DOG AND WOMAN GHOSTS

A few years ago I was working at a private residence on an exterior stone masonry project. The elderly couple who had hired me were, to be polite, a bit eccentric in their tastes, but were paying a good wage, which made up for their sometimes peculiar requests (with ongoing order changes, additions, etc) made regarding the stonework designs. The husband was a retired funeral director with years of experience in embalming (some local famous people included) and due to a back injury due to lifting a too many heavy coffins mostly stayed at home. He was in the company of his various pets, including two cats, two dogs and three chickens who were all allowed to roam freely inside the house amongst an impressive collection of antiques and oriental rugs.

In the back yard there was a concrete statue of a sitting dog, under which, I was told, were remains of a family pet dog. This seemed to me simply to be a quaint example of sentimentality and I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. Anyways, my work mostly was concentrated on the front yard of the house, where I was building a low, curving rock wall capped with a row of antique bricks. As I was concentrating on getting my brick capping to flow along a pleasing curve I thought I saw behind me one of the family dogs. I turned around to say hello (to Chloe, the friendly one) but there wasn't a dog there -- actually there wasn't any living creature in sight. During the next two days this process was repeated several times, with me seeing a dog-like shape behind me out of my peripheral vision, but upon turning to look directly at the pet saw nothing of the sort.

On the third day of sighting a lurking, ghostly dog I also saw quite clearly the standing figure of an older woman. Her body was see-through, smokey gray and she stood in the same place where the 'spirit' dog had been watching me. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to concentrate on my job, and I decided to ring the proprietor in his office to discuss the matter. Over the speaker, I was given permission to enter the home. Up on the third floor, the proprietor sat at this carved mahogany desk, holding one of the chickens and petting it as though it were a fluffy lapdog. After briefly relating what I thought I had seen, he laughed softly and told me I had simply seen the spirits of his deceased sister and her chocolate Labrador.

The remains of this beloved pet were, I was informed, buried under the concrete statue in the back yard. I went back to work, somewhat relieved to know that there might be a basis for seeing spooky things staring at me from behind. Interestingly, the sightings of the dog and woman ghosts stopped after they had been explained in this manner. I couldn't help but wonder, however, where the remains of the retired funeral director's sister were interred.

Submitted by Drake Bradstone

THE FACE

 

The late October Saturday morning was gloriously sunny and unusually warm. Fall colors of the maples were being blown across the landscape by a chinook from the south, sending leaves in every direction to blanket the landscape with a crazy quilt of pigment and texture. For some reason, I felt an inspiration to clean the windows of my cabinet shop. After decades of being exposed to a dusty enterprise, the windows in this building had become caked with a film made from condensation and fine wood particles.

 

I started the cleaning process with the west side row of windows. After more than an hour of hard work, I stood back to appreciate the results of my efforts. Wow! The sun was beaming through and I could actually make out the mountains in the far distance. I looked over to the east side row of windows and saw their dismal, opaque appearance. Internally, I debated whether or not to spend the next few hours cleaning these windows also. Ordinarily I would have thought up some clever rationale to avoid such a chore but something pushed me to continue on with the window cleaning.

 

After completing a few more windows I again stood back to admire the results of my work. It was now about two o'clock in the afternoon. Suddenly I noticed a hazy face looking towards me from the outside of the dirty center window on the east wall. This face quickly faded away from view. My first impression was that the kids who lived nearby were playing a Halloween trick on me. I ran out the back door, expecting to see the figures of children running away with their face-on-a-stick prop. There were no kids -- nobody -- outside the building.

 

I went back inside my workshop and looked at the dirty center window again. This was the next in line to be cleaned. While trying to calm my heart down, I saw that the same face was now peering through a still-dirty window to the right of the center window. It was there for just a moment and then faded away. After repeating the race outdoors to check for pranksters with no positive results I came back inside the shop to ponder what to do next. I decided to write off the peeping face as the product of imagination and continued to clean the middle window and the next set. Thankfully, this took place without seeing another eerie visage staring at me. This left only the set of windows in the southeast of the building, which was in a room partitioned off from the rest of the workshop.

 

My friend, Dave, had called a bit earlier and was going to come by in a while with the latest music recordings of historical pipe organs. We both enjoyed listening to and critiquing the new releases using authentic instruments. My shop had a good sound system and because of a buffer of acreage surrounding the building we could turn the volume up full blast without irritating the neighbors. Actually, since the morning I had been listening to pipe organ music played on restored Schnitger and Silberman instruments.

 

Now, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the sun's rays slanted in from the southwest and provided a dramatic, sideways illumination to the autumn foliage. Only the last set of windows in the workshop needed to be washed. This was in my shop's clean room which was where my sound equipment was located. To make the work go by easier, I put on a disc of J.S. Bach and turned the volume up full blast. The walls and windows of my workshop vibrated with the power of Bach's music . In what seemed like short order, the last set of windows was cleaned. I stood back to admire the results and was horrified to see that the same pale face with large, round eyes was leering at me through the just-cleaned window! Then the phone rang -- it was Dave saying he'd be by in a few minutes.

 

 

I was now sweating and in a near panic. The situation became exponentially worse when the face came through the (closed) window into the building and now hovered in the corner of the room up near the ceiling. In this location, I could see that its translucent, grey-white form included what looked like strands hanging down from an equivalent of a neck and shoulders, with the lower part of its body the least well defined. I ran over to turn off the pipe organ music. Mustering as much courage as possible under the circumstances, I told the ghostly thing that it had to leave. I had the feeling that I had somehow attracted this being along the lines of unintentionally befriending a stray dog. But instead of providing doggy biscuits to a wandering pooch, I had apparently drawn in an entity by a toccata and fugue!

 

Just then I heard the sound of Dave's car pulling up in front of my workshop. I braced myself for my friend's reaction to seeing a ghost hovering in the corner of the room next to the window. Oddly, I felt a sense of embarrassment, almost guilt, about having attracted a spector into my vicinity. Dave, in his usual boisterous manner, barged through the front door, already talking loudly about his newest pipe organ and harpsichord recording acquisitions. Sheepishly, I looked over to where the ghost had been last positioned, but it was gone! With a sigh of relief, I tried to forget about the whole situation.

 

A few days later, Dave told me that he had seen a ghost-like face floating in the hallway of his apartment. In an agitated state, he claimed that he had seen this face several times and was wondering openly if he was going nuts. I just shrugged my shoulders and pretended that I didn't know anything about it. After all, I'm not the crazy guy, right?

 

Submitted by Drake Bladstone (©1983)

 

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THE THING ON THE STAIRS

 

This is a true experience that happened to me and a girlfriend when we were juniors in high school many years ago. I'll call her Mel for the sake of the story.

 

Mel was staying over at my house that night. I think this took place in late November, early December, because there was snow on the ground, but it was one of those nights that's wintry but not cold. It was late and everyone was in bed except for us, and we were wide awake. Unable to talk in my room, I decided the best place for us to talk in relative comfort was the Catholic church about a half block up the street from my house. I had attended the Catholic school there for five years, so I was very familiar with the church. So we went there. In those days, churches didn't lock their doors at night, so were able to walk right in. It was really dark. The only lights were some votive candles burning at the statues of Joseph and Mary on both sides of the church up front. The entire entry way of the church was pitch black. In the entry way, on the left as you came in, was a staircase that led up to the balcony where the nuns sat. We went into the church and sat down in a pew about halfway up, on the left side of the church.

 

We had been sitting there talking in low voice whispers for about 10-15 minutes when suddenly we heard what at first sounded like a bunch of books tumbling down the staircase. A couple of seconds later I realized it sounded like extremely rapid, almost staccato-like steps coming down that staircase at breakneck speed in the dark. Mel and I froze, staring at each other wide-eyed in the half-light of the candles. Then, whatever it was hit the floor, and it started what I can only describe as dragging itself across the floor at the back of the church. It sounded like a heavy, dragging sound.

 

By this time, we were both standing in the middle aisle. Our eyes had adjusted to the dark, and we were straining to see in the back of the church where this awful sound was coming from, but we couldn't see anything. Whatever it was wasn't standing up, that was for sure. We heard it drag itself across the floor at the back of the church and then start up the far right aisle, by the confessionals. We were looking in that area, trying to see what it was. Our adrenalin levels were probably off the charts at that point. We heard it continue up the aisle and then go up front where the altar was. And then we didn't hear anything.

 

There were two exits on either side at the front of the church, and while I wasn't in love with the idea of going back to the entry area of the church to get out of there, I was more terrified of going towards the front to one of the exists there because I wasn't sure they were going to open, and I didn't know exactly what that thing was or where up front it was, and I didn't want to get "caught" at one of those exits. So I yelled to Mel to run, and I ran full tilt toward the back of the church. There were 2 sets of stairs as you came into the church, with a landing between them, and I completely bypassed that first set of steps. It was by the grace of God that I didn't land wrong and break an ankle because it was totally dark, but I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I was going to go through anything or anyone that was there. I ran down the second set of stairs, Mel right behind me, and we burst out of the church and ran down the street. I don't we stopped running for a couple of blocks, at least. If anyone had been on the other side of those doors they would have gone flying.

 

We took a roundabout way home because I was afraid whatever it was might follow us, and I didn't want it to know where I lived. We ended up staying up all night, too wired from our experience to sleep. I went to the rectory a couple of days later to talk to one of the priests about what happened, and he just gave me this song and dance about my probably having heard some sound in the rectory, since there were evidently speakers connected to the church, but I knew it hadn't been anything like that.

 

I have no idea what this thing was, but I know it wasn't an animal, and it wasn't a person, not coming down the stairs that fast in the total dark, no matter how well you know the layout. Out of all the paranormal experiences I have had, this was the most terrifying.

Submitted by Kathy Christian

 

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APARTMENT 21

 

In 1997 I was living in Ithaca, New York where my mother and two half-brothers live.

 

I had been living with a good friend in a two bedroom apartment, but our schedules didn't really overlap. I was getting up early to go to work and he would often stay up until 4 or 5am talking to friends on the phone, which kept me awake. In mid-september I decided to find a new place to live.

 

I wasn't making much money at the time, so I decided to move into a very small efficiency studio on the edge of town. It was in a large apartment complex that was probably built in the 1980's-- it was new, pretty shoddy construction-- essentially built as low-income housing. My apartment was on the ground floor-- I still remember the number, apartment 21. It was basically one large room with a small bathroom and small closet-style kitchenette off to one side. At the back of the room was a large closet with sliding mirrored doors on it. It wasn't great, but the price was right. I moved in on October 1st, 1997.

 

At first, I really liked having my own space. I had been living with roommates for so long that I really enjoyed coming home to the solitude, and the fact that there were no messes or dirty dishes, because I am sort of a neat freak. The only downsides to the apartment, which I noticed right away, were that when I came home after work every day and walked in the door, when the room had been shut up all day, there was a faintly sick-sweet odor, like rotting leaves or garbage. Since I am a very clean person, this frustrated me. I knew there was no garbage and that all the surfaces were clean. I would open the windows and burned scented candles, which dispelled the smell temporarily, but whenever I came home after being away for a few hours, it was back again. The other thing about the apartment that became more and more of a problem, as October gave way to November, was that it was very very cold. I chalked this up to the fact that it was a cheaply built building-- poor or no insulation, and the carpet was just a thin indoor/outdoor type which was so hard, it felt as if it were laid right on the concrete foundation of the building. The thing was, even in November, when temperatures were beginning to really fall, it was often warmer outside than it was in my apartment. I decided that this was because a bad designer had placed the electric heating unit along the wall under the only window in the apartment-- which meant all the heat was being sucked right out the uninsulated window and wall.

 

This is where the story gets difficult to tell, and why I have had to work up the courage to tell it. As maybe many of your listeners know, paranormal events seem to happen at times when you are particularly sensitive to them-- maybe you are depressed, or there has been a shock in your life-- maybe that makes us more sensitive, I don't know. But here goes.

 

Between November and December, I began to feel more and more depressed and became more reclusive. This is not like me. I am pretty outgoing. Though I do enjoy my solitude and my time alone-- I like to read and write a lot-- family and friends have always been important to me. But during mid-November of that year I began to feel a crushing depression. The thing is, I had a history of depression. When I was 15 I had tried to take my own life, and had been in therapy for many years after that. When my mood and thoughts began to turn darker and more filled with despair, I really thought I was just experiencing another round in the cycle of depression. I knew that eventually, it would pass, so I just tried to buckle down and endure this round of it.

 

Around the end of November, beginning of December a couple of things happened that did not seem strange at the time, but later made a lot of sense. First of all, I had been getting a lot of junk mail-- but somehow the companies that were sending me the mail had got my name wrong-- the first name and middle initial were correct, and the first part of the last name was right, but the last name was slightly different than mine. I thought that somehow I must have ended up on one of those mass-marketing lists somewhere and they had just typed in my name wrong. The mailboxes for the whole apartment building were on an island in the middle of the parking lot out front. Whenever I walked out there to get my mail, I would wave to the perpetual group of teenagers that hung out in front of the building, gossiping and smoking. I remember thinking what jerks they were, because whenever I came out there they got quiet and seemed to be waiting for me to leave. When I left, I would hear them start whispering to each other. But teenagers are teenagers. I just shrugged it off, but it definitely added to this atmosphere of depression that was weighing more and more heavily on me.

 

A similar thing with the junk mail was happening with telemarketers calling on my phone. This was before the No-Call list, and at least twice a week I was getting calls for someone with my same first name but a slightly different last name. I was really annoyed.

 

The first two weeks of December, things got really bad for me. My mother and I had had a falling out and she wasn't speaking to me. I think it was over some advice I had given my oldest half-brother that she had taken issue with. It was (looking back on it now), a stupid fight. My mother and I are very close, but we both have strong personalities and sometimes we clash. I spent all my free time alone in my apartment, lying in bed and reading. I didn't have a TV. It was so cold that I used an electric blanket for heat-- which worked better, and cost a lot less than the electric heat in the apartment. I was very down over the fight with my mother, but I didn't want to talk to anyone about it. When friends came by I ignored their knocks and pretended I was not at home. I didn't answer the phone or return anyone's calls if they left a message on my machine.

 

That was when I had the first dream-- if you can call it that. Even now, comparing it to all the dreams I've had in my life, it definitely had a different character. I was awake, but in that state between awake and asleep where you are still aware of your surroundings but aren't completely alert. That was when I heard a woman say to me, "I need your help." I thought to myself, "I am dreaming", so I thought back at her, "Why do you need my help?" She answered, "I am stuck here and I can't get out." I remember feeling very very cold, and the most intense kind of black unhappiness I had ever felt in my life. It was the bleakest sensation of being utterly devastated, and utterly alone.

 

Again, I thought in my head to her, "But how can I help you?" She answered, "I need you to carry me. I need to attach myself to you so that you can carry me out of this place. I can't do it on my own."

 

Even in the half-dreaming state I was in, what she said scared the hell out of me. I knew in some part of myself that it would be very bad to say yes to her, but another part of me believed that all of this was just a part of my own depression-- that I was slipping so far down this time that maybe another part of myself was appealing to me for help-- that maybe I was just carrying on a conversation with my own psyche. That was when I decided that I would say yes, because I wanted to help myself. I thought back to the voice, "All right. You can do it. I will help you."

 

I slept through that night. When I woke up the next morning, it was snowing. I felt a strange sense of not being really connected to myself-- like I was watching myself get up and make coffee, wash my face, etc. I think it was a Sunday, I remember I didn't have to go to work that day. And this is when the story gets really strange, and frightens me even now. For some reason, after I drank my morning coffee, I went into my closet and got out a pile of clean white sheets-- I had about 5 or 6 of them. Standing on a chair, I started tacking them to the ceiling with pushpins, so that they hung down around my room sort of like artificial walls, made out of white sheets. I put them up at right angles to each other so that they formed a kind of tunnel that led from my bed to the front door. Even now I have no idea what possessed me to do this. It is so completely weird that it is embarrasing to admit even now.

 

After I had tacked up the sheets, I crawled into my bed with a box of cookies. I knew, then, than I was going to kill myself. The idea just came to me all of the sudden, as if it were the obvious solution, or just a very simple thing that I needed to do. Just then, my phone rang and the answering machine picked up. It was my mother. She said, "Honey, please call me. I'm sorry. I'm worried about you."

 

I sat and looked at the phone for a long time, and then I picked it up, and then I put it down. I got up and got the phone book, and I looked up a suicide prevention hotline and I called. I talked to the woman on the other end for about an hour. I didn't tell her about any of the weird things that had happened-- I really thought that I was losing it-- that I had gone crazy. I just wanted to hear the sound of a voice that was not judging me. After she talked to me for about an hour, she gave me the number of a local, sliding-scale counseling center and made me give her my work that I would call them as soon as I hung up with her. I did. I made an appointment to see someone the next day.

 

The rest of that day was really hellish for me. I tried to distract myself by cleaning the apartment. While doing so, I discovered something that really terrified me-- all along the edges of the windows and on parts of the mirrored closet door, I discovered a kind of black mold that had begun to grow. I thought at first it was just discolorations on the mirror or on the wood that framed the windows, but when I looked closer, I realized they had the circular, spattered pattern of growing mold. (I have a degree in biology, so I could recognize that it was mold, but not a kind I had seen before).

 

I went to the counseling session, and the woman I spoke to told me that she wanted to work with me twice a week for as long as we needed. I began to talk to her about a lot of secrets and deep troubles that I had been carrying around with me for years. I was put on anti-depressant medication. Within a few weeks, I was starting to feel better. The atmosphere of my apartment was still bad. I still noticed the smell, but I took down the weird sheets and I started spending more time with friends. My mom and I patched things up. I began to believe that all of the strange events, my strange behavior, and my experience with the woman who asked me to help her had been symptoms of my depression. I was slowly rising back up out of the paralysis I had felt.

 

In January, I was on my way across the parking lot toward my apartment one afternoon, when the property manager, who was standing on her balcony on the second floor, called out to me and waved me over. We introduced ourselves to each other and when I told her my name, she looked startled. She asked me a few questions about whether or not I was happy with the apartment or not. I told her it was okay-- but cold and a little bit lonely. She said, "Can I ask you a more personal question?" I felt a little strange but I thought, why not? "Yes" I said. She said, "Do you notice anything strange about your apartment? Like a funny smell, or anything like that?"

 

I have to say that at that moment, I felt that strange feeling when the hair on the back of your neck stands up. I knew that she was about to tell me something that I both wanted, and didn't want, to know.

 

I told her yes, that I did sometimes notice a funny smell, but that I kept things very clean and burned candles and that it wasn't too bad-- just when I first got home was when I really noticed it.

 

"That's good" she said. "You just let me know if you need anything." Then she asked me my name again. I told her, and she said something like, "That's what I thought you said, but I thought maybe I didn't hear you right."

 

I knew there was something the woman wasn't telling me. For the next month, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about that interaction. I decided that if I ran into her again I would press her for more details.

 

On valentine's day that year, my Dad and stepmother, who live in California, sent me a flower bouquet. They new I didn't have a boyfriend and were just being sweet. Since it came in the middle of the day when I was at work, it was delivered to my upstairs neighbors, whom I had never met. Shortly after I came home, there was a knock on my front door. When I answered it, there was a man in his 40's standing there, holding the a bouquet of flowers in a vase. "Are you Laura?" he asked. "Yes," I said. He gave me the strangest look and then said, "These came for you today." I took the flowers, but when I went to thank him, he turned away and almost bolted up the stairs. He looked like he had seen a ghost.

 

It was either the next day or a couple of days later that I was leaving my apartment when little girl who lived in the apartment complex was riding by my door on her big wheel. Since my door was open, she stopped and looked inside. She was about 5 or 6 years old. "Hi!" I said, "You can come in if you want." She seemed very curious about the inside of my apartment. But she shook her head and started backing away from the door, pushing her bigwheel backward. I went outside and was locking my door behind me when she said, "Did you know the lady that died?"

 

I said, "What?" She said, "The lady that died." And pointed at my apartment. "A lady died there?" I said. She nodded. I squatted down so that I was at eye level with her. "When did this happen?" I said. But she didn't answer. She looked pretty scared. "That's okay," I said. "Bye bye-- see you later."

 

I went directly upstairs and knocked on the property manager's door. "Look, I said, I'm sorry to bother you, but I need to ask you a question." She looked at me like she knew what I was going to say. "A little girl just told me that a woman died in my apartment-- is that true?" She looked at me for a few seconds, and then she nodded. "I didn't want to say anything to you," she said, "The rental agency said that I should say anything."

 

"What happened?" I said.

 

"She committed suicide." She answered.

 

"When?" I asked.

 

"The day after Princess Diana died. I guess she was a huge fan of Princess Diana, and they think her death had something to do with it. But the thing is, she was a recluse. She almost never came out of her apartment except to go shopping or when she had to. So, the didn't find her body at first. It was your upstairs neighbors that started to notice a bad smell about two weeks later. And that's when we opened it up and found her. It was really bad. She had been decomposing for two weeks-- and it was the weirdest thing I've ever seen-- there was this black mold growing all over everything-- the walls, the mirrors-- they had to throw everything of hers away because it was covered with that black mold."

 

Honestly, I was feeling right then the way you probably feel right now reading this-- there is no way this could really be true. I must be making this up. I'm not. But still, some part of me then, even with everything I had been through, I didn't believe her. So here's what I did. I went to the Tompkins County library and looked up the obituaries on microfiche for September of 1997, and I found her obituary. She was a writer from California (I am from California, and I am a writer). She was twenty years older than me, and her first name, middle and last initials were the same as mine.

 

With a photocopy of the obituary in my hand, I went to the rental agent's office. I asked her if it was true, and she admitted that it was. I asked her why or how she could possibly, in good conscience, have rented an apartment to me when I had almost exactly the same name as the woman who had committed suicide in the apartment only a month before I moved in. She didn't have an answer, but she was very apologetic and offered to let me move into a different, empty unit- right next door. I did, but one month later, I moved out of that apartment complex entirely. I didn't feel like a simple wall between the two apartments was enough to really make any difference.

 

I still don't really understand what happened to me. The circumstances of what happened were so intimately tied up in my own mental state and life, that it is impossible for me to believe that this could have happened to anyone but me-- it was as if I was meant to move into that apartment. But I am a person who does not simply "believe" things-- the facts have to support the feelings. In this case, the facts are what made what I thought was just a severe bout with depression into something that I have no other way to describe than being paranormal.

Submitted by Laura M

MR. FLAGG'S GHOSTLY CANDY

A recent talk of old times with my mother brought this story back in the light after 45 years. When I was a child at age 4 my family lived in Rochester NY, a double house on a corner, which everyone seemed to use the back walk as a shortcut. Being so young and confined to stay by the house, I soon became familiar with the people who used it. Mr Flagg, a man in his late 70s was a regular. Usually returning from the local bar, Mr Flagg a tall slender man,well dressed with clothes which may have been a bit outdated, always greeted me with a pat on the head and some Necco candy (round pink candy which taste may remind one of pepto bismol )

I would gladly take the candy and after he left would give them to my mother because I really didn't care for the taste. Suddenly Mr Flagg no longer showed up for quite some time. Being a child I really didn't think about it, then one day here he came with a big smile, a pat on the head and Neccos! When he had gone I once again brought the Neccos in to Mom, and saw a strange look on her face. She asked, "Where did you get these?" I told her from Mr Flagg. "How long have you been keeping them?" She asked. I told her he just gave them to me. With a puzzled look on her face she went back to what she was doing and never spoke a word about it. I never saw Mr Flagg again after that day. Just recently, not knowing what made her think of it, she asked me if I remembered Mr Flagg. I said Yes, and she then asked me about the Last time he gave me candy, and wondered if I was telling the truth. I said "Of course!" She then told me that Mr Flagg had died two weeks before it happened. A very true story.

Submitted by CBUDZFORME

THE UNEXPECTED VISITOR

We lived in a railroad style apartment meaning rooms ran in succession to one another. One night my two brothers, my sister and I were watching T.V. That evening my older brother Edward had came by and left his pet German Sheppard named "King" with us for the night. The lights were off in all of the rooms and the living room except for the kitchen light, the television was up against the wall and to the right of the doorway that led to the rooms and the kitchen doorway was to the left of that one.

We were sitting on the couch and King was laying on the floor in front of us, when all of a sudden I noticed that a form was walking down towards us from the back rooms. I thought it was my mother but she had been asleep since early and the form was more like a man's! When it reached the living room doorway we all looked at it and we could see right through him! He was a grayish black shadow, but transparent! We were all speechless at what we were looking at and then that's when King stood up and started to growl. The form turned left into the kitchen and King gave chase as we followed behind. We all stood by the kitchen doorway and saw that King was barking at the refrigerator. The shadow was behind the refrigerator. We could see part of his shoulder and arm sticking out from a space that was only two inches from the wall. It seemed that every time it tried to move out from behind there King would make it go back when he approached barking closer at it. Every time the shadow moved a bit more out of the space king would back up some but bark even more wildly! Then the shadow came entirely out from behind the refrigerator and flew out the kitchen window through the glass pane. King gave chase towards the window and kept barking near the window sill. Till this day we still talk about that experience and wonder what would have happened if King was not there that night. Would it have tried to tell us something or try to communicate with us? We were all scared since we saw it -- but one thing was for sure, no one ever stayed home alone!

Submitted by Excalibur866

 

THE GHOST OF AUNT JEMIMA

 

In 1978, I was attending Cal State Fullerton while working in Anaheim and living in nearby Orange, California. The half hour drive to work and school was starting to get old, so I decided to look for a place to rent near the university. I had been looking for a couple of months, and not having much luck finding affordable rentals, when a friend of mine from High School called to say that he had just found a small, cheap house for rent in Fullerton and he was looking for a roommate to help come up with the cash that was needed to move in (clean up deposit, first and last months rent, etc.)

 

The rent sounded right for my budget (in fact, much cheaper than anything I had come across), so the next evening after work, I decided to check the place out. It turned out to be an old, dilapidated house in downtown Fullerton, near the corner of Lemon and Amerige. The place was a small, three-bedroom cottage, that was about 90 years old at the time that I lived there. My room mate got the front bedroom, I got the back bedroom, and the third bedroom (really a glorified porch) was used as either a common area or rented out to short-term roommates from time-to-time.

 

My bedroom was an extremely tiny room at the back of the house, barely big enough for a bed and a dresser. The door to my room had been painted so many times, that it would no longer close and latch. So each and every night before retiring to bed, I had to force the door closed, and then wedge a towel under the bottom edge of the door to make certain that it would stay closed (and to ensure that I would not be awoken by noisy roommates and unscheduled late night parties.) home from work sometime after midnight.)

 

One night, after I had been living in the house for about a month, I had a very strange experience.

 

I was home alone, and I had just gone to bed for the evening. I was lying there, trying to fall asleep, when suddenly the door swung wide open and a specteral "being" floated into my room. The "ghost" looked like a black or hispanic woman, dressed in turn of the century sharecropper clothes (a big apron and a "do-rag" on her head ... just like the old-school image of Aunt Jemima, which you might remember from pancake syrup bottle labels from your childhood.)

 

The ghost didn't actually have legs; it kind of "floated" about a foot above the floor, and it didn't appear to be made of solid matter either. It looked like it was made out of the "static" that you used to see on a pre-cable era TV set, when you had it tuned between channels; millions of little black and white dots, buzzing around like a cloud of angry bees.

 

So "Aunt Jemima" floated into my room and stopped about four feet away from where I lay. I sat up in bed and said "What?" and shook my head. Aunt Jemima paused for a moment, turned and looked directly at me with cold, dark eyes, and then slowly vanished into thin air.

 

At this point, every hair on my body was standing up and my back was covered with goosebumps (as I tell this story, over 28 years later, it still has the same effect on me.) So I got out of bed, retrieved an iron curtain rod that I kept near the bed for defensive purposes, and began to stalk the house, looking for an intruder. I checked all the bedrooms, the closets, under the beds, and even the attic, but there was nobody in the house except me. Before I even started my search, I more-or-less knew that there wasn't anybody in the house but me, but I just couldn't believe that I had seen a ghost, and was actually hoping that there was some other, more logical explanation for what I had seen.

 

The next day, I kept trying to tell myself that it had only been a dream or a hallucination, but I knew that something paranormal had happened, because I clearly remembered that after I had seen the "ghost" and I lept out of bed to check for intruders, I had noticed that the door to my room was wide open, with the towel tightly wedged between the door and the threshold. I was certain I'd closed the door and put the towel under the door like I always did, but there it was, wide open, with the towel jammed underneath it, as if the door had been pushed open by somebody very strong.

 

Weeks went by, without any further strange incidents, and I gradually forgot about my encounter with Aunt Jemima and adapted to life in the run-down old house.

 

Then, one night about two months later, a new girl friend was staying over at my house. This was one of the first times that she had slept over at my house, and we were both crammed into my tiny twin bed, not sleeping well at all.

 

In the middle of the night, my girl friend suddenly shook me awake. She said that she had been laying there trying to fall asleep, when suddenly two young black children had appeared in the room. Both of them were dressed up in "Sunday School Clothes" (as my girl friend put it), and there was a little girl sitting about two feet away from the bed, and a little boy sitting over in the corner. She said she started to sit up in bed, and then the little girl's head dissappeared, then both of the ghosts slowly faded away.

 

I didn't want to drive her home at 4:00 in the morning, so I told my girl friend that it had probably just been a dream. After a little bit of convincing, we both went back to sleep.

 

About ten years later, I told this story to my dad. His first reaction was disbelief, But as I explained the bit about the door being forced open, he conceded, "You know, that's a funny thing, but up until WWII, that part of town (Lemon and Amerige) had been the black neighborhood." (Dad lived in Fullerton in the 1930s.)

 

Submitted by Scott Micthell

 

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REVENGE ON THE PASING RIVER

 

 

"Hurry Lucrezia, it's low tide. Manong (our chef) is going to make the most heavenly clam soup," cried out cousin Heinzie.

 

The swift currents of the Pasig came up to her ankles. It was difficult to stand on the riverbed. Countless tahong clams had attached themselves to flat oval stones. She scooped up a handful.

 

"Who wants pandanus baskets for the clams?" asked Satya, one of their Sikh bodyguards.

 

Always adventurous, seven year old Lucrezia lay down among the circular pebbles.

 

"Ooh! I can see tiny blue and red fish swimming around me. I love it. They are kissing me softly on my head and feet," she exclaimed.

 

She had an ascendancy over most of her cousins because she was tall, bright and beautiful. Nine children plopped down on the water oohing and aahing. It was captivating to be spread eagled in the limpid waters of the Pasig River.

 

Casa Rizalina, their Grandmother's historic Filipino mansion in Tanay was a thirty-meter walk. It was a picturesque town with clean air, golden sunshine, and not a concrete house in sight. The green hills of Tanay cascaded into the streams and tributaries of the Pasig in Rizal province, two hours by car from Manila.

 

"I'd better gather as many tahong as I can. The tide's not coming in till dusk, but I don't want to ruin the magic just yet

 

"Come! There are huge silverfish here," yelled cousin Freckie some distance away from them, hidden among the tall bamboo trees.

 

Trust pestiferous Freckie to do that . All the cousins jumped up and ran towards him. "Show us," they cried out.

 

"I'm staying. I enjoy these moments alone with nature.

 

"Don't tarry Lucrezia. Your bag will overflow with tahong just the same where the milkfish are swarming," said Satya.

 

"I'll be right behind you," she replied.

 

She slid from pebble to pebble filling her hands with tahong and slowly letting them fall into the bag. The sound of the rushing streams reminded her of a symphony of crickets.

 

She heard enraged men shouting and cursing from the opposite bank. Their prey, a man with nothing but a hemp loincloth staggered into the stream. His chest heaved from the exertion. He ran past her and the crimson water from his torn feet splattered her.

 

I've never seen such large beads of sweat. He is grunting as loudly as a pig, poor man.

 

The hunters close held bolos, parangs, and krises. She recognized them; people from Tanay and friends of Grandmother Esperanza.

 

"Did you see the man? Where did he go?" She pointed towards the left in silence

 

"Makapili! Surrender! The animas cannot rest until they are avenged. Wala kang pag-asa." You have no hope.

 

I know what Makapili means. Everyone does. They are the ones who betrayed Filipinos, Americans and Europeans to the Japanese during the war. Makapili turned in Great Uncle Alcibiades and other friends and relatives of our clan including babies. We never saw them again.

 

The Makapili threw himself before Lucrezia. He clasped his hands as if in prayer and sobbed "Patawarin, Patawarin." Forgive me.

 

She froze on the spot. A twisted knife ran through her spine.

 

He is a wicked man. I pity him. Would I help him if I had the power? I don't know.

 

Two men approached him from behind. One beheaded him with the Kris so ferociously his head flew upwards. The other caught it in midair and placed it inside a large hemp basket. In silence, they bowed and placed their hands over their hearts before Lucrezia. Then without a glance at his headless corpse they walked away.

 

A stunned Lucrezia walked like an automaton to her Grandmother's mansion. Her family sat in animated conversation in the veranda.

 

I just saw a Makapili beheaded, she announced loudly,

 

"Where Nina?" asked her grandmother meeting her mother's gaze.

 

"In the stream not far from Casa Rizalina where we gather all the tahong."

 

"We must recite novenas to Saint Jude Thaddeus. That poor wretch will need all the help he can get," declared my grandmother.

 

"Who is Saint Jude Thaddeus?"

 

"He was a cousin and an Apostle of Jesus. When we need help in missions which are impossible we pray to him," Camilla, Lucrezia's mother told her.

 

"Indeed, Saint Jude is the Patron Saint of the hopeless and the helpless," affirmed my grandmother.

 

We recited the novena for the repose of the soul of the Makapili, Herminio Cruz every afternoon for thirty days.

 

I never thought about it again until the day I revisited Tanay twenty years later.

 

The crystal waters of the stream had turned murky. Cholera and typhoid lurked relentlessly. The tahong were now an endangered species.

 

"The beheading of the Makapili, which you witnessed, took place in 1946, long before you were born. We never spoke about it. It must have been a sighting or a vision on your part," revealed my aunt Allegra.

 

I began to weep for all the dead that had passed through my life and would continue to do so for as long as I lived. They all enriched me in some way.

 

"We are all endowed with various degrees of prescience, my Lucrezia. Your mother, Dahlia and I have it. Your grandmother has powerful friends from the spirit world. The tycoon Don Cesar read people like books. Your paternal grandmother Zorayda conversed with beings from other dimensions. Because of our wealth people call us eccentric. Never mind. Our gifts are to be used only for the good of our family and clan. They are never to be revealed to outsiders," murmured Aunt Dahlia enfolding me in her arms.

 

Submitted by N. B. Lucrezia