Pajiba

I work with a women whose husband had passed away. A few years after he died, she went to a nail salon in the town we work in, which is not the town she lives in. As she tells it, she was just killing time and stopped by on a whim.

While she was there, she was seated next to a woman from San Francisco, which is about 45 minutes south of us. They started talking and the woman told my co-worker that she had a message from her husband. My co-worker replied that her husband had passed away and the woman said she knew. She told her that her husband wanted her to be happy and had sent someone for her. That night my co-worker met her now-husband.

Okey dokey, you know how the girl in Paranormal Activity was followed by the ghost/demon/spirit/what have you? Well, I'm a Katie. (Sorry for the length but these are my experiences.)

The house I lived in in grade school, and we were the original owners, had a young man, around 24 or so with longish hair who wore jeans and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up 3/4. He was relatively benign and just stole stuff and made noise, like throwing things down the stairs or slamming doors and you'd go and look and the doors weren't shut and nothing was at the bottom of the stairs. He also liked to fuck with visitors by walking past their room or moving their stuff, ruffling curtains, etc. Other than the prankster stuff there was no problem.

I lived in three apartments where there was constant people noise overhead like walking or water running even though I didn't have anyone living above me. My pets would all turn and stare at the same spot and there was nothing there. Those places weren't too bad.

There were other places I moved and whatever is attracted to me manifested again but the worst was my house in Philadelphia.

In 2007, we bought a refurbished, totally-redone-from-the-basement-up row house in South Philly near Naval Square. Man, it was beautiful house and haunted as fuck.

The master bedroom was on the top floor. We put the bed directly across from the closet because basically it was the only place the bed would fit. Not long after we moved in I saw the prisoners that lived in the closet. I saw the three of them, dressed in rags, behind the bars. They were dirty and skinny and looked sick, like they had TB or something. One of them was hunched over, holding the bars, and the other two were pressed up against the bars and all three were screaming. And the monk appeared. That is all I can call the man that walked past the foot of the bed, wearing a cloak. He was bald and wouldn't look at me. He would just walk from one side of the bed to the other to disappear.

My boyfriend never saw the monk or the prisoners but was subjected to poking and prodding. They would pull his hands at night and push his legs. Things would walk across his side of the bed. They also liked to open the wardrobe. And cackle at you.

Add all of the regular haunting shit like cold spots and let's-fuck-with-the-new-owners noises like huge loud crashes that sounded like a picture fell and broke, which of course a picture didn't fall, and fucking with the animals, and then when you see how a compass would start spinning when you put it in that prison-closet and you get some freaked out people. (I even did the same thing Micah did in Paranormal State, but remember in 2007-early 2009, PS hadn't been released yet.) I yelled at the spirits/ghosts/whatever and said that I was sick of their shit and for them to do their best/worst, and they did. It was a really bad time, lots of crying, lots of bad juju.

We even called Paranormal State and they came out and interviewed us to make sure we weren't fame hounds and to see if we were crazy. They wanted to do one of their episodes about our place but we decided to put the house on the market and didn't feel that it was in our best interest to sell it when it was filmed as haunted. We sold that fucking place and moved the hell out. I'd like to ask the new owners if they have seen anything but...

The morning my father died, I was lying in my old bedroom and thinking back when he was first diagnosed with cancer, how he suffered and how his death finally brought a bittersweet relief.

It was then I heard the closet door open and clothes hangers being shuffled; because my bedroom adjoined his, I could hear this sound very clearly. Getting up, I entered his bedroom (the room in which he died and where I viewed his body) and found no-one there. Thinking perhaps it was the wind, I checked the windows but they were firmly closed.

Different species but same experience: shortly after my beloved german shepherd, Ripley, died of a sudden heart attack at the young age of three, I was lying on the couch downstairs watching some late night TV. Behind my head I was hearing a dog shifting around on the floor. Thinking it was my other GSD, Sara, I was ignoring the sound.

However, when I rose to go to bed, I turned around to gather her up...but, no dog! Thinking she went upstairs to bed without me noticing her, I wandered into our bedroom and asked John when Sara made herself present. He said, "she's been here for the past two hours". Right then, I knew my Ripster was still watching over me and I sobbed for the rest of the night.

Whoops, more sad than scary; sorry folks! Would it help if my Dad and Ripley became a crime-fighting duo with ghostly superpowers?

Jeepers, Shonda! If these ghost stories are a horse race, you have a clear lead!

Prisoners in rags, sweet baby Jebus.

I like that story Jeni, it has to be the sweetest ghost story I've ever heard.

I used to work at a really, really large racing farm in Kentucky. We were taking turns breaking ice in the water troughs for horses one day when it was really cold out. When it was your turn to go out you drove forever then walked forever and took an axe and used it clear any ice forming on top of the concrete troughs. Busy work to be done after the horses were fed and looked over for the morning, to keep you busy until evening feeding time. When you had a break you stayed in the one centrally located barn with a room with a heater and an old TV. The loft of the barn was used for storing hay, there were no trees for miles except for one, right outside the barn, far enough off not to have branches hanging over the roof. From any point outside the barn you could see for about a mile in any direction. There was nothing to hide behind. I was in the warm room with a cat when I kept hearing the stall doors slide open and shut and someone walking upstairs in the loft or in the aisle. Sometimes I'd hear horses walking in either stalls or in the asphalt aisle. It was too cold in the aisle and I was too happy to be bundled up on the couch with cocoa to bother to look and see who was in the barn. At some point it occurred to me that there were never any horses in the barn on any other occasion, and I didn't notice any in the pastures outside. The two people who were working with me that day were off in the truck breaking ice. I thought maybe someone had driven up but why hadn't I heard their vehicle? Curiosity and boredom finally get the best of me and I got up and walked around looking into stalls, poking my head up into the loft, calling out 'hello' repeatedly...and I found absolutely no one and no horses. Not in the stalls, not in the surrounding pastures. The tree is too far away for me to have heard branches on the roof masquerading as footsteps in the loft. I walked around the barn and there were no trucks anywhere. There is only one road leading up to the barn and no vehicles or people are visible anywhere on it or the roads in the distance. I get cold and give up. I don't hear anything else, and it all stopped once I went into the aisle. Eventually my co-workers return and I ask them if they had been back to the barn and just didn't stick their heads in to say hi. They said they hadn't but one of them told me that a night watchman in that barn had died of a heart attack on shift and that some other people had also heard his ghost in the past. I of course accused them of being lying liars who lied and that they had somehow orchestrated some kind of elaborate prank just to tell me that story. They denied it and showed me their cold, wet, red hands and wet gloves and axes wet with ice and snow. It was also really noticeably loud when the work truck they road in had pulled up, and at that point I was paying attention. I have no explanation for the noises I heard, and I refuse to believe in ghosts, gods or anything non-quantifiable by science. Maybe they just pulled a good prank, but I must have frustrated the hell out of them with my prolonged lack of investigation because I did NOT want to get up off that couch to see what was making the noise, and I didn't for a good 30 minutes or so after they had left and the noises started.

Not particularly scary, but true.

Yeah, it was a delightful two years in Philly. I have wondered if a naval prison was originally on the spot where the house is. I mean, it's that close to the old Naval Asylum.

Oh, and just to bookend the whole story, we moved into the Philly house on Halloween. And I no longer live in a brick-and-mortar home. We bought a 40-foot Phaeton motorhome and move every few weeks.

Let's see those fuckers find me now.

I haven't seen a ghost since I was four years old. Until that point, I routinely saw them floating in my old house, around the neighborhood, and in the church's cemetery. They never threatened me or acknowledged my presence. I just could see them.

One night, I went up to bed by myself. My parents normally left the upstairs hallway light on so I could go to bed safely, but the bulb burned out and they were too busy to change it. I climbed the stairs as fast as my stubby little legs let me and turned to go into my bedroom. That was when I saw the skull.

It wasn't a large skull--probably the size of an average adult's--but it was clearly there. It was a physical skull in the hallway. I walked up to it and could feel it, hold it. A face materialized around it in my hands. It was an old woman, covered in wrinkles. There was a hole in her cheek. I screamed and passed out.

When I came to, my family told me everything was a dream. There was no skull in the hallway. I had imagined it. They could barely keep straight faces when I recounted our exact conversation about changing the light bulb in the hallway, but they stuck to their story. That's when I began describing the woman's face. My father turned white and my mother couldn't meet my eyes.

They didn't admit it until many years later. The woman I described was the previous owner of the house. She killed herself with a gunshot through her cheek, into her brain.

I haven't seen a ghost since I was four years old because I made myself forget how to do it. I can feel them there, I can even hear them, but I don't need to see their stories anymore.

"The Fear Shits". That's the title of an anthology for sure.

Here's mine:

Fifteen years ago, I was asleep in bed. It must have been around 2:30 in the morning or so. In any case, I woke up startled with the sudden, real and complete realization that my grandmother had passed away. I knew it to be as certain and true as anything you can imagine. I knew it.

My mind immediately wondered whether or not I should go wake my mom up and I thought "No, I'm not the person who should be delivering these news." The moment that thought crossed my mind, the phone rang. And it kept ringing and ringing and I knew that it was my aunt calling to tell my mom of what had happened. I fell back onto my bed and listened while my parents picked up the phone and were told the news.

To this day, I have no idea how I knew that to the second.

Robert, that is fucking creepy! In fact, these are all turning out brilliantly. I need more.

My mother hates when I tell people this story (she says she's only allowed so seem crazy to close friends and relatives), but it's the only thing I have that sort of resembles a ghost story.

When I was 13, my family stayed in a ramshackle B&B on Chincoteague Island, VA, for a portion of our annual family spring break road trip. The B&B was this old Victorian mansion with four floors, and the five of us (parents, two sisters, and myself) had rented out the top floor. It was actually the attic, and it was creepy as fuck. Not only was the weather persistently gloomy and rainy, but our rented area was accessible by anyone staying in the house - there was no door at the top of the staircase to section off our space from whoever might venture up the stairs.

For this reason, my mother told us to lock our bedroom door from the inside before bed. She and my father would keep their door unlocked, in case of an emergency. We all felt a little safer this way (seriously, this house was creepy, and in a neighborhood that felt a bit past its prime).

On our last night in the house, my mom woke up around 3 in the morning to someone scratching at the door. She turned, expecting to see one of her daughters. And she did. Or, she thought that she did. She thought it was me, dressed in a floor-length nightgown, coming to ask her something. Instead, the girl crossed the room to the opposite corner, where she crouched down and began making soft noises and moving things around. My mom realized at this point that it was not her 13 year old daughter playing with toys in the corner at 3am, but a complete stranger.

She says that the girl didn't say anything to her, but a while later she heard her move across the room and out the door (at this point Mom was completely buried under the covers and clutching at my totally unresponsive Dad. The man can sleep through anything.) She casually mentioned it to the B&B owner the next morning, and he kind of rolled his eyes and laughed and told her that people who stayed there reported ghostly things happening all the time. My mom's got a famously overactive imagination, and she's a bit prone to superstition, both reasons why my dad maintains that she didn't see anything and was probably dreaming. That being said, she's also one of the most intuitive people I know, and has had a few other semi-supernatural experiences, so who knows.

Happy to oblige, Mr. Scott. I'm always willing to detail a horrifying experience in my life for other's enjoyment round these parts. It's not like I'm going to sleep tonight after remembering that story anyway, so I might as well spread the wealth.

This story is not mine but it's famous where I live, and I do know the family.

So right after graduation from HS one of two best friends died in an accident driving the wrong way on a highway on-ramp in CA. At his funeral a week later his best friend (Call him Mike) put his house key in the coffin and said you're always welcome wherever I am.

That Fall, Mike goes off to college. Thanksgiving rolls around and Mike comes home for break. His Mom is lugging groceries into the house the day before the holiday and sees Mike in the Foyer through the beveled glass window and rings the bell so he will come and take the bags from her hands. He walks the other way down the hall. She sets down her bags, opens the door and calls for her son. The house is empty.

Two nights later, Saturday, Mike goes out with friends. His Mom hears him come home around 11. Thinks to herself it's pretty early and goes back to sleep. She then wakes up at 4am to hear Mike really coming home. He had been out all night.

Mom, being superstitous goes to a psychic. Says nothing about the events, but goes for a reading. Psychic tells her you had guests for the holiday. Mom says, well I guess now that's he's gone to college Mike is a guest. The psychic says, no I meant his friend.

Over the four years until they sold that house Mike's Mom routinely saw "something or someone else" in the house when Mike was home for visits.

OK, I hate to throw a wet blanket on the spooky fire (wait, no I don't) but this is Pajiba, and we are Pajiba readers. In other words, I like to think many of you are smart and/or rational.

Do this many people here REALLY believe in ghosts?! This is blowing my mind! Please tell me that there is at least a little irony in many of these posts.

So here's my scary story. I watched Dracula with my brothers (1993?) when I was 9 years old, and it was the first scary movie I ever saw. Lying on the floor I could see the white curtains in the next room GLOWING RED and it was the middle of the night. Do I think this was the blood of Drac's victims? No. Did I think it was back then? No, but it was fun and spooky to pretend it was.

Okay, this story isn't particularly scary, but it is true.

About fifteen years ago, a friend of my then girlfriend complained to her of feeling a strange dread in the hallway of her single storey flat. My girlfriend told her friend that we could come over and have a look for her, being interested in the supernatural as we were.

Well, the hallway in question was one of those windowless, rectangular tubes that go down the middle of cheap, mass produced housing. It felt cool in there and it was a little creepy, but not that dreadful. But there was an access panel in the ceiling. So I borrowed the woman's step ladder and went up to have a look.

It was a hot day, but when I stuck my head up into the space between the ceiling and the roof, it was like sticking my head in a bucket of ice water. What freaked me out a little was there was no dividing barrier between the space above the woman's flat and the three others it was conjoined with, just one long shared space.

I was going to haul myself up, even though there was only about a foot and a half clearance, when my hand came to rest on a plastic bag. I lifted it up and found it to be holding some heavy object.

I brought this down to have a look at it. It was one half of a steering wheel club lock. It had been wrapped up tight in the bag and stowed in the roof.

Why, we had no idea.

We took it home with us. And I can't remember if we kept it somewhere or tossed it. But we got a call a couple of days later from my girlfriend's friend. The hallway had no ominous aura to it anymore.

We went over there some time after that and I had another look up in the roof. It was hot as Hell up there. The hallway seemed brighter than before as well.

Well, I warned you it wasn't scary, but it is 100% true.

By 2050, white people will be a minority in the United States. Okay, that my not be scary to you but it damn sure keeps Lou Dobbs up at night.

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at October 21, 2010 6:59 PM

I can't even imagine what it does to Rush Limbaugh.

I rented an apartment at The Tennyson Arms complex in Waco, Texas back in 1983. I worked for a small radio station and was thrilled to find this apartment which was within walking distance of work and, more importantly, within staggering distance of a club called 'Abracadabra' where most of us hung out after work.
It was a little pricey for someone on my salary but I was single and the location alone made it worthwhile, so I happily moved in.
Two things: First, I wondered how such a prime location was available. It was such a cool place and so close to everything that it should have been occupied all of the time. Second, when touring the place, I noticed two stains on the bedroom carpet which the agent said would be replaced immediately if I wanted to wait a few days or I could just move in and they'd replace it at my convenience. Anxious to get settled, I chose the latter.
The first couple of weeks were fairly uneventful. I spent my days at work, many evenings in the club and the nights sleeping peacefully. After the rather harrowing experiences at my previous apartment I was grateful for the relative calm in the new place. Sadly, it wouldn't last long.
Since I had no desk at the time, I did a lot of job related paperwork at my tiny dining table, with various stacks of paper pretty well covering the surface. It was on one of these nights that the weirdness began happening.
As I sat at the table, plugging away on a new music playlist, a stack of paper on the top right-hand corner of the table shuffled a bit... and then the top sheet lifted up and fluttered to the floor. Assuming that there was a draft of some sort, I checked the windows but they were all tightly shut. My next thought was that the table was lined up with the air conditioner vent and that the breeze had moved the paper. Satisfied with that theory, I went back to work and only a few moments later not one but three sheets of paper fluttered up and then down to the floor. Annoyed - but not yet spooked - I picked up the papers and turned the ac unit off then, again, went back to work. On the third occasion, as the papers began to shuffle, it was accompanied by the sound of someone whistling... not something but someone and it sounded as if it were right there in the apartment. Now, I was spooked. No, I was flat out scared and not ashamed to admit it. I did a hasty search of the place, satisfying myself that no one was in the place and got the hell out of there. Once at Abracadabra, I told a couple of co-workers what had happened; they gave me skeptical smirks, told me I was working too hard and after a few beers, I was in full agreement.
Back at home, getting ready for bed, a feeling came over me like nothing I've felt since - there was a presence in that room, vile and malevolent and it was phsically pressing down on me, making it difficult to breathe. My heart was pounding and with some effort I crawled out of bed and went to the living room. Terrified but with nowhere to go, I eventually fell into a fitful sleep on the sofa. The next morning, I decided to spend as little time in the bedroom as possible, gathered a few things there and made the living room my main space.
A couple of days passed with nothing weird taking place but then, the whistling started again, happening at all hours of the night; the poltergeist activity picked up as well, with things being moved or knocked over on a regular basis. I wasn't sure what the hell I was dealing with but did know that it wasn't anything benign or anything that I cared to challenge. Apartment hunting became a priority.
Here's something you should know: I am addicted to iced tea. Most nights, I'll take a large glass and place it on a nearby table before going to sleep so that I'll have a drink should I wake up.
On my last night in the place, I did exactly that. Fresh tea, clean glass, ice. Nothing unusual.
When I woke up the next morning, the glass was still on the coffee table but, dear Lord, it was vile. There was mold and crud growing up from the bottom of the glass. It looked as though it had been sitting there, festering for a week or more and it smelled like death... so much so that I ran to the kitchen and retched into the sink. I walked outside for some air and to clear my head and ran into my upstairs neighbor who wa sitting by the pool. I'd never spoken to the guy but he must have sensed that something was wrong because he asked if I were okay. Without thinking about what he'd think of me, I told him the whole story of my time there and asked if he had ever heard anything or had anything similar happen. His reply was a bit starling: "They didn't tell you before you moved in?"
I asked for details and he told me the story. A couple of months prior to my moving in, the apartment was occupied by a young couple. There were fights, occasionally but nothing too drastic until one evening when the husband came home to find his wife in bed, naked and obviously nervous. He knew exactly what was going on, calmly pulled a .38 from his nightstand, opened the closet door and shot her boyfriend in the head before turning the pistol on her (she had gone towards her husband, asking for forgiveness) and putting a bullet in her heart. After the killings, he sat on the bed and called the police... who were already on their way, thanks to the neighbors hearing everything. As my neighbor told the story, my blood turned ice cold and I knew that everything I'd experienced in that place was as real as anything in this world. The stains on the bedroom carpet were bloodstains which someone had tried to clean up but not done a good job. I was, at this point, ready to get the hell out of the place and told the leasing office I'd be leaving that day, they never asked why and even returned my deposit. I stayed at a co-workers place until finding another apartment but I had and continue to have dreams about that apartment and the nightmare scenario that took place.

Three things:

1. I believe I saw a flying saucer, and I don't believe in flying saucers. When I was a kid, I was playing in the back yard and a disc-shaped craft of some sort slowly flew over my yard and house and disappeared behind a cloud. This was in broad daylight.

2. When I was a teen I had the whole second floor of our house for my room. One day some of my cousins were visiting and we pulled out a Ouija board. As you probably know, several people are supposed to put their fingertips lightly on the heart-shaped slider and then record the letters or numbers it moves to. I had my fingers on the thing, very lightly, and a couple other people did too, and I closed my eyes. The slider started moving around the board, though my recollection is it spelled out nonsense (someone was calling out the letters). So after a few minutes of this I opened my eyes. The others had taken their fingers off, and they were laughing at me, because they thought I was deliberately moving it around myself. Meanwhile, I stared at the thing and had a fucking chill up my spine. I was barely touching it. I put the fucking thing up on a closet shelf and never took it out again.

3. This is more funny than scary, though it wasn't at the time. When Mrs. , and I were dating, I lived in a third-floor apartment in an old house. We went out one night to a concert and she left her purse (we both thought) on a chair in one room. Well, we came back a little frisky and got naked pretty quick, and then she said, "Where's my purse?" And I said, "Right there," and pointed at the chair where it wasn't.

So we looked around and there it was, on a chair in another room where it wasn't supposed to be. And suddenly we were certain someone had moved it, someone who was ... maybe ... still in the apartment, in this big walk-in closet I had. So we quickly put our clothes back on and I announced to the room, "We're going back out, you're free to leave if you want." And I think I took her home.

We laugh about it now, but it was serious business then.

Had the water in the upstairs bathroom turn on by itself. I heard it, thought it was the faucet outside at first, since I lived in a triplex, but nope. Roommate was not home and cat was downstairs when it happened. Freaked me out.

I've never experienced any sort of these type of encounters, but I also believe that if they are real, my brain/heart wouldn't be able to process them and I would literally lose my mind. I think maybe there are people who are just incapable of opening themselves up to it. I feel like there are too many stories told my rational people for the paranormal not to exist. But then again, the mind is a crazy place. It could all exist there.

This is totally not scary, but I used to think my old condo was haunted. It wasn't an especially scary place, it was built in the 60's and was a 1/1 of about 650 sq ft, very sunny. Only, ever since we moved in, I would wake up in the middle of the night a lot of nights, and I could feel that there were several people in the bedroom. They weren't aware of me as far as I could tell, they just seemed to be hanging out, socializing with each other. It was as though there was a low-key cocktail party happening in my bedroom. I just figured it was some kind of sleep hallucination, but I never woke up my husband so he could verify it. It could be my imagination, I also used to sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and I couldn't remember who was in bed with me and I would get really nervous and it would take sometimes 5 minutes for me to remember that, oh right, that's my husband. So I just assumed it was my brain. Until we moved to a new place and it never happened again.

TylerDFC wrote: "Vince Noir: In the words of Bad Religion, 'If it's real for me do I have to prove it to you?'"

Yes, if you want me to believe you.

I highly recommend Wendy Kamminer's book, Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials, about the increasing acceptance of personal anecdote as proof. Challenges to anecdotes are now seen as hostile; people's personal experiences are supposed to be accepted, without test, as true.

I'm with Vince Noir on the ghost topic. There are just too many scientific hurdles that most of these stories can't clear.

I have had only one strange occurrence that I can remember. It was 15 years ago with my then wife. We were on a road trip in Northern lower Michigan together with our 2 large dogs (Malamute and Ridgeback) when it got late and we decided to put up for the night at a motel. We had been hiking since dawn and were absolutely exhausted. The room was at the very end of the building and from the look of the lot we were one of the few people staying there. It looked like any other motel, nothing ominous about it. When we went to enter the room the malamute would not enter, I eventually grabbed him by the collar and had to practically drag him in the room. The ridgeback came in but immediately started pacing from the back wall to the front door with its hair up. I’m not a real believer in the paranormal, so my first inclination was to check to see if there was someone hiding behind the bed which was about 2 feet from the wall, below a window. Nothing was there so then I decided to check the bathroom, it had a full tub with the shower curtain drawn. The dogs agitated state, my wife’s concerned look has me keyed up by now – I decide go for it - rip back the curtain and nothings there. We start to laugh about the whole thing and decide to catch up on some rest for the next day.
At this point in life we haven’t had any children, so we put up with 160 lbs. of dogs in our bed every night. We climb into bed and neither dog will follow. One still has not left the front door where it is panting and glancing to us and back to the door repeatedly. The other will not lie down and is alternately pacing and sitting. This was very odd behavior, but we were dead tired. We figured they would eventually get tired and fall asleep also.
We both could fall asleep at anytime in minutes so soon we were both asleep. My wife awoke with a scream from a horrible dream about someone coming to get her through the floor. Both dogs were acting the same as before except with the addition of occasional whining. Being young, poor and exhausted we calm each other down and try to get back to sleep (we can’t afford another place for the night on our budget). We were both quite creeped out by this point and wanted the dogs to climb in bed with us and they still refuse. We both eventually fall asleep when something smashes through the window of the bed and lands on top of me holding me down. I struggle to get up and then awake, covered in sweat –it’s just a nightmare. The problem is - both dogs are at the end of our bed - hair up, teeth barred, growling at the window.
That did the trick, we grabbed all our shit and got out of there. It took us hours to calm down and we didn’t stop anywhere to rest until day broke. We are sure the dogs never slept at all while we were there.
I have never experienced anything like it before or after, but there was something terribly wrong with that place.

So Mike B. and Vince Noir, you two don't watch horror movies at all?

I dreamed my great-grandmother's last moments as they were happening. I dreamed of my Memaw when she passed away. I've had lots of instances where I could feel another presence in a room or house with me from the time I was old enough to remember.

My friend in high school, Angie, lived in a house that had a lot of strange happenings. You always felt as though you were being watched in that house. I had my hair pulled while I was in Angie's room by myself. My hair was pulled so hard that my head snapped back and no one was in the room. Angie and I once went into the attic to get something, but as we were cresting the stairs, something came stomping across the floor towards us. We ran back down the attic steps and out of the house and into the front yard. Angie's Mom asked us what was happening and we told her we heard someone stomping in the attic. She thought we were overreacting. Or at least, that's what she told us. It turns out that the stomping was so loud and persistent that she ended up sleeping in a chair in the living room with a gun in case there was an intruder in the attic.

Another time, we were sleeping in Angie's living room when I heard someone walk in. I raised my head and saw Angie sleeping on the couch and no one in the room. I covered my head up and tried to sleep, but something fell on top of me. It felt like a body pressing on my back, and I was unable to move. I struggled and was finally able to get whatever it was off of me, but I was freaked out,

Vince, Mike, with respect, let us have our fun.

If it bothers you so much to read that some of us honestly believe in ghosts or whatever, then go someplace else and feel superior because a lot of of us have had experiences that we believe to be supernatural. Whether or not you believe in that sort of thing, or whether or not you've read books that explain it away, doesn't make a bit of difference.

Also, if one of your books mentions that "Challenges to anecdotes are now seen as hostile" that is probably true because someone who really believes something that they've experienced is true doesn't like to be called a liar. I'd be pissed off too.

Maybe some people believe the idea of ghosts is all crazy and that nothing else exists except for science and rationality, but not everyone.

Let us tell our stories without the judgement, please.

ZombieNurse, excellent point. I am a huge skeptic myself and believe that most paranormal experiences (the ones on "Ghost Hunters" and whatnot anyway) can be explained. But in reading all of these comments, I see rational people telling, for the most part, believable stories that they sincerely believe to be true, and that's hard to ignore.

My story isn't scary, and I'm not sure it qualifies as a ghost story, but it's kinda weird. It's also pretty graphic (in a personal way). So I've given you fair warning if you want to stop reading now.

My freshman year of college I lived in a standard dorm with a roommate. There was nothing weird about it at all, but about a month into living there, I had a very odd dream in which I did some adult things with a beautiful brunette woman. This lead to an involuntary bodily reaction which forced me to change my pajama bottoms in the middle of the night (Sorry, I warned you). This was the first time a dream caused me to have such a reaction. I pretty much forgot about it and was just happy my roommate didn't wake up while it was happening. That was until it happened again about a week later. I don't remember anything about that dream except that the same woman was in it and it caused the same thing to happen. It just struck me as odd that I would have a sexual dream about the same woman that I'd never seen, or at least didn't remember seeing, twice. The main thing concerning me about the whole thing was that I didn't want to wake up my roommate with these dreams and end up having seriously awkward conversation the next morning.

Luckily, I don't think he noticed anything, and a few weeks went by with me sleeping normally. A few weeks following the second dream, my roommate went home for the weekend, so I had the room to myself. As I was about to go to sleep I said to myself jokingly something like "All right lady, the roommate's not here, so if you're still gonna be fucking with my dreams now's the time". I didn't expect anything to happen, but at about 5 that morning I had a dream about her. This continued very sporadically, maybe once every other month, for the rest of my freshman year. It was the same woman every time, and I still have no idea who she was. The dreams were always sexual.

The next year, I moved out of that dorm and I haven't seen her since. My friend jokes that she was a succubus, but neither of us really believe that. I'm sure it was just some subconscious mind thing, but it was just a very odd experience.

Sorry if I grossed anyone out too badly.

I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do I do I do I do I do believe in spooks!
That being said, I don't have any particulary scary stories, but I can say that a ghost lived with me.
I lived in a condo that wasn't terribly old, probably built in the 80s, typical apartment style. It was the first place I'd lived alone. I used to see my ghost while watching tv in the living room...out of the corner of my eye I'd see what looked like someone's head peaking around the corner of a wall at me. Of course when I would turn to look nothing would be there.
Things would go missing, like the tube of toothpaste I couldn't find until after I walked out of the bathroom and back in again, to see it in full view, lying on the bathroom counter, knowing it hadn't been there moments earlier.
My ex boyfriend fell asleep on the couch in the living room one evening, and I was in the bedroom putting away laundry when I suddenly heard him yell. He was apparently startled awake by an icy cold wind that came from nowhere. The door and windows were shut tight.
A girlfriend of mine spent the night once and slept on the couch. Early in the morning she heard me come walking out of my bedroom across the carpet and stop right in front of her. She could feel me standing there hovering over her and figured I was about to scare her awake. She figures "I'll show her" and opens her eyes to say "hah!" and no one was there. I was still fast asleep in my room.
Various unexplained noises that definitely sounded like they were IN the apartment, and not coming from a connected unit.
Once I bent over in my bedroom to straighten out a throw rug that had moved a bit on the floor, and when I stood straight I saw the hazy figure of what appeared to be a tall man standing in the doorway. Then it disappeared.
My favorite memory though, happened on Valentine's Day. The night before I was home alone and decided to light a few scented candles. Most of them were various vanilla scents, and white in color, except for the one red candle I had in the apartment. I was about to light it but decided against it b/c it had a cinnamon scent and I figured I'd stick with vanilla.
Later I blew out all the candles and went to bed.
The next morning, which was Valentine's day, I woke up, got a shower and proceeded to get ready for work. Later I walked out of my bedroom to go to the kitchen and start my coffee. Something in the living room caught my eye and stopped me dead in my tracks.
The one red candle I had decided not to light the night before was burning right in front of me.
It wasn't burned down very low as if it had been going all night and there wasn't a lot of melted wax...it looked like it had just been lit a little while before.
I got a little freaked out at that point...and called my then boyfriend to tell him what happened. When I got off the phone I said "thank you, and happy Valentine's day to you, too" and blew the candle out.

Can I retroactively say, "Yes"?

I lived in the Octagon apartment building on Roosevelt Island in New York--formerly known as the Lunatic Assylum of Blackwell Island. It's a beautiful building and I moved in right after the renovation to an apartment on the sixth floor. I think the place has something weird going on. I was fine walking in the newer sections of the building but when I had to travel through the older section to get to the laundry room I felt nervous, like I was being watched. One night I was sleeping and woke up around 3:00 to loud noises in the hallway. Garbage collection in the building was never that early. I gathered my courage and stuck my head out of the door to look out in the hallway. There was nothing there! It sounded like people were running up and down the hall and playing with the fire escape door but when I looked--nothing, but the hall had a weird vibe like someone had been there. I also heard people talking through the vents in the bathroom. Not normal neighbor talking, it was the always the same weird whispering voices that happened at all hours of the night. Just a bit creepy.

TylerDFC: OK. If this is the route we are going to take (more and more people in the mid-west are seeing UFOs so therefore there must be aliens from Centauri-8!!!) then I will fucking take it.

By the way, "UFO" stands for "UNIDENTIFIED flying object." My point is it could be a fucking bird. Maybe a pigeon if you are a city boy. (In related news, I once parked a block from my boyfriend's house and had a flock of pigeons chase me, repeatedly. And no, Alfred Hitchcock was nowhere nearby. They were just hungry for some bird seed.)

The SECOND I see any kind of real, proven evidence of "ghosts" (whatever the fuck that means) I will consider believing in them. How many people believe in "karma" or "homeopathy" or "Spencer Pratt's magical crystals"?

Your belief in ghosts is EXACTLY as valid as Spencer Pratt's belief in Magical Crystals.

Give me proof beyond "lots of people think so" you asshole.

Robert: You are absolutely right that anecdotal evidence cannot be discounted outright. It requires scientific testing to determine if there is any truth. What is science? Is it the molecular weight of Tungsten? Nope. Science is the systematic development of an idea followed by controlled experiments to determine if something is possibly true or not.

How many people in the history of the world do you think have believed their relatives or enemies were talking to them and tried to prove it? Has ANYONE come up with any proof of the positive? No? Well I concede as a scientist that we can never prove a negative (that ghosts do not exist) but I can as sure as hell after working in the mental health field assure you that even "normal" people are capable of amazing delusions.

Can I ever disprove the existence of Christ the Lord? No. Can I ever disprove the existence of Roger Rabit, the Savior of Toon-Kind? Nope. I fucking can't.

This whole Halloween post has almost made me need to find a new favorite site if so many people are completely unwilling to grasp the process of science in its simplest form. It's sad to me, though you guys tend to have great taste in movies (and ironically, great disdain for religiously bigoted politicians).

About 10 years ago I was in England in a little town where William Wordsworth wrote a bit of poetry in a little cottage. Throughout this whole trip we encountered several places we were not allowed to take photos. In fact, I believe we weren't allowed to take photos inside the cottage, just outside. After the tour of the cottage a group of us walked to the small church in the town. William Wordsworth is buried in a lot by the church. Anyway, I was inside the church and I was not sure if we were allowed to take photos. I waited until everyone had left the church and I looked around to make sure everyone was gone because I was not sure if photography was allowed inside the church. I looked to make sure no one was around and I took a quick snapshot towards the altar. After I got home from Europe, I got the film developed and there is a man standing in front of the alter, very clearly, looking at me. My evidence is the photograph and anecdotally, I am telling you no one was standing in front of the altar when I took that photo. I made absolutely sure no one was around to see me take a photo. The entire trip we were warned that some places were known for ripping out film from your camera if you were caught taking pictures in places you weren't allowed to take pictures. I looked to make sure no one was around and I know I would have seen a man standing in front of the altar.