I've had a couple of unexplained experiences.

I had a dream when I was really young and I remember waking up from it and the face of the person that was in it was in the air in front of me and went from right to left outside of my window.

And a few years later, I had gone to my Aunt and Uncles house. I had never met my mother's mom. She died before I was born. I saw a picture of her in my aunt and uncles bedroom and said, "I really would like to have seen her."

My family returns home in Dallas the next day and that night I woke up around 3 am and I hear a noise like the door open. I go to see who it is and an ethereal-like figure walks up to my bed and walks back to the door and I hear the same noise like it was closed. It looked just like my grandmother.

I don't think I fell back to sleep that night and the next couple of nights I slept in my parents room (told them what happened and apparently my aunt had a similar experience) and slept with a blanket over my head for the next few years. I'm over that now.

this looks fun!


http://www.groupon.com/deals/houston-ghost-tour-2?c=button&division=houston&sid=11060189&utm_source=newsletter&s=body&utm_medium=email&p=5&date=20111230&utm_campaign=houston-ghost-tour-2&utm_content=all-deals_houston&addxe=Qk1DMTMxM0BHTUFJTC5DT00=&user=fdf7c24a925bac2b6194bb543e53930968f1f6b1e533c7b8d172c6c1d1d03072

2 stories:

One morning while driving home after being awake for over 40 straight hours, I was really suffering to stay awake, but I was only about 2 miles from home. I am driving about 25 miles an hour because I realize I am zonked.

I see a mustard-yellow (like traffic stripe yellow) horse in the middle of the road. I see it plain as day.

I stop, and let the horse walk across the road, blink real good, and he's gone. Of course, now I am wide awake and get the rest of the way home with ease.

Of course there was no horse there, but I saw it plain as day. Sometimes our brain just freaks us out.

That being said, I recall seeing a golden floating marble inside of my livingroom when I was a teenager that others saw at the same time. Its stories where two or more people see the same strange phenomenon at the same time that really freak me out.

I used to live in a house that was haunted. We actually moved from it because it frightened my mom.

Used to have terrifying nightmares in that house all the time. When we moved they went away completely. TV's would turn on by themselves randomly, and sometimes the volume would also turn itself to 100% and wake us up. I woke up once with my remote control car driving itself around my room. Looked up and my mom was in the doorway watching it too, so I figured she was messing with me. Then I realized she had a bad look on her face. Once it stopped moving she picked it up to reveal that it didn't even have batteries inside. Doors would randomly shake in the middle of the night. Never actually saw a ghost, but that place was definitely haunted.


Only ghost I've ever actually seen wasn't in the form of any human. But it is at an old indian burial grounds near my town. Went out there several times and saw a weird ball of white mist that would float around a pasture. Wasn't really freaky at all because it never would get close enough to make you scared. It would always move but never get super close. Very interesting.

[This message has been edited by Disarmer (edited 12/31/2011 2:25a).]

Is that the indian burial ground outside of Moody TX? I went a couple times but never saw the floating cloud thing.

Ghosts do not exist

umm. i think we have been trolled by the whole kitchen story.

but tvs on and off seems to be a common theme in a lot of ghost stories.

Do know if ghosts exist but there’s definitely something out there. I posted this on a ghost thread on the outdoor board.

Our house had about a 4 month “haunting” that started a year ago last fall. Over the course of about six weeks, a strange things happened to my wife while alone in the house with me gone for work. Stereo turning itself up, finding locked doors open, kids toys making sounds while unplugged. On Christmas eve middle of the night a year ago we heard footsteps walking up and down the stairs which are right outside our bedroom. We listen for a while assuming it’s the kids coming down early to see the gifts. Finally we tell them to go back to bed, but they don’t – just more footsteps up and down the stairs. My wife gets up to tell them again to go back to bed, but there’s no one there. We go upstairs and both kids are sound asleep. Young kids too, 6 and 4, too young to be faking sleep to stay out of trouble.

We try to explain it away at first, but the footsteps returned every week or two. Now I’m the one that has to get up and see what is there - a very hard thing to make yourself do. They were loud enough to wake both of us up every time. There was no way to explain it away with creaking wood or shifting house or anything like that – it was footsteps on the stairs. Luckily I never had to experience the sight of whatever it was (like KL’s story on pg 9). Kids never saw anything either. After a few weeks of this, we’ve moved all 4 kids downstairs into the other bedroom because we just don’t know what’s going on.

By late February I’m hardly sleeping. Every little sound in the house at night wakes me up. Almost always it’s just regular sounds that you hear at night but every week or two we wake up to the footsteps again. We’re wondering how we’re supposed to sell this house. The last thing that happens – I leave for work one morning at 5AM. I notice as I walk by the stairs that the lights are on in the empty bedrooms upstairs. I know for 100% certain that all the lights were off when I went to bed. That evening when I got home, I found out that as soon as I walked out the door a toy pony in the living room starts playing its song. It’s not supposed to play unless there’s a kid sitting on it. My wife is scared to death and listens to it for 10 minutes hoping it will stop. It doesn’t stop. She has to get up and go in there and shut it off.

That morning was the last straw. My wife wants out of the house. We’re Christians so we decide to pray about it first. Every night for a week we pray, on our knees on the living room floor, trying to pray the James 5 type prayer. And that was the end of it. We were still on pins and needles for a while, but everything strange ended abruptly and a year later nothing else has happened. Based on that experience, there are no ghosts. What people experience as ghosts are actually demons. They mess with you, scare you, pretend to be grandpa. I don’t understand this, but there’s nothing imaginary about it.

cap... That's pretty intense

Im a strong believer in demons... That's why paranormal activity movies scare me to death

EDIT: Will be sleeping with this tonight.

[This message has been edited by petern81 (edited 12/31/2011 6:19p).]

Holy crap csp!

Having family in rural Mexico, I have heard countless ghost stories. I'll share two.

One of our uncles used to run a small grocery store in an old ranch house in the early 90s (For those that don't know, Mexico still has small stores much like the American early 1900's) This ranch house was famous in the area because people always claimed it was haunted (I have heard everything from leprechauns to "la llorona" occurring in this house). This house is made out of adobe mud and has a huge patio connecting every room (which gives it an even creepier feeling). The house has been abandoned since the 60's and was only being used as a store at that time (Keep in mind, this house has no electricity, which means no lights). One late afternoon, my uncle had to tend his livestock, so he left my cousin (5 years old at the time) in charge of the store by herself. Right at dusk, he drove back to the store to close up. When he got out of his truck, he heard my cousin scream from inside the house. His first thought was that maybe one of her friends had come over and they were playing. After 5 seconds pass by, he heard another scream, but this one sounded more like a distress scream. He ran inside the old house and went into the store area. He couldn't find her, so he then went on to search the rest of the house. When he reached the central patio, he heard her crying from within one of the rooms. He tried to open the door, but to his surprise, it was closed shut. This was an old wooden door that had no lock and was very frail, so for it to be shut was very odd. After kicking for about a minute, he finally got it opened (the whole time he was trying to get it open, she was inside crying frantically like if something was inside that room with her). When he went inside the room, he said that my cousin was in fetal position facing the far end corner of the room. (remember, the room has no electricity, which means the room was dark). He quickly ran and grabbed her and took her to the truck. He drove back to their house and asked her what had happened but she refused to speak about it. All she was able to say was that she "saw something" and doesn't know how she ended up inside the room locked in. Til this day, she has refused to tell us what that "something" was.

In Mexico, there is a small stretch of rural highway that connects small towns deep inside central Mexico (Mexican Federal Highway 51 to be exact). I don't know anyone who has directly experienced this, but know someone that claims to know a person who has experienced this (which means that I don't know how true all this is) It is said that in one of the hills at night, some drivers will sometimes see a girl in a white dress at the side of the road. If you pull over, she will disappear and you will see no signs of her. BUT, if you keep driving, it is believed that she will appear in your rear view mirror for a flash a couple of kilometers down the road. Once you look back to see if she is there (since natural instinct tells us too), she will not be there. Pretty creepy. Story has it that a girl was killed in that area while trying to hitchhike a ride.

I'm so smart! Can't sleep so I read the ghost thread. Dumb

Oldjohnny,

I remember hearing that story if the girl in the white dress when I was younger and living in south Texas.

Wasn't there a thread on AO that was similar to this one?

MFing Kitchen!

In all honesty I have seen waaaaayyy too much unexplainable things in my rather short life to discount anything. Literally I can think of dozens of events ranging from small to holy crap I need to get out of the house now. The first Paranormal activity scared me because I have seen most of those things at some point in my life, excepting the broken picture frame and demon tracks in the flour.

Things moving on their own, locked doors opening and closing, chandeliers shaking like crazy, lights going on and off on command, weird shapes moving in the corner of your peripheral visions, voices...the whole shebang. Seen it all.

Oddly enough the thing that scared me the most didn't involve me directly. Spent a summer with my uncle and aunt in rural NM. My little cousins (2 boys aged 4 and 5) were always sooo tired during the day and after several months of odd things happening the oldest comes up to me and asks me to lock the closet door in their room. (simple little catch high up on the door). I ask him why and he says, "So the bad people won't come out and talk to us anymore." Now at this point I get chills but it's when I look in his eyes that it gets me. This little boy that knows nothing of lies or falsehood is terrified out of his mind. I had never seen a more serious or scared person in my life. I ask him who they were and his reply was," We can't tell, They'll get angry and hurt us if we tell." At which point I shut up and lock the damned closet door every night. Incidentally it was at that same house that yrs later when they had moved out we were all discussing it and it turns out that every single one of us were having the same recurring nightmare of a malevolent dark mass outside a large window trying to get at our sleeping bodies. Every single one of us, 3 adults, 2 teenagers, and 3 little kids were having that EXACT same dream down to the smallest detail nearly every night while we stayed there and only stopped when the last person moved from that house.

Having discussed some of the things with my family I discovered I am the only son of the seventh born child of a seventh born child of a seventh born child. Weird huh? Not sure I buy into that really but it is an odd coincidence.

[This message has been edited by Eliminatus (edited 1/2/2012 11:53p).]

I haven't read this thread, but have we found out yet that there really isn't a ghost, it was just some old farmer trying to scare people away because he discovered gold on the land and he would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids?

why do so many of these stories sound like a plot to Paranormal Activity?

What was in the store Johnny!?!?!?

+1 on the Kitchen Petition.

KITCHEN!

I worked several summers at an all boys summer camp in North Carolina. (Apparently, North Carolina has way more stories of hauntings than most. I went my first summer hearing the typical ghost stories and thought nothing of it... just camp stuff.

Later, the leader of the camp actually forbade anyone from telling scary stories to campers. A couple summers later, he even added to our contracts that we would not tell ghost stories to campers OR staff. That was when I found out that many of the staff who had gone to this camp as boys refused to ever visit this one campsite in particular (I may tell that specific story later).

Before one summer session, my friend had a buddy that he'd met in Japan come to visit after going to see some schools in the U.S. as he was in the area. My friend didn't remember it until after the fact, but about ten years before, this friend in Japan had told him that his mother had taught him to see ghosts, and that he could teach my friend how. My friend declined, and it was never brought up again.

One night, my buddy was going around turning off the lights, and ran upstairs in one of the oldest buildings to turn off the upstairs porch lights. Upon returning, his friend asked him why he went up the stairs on the right, just to walk all the way through the building to the room farthest left (he had seen someone slowly open the shades and look out at him). My friend commented that he did not even go into the building, that the switch was on the outside, on the right. His Japanese friend tried to play it off like he really didn't see anything, but my buddy was freaked out and could tell he was lying.

The room the guy had seen someone in is the room with the safe, and has an alarm and motion sensors which were all on.
This story was told to me later when I was trying to figure out who kept setting off the alarm before there weren't even any kids at camp yet. My buddy finally told me about what had happened, and that he didn't think anyone was really setting off the alarm. We turned off fans, and put papers under weights etc, but it kept happening. I honestly thought he was messing with me, but was still freaked out. It was not at all abnormal for the lights to turn on and off on their own inside this one particular (locked) cabin that was nearest this two story building, and even hear the screen door (locked) open and close.

Well the Japanese friend came back a later summer, and actually stayed the night inside camp. The next morning, the Japanese friend says that he's sorry, but he can't stay any longer. After basically being begged, he finally tells my friend that he had seen ghosts of little girls all night long walking up and down the aisles between bunks. My friend told him that's weird, because that particular building was only a year old, and there had never been little girls at this camp.

The guy tried to let it go, and say it was probably a dream, but my friend could tell he was lying and pretty upset about what he'd seen. The friend described little girls with the stereotypical early 1900's white pajama dresses. He said that he had seen them the previous visit and didn't tell anyone. The reason he was disturbed this time, was that the girls could tell he could see them, and they began approaching him. When he tried to ignore them, they would become more aggressive in trying to get his attention.

Later on, we found out that the camp had actually been the site of an all girls camp in the late 1800's that was closed and abandoned very suddenly. We searched and searched and could not find any newspapers mentioning any outbreak of disease or fire or anything that was responsible for the sudden abandonment.

My question is: How can ghosts wear clothes?

Most people say that they are wearing whatever they died in...

right...so clothing is transmitted into the afterlife

What about David Carradine? Dude was a freak.

I'm scared now!

stories are getting stranger. we now have one with a Japanese shaman.

i am beginning to think that something in the air or water affects what a whole group of people see or feel.

Here's the story about the campsite I mentioned in an earlier post. Literally, every bad story from campouts happens at this site. It rains there every single night, and many people who grew up at the camp refuse to go there.

This site is by far the most beautiful of all of the campsites we have available to us, but it is also the only site we use which is public property. I've never gone and had any issue with other people being there, as it is very difficult to get to, and most visitors just go to the area during the day to see the falls.



Multiple things have happened here. One group leader had hiked back to camp alone to retrieve a medkit that one of his counselors had forgotten. He was by far the biggest, strongest guy at camp. He hiked back to the site after dark alone, but had the medkit, a radio, and a flashlight. Half way there, he hears what he thinks are footsteps behind him. He dismisses it as echoes of his own steps in the leaves coming off the mountain. Later, he's on the ridge and still hears other steps behind him that have gotten closer. He stops, and is going to turn to confront whatever counselor is messing with him, but is suddenly scared when the footsteps stop also, and something doesn't feel right. He is close to a very very steep hill we call suicide hill that even has a rope for hikers. He is so spooked, that he takes off sprinting down suicide hill. He slides down as the decline ends and spins around shining his flash light up to see this old, bearded mountain man just staring at him. After a pause, the man turns around and walks away. He stayed up all night and kept the fire going, and nothing else happened.

Later in the summer, helicopters were seen flying all over western north carolina searching for a wanted felon. I don't know what he did, but we were just told not to talk about it in front of the kids. The authorities believed he was hiding out somewhere near Asheville, and the camp I was at really wasn't too concerned about it, and didn't believe him to be hiding out in the woods (I've been told there's no way the man from the first story is this felon.)

Well, the youngest group (6-8 yrs) took a trip to this site (Catawba). The counselors had all the kids under a tarp and sleeping. Two boys had brought a tent from home, and wanted to sleep off away from the rest of the kids. The counselors stayed up late, just joking around and talking for a while. Just before they were about to go to sleep, one of the kids came up to them and asked why one of the counselors (the bearded one) had come and opened their tent and just stared at him. The group confirmed that this counselor had been at the fire the entire time, and had not even left to pee, surely not off in the directions these kids had set up. They ended up radioing camp, and being instructed to hike back that night.

Well the summer continued without any problems, but none of the leaders planned for their group to go to Catawba again. In the offseason, the year round receptionist and her husband who happens to be a sherriff were hiking to the falls (the campsite is on the way). It was winter, and the trees were thinned, and her husband spotted what looked like a makeshift campsite thrown together on a ridge before reaching the campsite. He went to investigate, and found some winter clothes, a fire pit, dozens of empty food cans, and a journal. He says that it was very hard to tell if the guy had left recently, or had been gone for several days. The scary part is, this guy had been writing in his journal describing kids from the camp in great detail. He would describe kids that were mean to the overweight ones, and fantasize about how he could punish them. There is no way of knowing, but the Sherriff believed that this man was the convict who was being pursued. In my mind, I find it more likely that all of these stories were the guy who my friend saw standing at the top of "Suicide Hill".

Also, on a session break well before my time there, a male and female staffer were killed after falling off of the water falls. No one knows if it was a suicide pact, one fell while trying to rescue the other, or if they were attacked.

All of that is back story on Catawba for an upcoming post (more ghost related).

The catawba site is along side the river that feeds the falls and is absolutely beautiful. Steep hills climb up all around the river and site, and make it set in a kind of flat bottomed bowl that is perfect for camping. One trail comes in from our camp a couple miles away, and continues past out the other side and on to the Catawba Falls.

One night, a single cabin went to camp at Catawba with just under 10 boys, and two counselors. One counselor was a Somoan looking guy that was huge, and known for being brave. Apparently, this guy had gone through the ritual where they hang you up from ropes by piercings through your chest muscles. One friend had even gotten him to show the scars, but when I met the guy at a reunion much later, he wasn't at all opened to talk about any of this.

So, as is par, the group gets to the site, eats, the kids catch crawfish in the creek, and the counselors eventually make them go to sleep. The two counselors stay up by the fire a little while longer talking about random things, most people claim they were talking about girls, and the upcoming trip with the nearby girls' camp.

Out of nowhere, the non-Somoan, we'll call him Bob gets very uneasy and comments on it. The Somoan tells him it's just his imagination and that it'll go away if he stops talking about it. Not a couple minutes later, both of the guys are extremely uncomfortable for absolutely no reason, and even radio camp requesting to come back.

(At this point of the story, I initially called BS, and said the guys just wanted to sleep in their own beds back at camp. However, people that wuss out like this usually do so by claiming to spot a bear while dinner is being cooked, and before they have to set up all the kids sleeping bags, tarps etc.)

At any rate, their tribe leader denies their request, because they literally have no reason to be feeling panicked. Soon after this, they hear leaves being kicked up at the top of the surrounding hills, and the temperature just plummets. The wind apparently was substantial, because the creek right next to the site is large, and loud, but the wind kicking up the leaves became loud enough to even start waking the kids. This rustling of leaves descends down the hills evenly and the counselors tell their kids to start packing, and that they're going back to their cabin.

No time later, the counselors tell the kids to just leave their stuff, and that they will come back for it later. They walk a ways down the back trail and stop as Bob radios his boss again that they are leaving. His boss threatens him, and Bob ignores this, and in fact, he even tells the leader to get out of bed and come meet them near the interstate. He is so spooked, he is going to use the back trail that pops out at the highway which we only use for emergencies and force his boss to come pick them all up in the middle of the night rather than hike back the way they came.

This is the last their boss hears from the radio, and eventually does leave to pick them up.

This cuts off most of my first hand sources, and the rest of this was told to me by a guy who is about my age who was actually a camper in the cabin when this all went down. Keep in mind that it is from a child's perspective.

My friend thought that people were in the trees when he first woke up, but later realized it was wind, and his counselor told him to pack because a storm was coming. Soon after, this boy realized the staff was lying when he heard them talking on the radio, and began to panic. After the last radio contact, some kind of blue aura was glowing back at the campsite. Bob had the kids hold hands in a row, and led them as they all began jogging up the back trail as fast as they could go. The Somoan offered to hold up the back of the line so that they wouldn't lose any of the kids.

The glowing light didn't stay at the campsite and was quickly catching up to them down the trail. The Somoan ended up staying behind to confront it, as the kids got out. Not long after he'd stopped, the Somoan came sprinting up the hill, passed all of the kids, and didn't stop until he reached the highway.

He instantly went from being the guy who would sacrifice himself for their safety, to having absolutely no regard for anything but his own self preservation.

People who were still awake back at camp had been laughing about them being scared, but ended up weirded out by the whole thing and anxiously awaited their return to hear what had happened. Well, the cabin gets back and goes to bed, and the Somoan refuses to tell anyone anything.

The next morning, the Somoan quit, and left without telling anyone what he'd seen. Several junior counselors were sent out to go retrieve all of the gear that had been left. (One of these guys ended up being leadership at the camp, and I know him well) He told me that they got to Catawba to find all of the leaves tossed around like a tornado had literally dropped down on the site. Tents had been tossed up and stuck in trees, and packs had been ripped open (possibly raccoons getting into their food).

The Somoan randomlly returned for the 75th reunion. Very few people know this story anymore at camp, I guess that's why he was ok coming back. My friend pointed him out to me and told me that was the guy from the story. I introduced myself and we talked briefly. When he mentioned what age he worked with, and what years, I tried to casually bring up, "Oh were you around when all that crazy stuff went down at Catawba?" and he just ended the conversation and walked away.

It terrifies me to think what this guy who was known as being brave witnessed that made him not tell a soul.