me all day (he's not superstitious or a worrywort), and that same day I was thinking about how if something happened to me while he's out of the country in a few weeks it would be really hard to get ahold of him. Well, the international trip is upon us, and what did he tell me when I talked to him this morning? "I had nightmares last night that something happened to you."

That will be me driving 15 mph on the shoulder of the highway with my hazards on ... just in case you were wondering.

[underjoyed]

britty said:

My mother bought her dog a stuffed toy lamb for Easter one year. It said "Happy Easter!" when you squeezed it. The dog had the thing forever, and it stopped talking after a month or so. I was home from college one fall weekend , and the lamb started talking again. My parents knew that I hated that stupid lamb, but they loved to torment me. I got back to my apartment, I lived alone, about midnight and played my answering machine messages. My mother had called and left messages of the lamb shrieking "Happy Easter!" over and over. Didn't sleep much that night.

I've been reading these through thinking I had nothing to contribute until Britty's post reminded me of something. I tend to be a bit of a sceptic. I'm always fascinated by other people's experiences, because [chanelling Fox Mulder] I want to believe [/cfm], but haven't seen anything myself, so am still agnostic. (I can't remember who it was who said: "I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm afraid of them", but that pretty much sums up my attitude.)

One thing, though, always makes me wonder, even though I can come up with several plausible explanations which don't involve anything otherwordly.

About five or six years ago, my mother bought her dog a toy stuffed cat which let out a disturbingly realistic mewing noise when you squeezed it. Mom considered this a fine gift for the dog, considering that our actual cat ruled the roost and this was as close as our dog would ever get to asserting superiority over a cat. Also, it was good for creeping people out (the woman had a macabre sense of humour). After a year or so, the squeaker/voice box in the thing went dead. Then it seemed to vanish, and we assumed that the dog had taken it out into the back yard and left it somewhere out of sight.

Another year or so later, my mother died of cancer. The night she died, my now-husband and I went back to her house and were woken in the middle of the night by a mewing noise from outside. Thinking that it was our cat, I ran out of the bedroom door, but the cat was sleeping peacefully. I went outside and traced the noise to the source. It was the stuffed toy cat, which had not worked for almost two years and missing for a year. I figured the rain had got in it or something so I brought it inside.

After an hour of silence, it started mewing again. I practically jumped up and down on it to shut it up, but an hour later, it started up again. Then it stopped and as a far I know has never spontaneously started mewing since.

Like I said, I can come up with scientific explanations, but I know which explanation made me feel better. It's the sort of thing she'd do.

[batmom]

It's the sort of thing she'd do.

Mess with you from the great beyond? Yet another reason why your mother rocked.

[jennipoo]

My brother was killed in a car accident in June 2004. Our bedrooms at home were set up dorm-style with a bathroom in between. He used to always "forget" to unlock my side when he was finished and "forget" to flush the toilet and complain about my toiletries...etc, etc. Basically the bathroom was our one source of contention.
Last Wednesday would have been his 25th birthday and in the middle of the night I heard the toilet flush by itself. I looked for my daughter (my children and I live with my parents now) and asked my parents if they had been in there. No one had. I think it was Michael messing with me via the bathroom again.
I miss him so much.

[pepper67]

::hugs JenniPoo::

[jennipoo]

Thanks Pepper67, I needed that.

I hardly ever cry about it because I've tried to be a rock for my parents, which they have greatly appreciated. Also, we live in a tiny town and have been a focal point since this happened and I try to be stoic about it so that people won't talk about me excessively or feel sorry for me, but sometimes I really need a hug. So, thank you again.

My guy is really sweet about it too. When we discussed having children, he said he knew what he'd want to name our son if we had one. That really got to me simply because my ex-husband never wanted me to talk about my feelings concerning my brother and was never sentimental about him at all. I vascillitate between feeling noble somehow in my stoicism and wanting to scream, "What about me!?!". Then I feel like a fruitcake.

*I know this belongs in another thread, but it just came out..."