Ghost? Probably not, but...

[Graye]

Never having been a believer in such things, the weirdest thing happened to me on Friday.

Sitting in a W'spoon's in Aberystwyth waiting for OH to come back from the bar, I was daydreaming. Suddenly a small, elderly man in a double breasted suit with a rose buttonhole, grey curly hair and piercing brown eyes almost ran to the table from the railway entrance (outside it's a sort of cordoned off area of the main railway concourse), leaned both hands onto the table, bent forward right into my face and shouted "Get on with it, you b***ers!" It made me REALLY jump and I looked round to check no one else had seen him. It was so real I could even see the veins under his skin but no one seemed to have spotted him.

The odd thing is that my cousin and I are researching a book on our great-grandfather, and have been for over a year. He was a rather eccentric inventor/engineer and was renowned for his temper. Digging up all the info is a long, complicated process involving extracting patent records in three countries, trawling records offices and so on. He died in 1944 so there are very little in the way of family memories as there are only a few people who are still alive who actually met him, and we have only blurry photos of him - but he DID have thick curly grey hair and almost certainly brown eyes. We have neglected it a bit over the summer, me because of the house move and so on and her because she has 3 small children but when I emailed her and mentioned this strange experience she said she had been thinking about him lately and that on the same day she had taken out all her paperwork and started doing more work on it. I know this was probably just my subconsciousness playing things out but I can honestly say I had not been like my cousin - I hadn't even given it a thought until then. Needless to say, I now have my paperwork out again...

So what do people think, ghost or my own mind?

[Green Aura]

Have you read "Aberystwyth mon amour"? Might explain a few things

[Davie Crockett]

I think it was your subconscious, or a "waking dream". I had a similar experience once when I was studying for my Paramedic qualification and was late for an essay. My Mum, (who was not dead at the time) came into my room and chivvied me like she used to when homework had to be done at school. I was living away from home and she was a couple of miles away at the time.

Your subconscious brain can play all sorts of tricks on you when you need to get stuff done.

[MKG]

Oh, definitely a ghost. But as ghosts are, I believe, products of the mind (especially the daydreaming and therefore receptive mind), there's no puzzle there. I would say that it's obvious that you HAD been thinking about your family history, even if you didn't realise it.

I think it's nice. I'd love to have my great granny turn up and speak to me (she was, shall we say, an interesting lady) even if she was just a product of my own imagination.

Mike

EDIT: ... and if you really want something to think about, imagine what might happen if an image you have already built up in your mind (so stored in the brain) "leaked" into the visual and auditory brain areas when said brain is just ticking over - daydreaming.

[old tree man]

Thats really wierd, i would love to have something like that happen to me, things like that have happend to Jane but never me she says women are more open to such things !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bonniethomas06]

How strange! I am not sure what I believe.

Difficult to see how it could be a trick of the mind if the details were so exact as to see the veins and little hairs and things...especially if your brain never saw him in real life to store the information in the first place.

Were you particularly tired or emotional at the time?

If you are sure that it actually happened (and if you physically reacted to it, I don't doubt it) I say ghost.

[magicguitarman]

I'd love to believe that ghosts and crypotzoology are real matters, nothing is cooler.

However, I'd suggest, slightly tongue in cheek, that it was just classic British politeness that made it seem as if everyone else hadn't seen the fellow!

[that_sarah_girl]

ooh I love a good ghost story! I didn't believe in them until we had one in our last house...

I think it most likely was your great-grandfather, and there might be somthing about him he wants you to find out from the way he shouted at you!

[Andy Hamilton]

Sounds very vivid, who knows really and perhaps Mike is right about the day dreaming thing?

I've had a few experiences with the supernatural. The oddest one was when I had swine flu a couple of years ago, a bit delierious I used all my energy to get to the bathroom. Whilst resting leaning against the sink I felt a presence of myself as real as all the other "ghosts" I have felt in the past.

[Lost-in-the-Day]

Both I'd say, a ghost acting through your mind, if that makes sense....it does to me anyway. It was a ghost but you were the only one who seemed to see and hear him because there's a link between the two of you. I do believe in ghosts and other wierd things like very strong deja vu and dreams that come true cos both myself and my mum have had way too many experiences for it to be conincidence.

I'd keep digging through the paperwork if I were you, must be something he wants you to see!

[Ellendra]

I've had a few experiences like that. Science is a work in progress, it hasn't explained everything yet :)

[Graye]

I'm really interested in some of these answers and I'm still not sure about what was going on. He was just so real that day. I had never seen a decent photo of him other than one profile picture from 1902 so I didn't really have any preconceived ideas of what he looked like in later life. To me the man I saw had the look of my cousin's father but wasn't really like him either. It's a strange thing that my cousin is 20 years younger than me but this is her grandfather, but my greatgrandfather. That comes about as her father was 54 when she was born and he was the youngest son whereas my grandmother was the oldest and 16 years older than him.

We have uncovered some strange "goings-on" in connection with his business dealings. He had apparently always sworn he had been fiddled when one of his companies was taken over by another and spent many years being bitter about it and working hard to start a new and more successful business - which he did. The minutes of the Board Meetings and Shareholder Meetings make interesting reading with him shouting and raving at the other directors but there wasn't any conclusion to be reached and they fobbed him off and, from what I can see, treated him disgracefully. From what we could see he was the brains of the outfit and patented 29 different inventions but the others were the upper class types with influence and they looked down on him a little so they found various ways of thwarting his attempts to uncover the truth and deliberately misleading him. But since then we have been going through the actual company records which are now lodged with various county records offices and museums. And we have established that he was right and now we have seen the apparently "lost" and even non-existent share certificates he was so incensed about pinned back into the company's shares book etc. All interesting stuff for our book anyway, although obviously with the period we are looking at some of information we need is lost.

So yes, he probably would want us to keep digging and at least put the true position in writing. I suppose that era (late 1920s and into the 1930s) was probably the last time the upper classes just stamped straight over people they basically looked down on even when they were the more intelligent. I would just so like to have met him and hope we can do him justice.

Anyway, if he was a ghost I would be very grateful if next time he decides to appear he would at least point us in the right direction!

[Sky]

I love a good ghost story, I didn't believe in anything like that until I saw someone walking through my kitchen in the middle of the daytime, a long while back now. I have never been surer of seeing someone and went looking for the intruder all alarmed but found nothing.

[mrsflibble]

I love to believe it's all real.