Ever had a ghostly or superstitious encounter? Share your story!

[Gemini562]

Okay, so I've got this freaky tale from when I was in high school. Picture this: middle of the night, I wake up, and I'm totally stuck, can't move anything but my eyes. And it seriously feels like there's someone in the room watching me. I tried to curse at whatever it was, hoping it would scram, but then—get this—I felt this icy cold air just hit me in the face. it felt like someone was literally blowing air right onto my face. No AC, nothing. It was summer. Finally got moving again and kept all the lights on, just waiting for dawn. Next day, I told my buddies, and one suggested it might've been sleep paralysis like your body's asleep but your brain's not, and you hallucinate freaky stuff. But that doesn't explain the cold air, right??

[Oldgixxer]

Ok,I'll bite..
When I was 12 my grandfather had a heart attack at home and passed away. My grandmother was clearly distraught as expected;the following night when she went to bed she woke up shortly after to my grandfather sitting on the bed telling her everything will be ok. She freaked out and ran out of the bedroom crying and ran downstairs. I was at their house w my mom & I was asleep in a bedroom next to hers. I immediately woke up like wtf is going on? She tells my mom what just occurred in graphic detail as I was quietly listening from the other room. That was '83,she never slept in their bedroom again,or would even go in that room unless someone was there w her.

This is where it gets creepy. Two days later I'm sleeping in my own bed and wake up in the middle of the night to a tapping on my window(getting chills as I type this)..our dog starts barking,there's nothing outside the window. Mom gets up to check on me( I didn't mention the tapping),then goes back to bed. I'm just about to fall asleep again and I hear louder tapping on the window...TAP TAP TAP.
Now I'm freaking out as I know what I just heard and the dog is at full alert. 30mins later our phone rings(2am)its my grandma freaking out to my mom saying she just got a call from my uncle in Canada who was also freaking out, My gramps and he were super close. He awoke to a tapping on his bedroom window that continued for a few seconds. He got up and looked out the window and nothing was there. Goes back to bed and wakes up to a louder TAP TAP TAP on the glass. Now he's scared and says "who's there??!" TAP TAP TAP. Nothing there. Tapping starts again and he says out loud "who is it" TAP TAP TAP. He says my gramps name out loud,"Bill?"
The tapping stopped immediately after he said his name and never occurred again for either him or I.

Anyways,my mom told me the next day in depth what the phone convo was about w my grandma at 2am...about what my uncle in Canada experienced and she told me not to be scared that sometimes strange,unexplained things occur after a loved one passes and that it might be grandpa saying goodbye to loved ones that were close.

So,basically just some unexplained tapping on a glass window after gramps passed. Take it FWIW,I know 100% what I heard that night so if y'all don't believe me I'm fine w that.

[Buug959]

I had an odd experience in the winter of 2000. I was working in Delray Beach, FL. The job was about six months long and we were about four months into it when one Sunday morning I woke up earlier than usual and I was absolutely wide awake. Something was telling me I had to go home... NOW! I had a few things that I just couldn't leave unfinished so I worked my ass off all day Sunday. I grabbed a couple of hours sleep and hit the I95 north early Monday morning. I drove all the way to Halifax only stopping for gas and gas station food... and two speeding tickets (both of them for 84mph oddly enough). The entire drive took about 32 hours and I arrived home late on Tuesday afternoon.
When my girlfriend got home after work she was, needless to say, surprised to see my car in the driveway. She found me asleep in bed. That's when she told me that my mother was trying to get ahold of me (I was not reachable in Florida. I had to call out.)
I called my mother right away and she told me my grandmother had passed away suddenly early Sunday morning from a ruptured brain aneurysm. Her funeral was Wednesday afternoon. She was 84.

[Esteban]

Never had anything ghostly happen to me but have heard plenty of stories like the ones above.

My Mom died when I was young (17, I'm 69 now) and tbh would love to see her or hear from her. Don't know if I believe in things like that but maybe things are possible beyond what I believe in.

[floridaorange]

I started going to church at 6am every Wed for the past year to join in early morning prayer time. We'd listen to worship music and just pray for about 30 mins and then stand in a circle and pray. I was drawn to this in a way I can't explain, the church was actually a construction site as we were renovating an old building and turning into a modern gathering place that happens to be a church. Anyway, I started forgiving everyone in my life after asking Jesus to reveal to me who I needed to forgive. This was suggested by a client of mine. That morning I broke down and cried nearly uncontrollably although not quite. I had no conscious idea I was holding grudges, zero. But that morning something happened and it was as if The Holy Spirit himself entered my heart. For about 3-4 months I was telling everyone, including strangers how amazing God was and listening to worship music 24-7. I never liked worship music ever, so I found that bizarre. Several people I work with and several neighbors also came to know God during that time after we talked. For the first time in my life I could tangibly feel what it meant to be actively loved by God. I'm not joking when I say, my body could barely contain the amount of light and love that was flooding me each day. I'm still in awe and still willing to tell anyone about this encounter if they seem interested but I'm not telling random strangers about it as much. Probably told 100 people though. Anyway, I 100% consider this a supernatrual encounter and something I'll never forget.

[Artemis]

Impressive experience: witnessing 'terminal lucidity' during several hours, of someone who was terminally ill, drowsy and delirious for days on end (because of a lethal disease ravaging the human body + high dose of morphine as analgesic) in a palliative department of a hospital.

Unlike before and after those hours: lucid, coherent and focused, vividly recalling memories from decades ago. Some kind of final-stage epiphany before relapsing into a lowered state of mind as death approached quickly. It was surreal, kept you puzzled how this sudden 'false positive' of apparent drastic 'recovery' or 'immunity' defied logic (seemingly incompatible with the serious medical condition + medical staff saying that death was imminent), whilst realizing very well that it was a very brief 'window of opportunity' for the final goodbye with a conscious state of mind (still fully responsive instead of semi-comatose).

Seems as if the human brain gives a final push in the critical condition, like a massive adrenalin shot, basic instinct of survival, granting full access with a boosted 'search engine' to all memory vaults before the final shutdown, signing out forever.

The human brain is way more intricate and sophisticated than we generally assume.

Also reminds of incandescent light bulbs sometimes getting brighter before burning out due to 'thermal runaway'. As the filament in the bulb weakens, its resistance increases, causing it to draw more current and produce more light. This increased current hastens the bulb's demise, leading to its eventual failure. Also think of the flame of a candle often burning brighter in the terminal stage (final spur).

[tcphoto]

Back in the early 90's, I worked in Japan for seven months and in Tokyo for the first four months. My roommate had left early in the morning for work and I walked to the other side of the apartment to the bathroom. On the way back, I noticed the door on the empty third bedroom was ajar. I opened it and found two young adults lying on the futon, one looked at me and said, "Scott told us we could crash here after partying last night".

I was half awake and called the office to hear about the days schedule and went back to address the strangers. I found an empty room and didn't hear the hollow metal front door close. Needless to say, Scott (roommate) had no idea what I was talking about and when I shared my encounter with a coworker, she freaked out and told me about her own encounter with ghosts in her apartment. If you've ever been to Tokyo, you know that the city is quite developed and many of those tiny cemeteries have probably been "relocated" for the sake of progress.

[kscarrol]

So when we lived in New Orleans we lived in a 130+ year old house where the previous owner (kind of an "old maid", single woman who never married) passed away in the house at an old age. My wife always said she never felt alone in the house but I never paid attention to it. One night while sleeping I felt someone grab and wiggle my big toe. Now my wife did this fairly frequently when our young diabetic son was having an issue but when I awoke and looked up, no one was there and my wife was asleep next to me. I figured I was dreaming and went back to sleep only to be awakened again by the felling of someone grabbing and wiggling my big toe. I looked up again to see no one there but I could actually see my big toe moving back and forth. Kind of creepy but that was my only "experience" in the house.

When I told this to our neighbor across the street, she responded "oh I see Ms. Ledy on your porch all the time." Ms. Ledy was the woman who passed away in the house before we bought it.

Finally, we sold the house to a woman my wife knew and moved to South Carolina. A month or two after moving my wife got a text out of the blue from the new owner asking if we had ever had any experiences with ghosts in the house.

[Gemini562]

Originally Posted by tcphoto

Back in the early 90's, I worked in Japan for seven months and in Tokyo for the first four months. My roommate had left early in the morning for work and I walked to the other side of the apartment to the bathroom. On the way back, I noticed the door on the empty third bedroom was ajar. I opened it and found two young adults lying on the futon, one looked at me and said, "Scott told us we could crash here after partying last night".

I was half awake and called the office to hear about the days schedule and went back to address the strangers. I found an empty room and didn't hear the hollow metal front door close. Needless to say, Scott (roommate) had no idea what I was talking about and when I shared my encounter with a coworker, she freaked out and told me about her own encounter with ghosts in her apartment. If you've ever been to Tokyo, you know that the city is quite developed and many of those tiny cemeteries have probably been "relocated" for the sake of progress.

Did you ever get curious enough to dig into the history of your apartment or that area in Tokyo?

[Gemini562]

Originally Posted by kscarrol

So when we lived in New Orleans we lived in a 130+ year old house where the previous owner (kind of an "old maid", single woman who never married) passed away in the house at an old age. My wife always said she never felt alone in the house but I never paid attention to it. One night while sleeping I felt someone grab and wiggle my big toe. Now my wife did this fairly frequently when our young diabetic son was having an issue but when I awoke and looked up, no one was there and my wife was asleep next to me. I figured I was dreaming and went back to sleep only to be awakened again by the felling of someone grabbing and wiggling my big toe. I looked up again to see no one there but I could actually see my big toe moving back and forth. Kind of creepy but that was my only "experience" in the house.

When I told this to our neighbor across the street, she responded "oh I see Ms. Ledy on your porch all the time." Ms. Ledy was the woman who passed away in the house before we bought it.

Finally, we sold the house to a woman my wife knew and moved to South Carolina. A month or two after moving my wife got a text out of the blue from the new owner asking if we had ever had any experiences with ghosts in the house.

Gives me goosebumps just reading about it!

[tcphoto]

Originally Posted by Gemini562

Did you ever get curious enough to dig into the history of your apartment or that area in Tokyo?

Nope, I can only imagine what's happened in that neighborhood as it was rumored to have many Japanese Mafia residents.

[nerdogray]

Never felt or seen anything. My brother did. But me, I've felt spiritually closed off my entire life. Kind of boring, really.

[Our03z4]

Originally Posted by Gemini562

Okay, so I've got this freaky tale from when I was in high school. Picture this: middle of the night, I wake up, and I'm totally stuck, can't move anything but my eyes. And it seriously feels like there's someone in the room watching me. I tried to curse at whatever it was, hoping it would scram, but then—get this—I felt this icy cold air just hit me in the face. it felt like someone was literally blowing air right onto my face. No AC, nothing. It was summer. Finally got moving again and kept all the lights on, just waiting for dawn. Next day, I told my buddies, and one suggested it might've been sleep paralysis like your body's asleep but your brain's not, and you hallucinate freaky stuff. But that doesn't explain the cold air, right??

Correct, that is sleep paralysis. My wife occasionally gets it. There are a few explanations for it but some are concerning depending on what you believe. I'll have some follow up questions. Basically don't interact with the object/person/ball of light in the room or pay mind to it. Use your eyes to notice things in the room, some items should be out of place and this will help confirm you are not awake or in real danger. Take peace in knowing nothing will actually harm you during it but could be a sign there is some kind of past evil like entity over you...if you believe that. My wifes mother had a...let's say an interesting past...which supposedly could have passed to my wife.

Quick question, did you ever have a "hearing test" in school, 1 on 1 with a "nurse" and were subjected to certain tones and told to identify patterns? Possibly flash card usage during the test as well.

Were you also told they wanted you in "gifted" classes at some point down the road?

Also not fully related but is to a point, do you have a birthmark?

There is a theory if you have had some of these things. If you don't want to answer I understand.

[///MPhatic]

First I want to say that I'm not a believer in ghosts, or a soul, or god or anything like that. However, I do believe that there are things that we, as humans, maybe be able to detect but don't quite understand how yet.

A few years ago my mother passed away. We had emptied her house other than the heavy furniture and I had gone over just to check everything one last time and silently say my last goodbyes. I went into the room where she passed, the bed was still there along with the covers and pillow. I was very aware of the quiet in the house. She lived by a busy street so there were almost constant sounds outside, but they were all muffled. It made the quiet in the house seem even more quiet, so perception was pretty high. I have always enjoyed this kind of quiet stillness.

Anyway, I was in the process of kneeling down at the foot of her bed (not even sure exactly why, as I certainly wasn't going to pray), and as I got closer to the bed I got the unmistakable smell of perfume for just a second on the way down, but once I was all the way down there was no smell at all. I guess I had intended to just lay my head on the bed for a few minutes and remember her, but now my thoughts would not leave the perfume.

I instantly reasoned that the smell had to have come from the bedding or the pillow, as it makes perfect sense, but a quick smell of the area, and indeed moving up and down several times as I had just done, trying to recreate the exact circumstances produced no smell at all. I looked around the room, there was nothing, just a chest of drawers, a nightstand, and the bed. No movement, no A/C or heat on, just quiet stillness.

I immediately felt my face flush and felt a bit of fight or flight, so I left. I know her favorite perfume very well, White Shoulders, she had worn it for years, yet I'm not sure that's what it was, it happened so fast. All I know is that it was without a doubt perfume, and there was none around anywhere.

I know that the part of the brain that controls memory and the part of the brain that controls smell are very near to each other, so we can sometimes literally create smells from memory for just an instant when diving deep into a memory, but I wasn't thinking of anything at the time, I was just trying to spend a few more moments there before the house was empty and sold.

I did return a few weeks later, the room was empty, and there was an altogether different feel to the place. It's as if I had felt something more last time, like something else was there, and this last time it clearly was not.

It was probably all in my mind, but it was an experience for sure.

[Maynard]

Not exactly a ghost story but...
A long time ago in a major city, there was a group of perhaps a dozen scientists who worked with kids. They all were noticing that it was not unusual for kids to report experiences of things commonly termed 'psychic' or 'paranormal' - all of them had kids in their cohorts that had been identified as doing this. The two most common things were very vivid and over-detailed reports of past lives, and what is caled 'remote viewing' - the sense that you can leave your body and travel elsewhere and see what is happening.

Many of these remote viewing reports had details that would have been considered 'proof' that they were real in today's internet (i.e. kids reporting real events that there was no plausible way they could have known otherwise, or things they were too young to even understand). But being scientists, they were pretty skeptical and really more interested in sussing out how it worked via non-paranormal abilities. So they were bored and tipsy at a conference and they spent the evening setting up a theoretical empirical test to reallly eliminate the alternative non-parapsychological explanations; this required a theoretical way to eliminate the possibility of any covert messaging or surveillance, a situation that is so hard to achieve that it was sort of imaginary.

Now in that big metro city there happened to be a really high tech research lab where they had a totally sealed room/chamber - massively shielded so that it had essentially zero outside RFI/EMF or any transmission signal, noise, or vibration AND the ability to instrumate it to completely record what was happening. And totally secure from anybody being able to rig it for surveillance covertly. IIRC it was for doing super refined physics and microchip experiments. Time in this chamber cost thousands per hour (in wayback dollars, so add a zero or two today). I'm sure it was just a coincidence, but such a chamber would be perfect for this kind of an experiment. It also just happened that some of these scientists were privy to insider info, and learned that a big corporation had just cancelled a few days of chamber time last minute. Somehow there was a 'messaging error' and the admin sort of neglected to fill those times with other paying customers. The scientist got on the phone real quick with thier buddies, and basically said 'lets do that study, I've got the perfect location'.

Amongst them they rounded up almost 2 doxen kids considered highly suspect for the ability (more than one plausible story/report). They ran a remote viewing experiment that was elaborately double-blinded (actually more like quadruple-blinded); the people getting the kids responses had absolutely no idea what was going to be going on inside the tank, and those in the tank did not know who was trying to view, or even specifically when each kid was trying (conventional studies usually use a fixed/known set of objects or images which really reduces the statistical difficulty - i.e. guessing card suite is a 25% chance, what card it is becomes about a 2% chance, but 'what do I have in my hand?' becomes almost infintely difficult). I won't belabour all the details, but this was basically the best study that a very talented group could put together, with appropriate statistical analysis on the results.

Results of this were that a subgroup of the kids - about 80% IIRC, were able to demonstrate repeatable performances that were statistically significant at better than the .01 level (less than 1% chance it could have been chance results). All but 2 of the kids did statistically better than chance. Several of the kids were so strikingly accurate that the group swapped experimenters for a second round and added more detailed material to the viewing task, without sugstantially decreasing accuracy.

Punch line: they all decided that they better keep this to themselves, that submitting this for publication or replication would only get them blackballed for being 'crackpots' and no more grant funding for any of them. And, amongst the small subgroup of kids w/ known history, they all grew out of it before puberty (but there was one kid that wasn't particularly believable in that).


Now about those past life memories - the people who tell me they were somebody real famous get my instant BS response, as does anything that happens at a 'psychic fair', but when it is an unremarkable day-to-day life described in vivid detail by a very young, uneducated kid it does make you wonder. No way to really guarantee that a kid didn't hear something that they subconsciously file away and bring out later, especially now that the internet has so much. But one that stuck out to me comes from back when the internet required a phone modem. This was a 5th grader who told one out of the blue about a past life as a farmer that involved him taking on a very wierd accent (Irish brogue, and he was inner city AA) and using a term for a piece of horse tack that I thought was made up until I was able to find s/b several years later at one of those historical villiages who knew 18th century farm gear. Quite a few others, but none with that level of obscure detail.

[Gemini562]

Originally Posted by Our03z4

Correct, that is sleep paralysis. My wife occasionally gets it. There are a few explanations for it but some are concerning depending on what you believe. I'll have some follow up questions. Basically don't interact with the object/person/ball of light in the room or pay mind to it. Use your eyes to notice things in the room, some items should be out of place and this will help confirm you are not awake or in real danger. Take peace in knowing nothing will actually harm you during it but could be a sign there is some kind of past evil like entity over you...if you believe that. My wifes mother had a...let's say an interesting past...which supposedly could have passed to my wife.

Quick question, did you ever have a "hearing test" in school, 1 on 1 with a "nurse" and were subjected to certain tones and told to identify patterns? Possibly flash card usage during the test as well.

Were you also told they wanted you in "gifted" classes at some point down the road?

Also not fully related but is to a point, do you have a birthmark?

There is a theory if you have had some of these things. If you don't want to answer I understand.

I appreciate the curiosity, but no, I didn't have any of the experiences you mentioned, and I don't have a birthmark either.

You know, I'm absolutely certain I was wide awake when it happened, that moment something blew air on my face. It was so real, I even blinked when the air brushed against me. The weird part is: I freaked out because I couldn't move and started cursing (it was all in my mind because I couldn't actually talk), trying to get some control back. But the moment I could move again, this odd thought popped into my head, like "Your cursing doesn't affect me. It feels so pointless, like, why even bother?" I have no clue where that thought came from, but it just appeared out of nowhere after I regained my movement.

[GOLFFRR]

When I was dating I would come across a ghost -er from time to time.

[billnchristy]

We lived in a haunted house in Newport News VA. Activity started pretty much the first night as my roommate went home on leave and I was by myself. We didn't have furniture yet so I had my computer room setup and that was it, it was a 4 bedroom house with 2 dudes so we each had two rooms. I was in the PC room and heard a banging on the door and my name, went downstairs and there was nobody there, I looked outside, no kids running away and even if it was kids, how would they know my name on the first night?

The great room had a wood burning stove that we never used, but it always smelled like a fresh fire and we came to theorize that maybe someone or someones had died in a fire in that room because it was always creepy feeling, likes someone was watching you. It also had a funky sliding glass door that you had to lift up on a latch and then slide a bolt sideways to open, and yet, almost daily that damn door was open about an inch or two.

Everything always happened out of your sight and we never saw anything, but if you were in the living room it sounded like someone was trying to find something in the kitchen, you'd go in there and cabinets and drawers would be open.

I had set an ashtray on top of a glass one night, and the bottom rim fit perfectly in the top of the glass, I went to change CDs and heard a noise and the ashtray had flung off the glass onto the carpet.

My now wife moved in with her 2yo son and he would constantly talk to someone while we were watching tv or something, but stop if we paused, ok no big deal, but with the other stuff it was suspect.

One day we're in the dining room and he pointed at the front door, which you couldn't see from there and said, "Light's out" and sure enough the porch light was out.

He also pointed at an air duct and said "Corridor"

Later, about 6mo or so after moving in, the daughter of the previous owner/renter came by and told us a bunch of stories and that they even had a priest come bless the place with no luck, the activity always came back

My roommate Wes would shit talk the ghosts, while I was always respectful and kindly asked them to not open the back door for instance, while he would yell and curse at them, he would also wake up with bruises all over his body so I guess they would give him a sock party in the middle of the night.

Lastly, a friend of ours spent the night in the haunted room and was gone when we woke up, he would never tell us what happened and always acted weird about it so we never pressed him.

[erickonphoenix]

Not very supernatural but super scary.

In the early 2000s I'd been dating a girl for a couple of months. Against my better judgement she was only separated from her husband who happened to be a sheriffs deputy the next county over. But, she was hot, seemed honest, had her own apartment so I felt comfortable with it.

I was living on a sailboat at the time so I got my mail at a PO box but any packages could be delivered to the Marina office. One weekend we had gone to Austin and after the drive home I dropped her off at her apartment then went to the marina. I'd been expecting a package delivery so I went into the office to see if it came in. The receptionist said it had not, then asked me, "Hey, your friend Chris came in here looking for you Saturday. Did he ever find you?"

[kscarrol]

Sounds like Chris was looking to make you in to a ghost...

[celsdogg]

Yesterday I decided to have some of the Macallen my uncle gave me.

This morning my sister called me to tell me he passed away yesterday.

[Oldgixxer]

Originally Posted by celsdogg

Yesterday I decided to have some of the Macallen my uncle gave me.

This morning my sister called me to tell me he passed away yesterday.

Damn,very sorry for your loss. My condolences. RIP Uncle