- CONTEST ENTRIES ENDED 10-20-05
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- EERIE VISITATION
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- 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.
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- Never forgetting it happened!
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- From David
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- A GUY NAMED VULTURE
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- I now get up and go outside to take a look around
on the front porch. Richard and Vulture remain inside and stay seated.
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- 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).
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Vulture again denies that he's heard anything.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- I could see that every one had also been -how
can I put this- defiled.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- From "PHONEDUDE"
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- GUARDIAN ANGEL
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- From Betty Fisher
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- THE HAUNTED MOTEL
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- From Vicky B
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THE GHOST THAT DIDN'T LIKE ROCK N' ROLL
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- 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.
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- We all played instruments and had a rock and roll band. We had a few
good parties. We had fun.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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!"
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- From Jack
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THINGS THAT GO BUMP...
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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
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- From Name Witheld By Request
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- A VISIT FROM 'POPS'
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- '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.
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- From Stephen Drew
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- HOUSE IN HOUSTON HEIGHTS
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- From Kathryn Mainzinger
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- INDIAN GHOSTS OUT WEST
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- 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."
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- 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!!"
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- 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.
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- From John Wade
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- A BARBER GHOST
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- From RevRecluse
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A CHRISTMAS GHOST
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- From Jack Velayas
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- 13 STEPS, PALO, IA
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