Have you ever seen a ghost?

[bonniethomas06]

Totally random topic I know, but I have been reading a ghost story which unusually for a book, has scared the life out of me. I have never seen a ghost, but have met people who say they have...and who are the type of people who would have no reason in the world to lie to me.

So I wonderd, have you ever seen a ghost and what did you see?

[little blue duck]

we've had an "orb" - like a ball of blue-ish light, that floats down the stairs & out the back door. my o/h has seen it several times - only when the back door has been open & it goes straight out.
he also says he has heard footsteps running downstairs behind him.
He thinks it is relating to his brother who died as a toddler, as we see / hear it when he has been thinking about his brother....

he also had a very strange reaction when he visited the grave, it was unmarked & we walked round the area we were told it was in ... my o/h just froze suddenly & said "its here". . .

(no, Im not some weirdo, honestly!)

where I work is a really old building & lots of people claim to have seen & heard things over the years, and loads of people are scared to go down the cellar on their own ---- not me, I'm not that sensitive!

[MKG]

Ooooh - careful Bonnie.

There's a huge difference between what people genuinely believe they have seen as opposed to what was actually there.

Mike

[little blue duck]

meant to ask ... what was the book?!

[Penny Lane]

My mum used to tell me loads of ghost stories when I was younger, all of them either her own experiences or her mothers', and I have memories of seeing ghosts myself but all the ghosts (if that's what they were) appeared during childhood/teenage years so perhaps (most probably!) down to over-active imaginations!!

I love ghost stories, I love getting scared silly!

[Thurston Garden]

I grew up in an old Manse. I will never forget the night I woke up on bed unable to move. There was the full weight of an adult on my legs. Nothing at all to see but the room was freezing. It's not something you could imagine - I was pinned to the bed for some time.

I plucked up the courage to tell my folks after a few days. Turns out my dad had been woken on numerous occasions in that house when my mum worked nights. He would be poked in the side by a finger until he sat up.

The folk my parents bought the house off did B&B. My parents did B&B to help pay the mortgage. The previous owner said to my mum when she collected the keys that it was a lovely family house (which it was) but it had some oddities. Pictures used to fall off her mantelpiece - they did when we lived there too. Also, and (possibly pure coincidence) the previous owner said she could go for days or even a couple of weeks without a B&B guest - put out some new flowers and a guest would turn up. Happened to my mum too on several occasions.

The house has had two other owners since we moved out in 1990 - we have known them both and they both (unknowing what had happened previously) have asked us about spooky goings on - they were experiencing things too. And still do.

[Archanejil]

I know that when I was a child, I had multiple conversations with my grandfather. He'd died 6 years prior to my birth, I'd never seen a photo or had him described to me, and yet at the age of 3 was getting particular details correct, though usually this was if I was running a fever. I also remember having a conversation with a very nice man in our new neighbour's garden, over the fence, when I was all of about 6. We spoke for ages. My mum mentioned it to the neighbours who knew of no one by the name I'd given -- but in that area had been a victorian cottage that had been demolished. Perhaps tied into that...? /shrug The bloke was mostly telling me about frogs, from what I remember, and how I mustn't let their pond dry up.

I've also seen and heard things at my grandmother's house when I was a kid. There was one floor I really couldn't stand to go to the end of -- it terrified me, even when I got older. As it turns out, some of my grandmother's lodgers had experienced strange things (stuff moving, noises, etc) on that floor and one of her lodgers had dropped dead from a heart attack there way back in the 50s. Apparently there were also reports of things moving, falling, and breaking from her lodgers.

I do sometimes, in this house, think I can see out of the corner of my eye the house's previous occupant, stood in a particular area. I've also had the strong feeling of a cat being about (to the point of having to stop myself from saying things like "don't open the door, the cat'll get out", or not doing something because of a cat). The OH has experienced this too. We call the cat Schrodinger :) We like him. He is very low maintenance /giggle

As for what we think about it? We don't know, don't want to know, not in a hurry to find out, and I'm happy to leave it alone and not ask too many questions. I don't care if folks think I'm mad. I personally think that there's a lot we don't know. I'm open to the possibility of something -- or nothing -- but I know what I've experienced, seen, heard and smelled. Whether that's a brain function or a wibbley-wobbly-timey-wimey thing, I dont' reckon I'll find out in this lifetime.

[theabsinthefairy]

We live in an old French farmhouse from the early 1800s.

Sometimes at night you can smell cigarette smoke on the stairs (none of us smoke) and occasionally you hear ladies talking and giggling, singing along to some old folky peasant music.

The house never leaves us with the feeling of anything horrid just the memory of its previous inhabitants. I admit I like feeling part of its history.

[TheGoodEarth]

We had many experiences in our last house - too many to mention. But we found it fun rather than scary as the house had a nice feeling about it.

[homegrown]

I use to be a butler in aprivate gentleman's club in a very old building, back in the early days of the club the caretaker lived on site and he died in house one evening. many a staff over the last hundred years have reported strange things in the building, when i workked there I was the only person in the place after midnight and would hear billiard balls dropping of the tables in the billiard hall, when I went up there all the table covers would be off and all the billiard balls on the floor, so I would rest and recover the tables with dust sheets and go back downstairs to my office and not ten minuts later I would here the balls dropping again. the old building had staff passages and stairways hidden from the guest, so one night I used them hoping to catch whichever staff member was playing a trick on me, and found no one but could see the balls roll across the table and flip over the edge and fall off, and yes I know there will be sceptics who have answer for that, but explaing how the triangles were lifted off the balls as well as the dust sheets. Finally one night I had a gentlemanly chat with an empty room, and ask if he could leave the tables alone as I was getting behind in my work having to rest them, he seemed to understand and it stopped. Although he started teasing the night porter I hired by hiding the mops and turning off the lights when he was cleaning the urinals, messy

[happyhippy]

I believe I have!When I was married to my first husband,his Dad died suddenly of a massive heart attack.About 2 weeks after his death,I woke up one night,and to my horror,saw my father in law standing next to the bed,looking down at his son! :pale:I immediately stuck my head under the duvet,scared out of my wits,and figured I had imagined it?Two minutes later,when I had calmed down,I decided to take a peak?He was still there!!!!!!! I went into panic mode,and shook my husband awake,and by that time he had disappeared!
I used to live in Australia and had a wide circle of friends.I moved back to the UK 10 years ago.6 years ago I woke up in the morning and started crying my eyes out!My OH woke up and asked me what was wrong.I told him one of my friends called Pam in Australia had died.I had no real reason to believe this.Last time we had spoken via the phone,she sounded well and happy.My OH suggested I ring her.I tried her house,no answer.OH then suggested I check my emails.I did,and to my horror another of my best mate's had emailed me,and it just said "Please ring me,urgent!I was almost too scared to ring her,but I did.To my horror she told me our best friend had been found dead in her home that day,and they were awaiting a post mortem!!!! I still to this day don't know how I knew she had died,but we always had a pact that the first one to die(yeah morbid I know! )would somehow come back to let us know there was life after death!Fast forward 6 mths later.I finished work and got into my car to drive home.To cut a long story short,I was slowing down to enter a large busy roundabout when suddenly I felt someone slap me on the shoulder? I felt a firm hand on my shoulder!!!!!At first I was petrified someone was in my back seat,but all of a sudden I said out loud "Ok I know its you Pam,would you might not trying to contact me whilst I'm driving"(Pam was the friend who had died 6 mths earlier)I did'nt think too much of it until...........I came off the sliproad off the busy motorway,tried to hit the brakes to slow down?My brakes failed!!!!!!!I had no brakes at all!!!!Luckily for me,the slip road went uphill,and I gradually came to a slow stop.I feel pam was warning me about my brakes by slapping me on the shoulder!Very strange!!!!!

[Ellendra]

I've always had "invisible friends", but I usually assumed it was my imagination, sort of my brain's way of talking things out. Especially since I could "talk" to them without actually speaking aloud, you can only do that if you're pretending, right?

Except, in the last few years I've noticed that once in a while they'll tell me things I had no way of knowing. Minor things, like once I was having trouble getting moving in the morning, kept hitting the snooze button, and one of my "friends" was standing near the window and told me "You'd better allow yourself some extra time, you'll need to clean the snow off the car." I'm thinking, yeah right, it was 70 degrees and sunny yesterday! But sure enough, we'd had one of our late-spring snowstorms during the night, and there was 4 inches of snow on the ground.

Another time, during a wilderness-survival/awareness class, one of my other "friends" kept standing nearby, just watching. (I sometimes get the impression I'm being baby-sat, that or they're my bodyguards.) There was a class exercise where we were supposed to pair up, and one person is blindfolded, then the other hides nearby, and the one who's blindfolded has to point to where the other is, without taking off the blindfold. Every time, my partner pointed to where my "invisible friend" was standing, swearing that they could sense a person there!

This kind of thing happens often enough that, unless a ghost is particularly angry or violent, I'm usually not scared by ghosts anymore.

[bonniethomas06]

Ooooh - careful Bonnie.

There's a huge difference between what people genuinely believe they have seen as opposed to what was actually there.

Mike

I don't doubt it Mike, but you have got to admit, when there are so many people who say they have seen the same thing, it gets hard to tell what was actually there and what people were just thinking was there.

I shouldn't have started this thread though...last night I was too scared to go to the loo in the middle of the night, particuarly because there were two power cuts and I didn't want to be caught in the bathroom of our 200 yr old house on my own! I kept imagining the man at the side of the bed! :

I believe I have!When I was married to my first husband,his Dad died suddenly of a massive heart attack.About 2 weeks after his death,I woke up one night,and to my horror,saw my father in law standing next to the bed,looking down at his son! :pale:I immediately stuck my head under the duvet,scared out of my wits,and figured I had imagined it?Two minutes later,when I had calmed down,I decided to take a peak?He was still there!!!!!!! I went into panic mode,and shook my husband awake,and by that time he had disappeared!!!!

But one thing I have noticed from the people I know who told me about their experiences, was that the descriptions had several things in common. Like both (who were in very different places in the country) were not quite on the ground, as if the level of the ground/floor was different to where it is now. Also, they were both described as being dark grey but transparent, so that you could just make out the facial features. Would anyone here who has seen one agree?

Maybe there are differing types of ghosts though - an ex-boyfriend's local pub lost their landlord to a heart attack suddenly once. We went in there a month later only to overhear a conversation with another fairly regular patron who hadn't been there for a while. They hadn't heard and had seen and waved at the deceased landlord since he had died, when cycling past. The barman just said 'oh yes, he's been back' and wouldn't elaborate. Ewwww!

The lady who told me about her very large old house kept having to find new cleaners because they all left after making beds, only to turn away for a second to find human-shaped imprints in the duvets when they turned back. She was a sensible woman, an ex school headmistress who was in all other things, stern, rational and in truth, rather boring. So why would she lie?

[Silver Ether]

We have lived with a couple of souls that I am aware of here for 30odd years ... never bothers any of us ... Tell fibs she used to keep Robbie awake at night when he was small ... but we all just rub along nicely .. also lived in a bedsitter many more years ago and saw spirits there and one very nasty tome in one of the other rooms ... intrigued three of us and it was daytime and sober Seen many but that will do ...

[JulieSherris]

I can't honestly say that I've ever 'seen' anything or anyone - but I've often thought that I have! And I HAVE heard something.

My old Nan had a little cornish pixie handbell on the mantelpiece. Before he died back in 1972, my granddad had chronic emphysema & was limited to his chair in the back door during the day. If he needed Nan at any time, he'd ring that damn bell like a lord summoning a slave & she'd come running.
(he was a horrible man, & I caught him going up stairs when nan was out & he thought I was too - long story)

Anyway, after he died, Nan would sometimes hear the bell ringing at odd times - and after the 3rd or 4th time of mentioning it to my dad, they realised that it was just before a death in the family.

She began to call my dad when she heard it, and then waited for the bad news... which usually came later that day.

I had Nan living with us for her last 2 years, but then she had to go into hospital & my ex-hubby & I were woken at 4am one morning by the thing being rattled quite loudly - The ex rang the hospital & they were trying to get through to us on their other line, to tell us that Nan had just passed!!

Anyway, after Nan's funeral, we took it for a walk & it went off the end of Deal Pier - and good riddance to it too.

But do I believe in ghosts? Oh yes.