Seriously. I've been SIFB all week- and I mean Sick in Frikking Bed, not stuck in a box. That would be silly.
I'm missing out on all my normal October Halloween fun, and I think I've read every possible ghost/paranormal story on the internet, watched every possible Netflix and Hulu special, and read every damned scary book in the house. (Actually, I feel like I've read the Internet. All of it.)
Now I've moved on to youtube videos and EVPs, and research stats. What I've learned:
A: Slenderman is not frikking scary.
B: According to polls, more than half of all Americans believe in ghosts.
So here's a thread for your ghost stories, paranormal experiences, haunted houses and things that will make me go Aaaaaack in the night. Just for some fabuloso eating pumpkin cake in bed Halloween fun.
Go ahead, scare me.
Re: Frighten me. Go ahead. Please.
At night, when the ladies would be counting up the money and the whole store would be locked, they would hear footsteps. Thinking a customer was locked in by accident would go investigate and find no one.
I used to work Saturday by myself. One time I was standing at the deli counter looking out to the bread aisle. Suddenly, a load of bread flew off the shelf and across the aisle. I went to pick it up and realized it had been squeezed in the shape of a hand. You could feel where the thumb would have grabbed the loaf. Also, it flew across the shelf. If it just fell off the shelf it wouldn't have landed across the aisle.
I had a hot dog roll off our machine and land on the shelf directly below it. Physics tells me that it should have fallen on the floor, not on a shelf directly below!
Lastly, we know who the ghost in the Exchange was or at least we thought we did. Long before the current building stood, the Coast Guard base used to be a Navy base. On the lot where the Exchange was used to hold the base's bar. There was a fight one night and one man left to get his gun, came back and killed our ghost. His name was Carlton Little. On Saturdays I routinely would hear noises in the warehouse, when no warehouse people would be working. So I would say out loud, I hear you Carlton and I know you're here, no need to make noises and the noises would stop.
My grandmother and a dear family friend named Fred spent their last years of life in the same nursing home. When Fred passed away, the whole family gathered in our hometown for the funeral. My grandmother passed away on the night of his funeral, and our family was notified the following morning. I overheard my dad and uncle on speaker phone with the nursing home. They said that that evening, my grandmother told the nurse that she was going to visit with Fred...she and Fred didn't ever visit in the nursing home, and as far as they could figure, no one had told her that Fred had died.
ETA- details
http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/wikipedia-makes-it-impossible-to-sleep
I read them at work, in a well-lit office full of people, and I still got creeped out.
I LOVED the Buzzfeed article with the wikipedia links. Some of those were SO creepy.
The theater was haunted by a little girl in a sailor uniform named Eleanor. One night after tech rehearsal for a play, I left one of my notebooks in the theater building. I had to get security to let me back into the building, because they locked up at 9:30. But the security guard did not accompany me inside the building. I went in to get my notebook, and heard a chair creak like the seat had gone up when someone stood up from it. I looked up, and on the balcony there was a little girl in a sailor uniform. It freaked me out, so of course I gasped, and she disappeared. Then I heard the back door of the balcony open and slam shut, like she'd run through it. I got the heck out of there.
Another night, I was snowed in to the dorms with my best friend. All the lights in the room were out, and I was watching the snow fall across the quad. The building directly across the quad from us had been a dorm in the early 1900s, but had since been converted to offices. While I was looking, I saw a girl in a white nightgown appear in a window on the second floor and then disappear after about a minute. It was really creepy.
Lots of other buildings were supposed to be haunted, but those were the only ones I ever saw.
http://strangemaine.blogspot.com/2008/09/pineland-cemetery-exploration.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P4J5oaa3YA
Being new to the state, I didn't originally know the history of the site just thought it was beautiful and picturesque. Originally, I suggested it as a site for H (FI at the time) and I's wedding. He quickly vetod it because it still carries the stigma of the Mental Hospital.
Anyway, one night I was in my room trying to fall asleep, I was turning over in bed and I looked out my window. I blinked a couple of times, and when I could focus, I saw the silhouette of a man wearing a traditional "cowboy" hat on the outside of the window. I remember not being scared at all, and I just laid down and went back to bed.
The next morning, I told my grandma what had happened and she knew exactly what I was talking about. Apparently, both my uncle and grandma had both seen the same thing, and my grandma thinks that it is her father that was a border patrol agent who was murdered while on duty. After I told her this, she called our priest (she is VERY catholic) and had him and about half of our church over to bless the house. Not that she was worried about my great grandfather "haunting" us, but she did this every year, and felt that it was a good time to do it lol.
There you go if my stupid tablet likes me. DF has suggested that as our recessional.
Never mind, it hates me.
I used to do archaeology, and I had a project to document this log house that was being torn down for a housing development. I was taking photos of it for my report, and I captured this one in the completely empty, normal looking room.
I saw it on the screen and was like WTF??? So I took another right after and the mist was gone.
A few years ago, my ex and I were looking for a house, and we toured this awesome 1885 Victorian house. It was a pretty big place, and we got separated while looking around, and I looked into one bedroom and saw BF's leg as he walked into the attached bathroom. So I followed him in, saying "Oh there you are!" and nobody was there!
We ended up buying the house, and I lived there for a while, and I would often hear footsteps in the attic (which was up a locked staircase). I never saw anything else, though.
1. My maternal grandmother used to live with a woman that everybody called a witch (apparently she was born with a caul on her face, which is supposed to be some kind of sign of paranormal abilities). She was gorgeous, but no guy would go out with her more than once because she creeped them out so much. My grandma once saw a hat floating through the air in the house where they lived.
2. My mom's family had just moved into a new house. My mom was half-asleep on the couch but could hear her sister getting more and more agitated. Suddenly her sister screamed and told everybody to run because she could hear sounds coming from the basement. Hearing sounds down there was pretty common, and one time my grandma started throwing pillows down the stairs and telling the ghost (or whatever it is) to stop. My grandpa admitted years later that a previous owner had shot himself in the basement.
3. My mom could see twinkling lights on one wall in her bedroom in another house they lived in. She found out later that it's associated with poltergeists.
4. My aunt (same one as in #2 - seriously, this woman is haunted) was really into the paranormal. One time when she was sleeping, she felt somebody grab her wrist really hard, but nobody was there. She yelled at it to stop, and it did. My aunt experimented with astral traveling. My mom is convinced that she opened herself up to the spirit world and hasn't ever been able to shut that door.
5. Last year, my cousin (who lives with the aunt above) woke up and saw a figure sitting on the other side of the room. When it cocked its head to the side as if it was watching her, she screamed and woke everybody up. When this cousin was a pre-teen, she was home alone and heard voices in the house. She was on the bed and closed her eyes immediately. She heard the voices come into the room where she was. When my aunt and uncle got back home, they found her so terrified that she couldn't even speak and she refused to open her eyes.
6. My aunt sees odd shadows moving in their house sometimes. Their cat can sense them too, because it will look up and follow it with its eyes even though there's nothing there. They've had other things happen in the house (objects disappearing and then reappearing when there's nobody else home, the TV turning on by itself). It's known that a woman died in a fire in the house a few years before they moved in.
7. When my little sister was a baby, my mom heard the TV downstairs turn on and the volume kept going way up and then way down. She thought it was my dad, and was mad at him because she thought he was going to wake my sister up. When she went to ball him out, he said he hadn't even been in the room.
8. When my sister came home from the hospital after she was born, my mom saw the lamp in my parents' room turn on and start shaking, then turn off. She thought it was my grandma signalling that she could see the baby.
9. My mom was trying to put her coat on and felt someone help her put it on (she assumed it was my dad). When she turned around to thank him, she saw that he was about 20 feet away (they were in a parking lot and nobody else was around).
10. My sister was vacuuming her car and felt a hand touch her scalp and tousle her hair (it had been our great uncle's car, who had passed away a few months prior).
TL;DR My family is haunted.
ETA: Oh! I forgot a super creepy one! My cousin (same as above) lives with her bf and bf's young son (around 6 years old) in my aunt and uncle's basement. The boy asked my aunt if she could see the face with one arm waving at her too. He didn't seem scared (probably too young). I don't remember what part of the house this happened in, though.
Move in - still feels off a smidge. Bring the critters in, my dad was with us. Bam, the off was gone. Our Siamese duo however are clearly the favorites. A friend pointed out their vocalizations sound very much like a human baby.
We decide to take down a wall. It's not structural at all, the one room is tiny. So I bring stuff home. The cats who normally don't give a fuck if it doesn't involve their food are not letting the sledgehammer anywhere near that wall. Give up for a few days, work on other projects. Cats don't care. We knock out another stupid wall, cats don't care. Go to tiny room wall - nope, demon cats again. These cats have never before even hissed at me. Contact granddaughter, she finally speaks to her mom when she's lucid. Apparently that room was the nursery.
Now it's just my little reading nook. The cats agree to that. When we got back after the EDS diagnosis, we were moping a bit on the couch. We both felt someone hug us.
Mother was called Grace, so yeah, we talk to her a bit now.