Have you, or anyone you know, ever actually SEEN a ghost?

[LifesTooShortToLearnPolish]

I mean actually, visually, witnessed something. I'm not talking about strange experiences, items moving/disappearing/reappearing etc.

I'm curious about this, the sort of visual experiences people have, what they're like, the type of 'person' they've seen.

I'm not interested in opinions on whether such things exist. And for clarity, I'm not entirely sure myself, however I do credit others' experiences and respect their beliefs.

I did have a visual experience of my own in my bedroom of my student flat, about 35 years ago. It was a weird old place. In a dim corner I saw a man with a blazer and hat standing in the corner. He looked annoyed. I ran out to get my flatmate but no one was there when we went back in. Felt a bit stupid.

What's your experience? 😊

I think it’s pretty much compulsory to state, at the beginning of your post on a woo thread, that you’re sceptical, not at all woo, don’t believe in ghosts…
BUT…

😅

I was working overseas where the locals were all very curious about foreigners and would often touch you, feel your hair, etc etc. I moved into an old house and on my first night, as I was falling asleep I distinctly felt a hand on the top of my head tilting my head back. I could feel every finger on my head. It was very gentle, and I did not feel afraid. Lived there for several years and never had any other incidents. But the locals strongly believed in ghosts, to the extent that the believed there was a month every year when ghosts had the ability to walk abroad at night and you had to be really careful not to be caught by one.

True! Especially if you have said on other woo threads that of course there is no such things as ghosts. Guilty as charged.

Yes i am. And it was very clear. Its bit in england though. I’m from indonesia so i saw it there.

i was 20 years old with my boyfriend we were driving car and lost somewhere in the woods at night. There still many woodlands in indonesia. It was past midnight. We just si tired and decided to stop for a bit and we make out. First thing i noticed it smells like flowers, smell so overwhelmingly like jasmine tree. Then i saw a woman stuck on the rear window screen. Both me and my boyfriend saw her. I we drive as quickly as we can but she was stuck in the rear window screen and followed our car. Its was gor good 20seconds maybe so i saw her really clearly. She was wearing long white dress and long black hair. But the face its not clear. But i still remember her hands touched and knock the window screen.

Talking of the Bronte parsonage, I stayed for one night in the Old Silent Inn in Howarth.

Now that was a spooky place. We had strange knocking on the bedroom door in the middle of the night, boyfriend had some sort of weird episode during the night and in general it all just felt a bit odd.

Good food though!

Yes! Scared the living shit out of me. In normal circumstances I probably would have pooh poohed ghost sightings. Until it happened to me

When I was a child we had a grey tabby cat. He died when I was about 13. Some months later, I was walking into the garden and saw a grey tabby run across the lawn and under a shrub. I thought to myself “Oh! A cat like Bob! I’ve never seen another grey tabby round here!” (I knew all the local cats) and I ran over to the bush to see it. No cat. There was nowhere it could have gone without me seeing; it had literally disappeared. I like to think it was Bob.

I've never seen a ghost but definitely experienced something. When visiting my Grandma's old house I used to always feel like I was being watched from the top of the stairs. It was an open plan living room. I was about 8/10 at the time. It was really eerie and if I played in the garden I always sensed a presence from the windows of next door. The neighbours were always abroad so the house was empty but I just felt like I was being watched. Even my Mum once thought she saw the net at the window move. About 10 years later the house was sold and I later found out the new owners had the house exorcised and apparently there was a man, who was not very nice and 2 children who were often locked up under the stairs.

Separately, a house my Mum and I moved into when I was 19 also made me feel we weren't alone. Our very first night I lay in bed just staring into the darkness when my jewellery box started playing. I've never shot out of bed so quickly and I refused to go to bed alone that night. It felt like a horror movie haha. Experienced nothing since though.

When people say that modern ghosts aren't seen, as they sometimes do, I think it's interesting to read some of the encounters here with modern seeming people where no one would think anything of it if they hasn't disappeared while being watched/ walked through walls etc.

I wonder how many ghosts we might pass every day on the tube or in a crowded street without realising?

I suppose in the past people would immediately recognise someone out of place and now perhaps less so, hence more ghost stories from earlier days...

That is a good point about modern ghosts, @cunningartificer .
Especially as sceptics often ask how ghosts are always historic and not modern, and that this is evidence that they're a stereotype that's been mentally conjured up somehow.
But modern ghosts would very often pass by unnoticed!

Back when I was 17 I worked in a pub that was really old. There were always a lot of stories about noises and things being seen but I didn't think much of it. One night I had a finished a bar shift and the pub was closed. I was sat at one end of the bar and as clear as day I saw a man walk past at the other end of the bar. I told my boss someone was still in the building and he asked me to describe them. He then told me that it was a ghost of a man and he walks through every night. Safe to say I made sure I was never alone after that!

I also had another experience in Bournemouth when away for the weekend with friends. We were staying in an old hotel and sharing a room. I had my back to the wall by the window and as clear as anything I had someone put their hand on my back. I was talking to my friend at the time and she asked if I was ok because the colour drained from my face and I froze. I can still remember the sensation now

When I was a teenager I heard a dog getting up off the wooden bedroom floor. My own dog was asleep on my bed, also woke up and her hackles were up and she was growling. I grabbed her collar to keep her in the bed and hid u dear the duvet.
A few months after DH died I saw him in the garden leaning against a tree watching me cut the grass.
A few random “ people” I didn’t know who just disappeared after a few seconds.
Remembered another one , staying in a very old ( 11th century) building my dog and cat kept staring at one wall in the living room. This went on for the whole two weeks we were there, every evening. They never went over to the wall sniffing it looking for something so I don’t think it could have been mice.

We also used to live in a house that always felt like you weren't alone although had never seen anything.

My son who must have been about 3 at the time used to always sit in bed and talk to a man. To be honest I thought nothing of it and just thought it was his imagination.

I went to visit a psychic and she told me that my son talks to a man and it makes me uncomfortable. She said that he meant no harm but if I didn't like it then tell him it makes you feel uncomfortable and that he needs to leave. I did this and my son never spoke to the man again or mentioned him

@PurpleClovers have you ever searched birth and death registers to see if Mr Keddes lived at that address? I’d love to do that.

Not me, DH and is very very very much not a ghost believer. Neither am I but something very very strange happened.

We were in a hotel in Ireland. he woke up saying that he had seen a man with a clipboard at the end of the bed in 'old fashioned' clothes and that the room was very cold. I was asleep, not aware of anything. He was not scared, said it was a comforting presence. We hadn't been drinking!

Didn't think much of it until we went out and saw an old article on the wall in the lobby. The hotel is an old hospital and there had been lots of stories of it being haunted.

Got talking to people in the bar that night and the woman in the room opposite us had had her hairdryer randomly turning on in the night. The hotel had a sauna that had been placed in the old morgue space. It never ever worked.

Went to bed that night, woke up in the morning and my bedside table had been overturned with the light placed properly back on it. Turns out our room was above the old morgue.

This was 20 years ago, still don't believe in ghosts but can't explain what was actually going on.

From my second floor bedroom in boarding school saw a young girl running down the road past my window. She was too young to be a schoolgirl (secondary school), and more to the point she was not wearing uniform. In fact what she was wearing was totally wrong for the season: light summer dress in mid winter.

Then I realised she seemed a little bit see-through, then I saw her put her foot right through the speed bump. She was carrying her sandals in her hand, too.

Then she kind of dissolved just as she was about to go out of view. The road snakes back into view a few yards further down, but she didn’t reappear and there was nowhere else she could have gone unless she had inexplicably decided to hang out behind a wall.

I spent ages trying to explain it all away, as I liked to think of myself as a no-nonsense evidence-based scientific type.

I did also check with others and didn’t find anyone else who’d seen similar.

I know someone that thinks she did. She was at home one day as a teenager and her grandfather walked past the house (he lived close) saw her and smiled and waved. She waved back. He mother arrived home that afternoon to say he had died. He died at approx the same time as she saw him wave. She still believes he was waving goodbye to her.

Not a ghost but I think a " shadow figure" but not sure as although I could only make out a shape it seemed to be wearing glasses. Not my dad! I have heard people say this is actually 'night terror' which I have never suffered from before or after this. I was so scared I just turned over in bed so I could not see it!!!

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I know a couple of people who claim they saw ghosts.

I can't confirm they did see 'ghosts', I can only confirm they make that claim.

Of course, @IncompleteSenten we can’t know what others have seen and how it can be explained. I’m just really interested in peoples’ experiences of seeing what they or others may describe as a “ghost” and if there are any recurring patterns or experiences.
The night demon/incubus that can visit during episodes of sleep paralysis, for example, is generally male and there is some sort of suffocating malevolence to him. It’s a psychological phenomenon, though, there’s nothing supernatural about it, so it’s strange that so many people have a very similar experience.

So, for “ghosts” I wondered if it was in any way similar; if there were any recurring themes in the sorts of things people see, the sort of people who do the seeing, how sceptical or not they ordinarily are, how old they were, if they have multiple experiences… if there’s any sort of pattern.

When I was 7, my Grandad came to live with us because he was poorly. I was topping and tailing with my brothers and he was sleeping in my bedroom. One morning, he came out of my room and walked along the landing and he just collapsed and died, right at the top of the stairs

A few years later, I woke one night and looked out of my bedroom door, along the landing, and saw my Grandad's silhouette (unmistakeably him, big burly gentle giant with hands like spades and a bald head) - I wasn't scared, I just rolled over and went back to sleep

Fast forward to me being about 30, on a camping holiday with my brothers, and we got talking about Grandad and my eldest brother casually mentioned that he once saw Grandad's "Ghost" one night as he was leaving the house, he had glanced up the stairs and saw his silhouette...

Neither of us had, until that moment, ever mentioned seeing Grandad's silhouette/ghost and I genuinely believe it was his spirit, walking the landing where he died, keeping an eye on us all

Of course, we all might see ghosts on a daily basis without knowing it, which puts a spanner in the works.

I've been hesitant about posting this as it sounds a bit daft, but here goes:

About 30 years ago, a relative of mine was killed by a drunk driver. We were very close and I missed him dreadfully.

A couple of years later, I started having quite vivid dreams about him, nothing scary just happy times. Very soon after that, I was on my own at home one night as DH was working. We had 2 very vigilant dogs and they were sleeping in front of the fire, I was reading my book.

Suddenly I had the weirdest feeling - I just knew that there was something/someone standing in the hallway, just inside the living room. I had the strangest sensation on the side of my face, like a pins and needles type of thing. I was so scared that I couldn't even turn my head round to look, so instead I stared at the dogs to see if they'd react. They didn't so I kind of flicked my glance to the side (still too scared to turn round properly) and I saw what I can only describe as twinkling lights! I whimpered shouted "No, go away!" at which point the dogs obviously leapt up and started barking. Everything was back to normal instantly, and I checked all over the house, there was nothing there.

I did wonder later if it was the start of a migraine (although I've never had that type before or since) but it never happened again after that.

I am well known for my love of Christmas, so both DH and my brother said later that it was typical of me, to have a ghost made out of fairy lights!

I didn't see a ghost but think I experienced one.

Staying in an attic suite in a hotel in the Highlands for a few nights. I was 16. I kept getting woken by the smell of cigarettes and an "old man" smell (someone whose hair was dirty and whose body needed a good wash). My Mum was sharing a room with me but her bed was well over the other side away from me and I mentioned it to her but she said she couldn't smell anything.

Earlyish one morning (6am), I'd woken up and the TV was on quietly. My Mum always used to put the TV on when she was getting ready for work so I guessed she was in the shower. It was the Sydney Olympics, so I turned over onto my side and watched it.

I felt my Mum sit down heavily on my bed (behind me, I was turned over near the edge of the bed with my back to the ensuite) and wriggling like she was putting her tights on. This was something she used to do when I was little and at this point I felt a bit irked because she could have woke me up and it felt a bit selfish.

The wriggling stopped and I felt her peel back the sheets and get into bed alongside me. Felt her full weight on the mattress.

Again when I was little, she'd sometimes do this and cuddle me and gently wake me up.

Very predictably, she did the next thing she'd do me as a child which was to rub my arm. Usually she'd say "bayyybeee, baybee, it's time for my baby to get UP now!"

and I was feeling quite irritated that she was treating me like a kid again (and would have liked a lie in!) so I brushed her arm off.

To make matters worse the cigarette smell and dirty man smell was over powering and I was getting really pissed off by the shitty smelly hotel and my mum climbing into bed with me (hormonal teenager).

Mum started stroking my arm again and this time wrapped me up and squeezed me tight across my body and I could feel her hot breath on my neck so in a rage I threw the covers back and said, "FFS sake, I'm awake OK??? I'm not bloody asleep will you leave me alone???"

To which my Mum, from her bed on the opposite side of the room piped up, "Well of course you're not asleep, you've put that bloody Olympics on at this hour and woke me up too! Did you HAVE to put the TV on? It's 6am!!!"

I SHOT out of that bed. My Mum was so confused.

I could see another imprint in the bed too.
She tried to convince me I'd been half asleep and dreamed it but I could tell her who had won the medals (rowing and running) and how it had been close.

Told the staff in the hotel. Said, "I know it's a weird question but do you have a frisky old man ghost here by any chance", I laughed. They didn't. They also refused to comment or anything. Felt very sinister.