Ghost Stories!

Mod Note: This thread is for sharing your experiences with what you believe to be the supernatural. It's not a place to show off your writing skills, nor to critique the what's been posted within. However, if you see something that catches your fancy, feel free to run with the idea in the appropriate venue.

On to the OP:

Recently, one of my writer friends on Facebook started posting about ghosts and witches and it reminded me of back in college during undergrad when I was haunted by a ghost (i did not believe in ghosts until that point!)
So if you have ghost stories you'd like to share about your personal experiences with the "other realm" please do share
(Mods, if this isn't allowed, I'm sorry and please delete!)

Here's mine:
Sophomore year, around 1-2am, I'm staying up late working on an assignment at my desk by lamplight. I'm in a single room, so everything is compact. My desk doubles as a tall book shelf. I'm typing along and a book falls off of my shelf right onto my desk. Me, thinking nothing of it, puts it back onto the shelf (remember, I dont believe in the supernatural at this point). I'm typing along again. A few minutes later, another book falls off my shelf and onto my desk. I'm thinking, "maybe i'm typing too hard and shaking the desk" and "maybe I accidentally bumped the desk..." so I reshelve the book and continue working. The third time the book falls, I'm getting weirded out and stand up to look at the shelf. Nothing out of the ordinary, so i put the book back. I continue typing. Across the room... my tall mirror mounted on the wall with velcro, COMES OFF THE WALL AND SHATTERS! I freak out! I run over to it and (i'm still a non-believer) examine the wall. Maybe the wall was sweating and the adhesive that bound the velcro to the wall slipped. NOPE! the sticky part of the velcro was still stuck to the wall. The velcro part stuck to the back of the mirror was still there. So I stuck the velcro back on the wall and tested it by tugging on the mirror to try to see if it would come off again. I tugged so hard, i ripped the paint off the wall! So the mirror didn't just fall off the wall!
By this point I was so freaked out, I ran out into the hallway, knocking on my neighbors door asking if we had an earth quake. she said she didn't feel anything and that when I knew.... some paranormal activity shit was happening in my room. I didn't go back in there! I had the nun down the hall come and bless my room!

THE END

 

Hat on, as long as you're just posting for fun and shares and not for critique, I see no problem with it.

 

i mean, i guess I should change it from "ghost stories" to just "haunting experiences" or something like that. I'm not looking for "stories" per se, but just swopping paranormal happening with one another

conversation starter

 

I'm just going to drop a note at the top of your OP so everybody knows what the rules are.

ETA: Or I could move it to Writing Prompts. That would be a legit place to swap stories which would let members run with them on their own if they wanted to. Sound okay to you?

 

Yep! Thanks!

 

I love ghost stories so let's see if we can infuse more life into this topic.

I've never had a clearly paranormal experience but I remember one story that my sister told me (she was the only witness so there is no proof that it's true). Not a very long story. Essential when entering her room one time, a doll flew across the room only to land several feet from the shelf it sat on.

When I was a teenager I did have a few episodes of hypnopompic hallucinations, which to the unaware soul would seem to be paranormal in nature. Luckily I had read stories about this phenomenon so I understood the scientific cause. Otherwise I would believe: a werewolf tried to break into my room, aliens had potentially abducted me and then injected me with anti-paralysis medicine as I woke up, my bed rocked violently a la The Exorcist, and that I was almost possessed by a demon while attending college.

 

When my family and I moved into a new house when I was 9, my room had the name "Cynthia" painted on the door. We painted over it but you can still see the name on the door.
Well, we also had a cat. Every night, he'd park himself in the threshold, facing out into the darkness, and just sit there. My older brother says he's protecting me from Cynthia and that if he's not there, Cynthia would get me. Naturally, I was scared, and from that point on, I started closing my door at night so "Cynthia" couldn't get in.

Moral of the story.... Older brothers suck!

 

Mine isn't ghost related, but you did say paranormal, so here it is:

I still remember it very clearly, though it happened decades ago when I was probably around 13 or so. I had gone to bed but was completely unable to sleep, and it being a perfect summer night with the window open and warm air streaming in carrying incredible scents, I finally rolled off the bed and kneeled in front of the window with my arms crossed on the sill looking out at the incredible night sky. Sighing wind, insects droning sleepily, the whole perfect summer night thing. The sky was black and the stars looked unusually bright.

And as I watched, suddenly one of them moved. Just a little bit. It slowly drifted to the side, just a short distance, and then stopped and again became a fixed star. I was utterly astonished. My breath was in deep gasps, I felt like I had just witnessed something miraculous. But look as I might, I could not determine which star had moved, they all looked exactly as stars are supposed to look.

But I kept staring out there, and after a while another one moved, and then another, and after a while about a dozen of them were wheeling around in the sky in something resembling a dance. I leaped to my feet in excitement and ran to my mom's room—she was still up. I realized if I told her what I had seen she wouldn't believe me, so I just grabbed her wrist and said something like "Come here, you've got to see what's happening outside!"

She did, and together we looked out. The show had stopped, but pretty soon it started up again—slowly like before, built up to the full crescendo, then subsided and all the stars froze in place again and apparently it was done.

This event stayed with me all my life. And in defense against the idea that I had dreamed it or imagined it, I had a witness.

Well, one day when I was an adult I mentioned it to her and she had no idea what I was talking about, but was intrigued. I thought she either had forgotten or it was so fantastical she had blocked it out, because she's not the kind of person who believes in 'silly stuff like that'. It was incredibly frustrating to me, because my validation of this amazing experience depended on her, and she just couldn't remember it! How does a person forget something like that??!!

And then the thing happened that explained it all. The blu-ray of Close Encounters came out. I loved that movie when I first saw it. I sat down in front of the flatscreen and lo and behold, the exact same spectacle played itself out before my eyes—even the buildup from a single slow-moving star all the way up to massive sky-dance, and the rapid winding-down to normal sky.

It was a scene from the movie.

In the interim I had learned a lot about dreams and sleep science, and suddenly realized the whole thing had been a sort of hypnopompic hallucination, a 'waking dream' experience, where you can swear you were awake (though it tends to happen in the bedroom or someplace where you came 'very near to falling asleep'). The imagery was so arresting it had captured my imagination and showed up in a very realistic false awakening.

Yowsa! Sounds like you had the full-on classic sleep paralysis experience.

 

How did I forget this one? I did have an experience that definitely fits this thread.

It was about three years ago, I had a black dog named Pepper. I got her from my sister in a round-about way too detailed to go into, but her name was already Pepper, and the first day I had her we watched an Iron Man movie while we bonded, and my 'full dog name' for her became Pepperpotts, but I always just called her Pepper.

Anyway, a bit of a spoiler, this involves her death, so stop here if you don't want to read the rest.

One evening I was taking the trash out and saw her laying curled up on the sidewalk right in front of my house. But—didn't I just walk past her a moment, ago—wasn't she sitting just inside the front door? I took a couple of steps back so I could see, and there she was looking out at me. A this point I got the goose bumps and the sense of everything closing in or however you'd describe it. I'm not a superstitious person at all, but this was an honest-to-goodness supernatural feeling just like our primitive ancestors would experience at times.

I looked back at her curled up on the sidewalk. Yep, she was still there. For a long moment, frozen in supernatural dread, I looked back and forth. There were 2 Peppers, both real and plain as day. I started thinking maybe it's a neighbor's dog that just looks like her, so I stepped closer, and realized it was actually a bizarrely Pepper-shaped shadow from a cluster of leaves, cast by a streetlight nearby. To reassure myself, because the illusion was so real and I was so strongly convinced (it still looked exactly like her) I had to slide a foot through the shadow. Nothing but sidewalk.

But the sense of supernatural dread didn't dissipate. My heart rate and breathing had escalated, and I was still experiencing the whole shebang, hearing the Twilight Zone music and everything. It really shook me deeply.

I was already familiar with the concept of a Doppelganger or an uncanny double. Seeing one that closely resembles somebody you know is a precursor of their death or of something terrible happening to them, especially if you get the goose bumps and the sense of supernatural dread.

Pepper was already a very old dog. Maybe I had subconsciously sensed something in her behavior and deep inside I knew it was getting close, and I needed something to prepare myself. That's my rationalist explanation, but other people would interpret it the other way around and that version would work just as well for them. Ultimately they mean the same thing.

It was 2 or 3 days later when I heard a strange sound outside, some kind of shrill animal yelp that didn't even sound at all like her, but I knew it was. She was sitting looking really droopy at the far end of the yard, under the tree that had cast the shadow. I dropped to a knee and patted my leg, called to her, and she stood and came toward me, but she was really slow and weak, walking very unsteadily. She couldn't quite make it—she collapsed half on the sidewalk, overlapping the exact spot where I had seen her shadow-self.

She died quickly and the pain didn't last long at all fortunately. That's about the best you can hope for when anybody dies. I believe it was a heart attack. I buried her in the back yard the next day. Sorry it's such a downer story, but hey, ghost stories tend to involve death...

 

I've had a few bizarre experiences.

I was struggling to sleep one night, when I heard creaking on the landing outside my room. That wasn't too unusual in that house, so it didn't specifically bother me. After that I heard more noise, like someone trying to push open my bedroom door. At that point I started to feel uneasy. Then I felt like something was inside my room, by the door. I tried to convince myself I was imagining things, with limited luck.
The entity advanced to being beside by bed. I tried to feel secure as I had a mosquito net that covered my bed. But then it leaned in over me, and I was tensed up grabbing my duvet tightly. I didn't succeed in staying calm, but I did an expert imitation of a rabbit in headlights.

I've seen a UFO, ironically whilst I was in hospital. It hovered over a roof for a fair while, then shot off into the night.

I was in bed, waiting for my ex to return from the bathroom, when the bedroom door suddenly slammed shut. There were no windows open or a temperature drop. No other doors had been opened or closed. I wasn't too unnerved by it, even though the door really did slam itself, as I'd been told it would happen a couple of weeks beforehand! No person told me either. I can't explain how that happened either.

 

I guess I can say I had another supernatural experience while at my university. My university is known for having supernatural occurrences, since theres a cemetery literally in the middle of campus of priests and nuns. Again, I never believed in any of that stuff and rolled my eyes whenever someone brought up stuff like that.

but this event happened off campus. It was my 19th birthday and, I'll admit, I'm a square. I'd never been to parties, clubs, or had anything stronger than Bacardi. So my friends wanted to take me out to a club. fake IDs and everything! (I didnt even have party clothes, so I had to barrow their roommates stuff to get all dressed up).

We never made it there. The car broke down on the turnpike into the city and we were stranded. we ended up hitchhiking into the city, but they dropped us off at a gas station because we wouldnt go with them to "dance in their club." So again, we were stranded. we flagged down a police officer, who said she couldnt help us (note, we were in club clothes, and my friends had already pregamed). So we decided to walk back to the turnpike and somehow find our car.
So we're walking and walking. Climb the barrier back onto the turnpike and are walking and walking. I break my heel (shoes that werent even mine). No i'm walking barefoot and my teammate is crying because she thinks she ruined my birthday. the other one is saying we're going to die. there are no lights on the turnpike. we'd probably get hit by a car or mauled by an animal, or kidnapped.
I kept reassuring them that it would all be ok. that everything was going to be ok. a few more hours go by and suddenly this light turns on. I was the only one to notice it. It was in the distance and up on a hill. I kid you not, it was a church. The light couldnt have been motion activated because we were on the turnpike and the church wasnt. I tell my friends to just wait here. so we stop walking and just wait. one is crying, the other one is drunk and falling asleep. another is angry at the situation, and i'm just sitting there on the barrier as calm as can be. then a car pulls up and its the turnpike police. he says he found our car.... a few miles in the opposite direction. He loads us all in the car, takes us back the other way to our car, gives it a jump and some gas, and we're good to go.
I never saw that church again.

my mom says the ghost from my room was watching over me that night, but I didnt "meet" that ghost until a year later and by that time, i'd forgotten all about that night on the turnpike.

 

That sounds like the beginning of a horror movie.

... And even as I typed that I realized it's a line from the beginning of some horror movie (maybe it was Chainsaw Massacre? Not sure) and immediately someone else in the van said "Or a porno."

 

Detroit Rock City, about the guys trying to get to the KISS concert.

 

• Confusion

What is happening?
Why are things different?

• Loss, sorrow, regret.

Mourning family for the young ghost whom doesn't know it's a ghost but has a story recalling a terrible night and why things are so different now until a climax where they find out they died that night and now they're a ghost.

• Suspense...

IDK, write a good ghost story, and try and film it and story board it and... Work on music queues for suspense...
Or, make it good Vs. evil but have the evil take the good one by one and write perilous situations in your ghost story.

• Psychological

Haunting of the mind, damned smorgasbord at psychiatric hospital, that type of stuff.

• Friendly

 

Umm, this thread isn't about writing, it's about your personal supernatural experiences.

 

When i was a kid, i had a single bed and its right side lay against a wall.
This one night i couldnt sleep and it was pretty late (i was a crappy sleeper anyway) so i turned to face the wall and just lay there hoping id fall asleep.
Anyway, i was staring at it and i heard a low voice shout my name from my bedroom door.
When i turned to check it there was no one there. I always had my door open so i figured my dad had put a voice on to scare me, thinking it was funny.
I wasnt having any of it so i got up to find him.
My parents room was next to mine and it had this door on it where youd have to pull it really hard so that it clicked shut. It creaked loudly when ever you moved it aswell.
So i got in front of that door and it was completely closed, i went to open it and it made its usual loud sounds.
I look in my parents bedroom and they were both in bed snoring away.
I ran back to my bed hid under the covers for most of the night.

 

I often hear noises or voices when I'm falling asleep or waking up.

They may well just be my brain doing something as I drift between sleep and wakefulness, but man, they seem real.

I was in bed in a hotel in Japan once, eyes shut, at that stage when you're waking up but not fully awake, and a voice said something right next to my head. I don't remember whether it was in Japanese or not, although I'm sure it was a word or words, rather than just random sounds.

I woke up pretty sharpish.

 

When I was a teenager I had a friend of mine sleepover with me in the livingroom. We were talking about boys and such. Then we seen someone go into the bathroom down the hallway. We thought it was my dad but after an hour he never came out. So I knocked on the door to see if he was okay. No answer. So I opened it and no one was there.

 

Might be a bit late adding to this thread, but here we go...

I went through a brief Wicca phase when I was a teenager and I remember taking up meditation because of it. I'm not a spiritual person, (the reason why I eventually dropped Wicca; I couldn't make myself believe in the gods) I like to think I'm open-minded, but my mind just refuses to accept religion/spirituality into my personal life, as much as I've tried to convince it otherwise. The point is that this shouldn't have happened to a close-minded cynic like me.

It was late evening, I was alone in my dim room, listening to one of those relaxing rain meditation tracks. I had never touched alchohol or drugs and wasn't even sleep deprived. Nothing was out of the norm, but right from the start this meditation session was different. Almost immediately after closing my eyes, I felt like I was falling into myself. Soon I couldn't hear the music or anything around me, and in my head it felt as though I had shrunk to the size of a molecule and fell through into my own chest, behind my ribs, where I was falling through stars. The inside of my body was a stunning galaxy and I vaguely felt like I was looking at my body as it was, just a vessel for these stars that were my conscience.
I don't know how long I was falling. Eventually I found myself looking at the room I was in, though my eyes were still closed. My skin crawled and I suddenly felt like I wasn't alone. In my mind, I saw a woman sitting next to me, mirroring my position. I knew right then that she was The Morrígan, an Irish/Wiccan goddess of death, war, lust, and all of that fun stuff. She matched an illustration I saw of her: muscular, lean, middle-aged, a mane of wild dark reddish-brown hair, a sharp face, and dressed in battered leathers and furs, knives hanging from her belt.
At this point, I started to feel uneasy. I honestly couldn't tell if I was dozing off and dreaming, or if it was real. It felt disturbingly real. That unsettled me to no end. I asked, mentally, "Is that you, Morrígan? Are you real?"
She slowly turned her head to give me a, This moron dares to disturb me? look, and growled, "Yes."
The feeling that I wasn't alone was overwhelming, as was the feeling that I was in immediate danger. Thoroughly freaked out at this point, I snapped myself out of the trance, finding myself alone and unharmed in my room. It took a while for the sinister feeling to stop crawling up my back, but nothing bad happened or came of that evening.
I'm not saying I'm a believer now. I'm still a skeptic. But I admit I have absolutely no idea what happened that night. My logic-loving brain is at loss. I could have been dreaming, but I'm not a lucid dreamer and have never been able to order myself awake. I admit the whole thing disturbed me enough that it was years before I tried meditating again. I never experienced anything like that before or since.

Any therapists here who want to analyze and judge this? It's all yours!

 

When I was about fifteen, I was laying in bed one night reading after everyone else had gone to bed. I heard someone go in the bathroom next door to me, then burst out of the bathroom, banging the door hard against the wall. Footsteps ran down the hall; I could hear the change in sound when the person went from the carpeted bedroom wing hall to the terrazzo tile in the entrance hall. Thinking it was my brother, I got up and went to ask him what in the heck he was doing. House was dark, everyone was in their rooms asleep. Doors were locked, not a mouse was stirring. Weird. I went back to bed. Next morning I woke up to find my curtains hanging by a single hook at each side of the window and drooping in the middle until they almost touched me. Someone would have had to stand on my bed to unhook the curtains or be very, very skilled with a long pole.

That was the only time I recall anything like that happening in that house. It was a new house, no one else had ever lived there, so had no reason to haunt the place. And seriously- a ghost who goes to the bathroom and unhooks curtains? Makes me laugh even fifty years later. I never have decided what the heck went on that night.