Are ghosts real?

[Queen of the Ryche]

Old boyfriend's brother died in a car wreck at 18 - he used to come wake us up - cat would attack walls, saw his shadow, felt him sit on the bed -
Last house hubby and I lived in, while we were gone during the day pictures would jump off walls, chair moved from one end of room to the other - yes, I believe in many different manifestations for many different reasons.

[Troubleshooter]

And yet they are still not credibly proven.

[lookout123]

i've witnessed (first hand) a couple of things, but one event still makes my skin crawl. this is the short version with some of the freakier events left out.

friend, who we'll call Rocco, was having marital problems with his wife, who we'll call Gladys.

Rocco is driving home from work and gets run off of road by a car no one else saw. it looked like the police car from The Andy Griffith show, so everyone thought he was stupid, drunk, or both. Rocco falls down in shower, splitting head open - swears he felt like he was pushed. Rocco sees the same police car driving next to him on road. old time mexican cop, not looking too healthy is driving. Rocco has come to me after each event and i think he is losing his freaking mind. drugs are an absolute impossibility, so he has to be going nuts i figure. all this stupid crap in the period of a couple days?

i get phone call at 3 am from "gladys" telling me to come quick - it's the baby and she is afraid of Rocco. i get dressed and drive over afraid that my friend got drunk and did something stupid. i get there and gladys lets me in.

neither she nor Rocco had called me as they had just woken up.

Rocco is sitting in corner shaking and incoherent. turns out that Gladys woke up with Rocco screaming, gasping, and physically trying to push someone/thing off his chest. she sees "something" leave him and go into the crib next to the bed. Rocco hysterically explains that the crazy looking cop from earlier was choking him and swearing that he was going to kill Rocco.
and then i knocked on the door.

they go into the other room to get the dazed Rocco cleaned up so i am alone with sleeping baby on couch across the room from me. i have not been drinking, don't do drugs, and am only vaguely confused, not really buying the story - not freaked out. until this 2 month old child goes from sound asleep on his back to sitting straight up without using his arms (which a 2 month old couldn't do anyway) and turns his head and just stares at me. the moment Rocco and Gladys walk back into the room the little bambino falls right back into the previous sleeping position, sound asleep. my jaw is on the floor.

things got a bit freakier from there with various noises, items moving, shaking, no access back into bedroom where the crib. an unlocked door that just won't budge. not an inch. not a milimeter. it may as well have been rock. sounds of a violent argument in spanish from behind the door. and three adults sitting speechless staring at a baby sleeping peacefully.

daylight rolls around and i go to work just dumbstruck. they called their family priest over. i don't know what all happened from there, but here is the gist of what they found out over the next few days.

gladys's (birth) father was a cop who'd been gunned down years before in mexico. Rocco didn't know about this. old mexico story, didn't exactly get passed out to people who didn't already know. Gladys didn't even know the whole story. or the fact that her grandmother was a self described "witch" who had taken the time to pray and speak with her dead son through the last photograph taken of him(in his police uniform) for 20 years before giving it to Gladys as wedding gift.

grandmother threatened to rain hell down upon rocco, gladys, and family if they destroyed the picture. she was satisfied to remove the photo back to her home. they let her, under the condition that she tells dead daddy to leave Rocco alone. apparently it worked out because there were never any repeats of the strange events.

yep, i know it sounds like a campfire story. i wouldn't believe it either if i hadn't been there. it wasn't imagined or exaggerated.

skin crawling now. that was 10-12 years ago, and it is all still crystal clear in my memory.

[plthijinx]

now that's spooky

[mrnoodle]

wow, lookout. good story. reminds me of the story my boss told me when I was doing my internship. Can't remember the details, but she was visiting her ex-husband's father (i think) in the hospital as he lay dying of cancer. The guy hadn't moved an inch in days, was only hours from death. Was still breathing on his own, but on oxygen. He'd also been up to his eyeballs in morphine for the past night or two. Anyway, she found herself alone with him momentarily while the ex-hubby went to get a soda or something.

The guy sat up, locked eyes with her, and reached for her throat with both hands.

She was between the bed and the wall, and had to go around him to escape. She did so, trying unsuccessfully to scream as she went. She ran to the nurse's station and said only that the patient was awake and had tried to attack her. When the nurses went to check, however, the guy was lying down as though he had never moved, except that the nose thing that delivered his oxygen had fallen down to his neck. He died later that night.

She vows that it actually happened, and that the malevolence she saw in the guy's eyes was something that she had never experienced or imagined could be possible from a human being. She had nightmares for weeks, too.

To me, this story could easily be explained by stress, fear, chemical imbalances, or other factors that are non-weird. But it sounds kind of like lookout's story...

Lookout's story is just plain spooky, so is Mr. Noodle's but his I could hazard an explanation for. The old dude is morphined out to the max and after a while people do develope a tolerance for the stuff. I was on a morphine drip for three weeks in critical care after my car wreck (above), and that stuff does very wierd things to your head after you've been on it for a while - nice sort of semi-hallucinatory state for me. So I can imagine the old man having some horrible vision brought on by the morphine and the fact that he's on his way out. He opens his eyes and sees his daughter in law as the angel of death or something, and in one last desperate effort to survive, he reaches out his hands to strangle her, then subsides back into his comatose state after this final expenditure of effort.

[wolf]

ICU psychosis kind of meshes with morphine induced psychosis and you get some wierd shit going on ...

[Elspode]

I don't think that entities/ghosts/spirits/phenomena are necessarily a single thing. I most especially don't buy into the whole "died horribly and are upset and lingering" theory.

That being said, I believe in parapsychological phenomenon. I've seen too many things that I cannot explain. I myself have experienced premonitions which came to pass. I don't know the mechanism, but I suspect it is related somehow to the energy fabric which is our physical world.

[bluecuracao]

Originally Posted by Elspode

I've seen too many things that I cannot explain. I myself have experienced premonitions which came to pass. I don't know the mechanism, but I suspect it is related somehow to the energy fabric which is our physical world.

Yeah, what he said.

I've experienced several different manifestations--vague, light-based, solidly human-shaped, invisible but physical, weird-shaped, and downright evil. Also, a few premonitions; one in particular that was so strong that I was able to alter the outcome. I have no idea where these things come from. I'd prefer that they not occur, but when they do, you just have to kind of go with it.

[dar512]

This story requires a little setup.

My Mom inherited a violin from her grandfather. No one else in the family played, so my mom had it mounted in a frame as a memory of her grandfather. My Mom's aunt found out about it and was very upset that it hadn't been saved so that someone would eventually take it up. Though my Mom and her aunt got along well, it remained a point of contention between them.

Years later ~8pm in the evening, the violin springs off the wall falling on the piano underneath it. My Mom heard the racket and came to see what happened. Now there was no reason that thing should have come off it's mounting. It was wired to the background and there was no internal tension - the violin strings were all loosened, etc.

Later that evening she got a call from her cousin. Her aunt had died. As near as we can tell, just before the violin took a dive.

[mrnoodle]

I got a couple three experiences. The least scary (and most unexpected) was in Del Norte in 1995.

They had recently begun renovating the Windsor Hotel, which had been vacant since 1970 or so. It's only by pure luck that the place wasn't razed (that, and the town has no money anyway). The second floor had rotted away, as had much of the roof. Only the outer hallways remained, these wall-less and overlooking the gaping hole to the lobby below. A few rooms were still accessible, but the doors for these were mostly gone, having been used as firewood by the transients who broke in and wintered there.

Renovation happens sporadically in Del Norte, so they're still working on the hotel. At the time, they had gotten money to fix the roof, and I was taking pictures for the local paper. It was about 8 in the morning, sunny, and the building was empty. I had just interviewed the historical society guy, and he went around back to where the demo crew was getting ready to pull off the rest of the rotten roof.

I went inside and climbed the scary staircase to the second floor to nose around. Sunlight was streaming in in various places, from the windows in the doorless rooms and from the holes in the ceiling. I was getting a feel for the oldness of the building and trying to find the light for a nifty black and white shot when I got that feeling. This was followed immediately by a really strong odor of fresh cigar smoke, like someone was right next to me with a stogie. It was quite hard to see clearly because of the contrast of the bright sunbeams and the dark corners of the hotel, so I didn't see anything. Just the smell and the "someone's right there" sensation. Those of you who are aware of that kind of thing know the feeling I'm talking about.

I wasn't scared or creeped out. In fact, the first feeling was positive, like whoever it was was just saying "hi" after a long time with no guests in his hotel. I'd bet it was a previous innkeeper/owner, or that was the impression I got, anyway.

I hope they finally get the thing open for business again sometime, at least as a historical monument/museum.

[staceyv]

This stuff freaks me out. I only read the whole thread because it's like an accident on the side of the road- you can't stop looking even though it's scary and makes you feel creeped out.
I got goosebumps all over my body about 4 times. I'm the type of person who absolutely cannot watch horror or psychological thrillers...It's 3 am and I'm alone in here. Thanks a whole lot.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot- the restaurant I work in has 3 floors. The employee room is on the second, and often, when I'm in there doing my cash-out, I hear loud thumps and banging and noises coming from the 3rd floor. It sounds like someone is throwing a bowling ball on the floor. NOONE is up there. It's a storage area. I asked someone about it. I was told, in a serious tone, that the restaurant is haunted. Oh, great.

[cowhead]

I have had a few run-ins with the paranormal. the easiest to re-create though is the Joplin Ghost Lights..if you are ever in Joplin Missouri ask a local.. there are these weird will-o-the-wisp lights that float down the street.. one of the strangest things I have seen. failing that there's a house on the s.east corner of mass. and 23rd streets here in town.. (a friend of mine lived there) one day we were all lounging about downstairs, (and everyone was accounted for) when from upstairs we heard a loud ass thump.. so I went up to check it out (curiousity... cat... etc.) and two bedroom door were open and there was a damn cold spot right at the bend in the stairs.. and when I say cold spot.. I mean the temperature dropped from a balmy 85 degrees to frost on the breath cold. but just in that spot.. so of course I gathered a couple of other people to check it out and they all had the same experience.. there was another time with oujia board... witnesses... it's all about the witnesses (and no, we weren't high or drunk at the time, afterwards OH HELL YEAH!)

[Happy Monkey]

Here's a major ghost infestation!


click for large size

[lookout123]

AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!