Paranormal

[Blahblah]

Anyone else ever experienced something you can't explain?

Years ago hubby and I were driving on a Sunday morning. Country road, straight, no other cars in either direction. No farm houses, trees, shrubs etc at the side. Just flat farming land. Hubby was driving and I was reading the paper.

Hubby says "wonder where he's going?". I looked up and about 100 metres ahead was a man in a long dark coat walking along the wire fence about 10 metres in from the side of the road. He wasn't hitch hiking because he was nowhere near the road. And he didn't look up or turn his head as we went past.

It was a hot morning and the coat he was wearing was far too heavy for the weather. As we went past him I didn't look directly at him because I felt sorry for him in the heat, but no way I was offering him a lift either.

After we drove past, hubby glanced in the mirror and said "where did he go?". I turned around and looked back but there was no sign of him. There was nowhere to hide - no trees, no shrubs, no gate or road or path to take. He just wasn't there. We discussed it for a while and shrugged it off as a bit odd, and forgot about it.

Cut to about 5 years later and a discussion on a local radio station raised the topic of local ghosts. A few callers mentioned the man who walked along that very road. He even had a name - Simon - and was supposedly a WW II airman trying to get back to his training base (that had been located at a nearby town) but was killed in action before he made it back.

Hubby and I just stared a each other in disbelief. I still don't know what to think to this day.

[Anny Nym]

I have a ghost soldier story too - or I think it COULD be a ghost soldier story, and I really like to hear of your opinions on this one:

The house my siblings and I grew up in was built by my parents in the early 80s. Average house on average patch of land in residential area just outside my hometown. So I have 6 siblings in total and while we are divided in character one more and one less as is is pretty normal for siblings, there are many big and tiny things that divided us in groups (like sisters vs. brothers, lil ones vs . big ones) and another thing was "seeing the man": "the man" was (yeah, is...) located in the corner you would see when you would take the stairs from our hallway down to the cellar. There the sucker was sitting and scaring the heck out of my older sister, one of my younger brothers and me. While none of the other 4 nor my parents could, uhm, "see" him. Just us three. And we all agreed it is the same image we "feeled": A young man in dark green coloured clothing. "He" never spoke to us, just sitting, staring and reached out.

And until this very day, us 3 absolutely HATE to enter our parents cellar. so we would not cross this one particular corner And as ist is a classical austrian styled house, the garage is like a level down and when you enter my parents house through the garage door, you have to cross through the cellar to get into the actual house. My sister even heavily objected to including a cellar into her new house because of this issue, although it meaned having less available space. My other siblings and my parents always brush it off as "silly story".

So why do I think it could be a ghost soldier? Apart from the obvious resons, my dad once admitted digging up " bones and scraps, probably from a soldier" while building the house ....

So what you all say? I´m agnostic with strong shifts to atheism, but raised traditional catholic. I have read a bit on mass psychotics and hysterias - is it likely I was experiencing this with my 2 siblings in a very small setting? My dad just told us causually about the above a couple of years ago when roadside workers found something from the WWII while reconstructing a road in our town, but never before.

Or maybe he did and we were just "projecting" as kids? So I really don´t know - I just know I´m pushing 30 and I´m still afraid of entering a cellar...

[bluelady]

Oooohhhh! I love stories like this! I have two of my own - one is a ghost story and the other a psychic story.

The ghost story is about my grandfather. He died very suddenly and unexpectedly, while driving home from a party with my grandmother. My mom and I were staying with them at the time, so my mom met my grandmother at the hospital to take care of whatever needed to be taken care of and to bring my grandmother home.

Now, my grandfather was rather fond of the drink. Before he and my grandmother left for the party, he was drinking Coke out of a bottle. My mom jokingly asked him if he had spiked it. He laughed and said no. Well, after my mom and grandmother returned from the hospital, the three of us were sitting in the livingroom, sharing stories about him. My mom mentioned asking him about the Coke and the three of us chuckled and said that he probably DID spike it and was not being truthful about it. Just as we said that, the top flew off a water bottle that had been sitting on the kitchen counter and landed on the other side of the kitchen. It didn't fall off, or slip to the floor, it flew. We like to think Grampie was there, trying to tell us that, dammit, he had told the truth.

My psychic story is strange. I'm a teacher and it can be hard to get a job. When I was first starting out, I mentioned to a friend, who claims to be "psychic" that I was worried I wouldn't get a job for the following year. She told me that she saw me working in a class room 214 and there would be coloured maps along the back wall. I told her that there was no room 214 at the school I was at. She said she couldn't explain it but that is what she felt.

I did manage to get a job the following year, but at a different school and not in room 214 and not with coloured maps on the back wall. At the end of THAT school year, I mentioned that I was again concerned about my prospects for the following year. She repeated the room 214 and coloured maps along the back wall. Well, shortly after that I was offered a permanent job with that particular school division and at the same school. Obviously, her premonition didn't come true. I told her as much and she said that she still felt that it would come true.

Except that a few weeks later, the high school around the corner needed a French immersion teacher. I was French immersion trained, but teaching in an English language program, so they told me that the following year I would be at the high school. I was NOT happy to go and the high school ended up bending over backwards to make me happy. One afternoon, I went over to get a tour from the two vice principals. They began by taking me to my room. As we were walking there, they said "And, you'll be in room 214". I stopped dead in my tracks, to the point where they asked me if I was ok. Yep, I said, and we continued. When we got to my room, they opened the door and let me in. The room, at that point, belonged to a Social Studies teacher. Along the back wall were coloured maps of Canada and the world. I nearly peed my pants.

[LeopardLady]

I've not seen any ghosts before but I have had a premonitory dream. This past year when that meteor hit Russia I had a dreamed that night, possibly at the time that it happened, that a meteor hit the earth. I know it wasn't some kind of weird deja vu because my dream subconcious took that image and ran with it turning it into an alien invasion. I go to look at the news that morning when I wake up, and the image in my dream of the meteor hitting the earth is almost exactly the same as one of the dashboard cameras that captured the event. It was a really weird feeling seeing an image out of a dream I had the night before.

[Blahblah]

I have no idea what I saw that day with the airman or what your soldier might have been Anny Nym, but my best guess is that some sort of electrical residual imprint exists that some people can pick up, but others can't. Like radios not quite tuned in correctly or something.

But having said that, sometimes physical things go on as well. I lived in a very old house for a couple of years and weird things would happen like the microwave oven beeping in the middle of the night, or the tv would itself on. Also lights would turn on and off in rooms with noone in them. And our cat would stare at things we couldn't see or track things with her eyes when nothing was there. But cats are peculiar like that anyway.

We found out that a man called Mr Pearce had died there years earlier so when anything odd happened we would just joke about it and say "cut it out Mr Pearce". It was never scary or threatening in the house at all but strange things happened all the time.

Jeez, I'm sounding like a looney after these two stories. I'm really very level headed I promise.

[Arete]

My dad died after one of my sister's got engaged. They had no venue or church yet. They did not even have a list of venues. One night I was asleep, and I dreamed I was outside. Sloped green hill, beautiful tree studded area in the back. Out walks my dad from out of the trees. He was in the suit he wore to weddings and events for the season my sister was getting married. His hair was long and in a ponytail, just like it was when he was young (practically unheard of for a Greek man raised in his social class). No tie. He hated ties and never wore them. He had an earing in his ear. (He had always wanted one because he thought they looked cool but we would veto him.) His favorite sandals. He looked so young, so well, and he was laughing. We both turned to look at the bride, who had her back to us and had her hair in an updo. And then I was awake. I felt so very relaxed and at peace. A good dream, I thought. I just told the sibs I saw dad in a dream, and he looked good. No details. Not the place, not the details of the suit, ponytail, and earing not that it was a wedding, not that there was a bride, because my sister had postponed her wedding for the mourning period. I wasn't going to rub salt in the wound. Besides, I honestly did not recognize the bride in the dream as her.

My sister married after the mourning in another state so I had never seen her venue. The first time I saw it was the day of the wedding. We arrived to take pictures, and there was the clearing, and the woods, exactly as I had seen them in my dream. Oh, and my sister who always insisted she was wearing her hair down during the wedding? Changed her mind the morning of and had her friend doing her hair put it up. She had never put it up formally before, or since. From the back she looked just like the bride in my dream.

I don't care what anyone else believes. As far as I'm concerned my agnostic, contrarian father got dressed up, finally got himself the earing he always wanted, and came to my sister's wedding. Not even death would have kept him from enjoying a party with his peeps. Time works differently in the world to come. ;)

[Savoring Samsara]

I've had two experiences that potentially fit the bill. One may be just a really weird coincidence, the other one is something I genuinely still can't explain. I'll put them in separate posts so as not to make a huge wall of text. First, the more coincidental one, which was still pretty odd even in the likely event that there is nothing paranormal about it.

I used to live and study in the historic district of a small city in Spain, in a student residence that had been converted from a convent. The building had existed since the Middle Ages and had stood through many renovations and several fires. There was a ghost story going around the students about the building, which stated that during one of the fires a young nun had burned to death after going back into the burning convent to try to retrieve a prized possession, and that late at night she could still be seen walking the halls and looking for the lost object. I never encountered anything like that while I lived there.

However, one weekend, most of the other students went away on a group trip that I had chosen not to go on due to a lack of money. There were only about four people left behind in a structure that could accommodate hundreds, so things got creepy really fast, especially since most of the lights had been shut off while everyone else was away to save on electricity. One late night/early morning after educating myself about the local culture through the unique experience of botellón (read: getting drunk on kalimotxo in a plaza somewhere), I returned to my room (a former nun's cell) and had an incredibly vivid dream that I was awakened from my sleep in the residence/convent and had to escape from a group of men who meant to kill me. In the dream, after being unable to get past the attackers, I tried to hide in my bed, only to have them break down my door and stab me to death with a bayonet. I woke up in a panic still feeling the sensation of the blade under my ribs. No more sleep for me that night.

A few days later, the rest of the students had returned from their trip and classes resumed. I was hanging out in my linguistics classroom waiting for the class to start and the door to the room slammed shut unexpected (probably because it was a drafty building, of course). Someone joked about it being a ghost, and another student, who had been studying in the program for longer than the rest of us, said "oh, have you heard what happened in this place that might have caused that?" I figured she meant the one about the burned nun and the lost item, but the story she told instead was one I had not heard before: "This building was still a convent during the Spanish Civil War. During the fighting here, the Republican faction thought the order that lived here was supporting the Nationalists. They ambushed the convent, bayoneted all the nuns in their beds, and set the place on fire."

I have no idea if that was what actually happened in the convent, and I think that a lot of paranormal experiences have a completely rational explanation - but I also think that some of them don't, and man, I will never forget how my blood ran cold when she said that. If that's a coincidence, it's a pretty big one.

[Savoring Samsara]

Now for the one that's weirder.

When I was about 10, I was invited to a slumber party at my friend Nicky's house for her birthday. I was the first one to be dropped off. Not too long after I arrived, Nicky's mom realized that she had forgotten some supplies for the party, so she went up the street to the grocery story leaving Nicky and me alone in the house. Nicky's house was one of those newer construction split levels that was popular in the 80s in the US, where you came in the front door and there was half a flight of stairs going up to the living/dining/kitchen area, and half a flight of stairs going down into a mostly unfinished basement, with all these areas being fairly open to each other. It was a hot July day, so the windows were all shut and the central air was on.

One basis for my friendship with Nicky was that we both loved Broadway musicals at that time in our lives, particularly "The Phantom of the Opera." I had a cassette tape of musical highlights from "Phantom" that we loved to sing along with. Anyway, the song "The Music of the Night" was the last song on Side 1 of the cassette, and if you've heard that song you know that it ends with the singer holding a high note on the word "night" for a pretty long time. Nicky and I were trying to sing "night" at the same pitch for the same length of time and failing miserably, with our efforts continuing on past the end of the song and into the blank tape space left over at the end of Side 1 (haha there are probably people here who have no idea what I'm talking about). We both wound up falling down on the floor, laughing and out of breath.

Just as our laughter subsided, two things happened that broke the silence. First, we heard the tape player click and shut off as it reached the end of the tape. Seconds after that, we heard something that to this day I cannot explain: a man's voice, almost identical to the singer's voice on the tape, singing the same clear, sustained high note on the word "night." It sounded like it was coming from the stairs that led down to the lower level of the house. It was clearly NOT an echo because it started more than a minute after the recording had ended, it couldn't have come from outside because the windows were all closed and the sound of the AC running would have drowned out our voices to anyone outside and vice versa, and it was clearly NOT coming from the tape player because the tape had just stopped. The voice held the note for even longer than it was sustained on the recording, and then died away.

Nicky and I looked at each other and both said "Did you hear that?!" at once. Then we did something that I cannot to this day believe that we did - we charged down into the lower level of the house to try to find where the sound had come from! We checked everywhere and didn't find anyone or anything that could possibly have made the sound. Just as we were finishing up our search, Nicky's mom returned, a few other guests showed up, and the party began. Nicky and I never talked about what had happened again, and I never again experienced anything strange on any of my visits to that house. It still freaks me out to think about it.

[miffy]

When I was about 16 I was on a cadets camp at an old Air Force base which had been used as a rehab hospital during WW1. My friend and I were in the same bed gossiping when all of a sudden there was a black shape in the room and she couldn't move her legs. It was very weird, I thought 'ghosts' were a load of rubbish until that night.

[FeministShrew]

I've had lots of experiences, as a child & an adult, but one stands out. It was here at work, about 5 years ago. Our building is old, & was a maintenance shed for the railroad, then a generator shed for Duke Power (Duke Energy now.) My office is on the second floor. There are always strange noises, & sometimes the outside door opens on its own, even though we keep it locked.

I was helping my boss find something in the "hallway" between our areas (we have low partitions to make cubicles). Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone standing outside our office in the lobby-type area. He was wearing a dark brown shirt & pants, his sleeves were rolled up, & he had aviator type sunglasses on top of his head. He was leaning against a partition with his arms folded. His hair was dark brown & wavy. I thought it was the UPS guy, so I turned around to say, "be with you in a minute," & he was gone. My boss didn't notice anything. For years after that, I would see him out of the corner of my eye standing in the same spot every time I walked in or out of the office. I still see him, but only a few times a year now. When I try to look straight at him, he's gone.

I haven't been able to find out if anyone died here, but I wouldn't be surprised with the heavy, dangerous equipment that used to be here.

[Lainey]

One of the most unexplainable weird things that happened to me was hearing my late grandpa snoring. It was the middle of the day, in the summertime. He had died two years before. I was wide awake, sitting on the floor in the living room at my grandma's house, and it just sort of started suddenly. The only thing about it that was different from when he was alive and had fallen asleep in his rocking chair, was that it sounded like it was coming from a corner of the ceiling (but there is an upstairs above there, and no pipes or anything in that part of the house.

I am like the biggest scaredy-cat ever, and yet I wasn't afraid. I was a bit concerned that I was hearing things, so I called my grandma into the living room, and she heard it, too. I don't remember how long it lasted (just a few minutes, I think), but then it just sort of faded out.

ETA: I should add that my grandma's house creeps me the hell out, always has, and that was the least scary weird thing that happened to me there. The other stuff, though, could be reasonably explained away. Maybe. Somehow. :?

[Effie]

Anyone else ever experienced something you can't explain?

Years ago hubby and I were driving on a Sunday morning. Country road, straight, no other cars in either direction. No farm houses, trees, shrubs etc at the side. Just flat farming land. Hubby was driving and I was reading the paper.

Hubby says "wonder where he's going?". I looked up and about 100 metres ahead was a man in a long dark coat walking along the wire fence about 10 metres in from the side of the road. He wasn't hitch hiking because he was nowhere near the road. And he didn't look up or turn his head as we went past.

It was a hot morning and the coat he was wearing was far too heavy for the weather. As we went past him I didn't look directly at him because I felt sorry for him in the heat, but no way I was offering him a lift either.

After we drove past, hubby glanced in the mirror and said "where did he go?". I turned around and looked back but there was no sign of him. There was nowhere to hide - no trees, no shrubs, no gate or road or path to take. He just wasn't there. We discussed it for a while and shrugged it off as a bit odd, and forgot about it.

Cut to about 5 years later and a discussion on a local radio station raised the topic of local ghosts. A few callers mentioned the man who walked along that very road. He even had a name - Simon - and was supposedly a WW II airman trying to get back to his training base (that had been located at a nearby town) but was killed in action before he made it back.

Hubby and I just stared a each other in disbelief. I still don't know what to think to this day.

Don't mean to sound like a party pooper, but humankind has existed for a very long time. And chances are that you'll find that people have died at most places, or not so far away from where you happen to be right now. So of course you'll find stories about someone dying in the same village or area.

People isolating themselves and hiding in the forests aren't as uncommon as you'd think. Back in social work school, we even had a case (real case) about a man who had decided to hide away from society because of his fear of radiation. He was dressed very strange indeed, because well uhm he thought his clothing and helmet would protect him from the radiation.

Google the story of Christopher Knight for example. The North Pond Hermit. He lived in the forests for 27 years.

[Lainey]

Don't mean to sound like a party pooper, but humankind has existed for a very long time. And chances are that you'll find that people have died at most places, or not so far away from where you happen to be right now. So of course you'll find stories about someone dying in the same village or area.

People isolating themselves and hiding in the forests aren't as uncommon as you'd think. Back in social work school, we even had a case (real case) about a man who had decided to hide away from society because of his fear of radiation. He was dressed very strange indeed, because well uhm he thought his clothing and helmet would protect him from the radiation.

Google the story of Christopher Knight for example. The North Pond Hermit. He lived in the forests for 27 years.

But Effie, she said there were no trees, no forest, nowhere for him to have gone.

Carry on, I love paranormal stories!

[Blahblah]

Hi Effie. We really had no idea where he had gone. Unless he dropped down completely flat and somehow hid in the ankle high sparse grass at the side of the road there was really nowhere for him to be.

I didn't identify his long dark coat as an airforce uniform at the time - it was just a long dark coat. And he looked like a person. Solid, normal, not even remotely scary.

After we heard the radio stuff years later I did some research. There was a training base that was reached by traveling along this road. He has apparently been a well known phenomenon since the 1940s.

All I know is that it was weird on the day, and got weirder when we heard the radio stories.

[laura oz]

I don't normally talk about this, but figured I'd share. When I was 9 my step cousin and I went back to her great aunt and uncle's house in the woods. Uncle's wife wouldn't allow any of the children back there (now that I'm an adult I realize it was probably for our safety due to snakes and other critters, but back then we just thought she was mean. Well, she was mean to me because I wasn't blood, but I digress), but since she had recently died and he had been put in a nursing home, we figured there was no one there to stop us. So off we went down the driveway. As cuz and I were standing in front of the house talking - she had her back to the front porch facing me while I was looking full on at the porch- something started to form in front of my eyes on the front porch. I remember raising my arm and pointing at it, and to this day I will never forget her response, "You can't fool me with that!" I guess the color must have drained from my face as I watched it gather its form and move to the steps, because she took one look behind her and SPLIT leaving me there. I have heard people use the word petrified a lot in my life, but I genuinely know how that feels because I could not move one muscle on my body. I was just frozen and could only hear my heart beat pounding in my ears as it got closer and closer to me. It probably got about 10 feet away from me when I felt my pony tail being grabbed and my body being pulled. That seemed to break the hold it had on me and I ran faster than I ever thought I could back to MawMaw's house with my step cousin. We tried to tell the adults what we'd seen, but they either didn't believe us or didn't want to acknowledge what we'd seen so we'd get over it quicker and forget. We did get them to walk back there with us, and naturally nothing unusual happened. Almost 20 years later the family decided to rent the house out to someone outside the blood family so they renovated, and the girl who was living there asked my former step father if anyone had had anything unusual happen to them back there. He gave her my phone number and told her to talk to me. Long story short: Her dishes were constantly being rearranged, she was being locked out of her house & while she was outside she could hear what sounded like furniture being moved, but when she would finally manage to get in everything was where it was supposed to be. She moved out and nobody has stayed there for more than a few months at a time before moving out. Now it's falling down and looks just as haunted as it is. I obviously can't talk about anybody else's experience, but I can promise you that what I saw and experienced was real, and it seemed to have some kind of self awareness and the ability to think and react.

[bucherwurm]

I don't have many good stories, as I think most things that happened were imagination or a dream. But all of yours are pretty cool. Keep them coming.

[julie paradox]

I just have a whole swathe of dreams that later happen. Never anything useful.

I know, I know, it's your mind playing tricks. Except that the first one I noticed I had written down every detail of the dream and mentioned it to other people because it was so realistic but I couldn't work out why it was happening (science teacher had got a bit of paper and was writing something down for me, which was ridiculous because if I didn't understand something then at the very least my friend who sat with me wouldn't either, and chances were pretty high that most of the class wouldn't... I didn't suffer from modesty). Once circumstances came together (he was also my friend's form tutor, and was giving me a list of stuff to take home to him while he was off school) the situation was obvious, and very definitely my dream.

I had loads of those in my late teens and early twenties, and still very occasionally get a flicker.

The mother of one of my friends has rather different experiences. I was at her daughter's wedding a few years after my mum died and a month or so after we'd started TTC, and she told me that someone she believed was my mum had appeared to her and said it would happen at the end of next year. The following December I gave birth.

[RosyDaisy]

A lot of paranormal things can be easily explained, therefore, I don't believe in it. They are either hoaxes or our minds playing tricks on us. There was one strange thing that happened. One night my mother was on the front porch and heard this weird noise. She looked around, but didn't see anything. I went outside with flashlight and heard the same noise, then all of a sudden I almost nose to nose with a horse! Come to find out, some horses managed to get of the trailer carrying them from one farm to another. We all had a big laugh after.

[Effie]

But Effie, she said there were no trees, no forest, nowhere for him to have gone.

Oh, that's strange indeed.

Blahblah, sorry if I was too eager to explain your story away. I just don't think paranormal things could be real, and well if they were - that would go completely against everything I believe in or understand (believe is maybe not the right word since I don't really believe in anything, but I have a trust in things like knowledge/scientific explanations). I used to be dead scared of those things (paranormal) as a kid and teen. I was afraid of the dark until my late teens. Back then, I was almost certain that things like those existed. A decade later, I just can't wrap my head around such ideas any longer. I don't know if I have just lost my imagination. One thing is certain though: if I would find myself seeing a ghost some day, I would ask to be locked at a mental hospital. I would question my own sanity before I would question my understanding of the world. I'm saying that because I mean that I have hallucinated once, and I know what kind of tricks one's mind could play with you. I'm not suggesting that you have been hallucinating, since you have seen the same as your husband for example (so I seriously doubt that was a hallucination). I'm not suggesting that anyone else here has hallucinated either. All I'm trying to explain is my own relation to the paranormal.

Great web source filled with scientific explanations for claims of the paranormal: http://www.skepdic.com/tipara.html

[PennySycamore]

I'm not much of a believer in ghosts, but one of my neighbors told me about the ghost that used to haunt our neighborhood. Our neighborhood used to be an apple orchard back in the 1800s. The land is still terraced and there were still a few of the old apple trees left. We had one in our yard and so did the neighbor. Anyway, my neighbor always walks her dogs in the morning and afternoon. On her morning walks, my neighbor would see this African-American woman dressed as she might if she'd lived in the 1800s. She's only see this shade on a certain stretch of the street and then she'd disappear. She did see her though and my neighbor is a very rational person, normally. Eventually, the woman's ghost went away.

My daughter and brother-in-law have been members of the Piedmont Paranormal Society and would go ghost hunting.

[Sumeri]

I totally believe in paranormal things. I really believe that we're all energy and energy always goes somewhere.

Lots of stories, but most are too weird to explain. But here's one -- our last house was stigmatized. The man who lived there had killed himself in the house. We knew this, it was disclosed before we bought the place, and both my husband and I agreed we'd probably be okay with this fact if a. we didn't know the specifics of it, as in, where in the house it happened or how he had done it and b. we agreed not to tell the kids because we didn't want little imaginations running wild. It was a basic, ranch style house out in the middle of the country, no neighbors around for at least a mile in any direction, and a kind of weird, rednecky part of the world where it wasn't likely that someone would see us out raking leaves and come over to say, "Hey! Doesn't it freak you out to live where Mr. _______ killed himself?"

My husband was a traveling salesman at the time, our sons were aged 12, 13 and 15, and our daughter was two. We moved in in the fall of 2006. My husband was on the road at least 4 nights a week.

Right away weird things started happening, but always when I was at home with the kids alone, so I chalked it up to my overactive imagination and the fact that the house was 40 years old, on rural electric. So it didn't bother me too much when lights dimmed, and radios turned on and off, and the tubes blew out in our old TV, and the phone rang in the middle of the night with nobody on the other end. From the minute we moved into the house, our dogs refused to go down to the basement. Seriously, you would have to drag them by their collar, and the minute you let go they would run upstairs again. There was a weird, very creepy room under the stairs in the basement and the dogs would NOT go near that room. Neither would the kids, not one of them. I can't even explain why it seemed so creepy -- it was just a cement room with shelves in it, well lit - certainly not dirty or scary in any way. On the rare occasion where the boys could get the dogs downstairs they would whine and stare at the door to that room.

After a while, the boys didn't want to be in the basement, either. None of them are easily scared, they had no idea of the house's history, but none of them ever wanted to be down there. So here we had this gigantic rec room (we had moved from our last home because it was too small) and all of us would be smooshed in the living room upstairs.

One weekend we all went camping. Our cat at the time was an indoor/outdoor model - she had been a farm cat. So I made sure she had plenty of food and water outside, locked the whole house, turned out the lights, and we left for the weekend. When we came home on Monday, I noticed as we drove up the driveway that all the lights in the house were on. Like, EVERY light. I made the kids stay in the car and walked up to the house, where there was loud music playing and a cat meowing inside the house. I went in and there was our cat, inside, all the doors were locked (dead bolted) from the outside just as I had left them. But every light was on. Every radio and TV was blaring. I went back out to the car with the kids and called the police, who came and searched the house, but what could I say? Someone broke into our house, let the cat in, turned on all the electronics and then locked it when they left again? Nothing was missing. Other than the cat, nothing was added. Nobody had keys to the house except me and my husband, and we had both been camping 75 miles away.

A couple years later my husband was transferred. We had completely gutted the house by that time and it sold after 7 days on the market. We had been using "the creepy room" (we all called it that) for storage, and one day I was home alone cleaning it out. I started hearing this buzzing noise. I don't really know how to describe it. At first it was an annoying noise, like a yellowjacket zooming around my head. But the longer I was in there, the louder it got. It was almost like it was inside my head, if that makes any sense, like a radio in between stations. Buzzing in and out. It got so loud I had to leave the room, I thought there was some sort of electrical problem in there. But when I had my husband go in he had no idea what I was talking about.

AND. I was a Realtor - I handled the home sale when we sold it. When I was doing the title search for the appraisal I came across the original owner's death certificate, where it said suicide by gunshot to the head. Since we were leaving anyway, I called the Realtor who we bought the house from and asked her to tell me where it had happened. Yep! The little room under the basement stairs. We moved 4 years ago and the house has sold three times since then.

[PennySycamore]

Man, Sumeri, your story is WEIRD!

[lilwriter85]

I totally believe in paranormal things. I really believe that we're all energy and energy always goes somewhere.

Lots of stories, but most are too weird to explain. But here's one -- our last house was stigmatized. The man who lived there had killed himself in the house. We knew this, it was disclosed before we bought the place, and both my husband and I agreed we'd probably be okay with this fact if a. we didn't know the specifics of it, as in, where in the house it happened or how he had done it and b. we agreed not to tell the kids because we didn't want little imaginations running wild. It was a basic, ranch style house out in the middle of the country, no neighbors around for at least a mile in any direction, and a kind of weird, rednecky part of the world where it wasn't likely that someone would see us out raking leaves and come over to say, "Hey! Doesn't it freak you out to live where Mr. _______ killed himself?"

My husband was a traveling salesman at the time, our sons were aged 12, 13 and 15, and our daughter was two. We moved in in the fall of 2006. My husband was on the road at least 4 nights a week.

Right away weird things started happening, but always when I was at home with the kids alone, so I chalked it up to my overactive imagination and the fact that the house was 40 years old, on rural electric. So it didn't bother me too much when lights dimmed, and radios turned on and off, and the tubes blew out in our old TV, and the phone rang in the middle of the night with nobody on the other end. From the minute we moved into the house, our dogs refused to go down to the basement. Seriously, you would have to drag them by their collar, and the minute you let go they would run upstairs again. There was a weird, very creepy room under the stairs in the basement and the dogs would NOT go near that room. Neither would the kids, not one of them. I can't even explain why it seemed so creepy -- it was just a cement room with shelves in it, well lit - certainly not dirty or scary in any way. On the rare occasion where the boys could get the dogs downstairs they would whine and stare at the door to that room.

After a while, the boys didn't want to be in the basement, either. None of them are easily scared, they had no idea of the house's history, but none of them ever wanted to be down there. So here we had this gigantic rec room (we had moved from our last home because it was too small) and all of us would be smooshed in the living room upstairs.

One weekend we all went camping. Our cat at the time was an indoor/outdoor model - she had been a farm cat. So I made sure she had plenty of food and water outside, locked the whole house, turned out the lights, and we left for the weekend. When we came home on Monday, I noticed as we drove up the driveway that all the lights in the house were on. Like, EVERY light. I made the kids stay in the car and walked up to the house, where there was loud music playing and a cat meowing inside the house. I went in and there was our cat, inside, all the doors were locked (dead bolted) from the outside just as I had left them. But every light was on. Every radio and TV was blaring. I went back out to the car with the kids and called the police, who came and searched the house, but what could I say? Someone broke into our house, let the cat in, turned on all the electronics and then locked it when they left again? Nothing was missing. Other than the cat, nothing was added. Nobody had keys to the house except me and my husband, and we had both been camping 75 miles away.

A couple years later my husband was transferred. We had completely gutted the house by that time and it sold after 7 days on the market. We had been using "the creepy room" (we all called it that) for storage, and one day I was home alone cleaning it out. I started hearing this buzzing noise. I don't really know how to describe it. At first it was an annoying noise, like a yellowjacket zooming around my head. But the longer I was in there, the louder it got. It was almost like it was inside my head, if that makes any sense, like a radio in between stations. Buzzing in and out. It got so loud I had to leave the room, I thought there was some sort of electrical problem in there. But when I had my husband go in he had no idea what I was talking about.

AND. I was a Realtor - I handled the home sale when we sold it. When I was doing the title search for the appraisal I came across the original owner's death certificate, where it said suicide by gunshot to the head. Since we were leaving anyway, I called the Realtor who we bought the house from and asked her to tell me where it had happened. Yep! The little room under the basement stairs. We moved 4 years ago and the house has sold three times since then.

The part about the cat is creepy.

[Lainey]

The whole thing is creepy! :shock:

And yet, awesomely fascinating.

[Ariel]

The whole thing is creepy! :shock:

And yet, awesomely fascinating.

This reminds me of the reddit thread "creepiest things your child has said". Really interesting because it makes me question my disbelief in paranormal, and also terrifying.