Who Believes in Ghosts?

[snoweater]

i'll join...

My house in college had a ghost-like occurence pretty regularly. dude that lived in the room right next to mine had a huge round dark stain that appeared on his comforter in the same spot about once a month as if something was dripping on him while he slept. After the first time he washed his stuff and moved his bed, spot's there in the same place amonth later. He changed his sheets and comforter completely, moved his bed again, spot's there in the same place. It never bled through to the sheets at all, so it came from on top of his bed, not underneath.
Pretty fucked up, he scared the hell outta me cause he would wake up screaming since it happened while he was sleeping in the bed! Nothing else strange ever happened, no leaks on the ceiling, no open windows, no noises, kept his door locked with a piece of string in the jam to see if anyone opened it with a key, nothing. We scraped the ceiling and repainted it finally when he started really freaking out, but it kept happening the whole time we lived there. No idea how the hell this shit happens if ghosts/spirits/whatever you call it, don't exist.

I always told him to cut out a section and have it tested by the chemistry department but he wouldn't cause he was afraid of what it might be.

[HankScorpio]

OK, here's my only ghost story.

When I was 13 or 14, I was in my family's house in CT. Not an old house, but the land we lived on had people living on it dating back to the mid 1600s. It was winter and I awoke, it was still dark outside, and turned over to glance at my clock radio. Just as I turned over, the clocked changed from 4:59 to 5:00 AM. What woke me up was blinking light that lit up my whole room.

The first thing I think was, my parents left their TV on. My parent's room was at the opposite end of the hall as mine, so I could tell if their TV was on. I got up and walked into their room to turn it off. The TV was on and flashing like a beacon would. As soon as I walked into their room, the TV shut off. At this point I was a little freaked out. My parents were asleep, TV remote on their night table. I turn around to leave the room and the TV turns back on, still blinking. So, I'm scared shitless by now and force myself to go back into the room; sure enough, the TV turns off. Now, I'm freaked so I turn around and run back to my room; the TV turns back on. Every time I enter the room it shuts off, as soon as I leave it turns back on. Still doing the same blinking thing. I shut my door and go back to sleep, trying to forget what just happened.

The next morning I tell my parents what happened and they look at me like I'm crazy.

So that next night I go to bed and am little scared from what happened. I fall asleep eventually and am awoken again by the same blinking light from my parent's TV. I roll over and my clock radio changes from 4:59 to 5:00. I almost shit myself, it was like some Poltergeist meets Groundhog Day shit. The exact same thing happend at the exact same time, 24 hours later. I shut my door and went back to sleep. It never happend again after that.

I think about it to this day, more than 15 years later and can't figure it out.

[edg]

Saw a special on national geographic channel the other night... it's called Old Hag Syndrome:

http://paranormal.about.com/library/.../aa112000a.htm

Thanks for the link, found that really interesting. I get sleep paralysis quite often, and have never really had any thought that it was a ghostly or supernatural thing - just my body fucking up.

Think it raises an interesting point about the psychological affect of already holding superstitions - I don't believe in ghosts, so I never thought it was a supernatural phenomenon; clearly it seems that people give it much more sinister associations.

edg

[Poop~Ghost]

When you are sleeping your body is going through some pretty wild processes - from releasing hormones to going through different sleep cycles and dreaming. Waking up either fully or partially can really make you feel like you are tripping balls.

As a kid I would get night terrors, where I could walk around and talk to my parents while still dreaming and freaking the fuck out of my folks.

Hallucinating visually and auditory things are common... you can "feel" things if your brain deems it so.

Ghosts? I lump ghosts into the same category as gods, devils, angles and demons. Shit that people made up to explain shit that they couldn't understand.

[hutash]

Why is it so many of these stories come from New England? Are ghosts Red Sox fans?

It is human nature to explain what they don't understand with a supernatural explanation. It is easier then looking for an answer, or more likely admitting they don't know something and just accepting it. Look at any religion

[72Twenty]

In a house in college I had a tv in my room but only hooked up to a VCR (no cable), so if you turned it on with the VCR still off, it was just a static screen. (yes, I had an extensive collection of porn and ski movies)

Randomly at night the tv would just turn on to the static screen. No remote.

I still have the tv to this day and it has never done it anywhere else. Used to creep me the fuck out.

[snowsprite]

Another odd one I just recalled from my youth...

I have a close friend I spent a lot of time with back when I was in middle school. We did a lot of sleepovers, drew and painted a lot, and skulked around in the woods looking for mystical creatures and stuff. Anyway, I also had a very active imagination and a grandmother who was practically a santeria priestess in Cuba. Not to mention the weird noises I would hear in my house (there's a post about those early in this thred). So we were always on the lookout for strange happenings. But really only one thing stands out with this friend and it was truly an odd one.

One night, I slept over my friends house and it was relatively uneventful. Except that earlier in the afternoon we had found a book laying on the side of the road that afternoon. It was a ragged paperback and on the cover it said "Necromicon." We took it home to check it out. However, after reading some of it we got freaked out and ran back to where we found it and put it back. I take it that it was the fake spell book published by some dude but cannot remember. All I know is that we thought spells were cool...but in a Harry Potter sort of way (we were twelve). We didn't really want to join forces with satan or anything.

After returning the book, we went home and proceeded to do our normal ritual of drawing, watching tv, torturing her older sister, and finally going to bed after staying up way too late.

The next morning, my friend sat up in her bed and said "Hey, wake up...look at this!" She had this little symbol on her finger. She tried to rub it off but it would not budge. We went into the bathroom and scrubbed and scrubbed but it stayed. We went to ask her older sister if she did this, but her sister strongly denied it. The symbol actually looked like a rubber stamp: the edges were very clear and it was very elegantly drawn. I started to believe my friend did it herself, but it was on the top of the lower segment of her index finger on her right hand and she was right-handed. Drawing this with her left hand would have made the writing too shaky. She started accusing me of doing it, but I was sound asleep and I suppose I could have done it in my sleep but I have no conscious memory of drawing the symbol.

After a few days the symbol began to fade and one day it was just gone altogether.

We never could figure out how it got there but we were both worried it had something to do with the book. Of course that would be a stretch but you never know. It was certainly a strange experience and to this day her sister swears she never drew that symbol (she was not very artistic anyway, and this thing was quite nicely done). Who the heck knows what happened. But it still weirds me out and if it wasn't that we all saw it, and her parents saw it...I would think it was a dream.

My friend actually did a little research on this and ended up thinking it was some type of hex. She did have/continues to have an inordinately difficult and messed up life, by the way.

Sprite

[gatorboy]

Another odd one I just recalled from my youth...

I have a close friend I spent a lot of time with back when I was in middle school. We did a lot of sleepovers, drew and painted a lot, and skulked around in the woods looking for mystical creatures and stuff. Anyway, I also had a very active imagination and a grandmother who was practically a santeria priestess in Cuba. Not to mention the weird noises I would hear in my house (there's a post about those early in this thred). So we were always on the lookout for strange happenings. But really only one thing stands out with this friend and it was truly an odd one.

One night, I slept over my friends house and it was relatively uneventful. Except that earlier in the afternoon we had found a book laying on the side of the road that afternoon. It was a ragged paperback and on the cover it said "Necromicon." We took it home to check it out. However, after reading some of it we got freaked out and ran back to where we found it and put it back. I take it that it was the fake spell book published by some dude but cannot remember. All I know is that we thought spells were cool...but in a Harry Potter sort of way (we were twelve). We didn't really want to join forces with satan or anything.

After returning the book, we went home and proceeded to do our normal ritual of drawing, watching tv, torturing her older sister, and finally going to bed after staying up way too late.

The next morning, my friend sat up in her bed and said "Hey, wake up...look at this!" She had this little symbol on her finger. She tried to rub it off but it would not budge. We went into the bathroom and scrubbed and scrubbed but it stayed. We went to ask her older sister if she did this, but her sister strongly denied it. The symbol actually looked like a rubber stamp: the edges were very clear and it was very elegantly drawn. I started to believe my friend did it herself, but it was on the top of the lower segment of her index finger on her right hand and she was right-handed. Drawing this with her left hand would have made the writing too shaky. She started accusing me of doing it, but I was sound asleep and I suppose I could have done it in my sleep but I have no conscious memory of drawing the symbol.

After a few days the symbol began to fade and one day it was just gone altogether.

We never could figure out how it got there but we were both worried it had something to do with the book. Of course that would be a stretch but you never know. It was certainly a strange experience and to this day her sister swears she never drew that symbol (she was not very artistic anyway, and this thing was quite nicely done). Who the heck knows what happened. But it still weirds me out and if it wasn't that we all saw it, and her parents saw it...I would think it was a dream.

My friend actually did a little research on this and ended up thinking it was some type of hex. She did have/continues to have an inordinately difficult and messed up life, by the way.

Sprite

Weird.

Self-fulfilling prophecy?

[flyandski365]

One day I was sitting on the can taking care of business, and pushed out what I swear was a HUGE log. When I went to survey my work, there was nothing there.

That happened a year ago today, and it still scares the shit out of me.

[Poop~Ghost]

One day I was sitting on the can taking care of business, and pushed out what I swear was a HUGE log. When I went to survey my work, there was nothing there.

That happened a year ago today, and it still scares the shit out of me.

POOP*GHOoooooooooooooooSTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gatorboy]

One day I was sitting on the can taking care of business, and pushed out what I swear was a HUGE log. When I went to survey my work, there was nothing there.

That happened a year ago today, and it still scares the shit out of me.

POOP*GHOoooooooooooooooSTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOL

appropriate!

[ML]

One day I was sitting on the can taking care of business, and pushed out what I swear was a HUGE log. When I went to survey my work, there was nothing there.

That happened a year ago today, and it still scares the shit out of me.

POOP*GHOoooooooooooooooSTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wouldn't that actually be a ghost poop?

[Yeti]

Why is it so many of these stories come from New England? Are ghosts Red Sox fans?

As a scientifically-oriented New Englander, I've often wondered about the (social) science of the paranormal. Without regard to the real explanation behind reported ghost sightings, empirically there appear to be patterns in the reports. Could a prerequisite for a ghost report be that you are in a place where you "expect" to see one? We have plentiful old housing stock, and historical traditions that could prime the pump for observations.

I would love to see an actual analysis of ghost sightings. Are they overrepresented in rural areas with old houses? Where's the haunting epicenter of the USA? Why (and how) are ghost reports different in the USA than in other countries? How do cultures that don't report ghost observations differ from those that do? What roles do ghosts play in culture?

Here's an offer. If you can raise me a suitable salary, plus expenses, I'll quit my job and pursue the answers to these questions.

[hutash]

^^^That makes more sense then being a Sox fan, even ghosts aren't that stupid.

[rungsp]

Some friends of ours moved into an old house in New Jersey. Their daughter was about two years old at the time.
About a four years later there was a knock at the door and a woman in her fourties was on the doorstep. She explained that she had been born and had grown up in the house, lived a long way away now, but had been in the area.
My friends invited her in for a coffee and they chatted.
The woman asked if they had noticed anything strange about the house?
Were there some old children's toys that the previous owners had left behind, and had they told them that they were to stay with the house when they eventually moved on?
My friends confirmed that.
Oh yes, they were my mother's the woman said, and I had them too. A doll and a bear.

The woman then asked if my friend's daughter had told her parents about her "friend" that comes to her bedroom upstairs?

A rather odd question, my friends said no, she hadn't. The daughter was up in her room at the time.

The woman said, why don't you ask her? Ask her what the little girl (the mystery friend) wears....it will be a long blue dress.

Puzzled, my friends did that. Now bear in mind the daughter was about six at the time. In a very matter of fact way she said "Oh yes, my friend sometimes comes to play but we only play with the doll and the bear, she has a blue dress"

The parents knew full well that there was no such friend.

The woman explained that when she was small, and had the same bedroom she had the same friend. Once she grew older the friend came less and less and eventually stopped coming to her room.

She also said that when her family moved out of the house the toys simply could not leave the house, every time they packed them in a box to move something would happen, the box would split, the person carrying it would stumble and spill its contents. They gave up and left the toys.

She reassured them that there was no harm in the "friend".

My friends were VERY concerned, they contacted the family who sold them the house and under some pressure they admitted that they had had the same experience, but obviously hadn't mentioned it when selling the house.

My friends are the most sensible people you could meet, their daughter is now a teenager, she no longer sees the friend, but she remembers her well. She is 100% sure it was real, and 100% sure that there was nothing to be scared of.

I 100% believe them. They still live there.

[carvedog]

One day I was sitting on the can taking care of business, and pushed out what I swear was a HUGE log. When I went to survey my work, there was nothing there.

That happened a year ago today, and it still scares the shit out of me.

Oh come on now. Poop eating ghosts?

I have done this several times and this is not the realm of ghosts. Sometimes the right angle and the way it ricochets off the curved part can up and over it out of the main bowl. If you have sufficiently firm and compacted poop. This will usually not happen after a large mexican meal of curry frinstance.....

Ghosts - yes I do believe there are time-space confused beings or entities. Ghosts if you will.

Not a ghost story but more about energy and the collective unconscious:
since the first time I flew to Europe ( we lived in Greece for four years ) I had a recurring nightmare/daydream about a large jet vaporizing into a glass building. Sometimes once or twice a month, sometimes more.

This was the mid 70s and I was a little (er) guy then in middle school. Same dream ( only I didn't have to be asleep to see it) over and over. Then on Sunday Sept 9th, 2001 I had been invited to visit a relative on base here in the western US for a family day thing. I remember it was ridiculously easy to get on the base. No IDs, no getting out of the car, no inspections, no dogs sniffing around - nothing. I had left my sniffables at home expecting sniffing. I was surprised and am usually not paranoid.

Then I started getting scared looking around at the couple thousand people that were there. I kept seeing them disappear. It bothered me enough I mentioned it to my family. They thought I was/am nuts. So whatever.

Two days later the tragedy of 9/11 happened and I have not had the daymare since.

Weird? i thought so.