SpookedOut

A few years ago I got a job with a temp agency working for a big insurance company.  When I went there for the interview, I was led through a bunch of big office areas, past the cafeteria and down to the far end of the building.  Once we passed the cafeteria, it felt like the air got colder and the lights got dimmer – it was weird because it looked pretty normal but the whole atmosphere of that area was different somehow (anyone who is sensitive to energy will know what I mean!)

Anyway, my interviewer wasn’t ready, so the receptionist had me sit in this little hallway waiting area outside the personnel office.  It was quiet and not many people passed that way, being so far away from the main office areas, but I kept looking around because I could swear I felt someone staring at me!  I couldn’t see anyone, but it was such a strong feeling that my skin was almost crawling with uneasiness.

Finally my interviewer called me in and we started the interview.  After we discussed the specifics of the job, I asked about the building we were in, and she said it used to be a factory in the 1930′s-60′s and then sat abandoned for 20 years before the insurance company moved in.  She gave me a weird smile and said, “Why, did you meet someone unusual while you were waiting for me?”  She really stressed the word “unusual” and I asked her what she meant but she shook her head and said never mind, then stood up, shook my hand and thanked me for coming in.  She asked if I could start the next day at 7:00am.  I was curious as hell about the “unusual someone” she mentioned but I didn’t push it, I just agreed to start the next day.

The next morning I was up and ready bright and early, and I got to the job just a little before 7:00.  I went to the personnel office but it wasn’t open yet, so I had to wait.  And AGAIN I started getting that creepy feeling like someone was watching me.  I stood up and walked a little ways down the hall, and the feeling got stronger.

Suddenly, from a doorway from the right side of the hall, a man walked into the hallway.  Except it wasn’t a living person – he was mostly transparent!!!!  I could see enough details to know it was a man and he was wearing an old-style work uniform – and here is the weirdest part, he had NO LEGS!  I could only see his head, torso and arms, but his body was moving up and down slightly, as if he was actually walking across the hallway.

When I saw him, I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared at him, not quite believing what I was seeing – and he turned and looked right at me, raised his arm and pointed at me, not really in a threatening way, but just like he was saying, “I see you.”  Then he continued across the hall and walked through a set of double doors that were closed.  (I later found out that beyond those doors was the old freight elevator that was in use when the building was a factory!)

Someone behind me said my name and I think I jumped about a foot – and when I turned around it was my interviewer from the day before.  She took one look at my face, grinned and said, “Ah, I see you met Walter.”

“Walter?”

“Our resident factory worker from the past.  Just about everyone who works here has seen him, but don’t worry, he’s completely harmless.  He’s not the only ghost we have either, there are several you’ll probably see if you work here long enough.”  She made it all seem very normal, no big deal, but I was practically shaking in my shoes!  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some weird experiences before but I’ve never SEEN a ghost with my own eyes like that!

I only temped at that company for a few weeks, but I never did see Walter again, or any other ghost.  I did feel kind of weird now and then, especially if they asked me to work late and most everyone else had gone home.  When the office got quiet I would hear footsteps or feel a presence nearby, like someone was watching me work.  It wasn’t scary really, just a bit unnerving because I didn’t know who they were or what they wanted from me – or what they could possibly do if I pissed them off. 

Needless to say I tried my best not to get in their way or call attention to myself any more than necessary.  lol

Jenna K.
Burbank, CA

Most people who end up having a paranormal experience are caught off guard by it, but something different happened to my mother.  My mom told me that when she was a little girl she used to have recurring dreams about an older woman standing on the front porch of a house, waving at my mother.  My mother did not know this lady or the house, so she didn’t know why she kept dreaming about her.  The dreams went on all through my mother’s childhood and teen years, with no apparent reason for them.

When my mother was 21, she met and married my father.  They lived with my father’s parents for a few months while they looked for their own home.  They finally found a cute little house in a nice neighborhood and the price was right, so they moved in.  About a week later my mother went to run some errands and when she came home and drove into the driveway she had a strong sense of deja vu.  She knew this house.  Finally she realized, her new house looked just like the house from her recurring dreams!  My mother was shocked by this insight, but she couldn’t really do anything about it, so she tried to put it out of her mind and say it was a coincidence.  Besides, there was no sign of the woman from the dream so maybe it didn’t mean anything.

About a month later, my mother said that changed.  She and my Dad were sleeping late one night when something woke my Mom up.  Near the window across the room, she could see the older woman from her dream standing there, looking at her.  But this time my mother was awake and she wasn’t dreaming.  The woman spoke to her, but my mother said she didn’t hear the words out loud; it was more like they came into her head like a thought.  The woman said, “Not too much longer now.”

“Who are you?” my mother asked.  But the woman didn’t respond; she just faded away.  Over the next few months, strange things started happening in the house.  Objects would be moved around, doors and windows would be locked, lights turned on, and things like that – but never while my parents were actually watching.  They would only notice it later.

Shortly after that, my father got a better-paying job unloading boats down on the docks, but the downside was that it was a third-shift job.  He hesitated to leave my mother home alone all night by herself but she told him not to be silly, they lived in a nice neighborhood and she would be fine.  A few weeks later she discovered she was pregnant with me.

From the very first night that my mother found out she was pregnant, the old woman’s spirit would show up by the window in her bedroom at night, humming lullabies.  My mother said it made her feel uneasy but the woman didn’t seem to be dangerous so she tried her best to ignore it.

Then one night my mother got the scare of her life.  By this time she was about 6 months pregnant with me, and late one night she heard a crash downstairs.  Without thinking she leaped out of bed and ran down the stairs, only to come face to face with an intruder in the house.  He was drunk and dirty, smelling like he hadn’t bathed in weeks.  He grabbed for my mother and she started turning to run back up the stairs when suddenly the man gasped and stared transfixed at something up higher on the stairs.  His eyes got very big and round, he got very pale and started backing away with his hands up, like he was warding off a vicious dog or something.  My mother looked up and saw the old woman on the stairs, looking as frightening as she’d ever seen her, fairly pulsating with fury.

In a flash, the old woman disappeared from the stairs and reappeared directly in front of the intruder, eyeball to eyeball.  The man screamed at the top of his lungs and ran for the front door as fast as his drunken legs would carry him.  The door was standing open, that apparently being the way he entered the house.  But the old woman wasn’t done with him yet and she slammed the door closed right before he could get to it, so he ended up crashing headlong into it.  He yowled in fear and pain, wrenched the door open and escaped into the night, with the old woman hot on his tail!  My mother could hear him screaming as he ran down the street flailing his arms, trying to rid himself of this terrifying specter!

My mother said later that if she wasn’t so scared she would have been rolling on the floor with laughter.  Instead, she called the police.  They did indeed find the man, who was still just as drunk, roaming the streets downtown, blabbering to anyone who would listen about evil spirits and witches siccing them on him like attack dogs.

After the police helped my mother secure the house and left, she went back upstairs feeling oddly at peace.  She sat on the edge of her bed, waiting to see if the old woman would appear by the window again.  Instead, she appeared on the edge of the bed right next to my mother.  By now my mother wasn’t afraid of her anymore, viewing her as a guardian angel of sorts.

The woman smiled gently and reached out to touch my mother’s growing belly.  She whispered softly, “She’ll be okay now, and so will you.”  Then she just faded away, and my mother never saw her again.  She insists that the old woman was my guardian angel, making sure I made it into the world safely.

I suspect she’s right, and there is a twist to this story that I’ve never told my mother.  When I was really young, before my mother ever told me this story, I used to have dreams about a smiling old woman standing on the front porch of a house, waving at me.  I suspect I will meet her someday in the future.

Christie O.
Portland, ME

When my husband and I separated, I took my two young children to live in the only place I could find on short notice: an old boarding house.  We had one big room with two beds, so my daughter and I slept in one bed and my son had the other bed to himself.

Our room didn’t have a private bath, so we had to use the common bath down at the end of the hallway.  I felt uncomfortable using that bathroom at night because the whole hallway and even inside the bathroom felt strange to me, but I figured that was because the house was really old and I wasn’t familiar with it.

On the first night we stayed there, I waited until my kids were sound asleep, then slipped out of our room to use the bathroom before going to sleep myself.  While I was in the bathroom, I heard a little girl in the hallway say, “Mommy?”  Thinking it was my daughter, I opened the door but the hallway was deserted.  I hurried back to our room and peeked inside but both of my kids were still sound asleep.  I wondered if there were other children staying on this floor with us, and maybe I heard one of them.

The next morning when my kids woke up, my daughter Destiny said with a smile, “Mommy, I met the little girl from downstairs last night.”  I knew my daughter didn’t leave our room because I am a light sleeper and I would have woken up if she’d gotten out of bed.  “What little girl?” I asked.

“Rebecca,” she said.

Carter, my son, sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes, then said, “It’s true, she came into our room last night and talked to us.  She’s nice but I wish she would wait until morning next time.”

I really did not know what to think!  It’s not that I didn’t believe in ghosts, but my mind kept searching for the logical explanation it knew must be there somewhere.

When we went downstairs to go out for breakfast, I asked the boarding house owner Mrs. Adams if she knew of a little girl named Rebecca who was staying there.  She inhaled sharply and then looked at me almost suspiciously, like she feared I was playing a trick on her.  I was about to tell her never mind when she said softly, “There is no Rebecca here any more…she was my daughter and she died in 1973.”  I glanced at my children to see how they would react to that, and I cringed when Destiny blurted out, “She’s not dead, she was just in our room with us last night!”

Mrs. Adams sat down heavily on a nearby dining room chair.  I crouched next to her and asked if she was okay.  She said she was, but she was clearly shaking.  As gently as I could, I asked “Is it possible that Rebecca never moved on?  Maybe she didn’t want to leave you behind?”

Mrs. Adams looked at me with tearful eyes and told me that she’d suspected as much over the years, but only when other children came to stay at the house.  Otherwise, Rebecca stayed hidden.  Mrs. Adams was obviously upset at the thought of her daughter hanging in limbo indefinitely, and I was struggling to think of something to say that would be helpful…when my brilliant son came up with a wonderful suggestion.

“I bet she would go if we threw her a going-away party!” Carter said.

Mrs. Adams stared at him for a moment and I started to worry that he offended her, but she stood, walked to him and planted a big kiss on his forehead!  “That is a wonderful idea, and we shall do just that tonight!  Will you help me?”

We all agreed to help.  After breakfast we stopped at a pharmacy and bought some inexpensive party hats, balloons and streamers, and a “Best Wishes” card for Rebecca.  I couldn’t help but laugh about the fact that this ghost was proving to be an excellent distraction from our unstable new circumstances.  Rather than my kids feeling sad about their family breaking up, they were eagerly anticipating giving a party for a child that had been dead for over 30 years!

After we got the party supplies I dropped the kids off at my mother’s house so I could go searching for more permanent housing for us.  I did find a nice apartment close to downtown that would work perfectly and it would be ready for new occupants within three weeks – perfect!  It would give me time to get a little more money saved, and in the meantime we could get by at the boarding house.

It was late afternoon before I retrieved the kids from my mother, and we were eager to get back to Mrs. Adams’ house to get Rebecca’s party started.  Mrs. A had been BUSY!  She made a delicious dinner, and set a place of honor at the head of the table for Rebecca.  None of us could see her, but we all felt her presence strongly as we donned party hats and hung balloons and streamers.  During dinner Mrs. Adams spoke softly to Rebecca, telling her how much she loved her and how hard it was to accept her death; but it was time to move on now because there was a better place waiting for her, and Mommy would join her there eventually…  It was a beautiful talk that put tears in my eyes.  Even Destiny and Carter sat quietly and solemnly as Mrs. A talked – definitely unusual behavior for them.

After dinner we had cake, and Destiny and Carter read out loud the message we put into Rebecca’s card, wishing her a wonderful exciting journey.  Then Mrs. A gestured for us all to hold hands around the table, and she said quietly, “It’s okay to go now baby girl.  I love you and I’ll see you soon.”

Suddenly a warm breeze wafted through the room, making the balloons and streamers dance, and it smelled like beautiful Spring flowers.  Mrs. A gasped, and with tears running down her face she said, “She’s gone.  I can feel it.”

After the party, Mrs. A hugged me tightly and said, “This is the most peace I have felt in nearly 40 years.  Thank you.”  I told her it was my pleasure, and I let her know about the apartment I’d found and we would be leaving in three weeks.  She just patted my hand and said, “You came here to do what God wanted done.”  The rest of our stay at the boarding house was uneventful, no more ghostly voices or visits.

About two months after we moved into our new apartment, I saw in the newspaper obituary column that Mrs. Adams had died peacefully in her sleep.  Mother and daughter were together again.

Emma W.
Fayetteville, TN

When me and my brother were kids, we saw a ghost wolf in the field behind our house.  Our back yard butts up against a big nature preserve so it’s not unusual to see lots of animals out there – but one night the animal we saw was definately not still among the living.

It was just my brother Jacob and me sitting around a small campfire we built in the fire pit around 9 o’clock at night.  We were still teenagers at that time.  It was a cloudy night so it was especially dark, not much moonlight to see by.  Out past the fence line of the yard, we both kept thinking we saw dark forms darting around, but every time we shined the flashlight back there we couldn’t see anything.

Suddenly we both noticed that all of the night animals like frogs and crickets had shut up all at once.  It was dead quiet all around us, and I felt the hairs on my arms stand up.  I was about to ask Jake what the hell was going on, when we saw a whitish form coming toward us from the field.  At first, trying to see it in the darkness I thought it was a white tiger or something but we don’t have those in Florida as far as I know!  But then it got closer we could see that it wasn’t a tiger at all – it was a WOLF, and it was glowing white.

It stopped right at the edge of the yard and just stared at us.  Jake and I both were tense as hell, not knowing why this thing was here, whether it was going to attack us or what?  It wasn’t a living wolf but we didn’t know whether it could still attack us – was it a demon taking the shape of a wolf or what???

Behind the wolf, something caught my eye and I saw some of those dark shapes moving around again.  I elbowed Jake to look, and at the same time the wolf turned around and growled deep in it’s chest at the shapes.  Whatever they were, they seemed to be afraid of the wolf and they didn’t come any closer.  After a few minutes they disappeared completely.

The wolf turned back to look at us, and man, something in those eyes was really unsettling, like that animal wasn’t just a wolf – like it had alot of power or something.  In the distance we heard a high-pitched whistle, and the wolf turned and trotted toward the sound, only glancing back at us once before breaking into a full run across the field and disappearing into the woods on the other side.

Jake and I both finally started to breathe again, and the night sounds of chirping and croacking and peeping resumed like nothing had happened.

We ran inside to tell our Dad about what we saw, and he said it reminded him of an old Native American legend he heard about when he was a boy, but he couldn’t remember the details.  We tried to research it at the library the next day but didn’t get anywhere.  We finally just concluded that maybe for whatever reason the wolf was a guardian animal spirit for us.  We found a lot of information about them online, and sometimes they are with you for your whole life and sometimes they only come to protect you once from danger.  We don’t know what those black shapes were out past the yard, but we think the wolf was there to protect us from them.

We never saw the wolf in the field again, or any other ghost, human or animal!  But we’ll never forget seeing it, that’s for sure.

Paul R.
Orlando, FL

Me and a bunch of friends got into ghosthunting a few years ago, and we went to investigate an old cemetery a few miles from my house.  We didn’t have any equipment except some tape recorders, but we set out one night to see what we could find.  That night it was just me and my friends Jake, Marc and Kevin.  Kevin borrowed his mom’s car and we got to the cemetery around 7 at night.  It was winter so it was already dark by then.

When we got out of the car I noticed how cold it was.  It was winter so I expected it to be cold, but it seemed alot colder than it was when we left our houses.  But I figured maybe it was just me freaking myself out or something.

So we start walking through this old cemetery – I mean it was OLD, most of the gravestones were so worn down you couldn’t even read them anymore, but the few we could read had dates from the 1700′s and 1800′s.  Marc said he felt like he was being pulled to this one spot over by the woods behind the cemetery, so we turned on our recorders and followed him there.

When we got there, Marc was crouched down in front of an old gravestone and he was trying to read what it said.  Off to my right, I thought I heard a woman’s voice say something.  I asked Kevin if he heard that and he said no, what?  I told him what I heard so we all looked in that direction…and we saw something we will never forget!

A white, misty like form was rising up out of one the graves and we could hear what sounded like a woman moaning or crying!!!!  We watched for a few minutes and this mist just kept rising up and getting thicker over this grave, and it started to take the shape of a woman, except not really any features we could see, just the shape.  It looked like her head turned to look at us then, and that got us moving!

We ran like hell back to the car and got the hell out of there.  Ive never been that scared in my life, whatever that was, I don’t think it was friendly and we weren’t gonna stick around to find out for sure!

I think it followed us too!  Kevin kept looking in the rearview mirror as we drove and he said he kept seeing a misty shape on the road behind us but when he tried to really look at it, it disappeared.  We told him not to drive straight to our houses because we didn’t want this thing to follow us home!  So we drove around town for awhile and stopped to eat at the mall.  We listened to our tape recorders to see if that woman’s voice was caught and get this…all 4 of the recorders had nothing but static on them!!  Not even our own voices or any other sounds except static.  Freaky!

None of us can explain what we saw that night, and none of our other friends believe we saw it, they think we made it up.  We told them to go to that cemetery at night and they would see for themselves but they haven’t yet.  Maybe they actually do believe we saw something afterall?    Anyway we gave up ghosthunting that night.  We always thought it would be cool to find some ghosts but it ended up being way scarier than we excpected.  We’ll leave it to the guys on TV from now on!

Rich S.
Farmington, CT

When me and my sister Deb were young our parents used to rent a cottage in Maine for a few weeks every summer.  It was a nice place near the water but really boring for us kids with nothing to do for weeks at a time.  That’s ok, we found plenty of trouble to get into…ha!  Down the road from our cottage was a family that lived there all year long and the two boys were a little younger than me and Deb, Ronald and Phil were their names.  The four of us would go down to the beach and throw rocks in the water or search for cool stuff that washed up on the shore.

One day we were out there late and the sun was going down and the tide was starting to come in, so we left the beach and walked down the road to the woods to go exploring in there.  The trails through the woods were kind of overgrown so I dont think people used them that much.

It was creepy in the woods because it was starting to get dark and the little bit of daylight left couldn’t really get through all those tree branches.  I could tell Deb was nervous too because she kept turning around and looking behind us as we walked.  I asked her what was wrong but she just shook her head and kept walking.  Ronald spoke up and said, “I bet she can feel the evil spirits here.  I’ve seen them, they’re real.”

We laughed and said “yea right” but Ronald acted all serious about it and even Phil was nodding his head like he believed it too.  Ronald motioned for us to come closer and he would tell us about it.  We all sat down on some dead logs by the side of the path and he said that one night, a few nights before last Halloween, he had been out walking in the woods later than he meant to and it was almost full dark when he started to make his way back home.  He said he wasn’t worried because he had a little flashlight with him, so he turned it on and followed the trail.

He was almost out of the woods when he heard a loud shriek and crash, like something big was coming through the woods right near him.  He didn’t stop to see what it was, he just ran for his life.  When he got out to the main road (the one our cottage is on), he turned to look back and he saw faint white shapes floating between the trees and he could hear voices murmuring, like chanting or something.  He turned around and ran as fast as could back to his house.

When he got home his father told him that many years ago that road used to be a stagecoach route, before any of the houses and cottages were built on it.  One night some local kids dressed all in white clothes and hid in the woods and waited for the stagecoach to come through.  The stagecoach driver was a mean old guy and they wanted to scare him.  When the stagecoach got close to them, they jumped out of the woods yelling and waving their arms, and the horses got spooked and took off down the road with the stagecoach flying behind!  And they didn’t stop, they ran right off the cliffs where the road curves to go into the main part of the town.  The cliffs there aren’t really high, only maybe a 100 foot drop or something, but it was high enough that the horses, driver and passengers in the coach hit the jagged rocks below and all of them died.

Ron’s Dad said that ever since then, you can see ghostly white travelers walking that road at night and moving through the woods, searching for the kids that killed them, especially around Halloween.

I don’t know if that’s a true story or not, but I can tell you one thing, it scared the crap out of me!  Even though it was still summertime, I didn’t want to be in those woods another second longer!  The others agreed and we all hurried back out to the road.  Nothing weird happened on the way, but that night I couldn’t stop thinking about that story and wondering if there was anything to these ghostly travelers, had Ronald really seen them?

I kept trying to forget about it and go to sleep, but I was still awake long after midnight.  Everyone else was asleep in the cottage, but I could swear I heard some voices murmuring outside.  At first I got scared, but then I figured it must be Ronald and Phil trying to spook me.

I got out of bed and went to the window and looked down onto the road in front of our cottage.  There were no street lights, but the moon was bright enough so I could see and sure enough, there they were!  They were walking down the road toward the woods, talking quietly to each other, and not looking up at me at all.  I leaned out the window and whispered loudly, “Hey!”  They stopped walking and turned to look up at me, and when they did I was suddenly covered in chill bumps head to toe!  I don’t know who they were, but they WEREN’T Ron and Phil!

These looked to be young guys, maybe a few years older than Ron and Phil, but I realized that they weren’t real people because they were giving off a kind of glow!  Not real bright, but it was definitely there.  They looked at each other and said something, then turned and started walking down the road again, and the weirdest thing was that I couldn’t hear their footsteps!  Its a gravel road so every step makes a crunch-crunch-crunch sound but these guys walked 100% silent.

I got so scared by that I slammed the window closed even though it was hot out that night, and I jumped into my sisters bed and stayed there till morning.  I don’t think I slept at all, and not again for the next few nights either!  I don’t know if those were some of the ghostly travelers I saw, and I never saw them again, but I sure was glad when my parents started renting a different cottage farther up the coast a few summers later!

Marge T.
Pittsburgh, PA

There is an old cemetery in my hometown, and a legend that you should never look into your rearview mirror while driving past that cemetery at night because you will see a ghostly passenger sitting in your backseat.  Of course, my friends and I never believed in that, but when we became teenagers and got our driver’s licenses we just had to test it out.  We didn’t really believe it would work, but it was the end of summer and we were bored.

My friend Tammy and I were driving in her mother’s car, a big old station wagon (this was in the early 80′s after all!) and we decided to take a drive down the road past the cemetery.  The cemetery was located in a very isolated spot and it was surrounded by miles of woodlands.  It was only about a 5-minute drive to the center of town, but while you were out there it sure seemed isolated.

Tammy and I were approaching the cemetery and I jokingly asked her, “Scared?”  She laughed and said, “As if!”  But she seemed a little bit jumpy, and as we passed the cemetery I glanced at her and she glanced at me, but neither of us got up the courage to look in the backseat.

“Come on!” I shouted, “We have to at least try it, otherwise how will we know for sure?”  We laughed and Tammy said I was right, but by this time we were past the cemetery, so she turned the car around and we headed back.

This time as we approached the cemetery I said to Tammy, “Okay, on the count of 3 we are going to do it.  You look in the mirror and I will just turn and look at the backseat, all right?”  She agreed, and we were almost there so I started counting, “One…two…THREE!”  I shouted the last number and I saw Tammy glance into the rearview mirror just as we passed the cemetery gates, and I whipped around and looked into the backseat.

I didn’t see anything but Tammy shrieked LOUD and almost drove off the road.  She started crying and screaming, “No, no, no, get out!!!”  And then she pressed the gas pedal hard and started driving at least 50mph on this little windy road through the woods.  At that speed it only took a few minutes to reach town center, but she screamed and cried the whole way, and I screamed at her to slow down before she killed us.

When we got into a well-lit area she pulled over into a parking lot and jumped out of the car.  She opened the doors and the hatch door in the back and started waving her arms and yelling for whoever it was to get out of the car.

I was so scared because that kind of behavior is totally unlike Tammy!  She is normally very laid back and fun, cracking jokes and making me laugh.  She wasn’t laughing now, she was mad and really scared, which only made me more scared!

I still couldn’t see anything or anyone in the backseat, and after a few minutes Tammy calmed down and leaned against the side of the car, taking big deep breaths.  “I think she’s gone now,” she said.  “Who was it?” I said.  But she wouldn’t tell me.  She never did tell me, and will not speak about it to this day, more than 20 years later.  Sometimes I think the curiosity will kill me, but other times I just have to recall the look of terror on Tammy’s face that night and I realize that I’m probably better off not knowing.

Belinda D.
Falls Church, VA

When my wife Sarah and I were newly married in 1982, we moved into a small 1-bedroom apartment to start our lives together.  We didn’t have a lot of money back then, so we were stuck on a third-floor walkup in a part of town that wasn’t so upscale (it was a dump, in other words).  Still, the landlady was nice and the house itself was in good condition – it was just the surrounding neighborhood that made you want to keep your doors and windows locked tight.  I was working 2nd shift at a local factory, and mornings at a diner one town over so we could save some money and move into a better area.

I hated leaving my wife home alone all evening until 11:30pm.  I was always harping on her to lock the door, don’t let anyone in, etc.  Little did I know that it wasn’t the living thugs we had to worry about.

One night after we were living there for about 2 weeks I came home from work and found my wife sitting outside on the front stoop by herself in the dark.  She was shaking and crying and I instantly feared the worst – that someone had broken into our apartment and hurt her.  But she said no, that wasn’t it.  What she said next couldn’t have shocked me more:  “No Jeff, I wasn’t attacked by a person but by a spirit.”  Come again?

Sarah told me that weird things had been happening almost since the day we moved in, but it had gradually escalated since then.  I was shocked because I hadn’t seen anything weird myself – but that wasn’t even the reason for my disbelief.

The truth is that I was a full-blown skeptic back then.  If I couldn’t see it, touch it, look at it under a microscope and categorize it, it wasn’t real.  I tried telling Sarah that ghosts and spirits aren’t real but the look she gave me shut me up in a hurry.  She was a tiny woman but I think she could have knocked me down with one hand, she was so angry.

She told me to follow her up to our apartment, and when we went inside I couldn’t believe what I saw – all of our stuff was strewn all over the place, I’m talking books, clothes, basically everything we owned was tossed out of drawers and onto the floor.

Sarah turned to look at me and said calmly, “Do you think I did all this?”  I said “of course not, but who did?”  She pursed her lips (in the past 28 years I’ve come to see that as a serious indication that I’d better zip my own lips, and fast) – and she says to me, “I’m going to ask a big favor of you, and I don’t want any questions, just do it for me, if you love me you will, please?”  I nodded, and she continued, “Call in sick to both of your jobs tomorrow, and just stay here with me.  Watch what happens.”  I agreed, because if nothing else it would make her feel better, but I didn’t expect anything to happen.

Boy was I wrong, and the next day is when I became a believer in ghosts, the paranormal, UFO’s, Rosemary’s baby – I’ll believe damn near anything after what I saw.  (Not really, but close.)

The next morning we both called in sick to work, and most of the morning was fine, nothing unusual happening.

Around dinnertime is when things started hopping.  First, Sarah and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner when the water faucet turned on by itself.  Not a lot, just a trickle, but we both noticed it.  I looked at her, but she just nodded and continued eating.  I got up and shut the water off, and waited to see if it would turn back on but it didn’t.  I inspected the faucet, but I couldn’t see anything wrong with it.  I’m no plumber, but to me it looked fine.

As if reading my thoughts, Sarah said, “There’s nothing wrong with it.  It does that almost every evening at this time.”

I sat down and we finished dinner without further incident.  After dinner we sat in the living room to watch TV, and within 20 minutes some other weird stuff started happening.  First, loud knocks on the ceiling.  Except this was only a 3-story house and we lived on the 3rd floor so there shouldn’t have been anyone upstairs.  There was a small attic, but it was little more than an unfinished crawl space and the only entrance to it was in our apartment.

We tried to ignore the knocking, and it did quiet down after a few minutes.  Then, out of the corner of my eye I caught some movement, and I glanced to the right and saw – I swear I’m not making this up – one of the books slowly working its way out of our bookshelf!  It was just wiggling slowly and pulling out further and further, as if someone was removing it little by little.  Before I could say anything to Sarah, it whipped fast across the room and smacked into the opposite wall, then dropped to the floor by our feet.

Sarah turned to me and said, “NOW do you believe me?”  For the first time in my life I was truly speechless.  I always thought that was just a figure of speech, but I was literally stunned to the point that I didn’t know what to say.

Then all hell broke loose and stuff started flying from shelves and drawers, a lot of it hitting us as we tried to get the hell out of the way.  When it didn’t let up, I grabbed Sarah’s hand and we ran from the apartment.

We only went back there once a few days later, to quickly pack up our stuff and leave for good.  We knocked on our landlady’s door to tell her we were leaving, and from the look on her face when she opened the door, I guessed she already knew.  Sarah said quietly, “Why didn’t you warn us?”  The landlady looked ashamed and said, “You are both such nice, calm people, I hoped that this time would be different.  He reacts badly to loud, mean people, but I thought he would be okay with you.”

It turns out that “he” was a former tenant of the house, one that had lived – and died – in the apartment we rented.  He was a drug abuser that was severely depressed and disturbed, and because he had stopped paying his rent the landlady threatened to have him evicted.  He took his own life that night and left a note that he would never leave there.  It seems he was true to his word.

I don’t know if she ever did get him to move on.  Sarah and I decided to swallow our pride and borrow a little money from our parents so we could rent a nicer place more quickly than we could manage on our own.  It was worth it to not have to deal with our own stuff being thrown at us by unseen hands.  As frightening as the experience was, I’m grateful for it.  It opened my mind to a much bigger world that I previously refused to acknowledge, and it brought Sarah and I closer together too.  We had a deeper level of trust and understanding from that day forward, and it has only gotten stronger over the past 28 years.

Jeff L.
Rochester, NY

For our 10th anniversary I took my wife Stephanie to a bed & breakfast she’d been talking about for years.  Our anniversary is actually on Halloween, and since that’s off-season we got a great rate on the room.  Even better, there were no other people staying there so we had the place to ourselves for an entire weekend.

We were in room number 6, which was a decent size room with a queen bed and a private bathroom.  After unpacking we went out to explore the town and they were having a fall festival so there was plenty to keep us busy for the day.  We got back to the B&B and our hostess had dinner ready for us – she was a nice older widow named Katherine.  She entertained us with stories from her life with her husband Harold, who had passed away about 12 years earlier.  Katherine said she used some of the insurance money from his death to buy the B&B and make a new start for herself.

Then she said with a wink, “I found out later that this place came with it’s own built-in staff.”  We asked what she meant and she told us, “If anything odd happens in your room, don’t worry, it’s just Madeline trying to make you more comfortable.”

“Who is Madeline?” Steph asked.  Katherine grinned and said, “Our friendly ghost.”  As nice as Katherine was, we wondered if she’d missed a dose of medication or something.  We just laughed like she was making a joke, and she assured us she was telling the truth.  She said Madeline was a previous owner of the home before it became a B&B, and she had loved entertaining guests back in her day, so she helped Katherine make her guests comfortable.  From the looks on our faces Katherine could probably tell that we doubted her claims, but she didn’t try to convince us and she soon changed the subject.

After dinner Steph and I went to our room and gave each other raised-eyebrow looks – you don’t need to say a word to communicate the possibility that someone might be crazy, right? – and then we laughed it off and started getting ready for bed.

We finally fell asleep some time around 11:00, and a noise woke me up around midnight.  I thought I heard faint rattling coming from the bathroom, like something was being moved around in there.  But Steph was breathing softly next to me so I figured it must have been water or air in the pipes or something and I went back to sleep.

Then I heard it again.  This time it was louder and I got up to investigate.  I turned on the bathroom light and everything seemed to be in order there.  No ghosts.  I turned off the light and started to go back to bed when it occurred to me, everything was in ORDER in the bathroom!  I am notoriously messy, and Steph had fallen asleep before I did – who cleaned up after me?  I remembered leaving the toothpaste cap off the tube and my toothbrush on the sink just like I always do.  I flicked on the light again and saw that it was all neatly put away now.  In fact, Steph had left her pantyhose draped over the shower rod, and now they were folded neatly and sitting on the little table next to the bathtub.

Katherine must have done it, or so I told myself.  But I knew that Katherine hadn’t entered our room, especially not in the middle of the night.  Maybe Steph had woken up and cleaned everything?  I needed to test it again to find out for sure.  I uncapped the toothpaste, grabbed my toothbrush and brushed my teeth again (why not make the test really authentic I figured?).  I left my toothbrush and toothpaste on the sink like I usually do.  I draped Steph’s pantyhose over the shower rod again.  Then for good measure I pulled open the shower curtain and put up the toilet seat.

Then I shut off the light and went back to bed.  It took awhile for me to fall back asleep, and during that time nothing happened.  All was quiet in our room.  Then, it must have been a couple hours later, I heard soft rattling coming from the bathroom again.

I didn’t move a muscle, just laid there and listened.  Sure enough, it sounded like someone was moving around in the bathroom and it definitely did not sound like water or air in the pipes.  I nudged Steph awake and told her to listen.  After a minute she whispered, “What is that?”  I told her I didn’t know, and I started to tell her what happened earlier but before I could finish we both noticed a soft glow of light getting brighter in the bathroom.  Within that light we saw the faint image of a young woman smiling at us, then the light faded and she was gone.

Steph breathed, “Did you see that?”  I said I did, and I finished telling her the story about the bathroom being straightened up.  We both got up to look, and sure enough, all was in order in the bathroom again.  Even the clothes I left hanging on the chair in our room were folded neatly and there was an extra blanket on the bed that we didn’t put there!

We told our incredible tale to Katherine the next morning, and she just laughed, nodded and said, “I won’t say I told you so.”  Then she showed us a journal that her guests had been contributing to over the years, dozens of sightings of Madeline very similar to ours.

I won’t blame anyone who doesn’t believe this story to be true – there are just some things that you have to see for yourself before you’ll believe them.  Me and Steph became believers that night.

Blake S.
Colorado Springs, CO

Me and my boyfriend lived in a haunted house up till recently, we lived there for almost 2 years.  What made us move out was THE FACE.  We started seeing the face almost from day one after we moved in.  Brad saw it first.  I was in the kitchen making lunch and he was in the living room surfing the net.  I heard him say, “Hey babe…ahhh!” That last part was a little scream like something scared him.  I came running from the kitchen and he was white as a ghost, staring up at the ceiling over my head.  I looked up but didn’t see anything.  “What?” I asked him? and he said there was just a white face up on the ceiling looking down at him.

I laughed a little bit because it sounded funny and Brad got MAD at me!  He was not kidding and he didn’t appreciate me making fun of him.  I told him I didn’t mean to make fun, I just never saw anything like that.  I told him to let me know if he saw it again and I went back to finish making lunch.

Next it was me who saw the face.  I just finished taking a shower and was putting moisturiser on my face in the bathroom mirror when I saw the face behind me, staring at me.  I jumped a foot and screamed loud, turned around but there was no one there, I only saw it in the mirror!

Brad ran in and I told him I saw it, and he shook his head like to say “we are in trouble now!”

The weirdest thing about the face (besides not having a body attached….haha) was the fact that it had no features really.  I couldn’t tell whether it was male or female, young or old.  It was just this white face with eyes, nose and mouth but it was kind of transparent and not solid really….except the eyes.  Those were dark color and seemed to burn into you when they watched, which gave me the creeps big time.

But the face never really did anything except stare at us.  It was just creepy, especially if you were in the bathroom or getting dressed or something, who wants to be stared at a time like that?  Jeez!

So we put up with it for close to 2 years but finally we decided to get the hell out of there.  We got a new place where we could actually have some privacy for a change…LOL

Tina D.
Bloomington, MN