Jeff & Brad's Second Annual True Ghost Story Contest









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CONTEST ENTRIES ENDED 10-20-05

EERIE VISITATION

Around 1989, when I was in my mid twenties, my ex-wife - (then girlfriend) and I stayed at my brothers mini-home with him and his girlfriend. When you enter this mini-home, you have to go up a few steps and into a built on porch that had a screen door and then an entrance door to the porch itself. Once inside, you turn left and open the front door to the mini-home. Directly in front of you would be the kitchen area and to the right the living room. On the left is a hallway that leads to the master bedroom. As you walk down the hallway, on the right is the spare bedroom followed by the bathroom and at the end of the hall, the master bedroom where my brother and his girlfriend would sleep.

At around 11:00 pm we all retired for the night with my brother and his girlfriend staying in their room (The master bedroom) and my girlfriend and I, in the spare bedroom near the kitchen and close to the entrance door. At 3:00 am My girlfriend and I were awakened by someone stepping up the steps and opening the screen door and then the porch door. A couple of foot steps were heard and then the main door was opened and the footsteps continued past our bedroom door and down the hall to my brothers bedroom! I was to say the least a bit unravelled by the sounds and got out of bed and opened the bedroom door. To my amazement, my brother opened his bedroom door at the same time and turned on the hall light. A chilling draft went by me and as it did, my brother asked me if I heard the door open and someone walking down the hall! All four of us heard the same thing and were mystified as to what happened. We eventually cooled down and went back to bed and back to sleep. A few hours later - around 7:00 am the phone rang with the sister to my brothers girlfriend calling extremely upset to say that their mother had passed away over night. She had a massive heart attack.

Never forgetting it happened!

From David

A GUY NAMED VULTURE

This is a true story. I had just met an interesting character, whom I'll call Vulture, through a friend named Richard. Then in his early twenties, bad tempered but brilliant, Vulture enjoyed hard partying, hard drinking, and any and all hallucinogens or other illicit substances, you name it, he'd do it.

He had one living kinfolk, his mother, with whom he lived. She was an interesting character too, she did automatic writing, obsessively so. In fact so much so that every scrap of paper in the house was covered with it. All the walls were also covered with her automatic writing too, right up to the highest point she could reach. Even the toilet paper had been written on, then rolled back up on the tube.

Anyway, a couple of months after I had met him, his mother dies -- In questionable circumstance. Richard told me that she had died in the bathtub (presumably from the bruises on her face) by slipping, falling and hitting her head, then drowning in the 1/2 inch of water that was left in the bathtub. No charges were filed, however the cops had been suspicious and had taken him downtown for questioning, but he had been cleared and released and was now back home at his house.

After hearing this I suggested to Richard that we go over and cheer him up with a ten gallon size bottle of laughing gas (It's about 3 feet tall and weighs a ton) that I had just obtained.

So, it's now 2 or 3 o clock in the morning, on a week night, dead of winter, with Richard and James and I all sitting there with our chairs pulled up in a little circle around the bottle of laughing gas.

I'm taking a breath of the gas when there is this Crash. It's quite loud and startles the hell out of me. I don't say anything about it, just pass the hose from the laughing gas bottle over to Richard.

There is now a TREMENDOUS crash, like a door slamming. This still doesn't convey the intensity of it. You've seen the scene in the Exorcist where the door slams so hard that it cracks right down the middle? Richard jumps so hard he almost knocks the bottle over. I ask Vulture if he heard it too, but he says he didn't hear anything.

I now get up and go outside to take a look around on the front porch. Richard and Vulture remain inside and stay seated.

I will add that the house Vulture was living in was a duplex, and that the people living on the other side had just moved out (I wonder now about the timing of that, too).

Standing on the porch, I walked over to the other side and looked through the doorway into his (ex)neighbor's side of the duplex. Although there wasn't power on that side of the house I could still see through the length of the house all of the way back to the open back door.

So I go back inside and sit down again. I don't particularly feel like doing anymore laughing gas, but Richard and Vulture are still passing the gas hose back and forth between each other.

And then there is an even louder CRASH like a door slamming, followed by a LOUD(and I do mean LOUD) series of knocks sounding like somebody pounding on a door with their fists. The whole house shakes with it. The living room had a bare wood floor and I'm sitting in a wooden chair with armrests and the crash and the knocks were so hard and loud that I could actually feel the vibrations of them through my arms resting on the arms of the chair, and in the soles of my feet right through my shoes.

Vulture again denies that he's heard anything.

A bit after this I have to use the bathroom, so I get up and walk down the unlighted hallway to the bathroom. I'm standing there in the bathroom, taking a whizz and looking down and to my right at the chain going down to the drain plug in the bathtub that his mother drowned in.

There is also a very noticeable, distinctly odd, clammy, almost greasy atmosphere in that bathroom that I don't think was simply my imagination working overtime. Scary. Looking down to my left at the automatic writing covered toilet paper roll was quite weird too. It was good that there were no more crashes at that point, I probably would have missed and wound up soaking my shoes.

After this I made to go to back into the living room, I look over to the right and down the dark hallway to the room that had been his mother's bedroom, where there was a light on. For some reason I walked down the hallway and looked into her bedroom.

It's a small, shabby little room with a sad little shabby single bed over in the corner. Standing in the doorway, I'm looking over at the bed and I see that every inch of it has been carefully covered, laid end to end, with old Playboys and other magazines of similar ilk.

I could see that every one had also been -how can I put this- defiled.

For some reason I felt compelled, and went over and drew up the covers over the bed with a blanket that was folded up at its foot. I then cut off the bedroom light, shut the door, and went back to the living room with Richard and Vulture.

There were no more crashes or noises after that. We both stayed for another hour before leaving, but neither Richard nor I did any more laughing gas that night, and we gave Vulture the rest of the tank when we left.

Although he said he hadn't heard anything, Vulture did move out the very next day. I haven't heard much from him since. Whew.

From "PHONEDUDE"

GUARDIAN ANGEL

I've always felt that I have a guardian angel. I've also felt the presence of my deceased grandfather. Many things have continued to happen over the years to convince not only me, but also my children.11 years ago I inherited my family home and property which has been in the family for 5 generations. My children and I no longer choose to live there for too many reasons to state here. However I will tell you of a few of the experiences that we had while living there.

6 years ago my now ex-husband, at the end of a bitter divorce, came into the house and standing only 5 feet away from me and my then 5 year old son, shot off several rounds from his gun at me. The bullets were deflected at the point of my heart; he was a sharp shooter. I thought that I was the only one to see an almost invisible hand appear in front of my heart, but my son later told me he had seen the same.

Another time I was making the bed and I felt a hand touch my leg, and when I turned around to see who it was, no one was there. One night I was taking an evening stroll, and up over a hill near my home I saw the figure of a man walking towards me. I hollered my ex-husbands name and it immediately disappeared.

Another time, I had gone shopping and the following morning when we woke up several of the items we bought were missing like bread and eggs canned goods. At one point a fire broke out on a calendar in my living room for no apparent reason, it burned the area all around the calendar.

For several days our TV would turn to cartoons all by itself, and it ended when one night we were looking for the remote and could not find it anywhere. I left with my favorite show on and when I returned cartoons were back on and there was the remote right on the coffee table in front of where I sit.

There were times when you could smell cigarette smoke when no one was around smoking -- my grandpa did smoke.To this day my children feel uncomfortable even walking in the house and do not want to go back. My parents have the property adjacent and they sometimes hear voices traveling on the wind, coming from the direction of my house. They have even gone up to see who it is and no one is there. I do believe that if it were not for my guardian angel protecting us and the spirit of my grandpa watching over us, great harm would have come to us by living there.

From Betty Fisher

THE HAUNTED MOTEL

For the last 12 years my husband and I have worked an out of town job that required us to spend the week, Monday through Friday, in a town almost 200 miles away from our home. We settled on an older motel called the Cozy Inn as our home-away-from-home. The first two years there were ordinary enough. The motel lived up to its name. Although the amenities were hardly up to date and the units could have stood a bit more cleaning, they were comfortable and cozy.

The third year, we drove up one Sunday afternoon so we could avoid the early morning-three hour drive on Monday. We settled in by 8 pm to what we expected to be a comfortable evening eating Chinese take-out and watching TV. While I was out in the kitchen area of the small unit, I heard a commotion from my husband. "There's a rat in the wastepaper basket," he said in a startled voice. But when we checked it out...no rat, not even a mouse. "The basket moved," he told me. "No doubt about it."

Later that night when we had all the lights out and were both in bed watching a Sunday night movie on TV, we heard a loud rustling sound in the kitchen area. . Investigating, we found the 20 packs of cigarettes we had stacked atop the refrigerator were in a pile on the other side of the room. Later that night, after I had drifted off into uneasy sleep, my husband said he saw the head and shoulders of some figure silhouetted in front of the light from the bathroom, peering around the corner at him.

All through our stay there that year there were many small instances of unusual happenings. We would wake up in the morning and all the silverware was moved from one side of the counter to the other. The electric stove would have a burner turned on (and both of us are compulsive double-checkers for that kind of thing). A pile of laundry would move from a chair to a desk.

The last night we were there that year, we were relaxing before taking off early the next morning. We were talking about how the year had went. I said I would really miss the people we had worked with. As soon as I said that, there was an electric blue light that filled only the space above the bed we were in. It was like whatever was there was saying goodbye to us.

In the years since then, we've talked to the bar-owner next door and he has told of us of strange occurrences on his property. Two years after our strange experiences, a friend came along with us to work. He stayed in a different room, but one morning he told us he was awakened by something sitting on the edge of his bed. He soon found other lodgings in the city. My husband spent several weekends staying over and he reported lights turned on and off unexplainably, as well as noises like an animal trying to dig its way through the walls. Last year another friend and I heard the same noises so unusual I was going to call 911. There had been a light snowfall in the hour or so before this, but there were no tracks in the area we had heard the noise. Later that night we distinctly heard the man in the unit next to us say, "What the...". He checked out the next day.

I don't know what this is. I can only report what I have seen and heard firsthand, and what I have heard from other people who I trust.

From Vicky B

THE GHOST THAT DIDN'T LIKE ROCK N' ROLL

While in community college I rented a house with 3 friends. It was a large house in a rural area outside of Knoxville, TN. About 3800 square feet, with a full unfinished basement on a 3 acre wooded lot in a subdivision. A big, nice place. I would sometime wash my car naked. I liked doing that. This was a great house. Primo.

We all played instruments and had a rock and roll band. We had a few good parties. We had fun.

It started as knocks on the wall and steps on the stairs both inside and outside the house. We would hear something outside on desk stairs, run to the door, nothing. We started hearing the same thing on the stairs inside the house. We could never find anything. And mind you, these were heavy determined steps. Sounded like people steps.

One night I awoke with someone at the foot of my bed. I was with my girlfriend. I thought it was one of my roommates being his lecherous self. He denied being there adamantly and I did not believe him for months.

It developed into the following ; others would see someone in the upper window looking out, and ask us who it was later. They would describe someone who did not look like us. This happened 3 times or so. We would hear our names called, and would finally stomp up the stairs in rage because we would answer, and the caller would continue calling as if it didn't hear us. It would mimic our voices. It did this to myself a lot.

One of the most memorable things was, we were all downstairs trying to set levels on a recording. We were playing and came to the abrupt end of the song. We ended, and "stomp stomp stomp" upstairs on the floor right above where we were playing - so hard that dust and dirt was falling on the the recorder. We ran upstairs, all the doors were locked - nothing - nobody. Everyone in the house was downstairs.

This went on the whole time we lived there - we finally got bored of it and ignored it. Our friends and visitors would hear things at times and we would say ' yeah.. its the damn ghost". Basically, it would start that stomping crap, etc, and we would grab a beer and yell at it to "Shut the !@#$%^ up!"

It was literally that frequent, like putting up with a cat or something. We moved out one by one and it didn't follow any of us. As far as we know, its still there.

We are all still around and in contact with each other - the other guys remember other things I have forgotten. But we had some kinda entity there - that is for sure.

From Jack

THINGS THAT GO BUMP...

The anecdotes that I am about to relay to you are all true. I have only told them to a handful of people. Those who were there still often discuss them, but with hushed voices so as not to be thought of as crazy. As a child, I lived in a small mill town in Virginia. The home I grew up in is still there, and I have often thought of stopping by to speak with the current owners to ask if they have had any of the same experiences that we did. I'm not sure of the age of the house, but I do know that it was old enough to have an unfinished root cellar with the remnants of coal scattered about that was once used to heat the home. There was always an uneasiness felt in the home, but uneasiness often turned to fear once the lights went out. I recall the time that my family was awakened in the night by a loud "boom." Actually, it sounded as if a shotgun had gone off in the house. We ran to see what the commotion was, and found that a plate had fallen from the wall in the dining room.

This in itself would not be so frightening, but the plate had landed on a carpeted floor yet shattered, sending shards of glass radiating out across the room. It had been a decorative plate with "The Lord's Prayer" printed on it. True story. Another incident involved hearing footsteps in the house. I was in the basement apartment with my mother and younger brother and we heard the front door of the house open, and someone walking through the house. The footsteps walked a circular pattern, and then out the back door. Thinking that the rest of our family had come home, we shouted upstairs to let them know we were in the basement. No answer. The footsteps continued in exactly the same pattern: in the front door, circle through the house, out the back door. When my mother's boyfriend arrived at our basement apartment, we told him what we had heard. He stated that no one was home upstairs as he had just arrived and had seen no one else. He dismissed our story as imagination - until he heard the same thing. He charged around the house, pistol in hand to catch the culprit. He found the house empty and the doors, front and back, locked.

Those are only two of the incidents to which there were multiple witnesses - there are more, but time doesn't permit here. I have many stories of experiences when I was alone, such as "the case of the Victorian lighting fixture." In the hallway of the house there was an old, gilded Victorian style fixture that hung from the ceiling. It never worked, and there was thought to be an electrical short in the wiring that had disabled it. Once, while playing in the hallway floor, the light switched on. Knowing that it wasn't supposed to work, I ran to get my grandmother to tell her about it. When we returned, the light was off. I hadn't before nor did I after the incident, see the light on again. Perhaps my strangest experience in the home was the time that I saw *something.* I'm not sure what it was, but it doesn't fit the bill of being a "ghost." I was asleep in my bed, which was at the end of the same hallway. I was awakened from a deep sleep by an object at the other end of the hall. It seemed to be a box, rectangular shaped, suspended in mid-air, tumbling end-over end down the hallway. It appeared to be shiny on one side, and dark on the other. I watched it come down the hall towards me. When it reached the threshold of my room, it simply vanished. I have no idea what it was, but it was frightening for a child.

Anyway, there are a few of my stories. They are true. I have puzzled over them into my adulthood, and occasionally still have nightmares about living in that house. I hope I don't tonight - thanks

From Name Witheld By Request

A VISIT FROM 'POPS'

My wife was taking a nap one Saturday afternoon while I sat drawing with our 5 year-old twins. From my position, sat at the dining room table, I could see through the house and along the corridor which led to the bedroom in which my wife slept. The a/c and heating thermostat is on the wall outside our bedroom and I looked up as it clicked on. I saw someone standing by the switch and assumed that my wife had got cold and had got up to turn on the heating. At the same time, my daughter had jumped in her seat and also turned her attention down the corridor. By the time I had focused on the figure, it was gone.

Not wanting to influence my daughter, I just asked her if she was okay. She gave me an odd sort of look. Then I pressed the subject. "Did you see something just then?" I asked. "Yes, Pops was standing there," she replied. Now, I didn't find this too strange as we are open-minded about the so-called "paranormal", and both my children have reported seeing 'Pops' before. 'Pops' was the name they knew my wife's recently deceased grandfather by, and they both had previously identified him and his wife from photographs that we showed them after they had both wanted to know, "who the man and lady in the back yard were," who stood looking at them occasionally. Just then, my wife got up and came out to us. "Wow," she said, "I just had the most vivid dream about my granddad."

'Pops' died in England, we live in the USA. Seems like 'Pops' still liked to visit his family and obviously distance is no longer a problem.

From Stephen Drew

HOUSE IN HOUSTON HEIGHTS

For 17 years I lived in an old home in the Houston Heights. Many unexplained things happened while we resided there. We'd see things such as old lanterns, cups/saucers floating to the back dining room, then disappearing in the wall. We found out later the house had been redesigned in the late 50's. The wall they disappeared into used to be where the original kitchen was. I could tell many stories, but the scariest of all occurred in 1997.

It began with a series of events where a ghost would actually manifest itself and poltergeist activity accelerated. I guess the kids all being in their teens brought this to elevated occurrences. Early 1997, I was told by a friend who was psychic, that a young girl's ghost would find it's way to my home and to beware. The girl was in her teens when she died a violent death and had a bad mentality. I was told she'd also be searching through my drawers and closets. Apparently she was looking for something or someone. A few months later I'd awaken to find bathroom and kitchen drawers partially open, closets would open even though they'd been shut. At first, I didn't relate as I'd already forgotten the warning.

Then one morning my daughter, who was in her senior year at high school, told me of an incident that scared her badly the night before. She played sports and was at a game out of town. By the time she got home, it was late and we were all in bed. She was in the kitchen getting a glass of water and looked up in the window (over the sink).. she saw the reflection of a dark haired girl she didn't recognize right behind her in the hallway. She turned around, thinking it was real, and stared at the girl. She said the girl looked straight at her, and she was solid. My daughter was going to speak, but said she felt a big chill run up her spine and couldn't move. She said the girl's eyes were wild and mean looking, they turned from dark black to blackish red.. then the girl stepped sideways into the wall and disappeared. My daughter hadn't slept that night and was still sitting with all the lights on at the kitchen table the next morning when I woke up. She said she didn't wake me up because the wall the girl disappeared into went straight into my bedroom.

By December, we'd had instances where glasses would fly from our hands or off tables and smash into walls. TV and stereo would go on and off all the time. Noises, crunching, walking, creaking, and banging on pipes under a tub in one bathroom happened all the time. One night I was wrapping gifts in my bedroom and suddenly felt someone was with me. I looked at the door to my room and a dark gray silhouette of a girl was standing there, staring at me. I could make out a few details, but not much. Then, slowly, she disappeared as I watched until nothing was there. I told a friend of mine about this and she came over out of curiosity.

She was not a psychic person. That night, as she sat in my living room, she saw the reflection of the girl in a large mirror staring at her. My friend is a brave person and is more curious than scared in a lot of instances. When the girl's reflection (which I didn't see) was g one from the mirror, my friend asked about the room behind the mirror. I told her it was a closet in my bedroom. She wanted to go in there, so we did. I stayed in my room as she walked into my closet. My back was turned to her as I was in front of a table looking for some crystals I'd bought to show her. While my back was turned, I heard my friend's voice telling me to "Come here"... I didn't turn and look right away because I felt a spine chilling coldness run up me and something in the tone of her voice wasn't right. I got scared, instinctively. I turned slowly as she said to come here again.

What I saw froze me!! The air in the closet was moving in waves around her, like electrical water (best I can describe). Her eyes were solid black, and she kept telling me to COME HERE and FEEL THIS, but the voice was like two people talking instead of hers. I suddenly felt I could move and said "NO, not until you come out of the closet"... then I forced myself to move and left the room. I was too scared to stay. My friend finally came out and said her back felt funny, kinda itchy and stingy. She proceeded to tell me about what she felt in the closet but had no recollection of feeling like another person was in her. She started to go home, but the closer she got to the door and yard, she kept complaining of her back. She finally came back in and we pulled up the back of her shirt to see... and there were scratch marks... big X's and whelps, some bleeding. ME was also spelled. There's no way she could have made these herself.

The other thing that happened before the ghost left (I assumed it did) was one night I got in bed. My husband was asleep. During the night I woke up with him tossing then rolling over and with his nose and mouth to my ear, he began making sounds like a wounded animal, then he began sniffing my ear and growling. I felt the spine tingling chill and was frozen again. I didn't want to look at his eyes for some reason. I stayed in that one spot until morning... spent the night awake and alert. He did not recollect anything.

Well, that's a little of my life living in that house. I've moved since then. It's been peaceful in my new house.

From Kathryn Mainzinger

INDIAN GHOSTS OUT WEST

In 1971, after visiting relatives in Arkansas, I decided to take a bus trip to Arizona because I'd never seen the desert. I took a bus to Phoenix and stayed there several days and then took a bus to Flagstaff. I left Phoenix about 6 P.M. and it took 6 hours to reach Flagstaff. The bus traveled slowly through the steep Superstition Mountains. At about 12 A.M., I arrived in Flagstaff, searched for a hotel and noticed one up the street called "Hotel Monte Vista". It was an old hotel from the early 1900s. A bar was on the first floor and cowboys and their women were inside being very raucous. I went to the desk clerk and asked for a room. Glancing at the board, it appeared nearly all of the keys were gone but for two rooms. I asked the clerk for a room with only one bed. He acted nervous for some odd reason. He said he had a double bed vacant. I insisted on a single bed. His fingers quivered as he handed me the key . He said; "take the elevator to the second floor."

Inside the room, was a bed against the wall and two giant pictures of the Grand Canyon. The bathroom was in the hall. I turned on the TV and watched a movie starring Jimmy Stewart entitled "The Glenn Miller Story" about a big band trombonist for about 45 minutes. As I started to fall asleep, I heard this very weird music. It was something like chanting with drums beating and an odd echoing effect I'd never heard before. It was not too unpleasant and had a good beat. I went to the window because I thought it was a band playing in a neighboring nightclub but could barely hear the music by sticking my head out the window . I started to drift off but was awakened again by this music only this time it was louder. I opened the hallway door to listen downstairs because I thought it might be new rock and roll music emanating from the jukebox downstairs but again it was very faint. It seemed like the music was directionless and was just coming through the walls. I stayed awake listening to it. If I started to drift asleep it would get louder. I was so tired I had to sleep and as I got into that twilight zone between waking and sleeping the music suddenly became much louder. I could hear heavy rhythmic drum beats and men chanting in some unknown language with this strange echoing effect to their voices. As I closed my eyes once more I could hear it getting so much louder, almost as if it was in the room above my bed, Then suddenly a wild Indian scream pierced my brain. I jumped up and shouted; "This darned place is haunted. I've got to get the hell out of here!!"

I wanted to run down to the desk clerk but had a suspicious feeling he knew all about this and there were no other rooms vacant in the place except for the double bed...maybe. So I deliberately stayed awake all night. I prayed that those angry spirits, whoever they were, would be satisfied and leave me alone. At 7:30 A.M. the bright sun penetrated the room and it seemed the ordeal was over and something had been resolved. After shutting the door, I realized that it was the first room in the hotel; right at the top of the lobby stairs. The windows faced due north to the Grand Canyon 50 miles away. The echoing effect of the music was like chanting off deep canyon walls. I figured, it was ghosts of angry Indians, scaring the hell out of the tourists and me.

From John Wade

A BARBER GHOST

In the early 90's, I owned a restaurant in a small town in Ohio with a close friend. The restaurant was located in a building that also housed a Masonic Lodge on the second floor as well as a Post Office next door. I was living in what used to be the town barbershop, which was in the basement area below the PO.

Although I had always been interested in the paranormal, I'd had nothing remotely "ghost-like" ever happen to me, until about 7 months after I had moved in to my basement studio.

During that time, I had gotten to be good friends with the man who was the postmaster in town from the late 40's until the late 80's; he had eaten in the restaurant with his wife many times, and I had picked his brain about the history of the building, and the town, while drinking coffee with them after their meals. They had a son who died in the Viet Nam War; my parents had both passed, so we developed a kind of a parent/son relationship in a way. He had told me about my apartment which had once been the barbershop, and talked about the barber, who was one of his best friends but had died in 1982.

One Friday night a few months after I had moved in it had been a busy night in the restaurant, and after we closed I headed down to my apartment with my then-girlfriend, who was visiting for the weekend from Cincinnati. I had to get up the next morning at 7 AM to open up the restaurant for Breakfast, so after I drank a beer, we went to bed.

About 3:30 AM I woke up to go to the bathroom, which was a few steps away from my bed in the one room apartment. I walked inside the bathroom and sat down with the light off, doing my business and thinking about what I had to do later that morning in the restaurant. After I was done, I started to walk out the door and towards my bed. "Something" told me to look to my left, toward the other end of the rectangular room. I slowly turned, and through the shadows in the corner of the room, I saw a man cutting a little boy's hair, who was about 9 or 10 years old and sitting in a barber chair. I couldn't see the man's face in the shadows, but I could see the boy's clearly.

He turned and "looked" at me with a kind of half-smile on his face. I then literally backed into the bathroom, closed the door, and sat on the john, thouroughly freaked out. After about 15 or so minutes, I realized that I couldn't stay there all night, but I was literally scared to death. After another 5 minutes, I got up enough courage to open the door and walk to the bed. I looked straight ahead as I walked, and when I was in bed, threw the covers over my head tried to go to sleep. I ended up sleeping for about 2 hours, and when I awoke, was still freaked out, to put it mildly. I never told my girlfriend, or anybody else, what happened.

About 4 months later I had decided to sell my part of the restaurant to my friend and move to another part of the country with my girlfriend.The last day I was working in the restaurant, the old postmaster and his wife came in to have a last meal there with me. He had brought a stack of photos that he had taken while he was postmaster of the building and the town itself, and I was really excited to pore through these since I had been gently bugging him to see them since the first time he mentioned having them to me.

We looked through them, and there were pics of the building in the 50's; the town's main street, and of people he had known at that time. He then picked up a picture and handed it to me. I looked at it, and my heart literally stopped. It was a picture of a man dressed up in a barber's smock standing next to a little boy, who was smiling. I recognized the boy. He was the one I had seen in the middle of the night 4 months earlier. I asked the old postmaster who the people were.

He said, "Well, that's the barber of course, the one who's shop you've been living in. The boy is my son; he had just gotten his hair cut by my friend the barber when I took the picture."

From RevRecluse

A CHRISTMAS GHOST

It was December 24th, 2000, Christmas Eve. I had to work that day and did not get off till 6:00 PM. I live in the Los Angeles area, but my family lives in Sacramento, which is in Northern California about a 5 or 6 hour drive. My vehicle was already packed and ready as I walked out the door of my office, so there was no time waste. The drive went well and I was tired when I pulled into the parking lot of the Marriott in Rancho Cordova, a suburb of Sacramento. It was just after midnight and the plan was that I would get up early and make the final leg of my trip to my nephew's house the next morning. The clerk handed me my key to the room and directed me to Room 808.

The room was very nice, clean and comfortable. But after driving 6 hours right after working a full day, anything would have been just fine. I went straight to bed and to sleep. It was about 1 AM. At about 2 AM I woke up, I was on my side facing the window. The curtain was open just a few inches. As my eyes focused I thought I saw the outline of man standing near the window. He was in a suit with a fedora hat. As my eyes opened all the way the image faded and I could clearly see that it was just a trick of the light. That happens, it is natural for the mind to identify objects and sometimes in the dark it will get it wrong. I shrugged my shoulders and rolled over to go back to sleep. Still I did have the feeling that I was not alone.

At 3:30 I woke up again. I was lying on my side now facing away from the window and some one had sat on the bed behind me. I lay there for a while, questioning if I had only dreamed the feeling. Once I was completely awake I rolled over quickly. There on the bed sat a little girl, I would guess about 9 or 10 years old with her back toward me. She had on a party dress. Without moving she slowly dissolved. I lay there silently. I sat up in bed and said out load, "Merry Christmas little girl." I then rolled over and fell asleep, the room felt a little sad.

From Jack Velayas

13 STEPS, PALO, IA

One summer evening, I suggested to my mother, aunt, and sister that we head to "13 Steps", a cemetery in Palo, Iowa. We climbed the 13 stairs to the entrance of the 1800's cemetery. Since our adventure nine years ago, paranormal teams have visited this area and detected activity using their equipment.

Thankful Blackburn, a self-proclaimed witch, is buried here. Legend has it, if you read her headstone in its entirety, you will be cursed. Her headstone lays flat in the ground and is a piece of art. A large willow tree and a poem are engraved in the brass. To avoid reading the poem in its entirety, each of us took turns reading two lines outloud. The sun was beginning to set and there was no breeze.

I read the last two lines of Mrs. Blackburn's tombstone, "As I am, you shall be also." (Six feet under!) We'd ignored two small pieces of wood lying around her grave. They were about 2" wide & about 6" long. The grass had not been mowed since the previous fall and stood 8-10" tall. The wood rested on top of the tall grass.

As I read those two lines, both pieces of driftwood sharply and quickly sank to the ground at the same time. There was nothing to explain the incident. I'm scared and excited, and as I looked at my mom & aunt to see if they were going to laugh (claiming responsibility for this) they took off running. While they like to tease and have fun, neither has admitted to pulling a joke on us.

From Andrea K.

ANGEL, GHOST OR ...?

When I was about ten years old I had an experience I cannot to this day explain. We used to attend a very large, prosperous church that had a gargantuan main chapel with vaulted ceilings and thickly carpeted floors. It had no windows whatsoever, designed in a modern fashion with fake lighting behind stained glass porticos built into the walls. When all the lights were out in the main chapel, the place was pitch, pitch black. You couldn't see a thing except one tiny, faint red light about the size of a dime up near the pulpit (which was the light to the audio system, which went green when the mic was on during sermons) and there were only 3 doors in or out, two main doors at the back and one door for the pastor near the podium up on the riser. Under these doors you could see a faint slit of dim light. If any of them opened, the entire chapel was powerfully illuminated. On Wednesdays we had 'night church' and it was mostly a free-for-all social event held in the rectory building adjacent to the chapel.

The large chapel was abandoned and no one was supposed to be over there at night. But being the mischievous and curious lad I was, and going perfectly unnoticed, I found myself drawn to the chapel where the air conditioning was powerfully refreshing and always left on full blast. Alone, I entered the chapel and once the door shut behind me, my only orientation was that tiny red light at what seemed like a football fields distance from me. The place was remarkably silent and the darkness just enveloped me. There was a main isle with pews on either side and I decided to challenge myself and see if I could run as fast as I could, utterly blind, down that main isle and stop at precisely the point where the carpeted steps led up to the podium riser. I took off in a hard run and when I thought I had reached the end I stopped, dropped to the floor, inched along the thick carpeting until I found the first step. RATS! I was a good ten feet from it. Failure! So, I felt my way, touching the pews, blindly back down the long isle to the back of the church to start again.

This time, I was sure I'd make it, imagining myself a Kain for KungFu. I bolted as fast as I could after getting my centered bearings between the pews on either side of me. I was plowing through the darkness when suddenly I ran smack into something very large, very powerful and entirely immovable. I didn't bounce off it, but strangely just came to an abrupt stop and then my feet left the ground. Two large hands clutched me by my upper arms and painlessly lifted me off my feet straight up. Then a voice, a deep, unusually calming but authoritative voice said in my ear, "We do not run in the house of God." I felt no breath. I detected no breeze though the voice was strongly in my left ear. There was no typical adult coffee breath. No scent of aftershave or cologne which I had grown accustom to among the men at our church. The enormous hands slowly lowered me, placing me gently back on the soft carpet and let go. I didn't move. I was frozen in place. I was not afraid, just awe struck. My senses were completely confused and I slowly reached out in front of me, but found nothing. My head darted forward and backward, watching the two doors. Whoever it was I ran into would have to leave by one of those doors and the light would come streaming in -- maybe I could catch a glimpse of who it was. Various suspects ran through my mind... the assistant pastor...? the janitor? No, couldn't be them, the assistant pastor was a small man and the janitor was an elderly black man that couldn't lift a child if he tried. And the Pastor himself was well into his late 70s. None I could think of were that large nor did they have THAT voice. I waited and waited for what seemed like twenty minutes or more, watching. I heard nothing. I saw nothing. I inched over to the nearest pew and sat down quietly and waited some more, but neither doors opened and the silence seemed almost like a roar in my ears.

I probably sat there a good twenty more minutes and then decided I'd better get back to my family or all hell would break loose. I felt my way down to the back of the chapel and backed out of the main door, casting total illumination over the interior. There was no one there. When I got back to the rectory, I noticed that all the really big men from church were present. I could count them on one hand. No one looked at me funny (I was watching for that!) and only my mom noticed I had been gone. "Where have you been?" I lied and said I was just wandering around the church grounds. I didn't tell her what happened.

I never ran in the house of God again. Even when church let out and all the kids traditionally bolted from the pews ahead of the adults to grab a little fun time before heading home, I continued for years to walk out quietly, reverently with the adults. Many years later I confided this story to our youth pastor and he was stunned. "I don't know WHAT you encountered there, but I can tell you this; The main chapel is always locked up tight on Wednesday nights, insurance reasons demand it, in fact. Even the janitor doesn't reopen it until Friday evening at the earliest for first choir practice and only I have keys other than him and the Pastor."

From Angelo Carapi

JUST SITTING ON THE SWING

Many years ago, long before people talked openly about ghostly experiences, I had my first ghost encounter. I was very young. I remember the incident, but when it happened, I didn't know it was a ghostly encounter. It was a little later that night, when I was talking to my mom about it, that she told me what I had experienced.

There was an old lady that lived across the street from us. I called her Mrs. P. She was a friend of my grandmother. Sometimes on hot summer evenings, my grandmother and I would walk over to her porch and sit with her while they talked about old memories, and people that had passed on. Mostly, I sat in her porch swing during those times, drinking cold lemonade, and listening to them go on and on about the past. She didn't have any children or grandchildren, and she always seemed glad to see us. One summer evening, just before sundown, I saw Mrs. P sitting in her porch swing. My grandmother was busy in the kitchen, so I went over and sat down beside her. When I said hello to her, she just nodded, and patted the seat next to her on the swing, offering me to sit down. I sat down and we began to swing. There was a breeze blowing and it felt really good on my hot little head and cooled me off a bit from the southern heat. We didn't talk, we just sat there and swung back and forth. After a little while, I told her that I had to go back home or my grandmother would be looking for me. She nodded, like she always did. I jumped up and started back home. When I turned around and looked at her, she raised her hand, smiled and waved goodbye to me. I waved back and hurried into my house.

When I got into the kitchen where my grandmother was, I found her sitting at the table crying. There were tissues scattered all in her lap, like she had been crying for a while. When I asked her what was wrong, she said," My friend passed away." I said," You should tell Mrs. P, she's sitting on her swing. Did she know your friend?" My grandmother looked at me so strangely. She then said, "Honey, it was Mrs. P that passed away this morning. You must have seen someone else." I told my grandmother, "No, it wasn't her that died, I just sat on the swing with her." Then I walked out of the kitchen and didn't think anything else about it until later when I mentioned to my mom that I had been sitting on the swing with Mrs. P. My mom sat down and looked at me very seriously. "What did she say to you?", my mom asked. I told her that Mrs. P didn't say anything, that we just sat there in the swing with the wind blowing. "She did wave good-bye to me when I left." I told my mom. That's when my mom explained to me what had happened. She told me that Mrs. P had passed away that morning, but she had probably come back to sit on her swing for one last time, just to say good-bye to me. That's when I knew that I wasn't afraid of ghosts. Mrs. P had shown me that there was a gentle side to the other side. I will always remember her, her sweet wrinkled smile, and that last wave of her hand. The End

From Name Witheld

UP ON THE ROOFTOP, CLOMP, CLOMP, CLOMP!

When I was in graduate school I lived in a rented mobile home near campus. I was awakened one night at three a.m. to the sound of someone walking back and forth across the roof of the trailer. This was the heavy clomp, clomp, clomp sound made by heavy boots. It was definitely not the soft scurrying sound that would be made by an animal. Nor was it a scraping sound that tree limbs would make. I was unnerved to say the least.

I got up and walked to the kitchen to look out of the window. All was dark. The footsteps continued walking from one end of the trailer to the other. I knew that this was basically impossible since there were low tree limbs that branched out over the roof. No one could stand upright and walk without running into the tree limbs. What,s more, why would anybody in their right mind climb to the top of a trailer at three in the morning to walk back and forth across the roof?

I knew that I should go outside and investigate. There was minimal outdoor lighting so it was quite dark. As expected, nothing was visible. I could not hear the footsteps from the outside. When I got back inside, the sounds stopped. I could do nothing but nervously go back to bed and try to sleep.

The next day I looked outside for evidence to explain what might have happened the night before. Nothing was disturbed. No evidence of anything unusual could be found. The next few nights everything was seemingly back to normal. Then there was the night when a heavy thunderstorm came through and the electricity was knocked out. The power was still out when I went to bed. That night, I was startled awake by the sounds of heavy walking back and forth across the roof. The electricity was still off so the darkness outside was profound. The walking continued for about ten minutes and abruptly stopped. For the next few months the walker returned about every two weeks, always at the same time of three a.m.

After that, the footsteps were not heard again. I continued to live in that trailer until an apartment became available in a nearby community. To this day, I have no rational explanation for the strange footsteps on the roof. This is a true story, and an experience I will never forget!

From Michael Long

THE RAIL-CAR STYLE APARTMENT

This event occurred during late 1929 or early 1930 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My father was the youngest child at that time preceded in age by my aunt Mary and uncle James in that progressive order with James being the oldest. My dad was 7, my aunt was 9 and my uncle was 11 years of age. At that time the family lived in what was called railcar apartment housing that consisted of long narrow apartments with one room leading to another, front to back.

Dad, his older sister and brother were playing in the street next to one of the apartment buildings. During those days the windows were long into the apartments and began approximately 1 to 2 feet from the ground. The couple who lived in this particular railroad car apartment were out for the evening but left the lights on in the rear bedroom. Curious as children are, they peeked in the windows to see what was inside. I have heard the story from all three individuals involved and the only differences in telling were from their locations at the windows.

In the rear bedroom was a vanity, chesser and bed. All three observed a black shadow person sitting at the vanity. The being was completely without features but did have a human-type upper torso and profile. The entity turned its head to watch them through the window. My brave sire and his braver yet siblings began to scream. They regrouped and looked again at the window, careful not to get too close. The sideways profile of the shadow entity floated past the window as though on roller skates (description by all three) this would have put the entity at approximately 3 feet tall. The profile described by Dad was the likeness of a cat profile; my aunt and uncle described it as a small child,s profile.

Again my family looked in the window not too closely of course and saw it lying on the bed. It had no depth to it described to me as a flat black shadow. At this point it seemed to fade away.

My uncle, oldest of the three, went to the window and held on to the windowsill, looking in. The entity rose from below the window and stopped directly at my uncle,s face level, face-to-face with him. He told me that it seemed to have a black sparkly turban on its featureless head. Reason set in and the three of them ran home, shrieking.

When the neighbors returned home, my elders tried to tell them what happened. It was disregarded as childish imagination. I however believe the story as all three witnessed the same events.

From Jan Rogers

JAN'S STORY

My first encounter occurred when I was approximately ten years old. My family owns an acreage that is half wooded and half landscaped yard. Our property extends from the top of a small hill and ends at the base of the hill, where our home and pond are situated (the woods being on the higher ground). As we live at the halfway point in a mile section a side road was graded which moved a very large sandstone bowl-type rock to the edge of our woods. Due to the unusual shape of the rock we called it the "bathtub rock and would pretend it was a flying saucer and traveled on this structure to many exotic places.

On the day the incident occurred I was lying on my stomach across the bowl looking south over a cow pasture. I pretended that I was flying low over the cattle and watching them scramble away from my frightful flying machine. As I daydreamed, I heard footsteps approach from a north path that led directly to the bathtub rock. I crawled out of the bowl and stood facing the north path expecting my brothers or my sister. I yelled for them to come join me in playing on the rock. What came was nothing like what I expected.

The time was early fall and a carpet of leaves and dead long grasses were around me. I watched as the grass was mashed down by the footsteps they approached me and stopped toe-to-toe with me. What seemed to be minutes later (but probably took only a few seconds) they left and went down an easterly path toward my home. I was quite mystified but not yet afraid. In fact, I was very relaxed but puzzled. There were no cold spots or anything of that nature.

As I stood there a light shone in my reasoning that I had experienced my first ghost. Panic-stricken at the thought I ran headlong down the same path the footsteps took and into the kitchen to tell my mother. She pursed her lips in worry and turned around to do the dishes (no dishwasher in our house). I grabbed her and vehemently demanded an explanation.

Most reluctantly, she finally told me that both she and my father had experienced them as well as our neighbors from up the hill who also happened to be teachers at my small country school. She stated that the footsteps would follow people in the snow and leave marks as they followed whoever was near. She had prayed that we would not have the "tainted ability genetics do tell.

Years later my sister and I would send our boyfriends alone to that spot at night to see how long they could stand it 30 seconds was par for the course. When the footsteps started our dogs would flee for home with tails tucked between their legs and whining bravely.

I still live at that property with my Dad (Mom passed several years ago) but I rarely go up there alone.

From Jan Rogers

BEHOLD A PALOMINO

I was fortunate to grow up on an acreage located in central Oklahoma. In the early years (1960,s) we did not have an air conditioner so we left windows open in the spring and summer for air circulation. Our home is situated in a valley with hills on all sides of our property. A benefit to being in a valley was that we have escaped many tornadoes that have passed our way each year.

In the early spring, just after a rainstorm when a light mist still falls and the fresh smell of damp earth hangs in the air we were eating dinner by our patio doors facing the western sky. Due to the lack of air conditioning, the patio door was open with a screen to prevent various flying insects from joining us in our abode. Bits of sunshine shone through the dissipating clouds and our dogs lay sleeping on the top of our storm cellar that was built into the western hill just outside.

We were startled to see a man in new tan slacks, hat and a Mexican-style poncho riding a beautiful palomino horse from north to south just atop the hill and behind the cellar. Both of our dogs remained asleep and the rider seemed to be watching the ground as if for tracks. Neither the man nor his horse were damp at all and did not seem notice us as we yelled "hey and "who is that. He then turned west and rode into our woods, still taking no note of the family staring at him from the house below.

Our dogs were awakened as we ran outside to check to see if the hoof prints in the mud reflected a shod or unshod horse. We were amazed to find that no hoof prints whatsoever were visible in the fresh mud nor did any evidence exist relative to the passing of the man and his beautiful palomino.

We never saw the man or horse again and were not really "spooked, just curious. I still live on that acreage and reflect now and again on our encounter. Were the man and horse ghosts or some echo of a passage from a time long past?

From Jan Rogers

THE HAUNTINGS OF LAKEVIEW

I am a traveling aide and have worked in many nursing homes(12)around the state I live in. "The hauntings of lake view" are real accounts so please keep this in mind. Last October I was assigned to a place called Lakeview and my living quarters we in the basement of the complex in which strange things went on all the time. I was in bed awake (all dark) when I looked at the bottom of the door jam and the exit light out in the hall was the only light available, the light at the bottom was blocked (someone or something walked by) and my hair stood up.

I knew I was the only one down there and this was just the beginning. One morning I woke up and my electric tooth was laying on the floor (on table top with all kinds of articles in front of toothbrush and nothing else was moved). Another night I was sitting in a chair (watching TV) and I thought that the ceiling was leaking water because something kept touching my hair and up above me was the ALZ unit. I had seen many shadows and images (full body people) roaming at night especially in the basement were the living quarters are for the travelers. It was 3:00 a.m. and I was in a long hall and at the opposite end I saw a person go from one room directly across to another.We went down and checked the unit and found nothing in which about 40 minutes later a resident started screaming. When we went into the room the person said something was grabbing this persons leg.

This person stated "they are coming up from the basement" not even knowing there was a basement or ever have been in it. The person (image) I watched walk across rooms 40 minutes earlier, walked into this persons room (went back and position of where I was standing to what I saw). There was another night walking down a hall and saw (what looked like an elderly lady, hunched over) walk around a corner and thinking someone was up checked all units and found nothing. I know this image had a pink like sweater on a dress and was an elderly lady (saw that good). I made the effort to bring in three cameras (carried) and filled all three, two are still not developed. It was about 1:00 a.m. one night and I was in bed sleeping on a stiff mattress and I could feel something pushing up against the bed because it moved my legs and the mattress was pushed in (exit light outside of door gave enough light to see the bottom of bed pushed in,like a night light). When I took breaks and lunch I would go down to the basement and the areas had locks for all living down there, no game playing.

What I learned was that our living quarters were once where they keep the dead, some day I will write a book because the experiences were real and interesting. I will never forget "the hauntings of Lakeview".

From Name Witheld By Request

SHATTERED MEMORIES

My mother's second husband committed suicide in July 1996. Of course he left her mourning and wondering what had triggered it, with a serious case of guilt included. But she learned to get over it. Or thought she had. Almost exactly 3 years later, when driving on a highway from her home to her vacation home she glanced into her car's side mirror and saw -instead of an overtaking car- her husband's face. The next moment the mirror shattered. Just like that. And we never found out what broke it. Maybe he's still keeping an eye on her.

From Elisabeth van Son

HOUSE ON MOODY

The day my parents, brother, and I moved in to the two-story house at 9th and moody in Mount Vernon, Washington, in the middle 1970's, my brother was touched upstairs, on the back, by an unseen hand and it really scared him.

The house was well over 100 years old and designated an historical site and after a time living there we began to hear noises from the padlocked shut bathroom across the hall. The landlady told us it was unusable, she stored stuff in it. She seemed to not want to talk about it much.

My brother and I resided in the large room upstairs, in the front part of the house. Across the hall were three rooms in the back portion. A long straight staircase ran up to the second story on the left inside of the building.

The three rooms were two bedrooms and the bathroom in between.

The eerie sounds in the locked empty bathroom of an older man and younger woman talking and someone splashing around in the tub began shortly after we moved in. They would start about midnight and would always end with violent squeaking and splashing, then deathly quiet. The sounds became louder and clearer as days went by.

Then one night after awhile residing there something extremely weird happened.

My brother and I slept in single beds across the large room from one another. We were planning to split up into two different rooms at first but when the noises started we were too nervous to stay in separate rooms.

That night the family locked the front door that faced the bottom of the staircase and went to bed. My parents slept in a large room on the first floor at the back of the house that was a later add-on.

My brother and I were just about asleep when we heard the front door open up with a thump and a rush of cold air swept into our upstairs room and footsteps came up the stairs. We knew the front door was locked so we were very concerned that someone had broken into our house.

Being six feet five I grabbed my baseball bat and crept out towards the top of the stairway, my brother, too apprehensive to come out of the room.

I never turned the hall light on, wanting to catch the intruders by surprise. I figured it might also be my mom or dad but when I reached the top of the stairs and looked down I saw something that made the hair stand up on my neck. A young woman in a long white nightgown, stood in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me.

At first I thought it was my mother and I said, "Mom! Is that you?" My mother wore a long white nightgown but she was short, stout and middle-aged and the figure was tall, slim and young.

The nightgown seemed to glow strangely as if it was in moonlight but there was none in the room. It had a long frilly-laced neck that went to the chin, styled in the turn of the century. My mother's nightgown was long, open-necked, and modern, thus I knew it wasn't her. A chill ran through me on realization of that.

My mind was having a little trouble wrapping around the whole situation and I strangely said to the figure, "Can I help you?" It seems kind of silly to me now that I said that to her.

The feminine figure just stood there silently not moving. Her face seemed odd, shadowy and unfocused while the rest of her was glowing clearly bright. She stood there for awhile while I just stood there frozen to the spot.

Then she silently turned back under the stairs towards the rear where a door led to my parent's bedroom that was nailed shut.

I thought my eyes had deceived me because there was no way anyone could go through there and the woman had actually gone through the archway into the living room, towards the back of the house and the kitchen.

At first I went under the staircase. It was strangely cold and dank and a little breezy, as if in a fog. The door was still nailed shut and there were no air leaks from outside.

Then I figured it was my mother after all and I went through the archway into the front room and made my way back through the dining room to the kitchen.

My parent's room was through a door from the kitchen, which formerly led outside. I opened it carefully and looked in on them. My dad was asleep beside my also sleeping mom with his arm over her.

It definitely wasn't my mom. I went throughout the house to see if anyone were there. All the outside doors were locked. No one had came in. I realized I experienced something that was obviously paranormal.

A few days later our landlady came over to put something in the padlocked bathroom and I helped her. The floor was all broken-in and there was an ancient rusted porcelain bathtub and old-style toilet. It was oddly cold and dank around the bathtub like it was that night under the stairs, like a fog.

I told the landlady about our experience with the white lady and the sounds coming from the bathroom at night and she confessed the house was actually haunted but she didn't tell us because we might not want to rent the place.

She told me that at the turn-of-the-century the wealthy old man of the place had been found drowned in his bathtub. Everyone was sure that his young wife had drowned him for his money. She was even prosecuted for it but never convicted. That's why the bathroom was padlocked and hadn't been used since that time. That explained it all to me.

From Dan Dean Dailey

THE HAUNTING AT 124 E. INGRAM

It all started innocently enough. I got the mail one-day, and there was a card from my mom. Inside was a five-dollar bill. I was tickled to receive the money, since I had wanted some eye shadow that I had seen in the grocery store a few nights earlier. I decided to hop on my bike and dash up to the store before my daughter got out of school. Before leaving I left a note for my husband to let him know where I was going. Don sometimes came by the house for lunch. He was a computer service technician, and traveled all over the city. If he happened to be near the house at lunchtime, he would drop in.

I wrote a note explaining that mom sent me five dollars and I was going to the store. I sat the note on the table and drew an arrow on it, which pointed to the card. I sat the card up with the cover showing. This card was pretty as it had a birthstone set in the center of a flower on the cover.

I got back about half an hour later. Don wasn't there. But, I saw that he had been. The card was flipped over and upside down. The part of the card visible now was the backside, with the part that displayed the price, facing forward. I was sorry that I missed Don. I thought he was really clever in letting me know he had been there by flipping the card. Don came home at the end of his workday. I told him that I was sorry I had missed him. He didn't know what I was talking about. He hadn't been by the house that day.

A week went by with no other strange happenings. Then, another spooky thing occurred. I was home alone doing the dishes. I realized I needed to go pee. When I returned to the kitchen I saw something strange. A glass was sitting upside down on the side of the sink. I knew I hadn't left it there. A chill ran up my spine.

This became more pronounced. I would leave a room and return to find an object upside down, on a regular basis.

One day my sister was over. I was telling her about the incidents. We were sitting at the kitchen table and I was cooking lunch*.* We also had a pot of coffee going. As soon as I had finished telling her of the weird things, she did a brave (or crazy) thing.

Rhonda said aloud, "If you're here, show yourself." At the instant the words were gone from her mouth, the electricity died! The macaroni stopped cooking, and the Mr. Coffee shut off. We both ran outside. We ran to the back of the four-plex to the breaker box. We looked inside the box, but no breakers were tripped.. We called the electric company*.* A repairman arrived and quickly found and fixed the problem. He informed us that a pertinent part was missing from the breaker box, and he replaced it.

We had gone straight outside when the electricity failed. No one had been outside. Even if a human had done it, what were the odds of it occurring just when Rhonda asked the presence to show itself?

One rainy morning after Dody left for school, I decided to go back to bed. I wasn't too surprised when I heard Don coming up the sidewalk with his keys jangling. I heard him open the front door, and come into the apartment. I was waiting until he came into the room to greet him, therefore I kept the covers over my head. Silly, I know. I heard him come into the room. I could hear him breathing. But he never spoke. Finally, I whipped the covers off my head and yelled, "BOO!." No one was there! I was about to jump out of the bed when something pushed me back down. I was screaming, crying and pleading for the entity to leave me alone! It just pushed harder on my chest, pushing me deeper into the waterbed mattress. I couldn't breathe. I really and truly thought I was going to die. Just when I thought I couldn't take anymore pressure--it stopped! Just as quickly as it had happened, it was over. I hurriedly dressed and drove over to my sisters house for the day. I was not going to stay alone in that house!

I got a job soon thereafter so that I was rarely alone in the house. One day though, the presence still managed to *spook* me. I picked Dody up from school. We were going over to my sisters. Dody wanted to change first*.* I went to the bathroom while Dody changed in her bedroom. As I was washing my hands, I decided to move a plaque off the bathroom shelf and put it away. The plaque read, "All that I like is either immoral, illegal, or fattening." For some reason that day, the plaque made me feel disgusted. I hated its message. I took it off the shelf and put it in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. I noticed that the shelf needed to be dusted, as there was a clean line where the plaque had rested. I decided to leave the dusting until I returned.

After returning home, I went to dust the bathroom shelf. I stood frozen in shock at what I saw. There sat the plaque exactly where it had been before I had moved it! It had even been set meticulously back the way it had been--sitting perfectly in line with the dust surrounding it.

That May we received our tax refund and used the money to move. Fortunately, the entity didn't follow us.

To this day, if ever I see something turned upside down, it unnerves me. I'm always fearful that the terror will begin again.

From Moonchime

OUT OF BODY MEETING

This is a story that happened back in 1985 while on vacation in Hamburg Germany. I was traveling w/ a German couple and was staying at a flat which was several stories high and quite old.When we arrived the host showed us to our rooms and a tour of the rest of the flat.I noticed that he missed one room to the immediate right of the front entry.He brushed it off by quickly opening the door to expose a drying rack w/ a few shirts on it.It was a big spacious room w high ceilings and a French door and balcony leading out to the street below.I asked if I could stay there and he tried to make excuses and finally gave in and said he could bring a futon for me.I noticed that the 2 cats and small dog would not enter the room but did not think about it at the time.

I was practicing a meditation technique at the time where you simply breathe in and out and then visualize a color, mine at the time was blue, and you just breathe deeper and deeper into the light until you become one w/ the light. This technique gave me the ability to understand every word the rest of the house hold were saying,even though I did not speak a word of German. I was also able to travel to remote places like one in the Himalayas, where a group of people were preparing to care for an enlightened Master. All of this was verified later. As a matter of fact, I would loose time and the hosts as well as my traveling companions though I was strange because I would meditate for 10-15 hours at a time.Well on about the second night, the haunting began. I was asleep and struggling with a dream where I "became" an old woman that had a husband who worked taking jewelry and dental fillings etc. from the victims of Hitler.

He would bring home massive amounts of the contraband and turn it over into cash.When he died he left her quite endowed, millions. Her only living relative was a nephew who was only there to get the money( which she horded)when she died. After so many years he finally got tired of waiting and plotted to kill her with his only true friends that lived in the flat next door.They being as greedy as he, were more than anxious for the widow to pass.The elderly woman had become agoraphobic and anorexic,and wanted to hold on to every penny, which angered the nephew.As a matter of fact he hated her.The old woman knew this and began hiding from the nephew, she would only come out of the room when he was gone. Now every night for 2 weeks I would dream another piece of this old woman's life.I could feel her paranoia, anger and damnation.Each night the dream became more intense, as if I was becoming one with the old woman.

Her power and strength fed off of my meditation and the inner strength that I was experiencing.It was as if she was trying to become one with me to exact some sort of revenge on the nephew.After the first few nights, her evil presence would wake me and was a black cloud over my bed, her story became more unbearable for me and at exactly 2:30am I would go running out of the room having awakened and escaping.On the final night I woke to the sound of the French doors shaking violently, I could not wake up! I could hear the rattling and I knew I was awake but was paralyzed! Drawing all of the strength I could,I opened my eyes and up above me she was letting me know that she was going to become one with me.It was a battle of the spirits and she was not strong enough to win, she drifted off and I went back to sleep.I began dreaming as before, one with her.Her nephew was talking with the neighbors finalizing plans, and then he made a rare appearance at her door and in a sickeningly sweet voice he said "come on out dear Auntie,at least open the door, I am worried about you.I see you have not eaten the bread or drank your tea in days",(which was true because she was quite sure he was plotting to kill her)he pleaded with her and so, as if feeling something other than anger and paranoia for the first time in years, she opened the door for her nephew.

He beamed and told her to wait that he wanted to talk to her over some nice tea and breads. He left for the kitchen and minutes returned with a full tray of sweet breads and tea in the best of saucers.Feeling as if maybe just maybe she had been to harsh on the boy, and perhaps not trusting enough, she invited him in to sit. At this point I literally become one with her and as we raise the cup to drink, a moments hesitation,a brief sensation of distrust, we lifted the cup and swallowed the entire cup in a single drink.I rose to a sitting position feet on the floor, hands cupping the falling bits of teeth and gums as the blood profusely fell in a steady stream between my shaking fingers. He had put acid in the tea!It hurt so badly,the experience was tortuous.I could feel as the searing molten hot liquid burned all the way through my stomach and beyond.

Then I remembered this was 'her' memory, not mine.She tried to hold me, to enter me, to become me,and it was once again a battle of the spirit. The room became charged with a whirling electric energy and the French doors began shaking, a large round white spot on the floor opened into a pentagram, I made it to the spot and stepped inside.The blue light that I had visualized in my meditation reappeared and this time it showed me all of the things I had done in this and other past lives that were in need of forgiveness, not to God, but to myself, and when this was done, wiping tears from my eyes, I called to her, did what was needed to send her to the next dimensional plane of existence.It was 2:30am when I walked out of the room.She did leave the flat, but I don't think she has left this plane of existence, she needs to find someone who can expose her nephew who is now one of the richest steel mill owners in Germany.The following am the 2 cats and the dog came bounding into my room and made it clear all was safe now.

One more thing, I later found out that there was a little old lady who had committed suicide in the flat, and that when the workers came to paint after, they left everything buckets ladders paint tools everything and never would say why, but would never return.When I told the hosts about the experience in the room, they found it impossible to believe that some one in the building had not told me the story, and that I did not speak German.

From Julie Russell

THE E. VILLE GHOST

It was a cold winters night in 1994 about 3:00 am and I had just left the home of my friend Carolyn in the East Village. I had just rounded the corner of 1st Street and Ave A and was starting up to catch the F train. A brisk wind had swept the streets clean of garbage and Clubers alike and was hurrying me along too. I had just passed the East Indian Deli and was walking pass the parking lots of the high rise when I saw the young man approaching me.

He was staggering and really not dressed for the weather now though earlier his attire would have been enough. I remember thinking to myself you'll not make it through this night if you continue going the direction you are staggering like that. Why not just put a sign on your neck saying, "Mug me.... Easy prey."

To my surprise the youth staggered toward me and stopped. "You won't believe this he said but I have walked all the way down from Broadway trying to bum subway fare..." he slurred " No one will give me even a quarter."

I looked at him and was startled how much he looked like the ex boy friend of a mutual friend of Carolyns and mine.... It was just that he was at least ten years younger but damned near a twin of him. He apologized several times to me for being in the condition he was and said he should have known better but he spent every dime he had on a girl and a good time and that they both ran out at the same time. I laughed and gave him a quarter and started to walk for it was cold and he said, "Great all I need now is another dollar."

I had thought all he needed was a quarter by what he had said earlier and called him back and said, "Look you need to get your ass off these cold streets give me back the quarter and I'll give you a token." Wobbling he put out his hand and I took the quarter from it at pushed the token into his palm for I was afraid he would drop it and that was all I had was two tokens and a quarter.

"Now you need to get on the subway" I said and started to walk toward the station. "Ok." he said but walked the other way I turned to call him he was gone. I walked up the block and called Carolyn to tell her of what happened and about the young twin of Rob I had encountered. After a long pause she told me how when Rob was a young kid he had been stabbed and died on a subway but was brought back to life in the hospital. Was it young Roberts' ghost? You tell me...

Are these alien tests of compassion, are they ghosts, or inter dimensional bleed over?

If any one reading this article has ever encountered or heard of these entities or phenomena please contact me by email.

From Posey Lee Gilbert

A TALE OF TWO GHOSTS

It was the summer of 1960. It was a hot and humid late July afternoon. Ralph and I were on our way home from day camp at Benjamin Franklin J.H.S 55. As we reached near the bottom of the steep hill that was 169th a man suddenly staggered out from between the parked cars down and to the right of us. He was a young Latino deep brown skinned, black greasy curly hair worn in the style of the fifties slick on the sides curly on top coming to kind of a coma in front. He was taller than us of course, maybe five three of a slender build and in his late teens - early twenties, but old to us.

He was limping badly and I thought he may have been hit and had been laying in-between the cars stunned. As we were watching him stumble and hold on to the cars making his way up the hill toward us, Ralph leaned over to me and whispered, "Should we help him?"
"No!" I scolded him, Remember Mother said not to go with any one cause they could take us and hurt us!"

We slowed down and moved toward the fence putting as much distance between the struggling man and us as the sidewalk would allow. The man never looked at us once but just seemed to be concentrating on getting up to Saint Pails Place and Washington Ave at the top of the hill. He would walk a little and pause and hold on to the cars and gather his strength then try to walk a little more and end up stopping again to hold on to the parked cars for balance again. I put myself between Ralph and the man so I had a clear view of him all the while we approached each other. He never said anything but grimace ever time he took a step on his left leg.

We passed him to his right he to our left we took one step an then I said, "Ralph he really looks hurt, we should help him." We turned and the man was gone. I thought maybe he had fallen between the cars again. We turned and started back up the hill putting a distance between us and the cars just in case he wasn't hurt but hiding. Ralph walked in the street and I walked on the sidewalk we each looking into the parked cars to see if he was in one. He was nowhere to be seen even an athlete could not have made it up that hill in the second it took for us to turn around. Ralph and me just looked at each other and said, "May be he was a ghost."

Because we were thinking about helping this man and going against the warnings of our mother we could not tell any of our family about it but we told our friends that we saw a ghost but because they booed and called us crazy we stopped talking about it. In 1982 as Ralph and I sat talking about the weird things we had seen in our lives. He suddenly asked me, "Do you remember that old man?"
"Old man?" I asked.
Thinking about Aaron - he didn't know about Aaron only mother knew about him. "Yeah " he said " The old man in the grey suit."
"Me and you were walking down from 55 and he came out of the street carrying those heavy shopping bags and I asked you if we should help him and you said no because mother said not to go with people. Then when he passed us you said we should help him and when we turned around he was gone."
"Is that what you saw? I asked.
"Yeah why did you think I was asking if we should help him?" he answered.

From Posey Lee Gilbert

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