Spooky stuff

[Panache]

nah Panache, don't delete it. That was cool...and very Lovecraft-esque.
I love the old "pulp" type horror stories. Speaking of Lovecraft, is it just me, or does Dread's new tentacled avatar pic look sorta like Cthulu?

anyways...back to the ghosties

cloves,

Many a fan of the Gentleman from Providence felt that Davy Jones and his Kracken owed quite a bit to the great Cthulhu.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, and over strange eons even death may die

H.P. Lovecraft

Cheers

Panache

[Livingston]

cloves,

True stories....

1st a little history: My parents bought a house (built in 1918) in 1970 that had been empty for 18 years. The owner was the son of a very controlling mother. When she passed away he finally married a woman that had also inherited a good bit of money. She would not live in that house. When he passed, my parents became the owners and lived in it for a little over 20 years.

Story 1.
I was 19 at the time we first got the house. I was over there alone painting closets for Dad. I heard someone walking around. I called out to both Mom and Dad seperately several times. No answer. It was quiet so I went back to painting. Heard the footsteps again, called out again and again, no answers. I set the brush down and walked all over that 6000 square foot house. No one was there. You've never seen a paint brush cleaned and put up so quickly.

Story 2.
My sister was playing records in the living room. She left them stacked on the coffee table while she went to talk to Mom in the kitchen. When she came back, the records were stacked on the floor.

Story 3.
Mom was working in the kitchen. Our dog came in, stopped, stared into the corner and then quickly left the room. Mom got a piece of hamberger and enticed him back to the room. He would NOT go near that corner no matter how much he wanted that meat. She picked him up and took him over there and he fought to get out of her arms. When she put him down his paws were spinning just like a cartoon dogs would when trying to go fast.

Story 4.
We had guest staying at the house in my sisters bedroom. She was sleeping in what had been the master bedroom. She went into our parents room and asked Mom to "tell them to stop!" Mom asked who? and she answered "You know"

Story 5.
My ex and I were house sitting for my parents while they were out of town. We had a small party which included my Dad's secretary. At one point in the evening he asked "Who is the old man upstairs looking over the railing?" Took a while to convince him there wasn't anyone around.

Want more? We have them. It seems that as Mom and Dad redecorated a room the ghost no longer was seen/felt/heard there.

Sleep tight

[SnakeEyes]

I allways figured my grandparent's house was haunted. Part of the house was bult in 1910 and was a stopping house for pioneers in the region. Once when I was young I saw a man in the basement, blinked and he was gone. I chalked that one up to my imagination.

After my grandparents passed away, my brother moved in to the house. He took some pictures in the kitchen for some reason or the other, and when they were developed there distortions in the photos, like swirls of smoke and orbs and such. Also, while he was living there the sugarbowl flew off the kitchen table and hit the wall, when no one was even in the room.

My dad took over the house a few years ago when my brother moved away, so I would spend a few nights a week there. The computer had a habit of turning on and off by itself, lights would flicker, etc. The worst was when I heard 'scratchy and scrabbly' noises coming from the floor of my room... and the only thing under that part of the house was dirt (could have been an animal, but I have an imagination).

Recently, I learned that a man was shot and killed near the house in the 1930s after the land had been converted into a farm. His family buried him somewhere on the property. Kind of makes all the weird happenings just a little more creepy...

I have more, just don't want to put it all in one post!

[ckelly327]

Not my own - but:

I live in an old suburb of Albany, NY and some of the houses are very old. In elementary school a girl I knew would come in and tell strange stories of what would happen in her house. The story was that Mary Todd Lincoln came to NY after the death of her husband. She supposedly left the dress that she was wearing on the night of his assasination, still with the blood stains. She never left the house in ghostly form after her eventual death. My friend insisted that strange things would go on and while I was in the house sometimes, I never saw anything. The haunting is still listed on some internet websites as real. You never know just how true these stories are but she was convinced.

[RK-REX]

Sorry for the length, need to lay the ground work for the story to make sense.

Lynn and I purchased our hose from the son of the original owner. Mr. B's Father and Grandfather built our house and the one next to it. Mr. B was born there LITTERALY. The house has raised a total of 13 children, 14 now with Nicholas.

Anyway, we kept in touch with the B's and they'd come over from time to time and see what we'd done to the house. It was built in 1919 and we were just updating, no major changes as we like the Craftsman style of the house. They were pleased and were happy that we'd bought it from them and were taking care of it when they couldn't. Family home and all.

Mr. B wasn't getting along well, alzheimers had taken it's toll and he passed about 22 months ago. I spoke to Mrs. B at the funeral and she'd said that Howard was so happy when he found out we were expecting because the house would have children in it again and those were his favorite memories from their children growing up.

Lynn's pregnancy was pretty normal for a 34 year old woman. No major issues, healthy baby, healthy mom. Well, one Saturday, April 8th to be exact we both were startled awake by someone walking across the floor upstairs. I mean we both woke up at the same second, it was that loud. I grabbed my shotgun and headed upstairs.....Nothing, I checked every square inch of the entire house. No one was there and the dog and cat were asleep in our room when it happened. An hour late we were back in bed and one of us made a joke that maybe Mr. B had come to see how the nursery was progressing. Less than a minute later, there was the same footfalls and a crash upstairs. I told Lynn to call 911 and I headed back up with my gun. No one was there, but a lamp in the room that was going to be the nursery, not even started yet BTW, was across the room from it's place on my desk and smashed. The sheriff's deputy and I both checked the house. Back in bed again and wishing I'd had a good stiff whiskey in me to calm the nerves. I told Lynn that maybe we shouldn't make that room the nursery and to make the other room, which was decorated for a toddler already, the nursery. The incident sealed it for me, the other, previous children's room would be renovated and I'd start on it Monday.

The next day, Sunday, we had three neighbor families over for a BBQ. Lynn and Teena were in he kitchen and her water broke...7 weeks too early. Rush her to the hospital, ship her to another hospital for high risk pregnancies. A week later on Friday, Nicholas John was born exactly 6 weeks early. During that whole week, I'd stay at the hospital from about 6pm until 6am, then go home to work on the nursery with a haste that would make Norm Abrams proud. When Nicholas came home, the very first night we were of course nervous. Him being our first child. Sometime in the night the footsteps came again. They went from the room with the lamp into the nursery and right to the crib, I flipped out grabbed a big maglight for a weapon and headed up.

NOTHING!!!! We never heard them since and that was almost two years ago. However, Guinness the dog will look into an empty room and wag his tail and Nicholas does talk to an empty space sometimes in baby gibberish. Here's a pic that we took by chance and then noticed that he was looking up at something. It's a blank wall in that direction behind the TV, which was off. He was babbling and laughing too. We think it's Mr. B keeping an eye on him and us.

[Colin]

I used to bartend at an old home that had since been turned into a wedding reception hall. It was a grand old place and had at least one ghost living there.

Windows would open in the dea dof winter, stuff would get moved around, footsteps in empty parts of the house, stereos turning on, etc, etc.

The ghost in the attic (linus) even had a bedroom set up. There had also been reports of a woman downstairs dancing long after all the guests had left on a number of occasions.

Everyone always figured that whatever was in the house loved a good party, and the mischief was all in good fun.

[macwilkin]

Hmm...where to begin? I should explain that a friend of mine & I actually have a program of traditional Ozarks & Scottish ghost stories. We make the circuit in the Fall, mostly around Halloween, talking about folklore, superstitions, etc. to local civic, church and community groups. We have also presented programs for the State and National Parks Service. So if you want to hear some ghost stories....you'll need to come to one of our programs! :mrgreen:

One of my best "personal" ghost stories involves a place that our own Riverkilt is familiar with: Fort Verde, Arizona. Fort Verder is an AZ State Park in Camp Verde, about 100 miles north of Phoenix on I-17. Fort Verde was an Indian Wars era post during the 1860's-1880's, and was home to General George F. Crook, who employed Apache scouts in actions against Geronimo and other "hostile Apaches".

Today, there are only four buildings in Ft. Verde; The Administration building, the Commanding Officer's Quarters, Bachelor Officer's Quarters and the Post Suregon's office.

Back in the late 1980's, when I would spend summers with my grandparents in PHX, we would always head to the Verde Valley and visit Ft. Verde, Jerome, Tuzigoot, Flagstaff, etc. I was very "into" the Indian Wars period at the time, and loved to stop at Ft. Verde. On one such visit, my grandparents decided to look around the museum/visitor center, while I decided to walk accross the parade ground and visit some of the other structures.

I headed for the Commanding Officer's Quarters, which is a two story building. When you open the front door, there are two rooms on the left and right, and a stairway in front of you, which leads to a landing, and then another set of stairs to the second floor. That summer day, when I opened the front door and stood in the foyer, My eyes were immediately attracted to the landing above me -- now, I didn't see anything per se, but I could feel a very strong presence on the landing, and whatever it was did not want me in the house. I immediately turned on my heels and left.

Okay, so it's not that scary. But to a 13 year-old boy, it was terrifying.

The Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone also sent chills down my spine.

From ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go BUMP in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!"

-- Scottish prayer book

Cheers,

Todd

[cloves]

wow everybody! Those stories are great. Keep em coming.
RK-REX, the photo evidence is compelling huh?

[Sciuropterus]

I'm a hard-core skeptic, but I found this article about hallucinations caused by subsonic air pressure waves interesting and creepy:

http://www.meta-religion.com/Paranor..._frequency.htm

[Warlock]

During the reconstruction phase of our Grand Orpheum Theatre, I got a job on the midnight shift. At the timeI owned my own business and was working alot. At the time I believed that anything was possible, but really did not believe in ghost. I became a firm believer in ghost and spirits working in that theatre. I encountered many ghost and spirits in that theatre, includung the little girl ghost Mary. I met the ghost in the projection room toilet. There were about 24 that the midnight crew and myself came to know that summer and autumn. There are others that I have since encountered.
One July day, I had a real estate agent come to me asking if I would check out a house he had on the market. He said he could not stand to be alone in the house. My business associate, the Realtor, and myself, went to the house.
this house had been shut for two months, and it was a very hot July day. You can imagine how hot the inside of this house was. We started in the basement, with just the three of us walking around with a tape recorder. The Realtor filled us in on everything he knew. We wondered around the first floor, checking every little spot that we could find. We went up stairs to the second floor. The staircase went in one direction to a landing, then continued up in the opposite direction. The second floor was uneventful as well. We were all sweating profusely by now. We started down the stairs again and when we got to the landing it was cold enough to see your breath. There was no power on in this house, remember, so it wasn't the ac. It was freakin' cold! we stood there on the landing for about 1 minute, then the cold was gone suddenly. That's when the attic door slammed shut. The Realtor jumped about 4 feet in the air and rushed us out. Outside in our van, we rewound the tape to where we were about to come down the stairs. On the landing after all had commented about how cold it was, there was a voice. Clear and Malevolent. It said "GET OUT!" It was as if someone there had spoke very clearly into the microphone. But none of us did. The Realtor turned white and immediately turned the house over to another agent. He refused to ever go near that house again. I have had several encounters like that. Memphis has many spirits here. Good and Bad.