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? 😊

Yes. Three times.

no1 - late 1980s. i saw a woman on her hands and knees scrubbing the steps of a building in London at 2am. As i drove by i saw one of those cloth turbans round her head with the tie at the front. I saw her side on, i saw the silver bucket on the steps next to her and i saw her pinny tied at the back. I could see her rocking back and forward scrubbing.

I was so i turned the car around as soon as i could (1/2 minutes max) and drove back past and there was no one there. Steps were dry.

no2 - in a hotel with DH-to-be in a small market town in Northants. Big old house converted into hotel rooms with en-suites. Big stone fireplace in the room ect. I awoke to the feeling there was someone else in the room. I looked down the bed and could see the blury figure of a young girl just standing totally still a few feet away from the end of the bed. She had long hair and a dress on.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes like some cartoon character and peered into the gloom. I could still see her. I started to nudge DH awake while keeping my eyes on her, and she slowly slowly faded away before DH became bloomin' conscious enough to sit up I was not scared. No malevolence.

no.3 - this time DH DID see it. A couple in navy blue waterproofs walking straight towards us across a huge flat field. 10 meters away apx. I felt they had seen us and i was going to greet them when they got nearer, like you do.
They disappeared into nowhere. DH had seen them clearly too.

Told this before. I was on Holiday on the Broads. Moored up had food in the local pub. Four of us back to the boat and to bed. About 5am there was a huge storm. As it was daylight I got up to make a coffee. Looked out of the window and saw a person in a cloak, hood up getting into a small boat. Watched him row across the broad and disappear into the mist. At the time I thought it was just someone going fishing. It stayed with me for some reason, niggled me and then forget.
Years later we moved to the Broads, I got a local book of folklore etc. The ghost of Ranworth Broad tells of a monk who rows across the broad in the early morning, hoping to save the monks who had been attacked by reformers.
I still don’t know what I saw, a genuine fisherman or a monk.

Not me, never seen anything but my mother a few days after I was born, these were the days when you stayed in for a while.

She was in the hospital chapel (quite an old hospital) and in front of her was a young woman whose baby was sadly very ill. My mother said that she saw a woman dressed in grey clothes, she thought a nun, come and sit behind the young woman and put her hand on her shoulder, as if she was comforting her. Mum continued praying but when she looked up again the woman in grey had gone.

She walked out behind the other young mother who was met by nurses coming to tell her that her baby had died. There is a story about a former nurse dressed in grey, who had taken her own life, haunting this hospital (now long converted to flats) which I didn't find out about until long after I was told this by Mum.

I have a theory that you can tell a real ghost sighting by the person recounting the story mentioning the clothes in great detail. I think the energy finds it easier to manifest the clothes and we as humans ‘see’ them more easily. Just a scroll through this thread and so many people can recall the exact clothing. I find it quite fascinating.

That's an interesting idea about noticing the clothes in particular... I've already posted on here my experiences in hospital working... and at home... particularly one time I recall seeing literally just a column of light but foggy and transparent like a cloud.
It was from ceiling to floor and width of a n average person size ( I feel it was my gran who passed that week)
It manifested in my mums bedroom and moved slowly around to the side of her bed. There was no bad feeling but the room felt cold in the area that it had been. Both my mum and i witnessed it in total bemusement

I was sat in the kitchen having a chat with my dad after a night out and we heard someone walking across the gravel drive and into the tiled porch - heels - saw someone in a pale trench-type coat on the other side of the bubbly-glass (so not clear) of the door and then step out of sight to (we assumed) ring the door bell which was on the wall not the door and then ... nothing.

We looked at each other and then got up and opened the door and there was nobody there. Nobody on the drive or down the lane. They couldn't have got away silently as the house was surrounded by gravel.

it was really weird and we both experienced the same thing.

Yes. Twice in one day. I don't think I belive either.

The first one was about 9.30am. A workman dressed in gray shorts by the side of a A road semi crouched ready to run across a A road. When I blinked he had disappeared. Modern day man. Later, about 11.30am I saw a black outline of a builder ( as if the sun was behind him so you couldn't see detail) walk up my hall, into the living room and into my tiny dead end kitchen. When I followed ( he was 2 metres in front of me if that) he wasn't there. I knew he wouldn't be. It was very real but at the same time I knew it wasn't a real person in my gut. Freaked me out, thought I was going mad. No one believes me I think. I definitely definitely saw both of them. Whether or not they was "real" is snother matter. I 100% saw them both. No out of the corner of my eye kind of thing. Right in front of me I could have taken a few steps forward and touched the second one

No sightings myself but friends have seen 'ghosts'.

1.One single friend bought an old terraced house with a streetlight outside the bedroom window. The bedroom wasn't that dark when she first moved in and hadn't got new curtains.
One night she woke up because she felt the bed move (double). She looked down to see an old lady sat on the end of the bed. The bed was depressed where the lady sat and her outline blocked the light.
After a while the apparition disappeared.

This happened a few times, but she wasn't scared by it.

Once she got a boyfriend and he was staying over the old lady stopped visiting!

Another friend bought an old cottage.

One night just after they moved in, she got out of bed to go to the loo and saw a young girl on the landing. This girl was about 12, dressed in Victorian costume. She appeared out of the wall on one side, walked across the passage and then went through the wall on the other side.
She told her husband who said she was dreaming.

Some months later he saw her as well!

They both saw her regularly after that but weren't scared by her.

My very sensible, practical non woo mum told me something last weekend, that she'd never mentioned before.
When she was little,her grandad on her mum's side was very poorly and dying of cancer. He was in a bed downstairs in his home,and various family members would take turns to stay with him.

On this particular night,mum had been put to bed upstairs,in granddad's big double bed,whilst her mum and dad sat with him downstairs. She remembers something waking her up,and looked up to see her grandad standing at the end of the bed. He said "It's all right. Go back to sleep". So she did.

The next morning,when she got up, everyone was very upset. Grandad had died in the night. Mum piped up that she'd seen him the night before,and her mum was very upset and angry with her. She was told that she was never to talk about it ever again,and I'm assuming that for the past 75 years,she never did.

I saw our old cat,Sweep,after he'd died. I was sitting reading,and caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. He walked across the room in front of me and just vanished,like a soap bubble popping. He was there,and then he wasn't.

Friends good friend lives in a house that has a female ghost. Her and her daughter have seen her regularly but her very sceptical husband never had… until a few months ago. Washing up in the kitchen with the light on, it was dark outside so in the window all he could see was his reflection and the kitchen behind him. He carried on washing up and then glanced up and standing behind him, in his reflection, was a young woman. He turned around but she was gone.
His wife is rather pleased he’s finally seen the ghost and he says he has had to now admit that his wife and daughter don’t just have over active imaginations!

Many, many times.

One night I had an incredibly vivid dream. I was me but dream-me was a young lady living in the late 70s (before I was even born). I had a flat in a high rise and a boyfriend but I was always angry with him and I was cheating on him with some local dickhead. One day he unexpectedly came to the flat when I was there with the dickhead and there was a big argument which ended with the dickhead stabbing the boyfriend and pushing him to the floor behind the sofa. It felt so real. I can still recall the sofa (dark brown cord material), the carpet (brown and burnt orange splodges and swirls), brown curtains that were a like a fuzzy, fake velvet (velour?), the kitchen (white with metal coloured plastic grooves to open the cabinets and and a thin grey checked pattern on the countertop) and the white cooker with a grill and a tray over the top of the hob.

The dream itself was weird. I woke up in a fright because everything had gotten so out of control, I was so scared that dickhead had stabbed boyfriend and when I opened my eyes the boyfriend was next to my bed starring at me with such an angry expression. Just like in my dream he was wearing a blue denim jacket with a white fleece collar and blue jeans. He had brown curly hair down to his collar but cut shorter in the front kind of like it was layered and he absolutely hated me. I quickly pulled the covers over me head and scooted backwards into DH, when I peeped out a few minutes later he was gone. I woke DH up who told me I was just dreaming.

Maybe I was just dreaming and a bit of it carried over into waking up but I've never had a dream like it before or since and I can still recall it so clearly even after all this time.

I was in a room at work by myself. My mum had not long passed away. I felt someone play with my hair (it moved on my head) just like the way my mum did when I was a child. It wasn't scary at all

Me! I did. I am the least ‘woo’ person in the world but I definitely saw a ghost in St Mary and St Finnan Church in Glenfinnan. Still makes me cold when I think about it and have never set foot in that church again.

I've told this one before.
Worked a bit later than usual and had to get an 'all stops' train to my station which was at the end of the line.
This was when the trains had separate carriages with a door between them that had to be slammed.
I was in the carriage nearest the driver, sitting on a bank of seats that faced the central doors of the carriage.
When I got on the train was busy, not crowded, and emptied as we progressed along the line.
Every time the doors to get on or off opened, they beeped loudly.
I was reading a book but keeping one eye on the carriage.
Two stops before mine, almost everyone got out. I was aware of a man sitting in the seats behind me, but he didn't seem threatening. So I was aware of him, but didn't feel the need to get off.
We got to the station before mine and he got up and went to stand by the doors. Just an average city commuter type, at a glance.
We got to the station, the doors opened and then closed and he was still there. I guessed he'd done what a lot of people do, and miscalculated where we were.
I packed up my stuff, glanced up to see him still there and then rang DH to ask him to collect me.
I was putting my phone in my pocket as I got off the train.
As I started to walk away from the train, I realises I hadn't passed anyone. I looked up and down the platform but there were only a few other people getting off further up the train.
I don't have an explanation for where the male passenger went. He couldn't go forwards as that was the drivers cab. He couldn't have left the carriage to go back without passing me and the door slamming. He was still by the doors when we left the penultimate station. He wasn't there when I got off.

When I was 15ish, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a man looking at me from the other side of my room.
He was all black and wore a hat (fedora style I think.)
We had guinea pigs in our room at the time, with newspaper on the floor outside their cage to catch anything that got kicked from their cage.

When I saw him, my whole body ached suddenly, I think it was like a super freeze reaction. I remember telling myself that it can't be real, I must be dreaming it so I stuck my nail into my palm to check I was awake. I was so petrified as I was imagining him coming face to face with me. Pretending to be asleep, I had to force my body to put my back to him. I remember i felt like a tonne weight, such effort to turn around. Still trying to tell myself he wasn't real, I heard two footsteps, one after the other, step onto the newspaper. I spent the rest of the night wishing and praying my parents would wake up and come into my room. Eventually I did fall asleep but my body hurt in the morning from being so tense all night. Having discovered Reddit as an adult, apparently 'the hat man' is a real phenomena.

After my pet died, a couple of weeks later my partner and I were talking. Turns out we'd both separately tried to touch feet at night like we always do, but felt a weight there stopping us. So, I suppose I've felt the ghost of my pet still coming to sleep with us. Unfortunately, it only lasted about a week.

I used to work in a pub that had a bar split between two rooms. While at one end, I saw a guy perched over at the other end, head down, his hands around what I assumed was his empty glass. I went to serve him and he'd disappeared. I'd not long opened up and the four people who were in were all in the same room I had been.

Also, if anyone believes in orbs, I have a photo from 15 years ago of one zooming over my baby. It happened two weeks after a relative I was close to died. Never caught another one before or since. I'd also took other photos a few seconds apart at the time and none others had the 'orb' on.

What sort of twinkling lights @CarrieMoonbeams? I ask because I've had quite a few things happen which I can't logically explain, especially in the house I grew up in. One is that when I was around 17, I woke up in the night and immediately saw on the wall behind my bed, above my head, a silvery shimmering light sort of sparkling/twinkling/rippling up and down the wall.

I felt completely frozen with fear. I was too scared to move, all I could do was close my eyes. I realised that I could also hear a sort of low humming sound too, like an electrical type of hum. I laid there utterly terrified with my eyes tight shut, then suddenly the noise stopped and at the same time, even with my eyes shut, I felt the room had gone darker. I opened my eyes and the light had gone.

The next day I re-arranged my room so the bed was against a different wall, I was scared for a long time afterwards. Now, many years later I wish I'd been braver and had looked properly, looked to see where the light was coming from, or tried to touch it, or something. It frustrates me that I just can't explain what it was.

I've had quite a few other odd experiences, but only once saw something that could have been a "ghost" (which I'm not sure I believe in, I just know I can't explain it).

I'd been at a friend's house for the evening. I left at around 1am to drive the five minutes home. She lived on a modern housing estate off the main road of a village. I left her estate and turned on to the main road, which was well lit (it was about 20 years ago, before they started switching the street lights off at night).

As I drove along the main road, I saw sitting on the kerb facing the road a young boy with a border collie dog. I'd guess the boy was around 8 years old. He had short dark scruffy hair and was dressed in grey formal shorts, a striped woollen tank top with a short sleeved shirt underneath (I realised afterwards that they were old fashioned clothes, what I would describe as 1940s era clothes) and he appeared quite unkempt.

I was so shocked to see a child sitting by the road at that time and I slowed down and looked right at him as I drove past, and he looked back straight into my eyes, his head moving from right to left as he kept watching my car pass. He looked unhappy.

I immediately turned the car around and drove back (a matter of seconds), and there was nothing there.

I know it was late, and maybe it was a trick of the (street)light or something but I was certain I saw that boy and dog.

My Dad has. He won't talk about himself or ever admit to it but my mum told us.

My Aunt, who was purportedly a gifted psychic, died and it was the night of her funeral. At her wake, which my dad didn't attend, my mum and other family members all discussed what they would do if she "visited" them that night. Out of the group, only my mum said she would be happy to be visited. My mum swears she didn't relay this conversation to my dad until after the event. She said it was just a passing conversation and not important enough to talk about until after.

They were in bed sleeping when my dad jumped out of bed screaming at my mum to turn on the light. As soon as she did my dad told her, "she's gone, oh my God, she's gone." He was in tears and shaking and he is not a man who cries or scares easily.

He told her a woman, dressed in white, and surrounded by light, was standing at her side of the bed, leaning over her as if she was whispering in her ear. The light was too bright for him to make out any features but it was definitely a woman.

He didn't sleep for the rest of the night and refused to turn the light back off. The next morning he refused to talk to about it and since then whenever it is brought up he refuses to talk about it and denies that it happened.

I have never actually seen a ghost but have experienced a few things that seem very odd

At my old house, every night I would wake up and the window would be wide open, and the room would be freezing. My mum would come in and tell me off asking me why I have the window open like that in winter even though I made sure it was closed before bed.

I was spooked but didn't do anything about it until one night I felt someone tap my back 3 times almost as if to say "get out". I ran out of my bedroom screaming and my sister swapped rooms with me. She never experienced anything.

Same house, few years prior I felt someone put pressure on my back while I was in bed. I got up straight away and at the same time my brother shouted from his bedroom "close my door" - he was playing on his console with his headphones in, and his bedroom door opened on it's own, he thought it was one of us until he realised we were all in bed.

Never had anything weird since then

I've just remembered, I've seen a ghost, I just didn't know it at the time.

When me and my sisters were small we would visit my great uncle every week with my mum and gran (brother to the psychic aunt). My mum and gran would sit in the front room with my uncle and I and my two younger sisters would sit in the backroom and talk to his wife.

She would tell us stories, feed us cakes from her silver cake trolley, and let us play with the weather barometer. We used to play a game where we would decide on an animal and then go to the front room and ask my uncle to guess what animal we were acting out. His wife would be the one who told us what animal to be. If we didn't know the animal she would tell us what noises it made and how to act it out. She kept score for us and the winner got an extra cake.

I remember her clearly. I remember what she wore, how she used to speak, what type of clothes she wore, her three-tier, silver cake trolley, the types of cakes she had on the trolley, the chair she used to sit on, and how she sat, and how she taught us what the weather barometer was and used to ask us each time we visited what the weather was.

We stopped visiting when we were older, so when my uncle remarried it didn't seem odd to us. We assumed his first wife, the lady with the cakes, as we called her, had died.

I was living away when my mum phoned me the night after a family get-together I hadn't been able to get to. She told me about how my sisters swore blind my uncle had been married before but he had been single all his life. I then asked her who the lady with the cakes was if she wasn't his wife. I was able to describe her exactly the same way my sisters did without having spoken to them.

I still remember her clearly. There was a lady with a cake trolley in that room with us. She gave us cakes, I would pick a brown and a pink fondant fancy, she wore a flowery smock and an apron and she told us stories about our uncle, and smelled of lavender and tobacco.

My mum and gran swear blind there was no lady in the front room. It was just me and my sisters. All the adults were in the back room.

@Iam4eels so none of what you describe in your dream was ever real? You didn't have a bf you were angry at and that you cheated on?

The first time was When I was about 8. We went on a little family holiday to Pitlochry. It wasn’t a scary thing. I wondered who it was who was in the bedroom. I was with my sister. I told mum about the lady. I just felt sad for her, I just remember that she was sad. It sounds so bizarre, I know. I remember asking my mum about her. The lady. She said what lady? Don’t be silly, you had a dream. I was very adamant in talking about her because I knew it wasn’t a dream.
Mum told me years later that when her and dad checked out that I was hang stopped talking about the sad lady. The highlight of my holiday obviously?
i think mum was pretty freaked when she told me the owner had said, yes. We have a spirit here. Causes no harm. She lost her child and seems to be drawn to just looking over children.
mum told me after, if they knew about this prior to booking they would have dodged that old hotel.
it’s very goosebumpy thinking how much more children and animals pick up on these things too. 👻

@ScaredSceptic Sadly, like you I was too scared to look at the lights properly, but naturally I've thought about it many times over the intervening years.

The best description I can give you is that it was a tall (person sized) narrow column of bright sparkling/twinkling lights. Small white lights. Is that kind of like what you saw?

I wasn't even alive until the mid-80s so I definitely did not have a boyfriend or a flat in the 70s.