Title says it all, first hand experiences please. For the record I'm not a believer but always found it interesting and have a few experiences I can't fully explain. Well I kind of can, brain playing tricks and that sort of thing. here's some from when I was a kid living on a farm.
When I was 8 years old my grandfather on my fathers side died. At the time I shared a room with my older brother and we had bunk beds, with him on the top bunk. My brother didn't like the dark so my parents would leave the hallway light on and the door ajar. A short time after my grandfather died I woke in the night and saw my grandfather watching over us from the door way but he looked wispy and ethereal. I found it strangely comforting even though I was a bit scared of him in life as he was quite strict. In the morning I asked my brother if he had seen anything during the night and he described what I had seen.
Within a few years of that, I don't remember if it was before or after, one of our dogs died. She was an English setter called Minty. a few weeks after she died I saw her at the end of the garden and I called her name and ran over to her keeping my eyes on her until I stumbled, when I looked up again she was gone.
Also within a few years, somewhere between the age of 8 and 10 I guess. We had the run of the farm and the fields around it. Just beyond the fields to the east the was some red brick walls, and I wanted to go check them out for ages but being the youngest my brother and sister never let me go that far. The walls were 8-10 feet high at a guess and it was clearly old and looked abandoned. There was an opening, the entrance I guess. All around it, aside from where I approached was woods. As we got older they were usually off doing their own things and I ended up roaming the farm alone so i made my way over there and as I approached it I could hear many voices, horses and the sound of metal hitting metal. Like a blacksmith working or something similar. I sneaked closer and peered in at the entrance.Ii saw what looked like a Victorian courtyard with a fountain at the centre, a horse and carriage and several people working including a farrier. I ducked back worried I might get in trouble and after a few moments risked looking again. That time it was just an overgrown mess, there were no people or horses. It was so overgrown I couldn't tell what was at the centre of the courtyard. For the following few weekends I kept going back there trying to clear it up as I thought it would make for a cool den. When I cleared the vegetation enough I discovered there was a dried up old fountain at the centre. I found various horse shoes and old tools. the layout appeared very similar to what I had seen in my first look.
Also one night I swear I saw a ghostly horse and carriage riding right outside the houses, but that was easier to dismiss as my imagination.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Tell us your weird, unexplained or ghostly experiences.
I'm not a supernatural believer myself. I have had some interesting experiences, but all have explanations.
The most interesting phenomenon I witnessed was "ball lightning." My brother and I saw it in our shared bedroom when we were kids. It passed through the ceiling and then out a wall. We were shocked by the appearance and asked each other what we saw. It was the days before internet, so I didn't have a chance to look it up until recently. I found out it's most likely a mirage of sorts, caused by specific electrical patterns in the brain, triggered by thunderstorms. It's a pretty common phenomenon.
Another interesting thing I saw was during a meteor shower I was watching with a group of science teachers and their families at a summer program. We saw a light that was approaching head-on. It grew steadily brighter but then shot off in a different direction at an angle. The consensus among the crowd was that it was probably a meteor that bounced off the atmosphere, like a stone skipping on a river.
I also had an amusing coincidence occur while working at a historical state park. I was working on a Civil War ghost story program. The book U was reading was talking about a Southern field hospital that was ill-staffed and led to suffering of soldiers from both sides. As I wrote on my notes, "The incompetent Confederate," the door slammed shut and startled me to a jump. There were only two people in the building. My coworker was in her office. I went and asked if she had shut the door. She said she was wondering why I was slamming doors. We had the outside door and windows open, so the real culprit was the wind. It just had amusing timing.
There were a few ghost stories in the lore of my family so I picked up an interest early on but never experienced anything until I was an adult. Now like UB I can explain almost anything so I'll share the ones I CAN't explain.
The wife and I love ghost walks. So the second one we went on in Gettysburg was through town as opposed to the battlefield. We were walking down a main road and we glanced over at a building that the guide had just told us about. Seems the lights flicker at sunset and the fixture swings gently back and forth. It was sunset after she finished the story and we started onward. Just then the lights began to flicker. This was before LEDs and compact fluorescent and incandescent lighting just didn't flicker like that even if on a timer or with a light sensor. And inside light fixtures hanging from the ceiling don't swing when there's nothing to push them. I took a bunch of pictures with my wonderful Push Here Dummy 35mm zoom camera. Pity I'd never see them developed because of what awaited us at the next stop.
The Jenny Wade house was the home of the only civilian fatality of the battle of Gettysburg. The bullet hole was still in the door. Legend had it her spirit really hated cameras, especially when photographing the bullet hole. My camera was barely six months old and very well cared for. I took one shot of the hole then went for another and – nothing. The camera could turn on and off, the film was loaded fine but would not advance, and nothing happened when the button was pressed. It was as if lightning has stricken it and it was suddenly dead. No one could ever figure out what had happened to it. It was just struck dead at the Jenny Wade house and she didn't like cameras.
I also had a perfect nighttime light in the sky UFO sighting. It just hovered there for five minutes and it looked disc shaped (actually refraction, a round light flattens into a disc when observed for long periods) It was totally silent. Couldn't be a helicopter! And then it suddenly winked out. Well the helicopter turned presenting it's side and the turned off the spotlight. It was running without lights, was a police chopper and the silhouette was unmistakable to my aircraft ID trained eyes. Dim but perceptible. Anyone else would have had a perfect UFO sighting. Wasn't to be for me.
Though the glowing orb we caught on the security cameras flitting around the outside of the building was a bit harder to explain. Went between two cameras on the side of the building facing the parking lot. Flitted about like a lightning bug, but was much too bright for that. There was no one in the parking lot with a flashlight, there was no atmospheric phenomena that night to explain the little orb of light. It wasn't in the cameras because the cameras were stationary and this thing moved. And the cameras were mounted between 12 and 20 feet off the ground. Reflections also don't last for five to fifteen minutes. Or do they? As I'm writing this I realize both cameras were under a floodlight on the side of the building. If a bat was flying around the camera the light could have reflected off its eyes creating the ball of glare. A bat would be nearly indistinguishable from the dark background as we discovered later when we had to chase some away from under the awning on the bus stop – on Halloween.
I have become a lot more rational as I've aged so that even the things I can't explain from my younger days I know are attributable to faulty memories, my eyes and brain playing tricks, and being open to suggestion, because ghosts, monsters, beasties etc are all impossible and therefore silly. :)
One of the main ones from when I was little was when I walked down the hallway into my dark bedroom at night and saw a tall Australian soldier, with a slouch hat on his head and a big radio telephone set on his back, holding the telephone to his face. He was all grey and glowing dimly against the blackness, as if he was made out of the static dust particles in the air.
He was just standing there…
I screamed in terror and called my mum and dad. Dad came charging in with a huge machete in his hand and mum with a big kitchen knife, roaring. They turned on the lights but there was no one there.
I was shocked and embarrassed…
They searched around but found no one. No one at all.
I saw weird things at night as a kid too. Usually in a half sleeping state, and I woke up in weird places too. Sleep disorders are really common in children, sleep walking, sleep paralysis, etc. Most grow out of it. Certainly explains a lot of the things that go "bump" at night, especially when compounded by imagination and a lack of knowledge and experience.
But as an adult, I can still creep myself out. The scariest times are when you are alone. Keeping cats/dogs around telly helps because you have something to blame all the random night sounds. (The dog helps the most because he will always react to a living thing's noise and ignores random house settling and other inconsequential sounds.) Honestly, I'm most afraid of earthly things. Especially since we had a burglar a few years ago.
I'm also creeped out by mirrors. I decided at some point that the scariest thing in the world would be to see a reflection not in the room or vice versa. So I never look too long in a mirror. I know it's completely illogical but it's this hypothetical world-breaking horror that has taken residence in my mind.
I trouble sleeping at night as a child and would wander the house and look at the long shadows and imagine things but there was never anything there.
But mirrors– we had a mirrored cabinet that opened reflecting onto another mirror and you'd see the reflection of the reflection into infinity, as a succession of doors. Infinite possibilities and universes reflecting into the mirror. I watched a lot of Twilight Zone as a kid.
ozoneocean wrote:
I have become a lot more rational as I've aged so that even the things I can't explain from my younger days I know are attributable to faulty memories, my eyes and brain playing tricks, and being open to suggestion, because ghosts, monsters, beasties etc are all impossible and therefore silly. :)
Yup, the ones I mentioned I kind of put down to that, especially the dog one. The one about my grandfather, well my brother saw it as well, but who really knows. Maybe it was my dad watching over us or something.
The courtyard one I can't explain, perhaps I'd heard something about it and imagined it but I remember telling my dad and he had no idea what it was before that.
Some others I've had.
Once in a large greenhouse the roof glass shattered and started swirling around. I guess a mini whirlwind, but back then I'd never seen or heard of weather like that in the UK. It was scary all broken glass swirling in the air for a few minutes.
When I was 18 I worked the night shift in a convenience store, the sort where you'd serve people through a hatch after 11pm. It was an old building and in the stock room there was a cold spot where the temperature dropped to 5 degrees Celsius. There was no drafts or any reason we could figure out that caused it. There was also an old rotary phone that moved. It was usually on a shelf above the back door to the left about 10 feet high. It wasn't used for anything, it was wired but not an active line. Every so often it would move and the manager said it was unexplained how it moved. Assuming it was a joke I played along and moved it myself. I moved it from the shelf to the top of a pallet of tinned food a few hours into a night shift. Bear in mind I was the only person in the building and there was no way in that O wouldn't have been aware of. A few hours later I walked through the stock room and the phone was on the shelf again. So I moved it again, this time into the cleaning cupboard. Within an hour it was back on the pallet of tinned food. Later again it was back on the shelf. I searched the building thoroughly in case someone was hiding and playing a prank. Nothing. This happened fairly regularly and a few others notices it too but everyone thought it was someone else playing a prank.
Not a ghost story, but I had an odd experience when I was in high school.
Our cat had gone missing. He was a stray that we had adopted and he loved going outside. Before this time, he had always returned within an hour or so.
After several hours, my folks called me while I was over at a friend's house, asking if I had any idea where Arthur might be (we named him Arthur; it just fit). Nope. When I got home, still no Arthur.
The next morning I woke very early (this was extremely odd in itself). I pulled on pants and jacket over my jams, slipped into sneakers, when outside, crossed the road into the wooded park, walked about five minutes Straight to him. No deviations, no trail-following, like iron to a magnet.
He was still alive, but injured; 99% sure he was hit by a car, but odd that he chose to go away from our house and crawl deep into the woods.
I brought him home, woke my Dad, who immediately dressed and took the cat to a 24-hour vet, but Arthur died before he got there.
I don't know that I believe in ghosts, but I do believe in energies. I know that other people's moods can greatly affect mine, that my intuition has saved me a few times, and that I've walked into houses and gotten immediate chills when everyone else tells me the temperature is fine.
Like just about everything else, I think it's a spectrum.
I’ve had a few odd experiences - one of the biggies was a couple weeks after my Dad died.
I was sleeping - I woke up with a start, panting and out of breath, my heart pounding.
Hovering a few feet away was an image of my Dad, looking slightly away from me. I was freaked out, shocked and afraid to look directly at the image. But I kept it in sight, in my peripheral vision. After less than a minute, the image slowly faded away.
I can’t say whether this was some kind of visit from beyond the grave, or something my mind conjured up to process the stress of his death. Either way, it was quite the experience!
The following dates back quite a few years, to my time as a business rate inspector for Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs.
There's a major road in North London called the A40, which is part of my business rate inspection area. It's mostly 1930s factories and warehouses on either side, and the site I have to measure is made up of several big warehouses and a small office building at the back. The site is being converted into a self storage facility and everywhere there are big guys in high viz jackets lifting stuff. I meet the site manager at 10am and he says I can start in the office, handing me the keys and leaving me out front. It's small, just a two storey building with the build quality you'd expect for something tucked behind a warehouse.
The entrance to the building has lots of glass and it's a warm day. I can remember thinking how pleasant it was as I started to study the plan and measure the reception area. Then I go through to the front office and that's when things start to get weird. It's one long, open plan room with nothing much in and windows down one side. About half way down I see an open door and my plan confirms it's a small file storage room. I step inside and immediately step out again. There's an air raid siren going off in my head, my stomach is starting to churn, but my eyes are telling me there's nothing remotely strange here. It couldn't be more ordinary and I've had to measure up some incredibly creepy places so I check myself and get on with the job. By the time I've measured that store, which took about thirty seconds, I'm feeling physically sick.
Next comes the upper floor and this is much creepier looking: decaying and full of corridors and dark corners. I'm feeling much better now though, so I put my earlier experience down to bad breakfast cereal. I finish upstairs and start to go down another staircase which leads to the rear ground floor. Half way down the stairs I'm gripped by that awful feeling again and it's getting worse with every step. I look at my plan and realise that little store room is right next to me, on the other side of the wall. Now I'm starting to panic but thankfully there's only a couple more measurements needed. Job done I leave by the back door in a cold sweat.
Stepping out into the sunlight I see the site manager walking up to meet me. He asks me how I got on and I tell him I got everything I need, joking that I had a "bit of a funny turn" in the process. Immediately he asks "On the back stairs?". "Yes" I say and ask him why and he replies "No idea but none of my guys will go in there alone, especially those back stairs.".
@ironscarf: an experience like that often means it's the site of a death or deaths. If you remember the building you could research if there were any deaths there like during the Blitz or whenever.
When I went to Worchester cathedral I saw the tomb and effigy of King John. I looked at the face of the effigy and felt such onrushing pain and depression I broke down crying. I felt like I was at the grave of an old friend. I usually get feelings off of historical sites but this was more than ever before. Yeah, too much imagination. Actual sympathy and empathy to people who led troubled lives. I've been in plenty of cemeteries and never had that strong a reaction.
Banes wrote:
I’ve had a few odd experiences - one of the biggies was a couple weeks after my Dad died.
I was sleeping - I woke up with a start, panting and out of breath, my heart pounding.
Hovering a few feet away was an image of my Dad, looking slightly away from me. I was freaked out, shocked and afraid to look directly at the image. But I kept it in sight, in my peripheral vision. After less than a minute, the image slowly faded away.
I can’t say whether this was some kind of visit from beyond the grave, or something my mind conjured up to process the stress of his death. Either way, it was quite the experience!
Sounds very similar to the one about my grandfather.
I have a friend who says she sees dead people sixth sense style. She says she sees a woman watching over me and when she described her it sounded like my godmother who died a few years back. I know easily claimed etc but I believe that she believes it.
Banes wrote:
… It doesn't seem crazy to think that intense emotion or violence could leave some kind of 'residue' or after effects.
This is what I mean about energy. Many times, I hear people speaking of ghosts as if they are remnants of personalities. That's not how I see it.
Some people have great charisma, and/or large emotions (whether love, fear, depression, even peace) –energy– that affects others when they're alive. I think that energy echoes on, certainly in the minds of those who witnessed the display of such (and these witnesses might even add to the initial "deposit" of energy). Overtime, energy can dissipate, but energy does not disappear, pretty much a law of physics there. I suspect that there are places that, for reasons I cannot explain, hold on to some energies better than others. Like stains.
Have you ever walked into a church or temple and felt a sense of peace? I have, and I'm not a religious person. It could be empty, it could be a ruins and no longer a place of active worship, but that sense is still there.
@bravo. I had an experience similar to your King John's. I've been to Gettysburg, and it was a very solemn experience, but I didn't experience it beyond a sense of respect and maybe gratitude. However, when we visited the Frederickburg's battlefield, I was literally overcome with emotion, a boiling mix of hopelessness and grief; the tears would not stop. I know I was imagining screams and smoke, but it was so strong it almost seemed like they were manifesting. I couldn't get out of there quickly enough, and it took hours to lose that involvement.
When house hunting, I looked for places based partially on the "vibe." Can't really explain a vibe. Step into some buildings and I just want out. Others feel like they are welcoming me in. Others feel like home. Could be something to do with "energy." But it could be the layout, colors, radon, smell, really any combination of things. But sometimes I have no explanation aside from, "This place is not a place I want to be."
Have you ever walked into a church or temple and felt a sense of peace? I have, and I'm not a religious person. It could be empty, it could be a ruins and no longer a place of active worship, but that sense is still there.
Not so much the worship aspect, but I went to an old abbey, or rather the ruins of an abbey and felt something. A couple of years ago I was seeing this woman who was very much into empathy and feeling things. We'd talked a lot about experiences like this and she said we should go to this abbey and see if I felt it too.
Her story was that she and some friends went to this abbey at midnight on Halloween and she felt an ominous presence very strongly in one room. An shortly after a man in robes and a scarred face chased them off.
The next day we went to the ruins of the abbey and as we looked around it felt peaceful, until I went in one room and it immediately felt like somewhere I didn't want to be.
I asked her if this was the room and she nodded. Stepped out of the room and the feeling faded. In and it was there again. I wouldn't say it felt like an ominous presence, but to my mind there was no doubt there was a definite change in how it felt. It was a bright summer's day but in that room it felt like it got colder, it didn't as I checked. I guess it gave me a strong sense of foreboding. Goosebumps and all that.
Naturally parts are easy to write off, she had told me the story the night before going there, even though she hadn't described the room or its location I was still primed for it.
This experience needs a little explanation. When I was eighteen my mother overdosed and died. Everyone told me it was an accident. But can you chase a bottle of hydrocodone with vodka and plan to come out the other side? You see my view on her accident.
From eighteen on I have stressed about dying. not just a random thought, but a all consuming feeling that would leave me hyperventilating and in tears. The random thought of losing my conscious thoughts because I would no longer be there to perceive it. How I died didn't scare me, just the fact I would was enough to create my own fear fuel to stay awake for upwards to 5 or 6 days…for fifteen years I had to live like this.
One day, I was getting ready for bed, I was tucked in and of course before I could relax that out of nowhere panic stricken feeling hits again. "Your gonna die one day and then there will be nothing left of you". was the mantra in my head…and something else.
The best way I can describe it was I felt some strange vibration coming out of my body. I closed my eyes because I didn't know what else to do! this feeling was so alien to me, for a second I thought I WAS dying! The next sensation was floating. It felt like I wasn't laying on my bed but more so hovering OVER it, I was too scared to open my eyes because a part of me thought this was the end…but my moms voice as clear as a window pane spoke to me in my head.
"I need to talk to you." was what I heard before something so quick and bright, like a fire cracker went off in my face.
I was at the beach…not in my house, not in my room, and NOT IN MY BED.
She was there, my mom; beaming at me. I couldn't control what I was feeling, this does not happen to people like me. I broke down when I saw her, there were so many things I wanted to tell her, all the times I needed her in my life, all the advice she had still left to give me. I physically felt her as we hugged. It was real, I felt the sun on my skin, I heard the waves of the water and I felt that long lost feeling of my mothers hug. Something I haven't felt in fifteen years; this was a gift no one could ever give me, yet it was real.
Our conversation (for what I can remember) was short. She asked me what was wrong. I scooped some water at my feet and as it ran out of my hand I sobbed "This is my life! this is all there is!!"
Still smiling she shook her head.
"No Boomer" she pointed out into the vast ocean "That is your life, what you were holding was your reality."
I started sobbing again and she kissed me on my forehead.
"I love you" was what she said, and was what I woke up to the next day.
There were no signs that she visited. I didn't go all "Pet Semetary" with sandy feet. But the impression was made in my mind.
Nowadays, when I think of death, I think of it like a transition from a school (Earth) where you are taught two important lessons: limitation and emotion. Thanks to my late Mom I feel like this is not it, it can't be, she showed me so.
Hmmm….nice topic for me to drift back onto DUCKY's forums . I've got a few
I'll come back later with a very personal and initially traumatic set of experiences, but first -
When I first started work in Australia (I.T. for local Energy Supplier) we were in a largely open-plan, 50s(?) built place of 6 storeys. The computer section was on the 2nd (#3rd of 7 to Americans). We had a few re-arrangements, as years passed and technology changed. The last change, before we totally moved buildings to a high-rise, involved blocking off the whole floor from the lifts/foyer bit, with panels and glass doors that could be locked, after hours.
The things is…the area to our left had been an accountancy dept., and just before I started there, one of them was found dead at his desk - he was single, in his 50s and often worked until 8 or 9, which is what he'd done the night he died. Now the lifts used to "ping" when they arrived, and this ex-London guy, Des (who used to be a roadie for Cockney Rebel) would often look up from our desks at this hatch, where people left work sheets, when one would "ping", in the evening, but no-one got out . You ignore things like that - people often press the wrong floor, then correct.
But once the partition was in, and we locked the doors (around 7:30) it got eery, as the door would open, We'd look up, see the button light up, as if pressed, then the lift arrive . Always between 8 and 9-ish. Our colleagues wouldn't work at that hatch, if possible, between those times. Both of us used to get a 'cold' feeling,as if the air had been disturbed…we took to saying "G'night, John", even thought neither of us had ever met him . The others hated that B-)
The forums are fairly quiet these days, unfortunately; even the made thread will sometimes go a week or more between posts.
Oh, O.K. I'm only just back on the forums here, but in Fury I DO seem to quite often be the 'last word' on a thread…
Well here's the much more personal weird experience post :-
I had kidney failure, in 2004. I was "caught" last-minute, with only 7% function left (you need 10% to stay alive), so I went on dialysis, intially 'peritoneal' (tube in the belly and bags), then 'haemo-', later getting a machne at home to do it overnight. Eventually, infection killed off the fistula in my arm I used to needle into to go on….attempts to make one on the other arm failed, so I ended up on the emergency transplant list…and got one, Valentine'd Day, 2008 .
There'd been an accident on the freeway (not far from the hospital, as it happens) and a young lady had been killed, while other passengers survived, so assumed I and another recipient got ours from her (you're never told though).
So, after being home for a few weeks - I didn't go to bed for over 2 weeks, as I was 'wee'ing about every 15 minutes, at first, due to bladder shrinkage, from disuse for a few years - things were starting to settle a bit .
I used to stay up late, 'cause I was still up a few times in the night, and my wife's a light sleeper . I'd be watching rugby games from somewhere or other around the world, and getting into 'drifting' mode, sometimes actually falling asleep…but then -
The only way I can describe this - some of you may still have slide projectors (I've got one stashed somewhere around here) and may remember that sometimes you would end up with two slides jammed in it together, producing a double image .
Well these experiences were like that. I'd suddenly go from being a bit dozy, to being not just wide awake, but pressed back into
the sofa, knuckles whitened on its arms. I could still see the T.V. and game in progress, rest of the living room, etc.,
BUT super-imposed on that was a bar or reception room, with people dressed for a night out, drinks in hand, chatting…
and over the top of the real me, up to the chest (you know the way you seeing yourself now) is this young woman in the classic black cocktail dress, with stilettos, handbag on the floor, charm bracelet on one arm, and a glass of chardonnay - which some nice young man leans over me and asks if I want topped up ! "End of.." scene fades. I'm still stiff as a board and afraid to relax, for several minutes…
There wasn't another for weeks, but they got more frequent, and the 'story' moved on progessively, to eventually include the bit where double doors are opened and we all stand to clap the engaged couple. "So THAT why we're there ". I thought.
It took a while to get to that….by which time, I was growing more used to it - always startled, but no longer afraid.
I also used to get images of an old lady in a chair, side-on and dozing who I assumed (or rather 'felt') was her gran .
I got SO used to these…and the assumption of who she was…that when I suddenly realised I hadn't had one in ages, and that she must now be 'gone', I was upset .
p.s. I never passed in front of a mirror, so didn't see a face .
@BearinOz - Wow, that's quite the account. I can't and, frankly, don't want to imagine living so tenuously for so long. And then the superimposed events. It makes me think of the stories of "seeing through the veil."
And if I'm remembering correctly, a small black cocktail dress was significant to one of your comics, wasn't it?
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