to be shit scared?

[hauntingme]

Namechanger. My DD, who is just 3 was playing upstairs early on. All of a sudden she let out an almighty shriek and screamed help. It was the sort of cry your child makes that makes you drop everything (in my case a knife and some lemons) and dash. I dashed up as she was running down the stairs. She literally jumped in my arms and looked terrified.

i asked her what was worng and she said that was a man in her room. I said whta did he look like, she said bigger than her with blue hair (she is unsure of her colours ) My first thought was ghost. I gave my DD, 10 the phone and said if I scream, take the others and run out of the house.

Adrenalin took over and I ran upstairs and got my baseball bat and searched every nook and cranny, no one there.

I came down and reassured everyone that it was probably the cat that spooked her whilst shitting it I asked DD what the man said, she said he said, this is my room and my bed.

reassure me please.

So, why do they never say, 'hello, I'm Gladys, I was your granny's cousin, I died of the pox and there's a fiver in your knicker drawer that you've forgotten about?

Or "Word up Homies, my name is Dwayne and I is lookin for somewhere to chill innit?"

Or do young dead people consider haunting uncool?

One day I walked past a man who was oddly dressed and unusually for me I noticed as he stood out in our village - wouldn't have given him a second galnce in a city- anyway I found out a few weeks later that this is the ghost of xxxxx and he has been seen by only a few people walking along the road towards the pub and then just disappearing - i didn't look to see where he went so I will never know if he subsequently disappeared - but I did see an odd looking man - ghost or just odd bod in the village - you decide?

Right so let me get this straight

When I die, I'm going to reassemble my body and reclothe myself in a way that I saw myself when I was alive?

Better stock up on baggy house clothes and odd socks.

She wasn't behind the hedge. She was peering over to the other side so we could see all of her. I saw her vanish. I didn't look away. She didn't crouch or run away or hide I saw her.

I know it sounds mad but we saw it and before that happened I didn't believe in anything so mad.

Think of it logically. Let's assume for the sake of the argument that it was the ghost of a man who has died but is still able
to communicate with living people. Why not appear to you or another adult. Or a group of adults who can verify the reality of what they are witnessing. Or a group of Oxbridge scientists? And tell them what life on the other side of death entails.

If he has the intellect to speak English then wouldn't he have the intellect to understand that 3 year olds are not reliable witnesses?

Worra - well, if you're coming through to Derek Acorah then you'll dress as your sister-in-law's hairdresser knew you (as in, 'oooh, I've got a lovely lady here who liked blue . . . sometimes wore shoes . . . oooh, she didn't suffer fools gladly, did she? but worra a big heart, worra big heart' etc etc), but I guess if you see yourself as Kate Moss, then maybe you'll wander around all eternity dressed like a supermodel? Beats me. I can go ask an expert if you like?

headinhands - I know this one!

My experts tell me that as children are all innocent and pure and open to spirit yadda yadda yadda, then they are the ones who are often given messages. It's just that us nasty grown ups blame it all on Haribo and too much Nickelodeon rather than face The Truth.

I dont necessarily believe in ghosts. I dont believe in God. Science is fairly convincing. I do believe that everything has an explanation somewhere, that may not have been discovered yet. I do however find it arrogant, that anyone, and I include scientists and religious persons, feel that they have ALL the answers. Nobody has all the answers. Scientists dont believe in God or ghosts but they cannot irrefutably prove that they doesnt exist. Creationists insist that the fossil record and the theory of evolution is shot full of holes. People who believe in ghosts are probably actually the least convincing. but everyone believes they are right.
What really has changed since the middle ages? when scientists were executed by other scientists and religious bodies for their theories? Only to be proved right? Nobody knows everything. Nobody knows what is still to be proved or misproved.

best I suspect he'll find out my parents are Irish and then tell me he's being contacted by a dead woman called 'Mary'

There's not an Irish person on this earth who doesn't have a dead person called Mary, kicking around somewhere in their family tree.

When I was a child our neighbour used to take her dog for a walk if she couldn't sleep. There were a lot of stories around about a ghost in our neck of the woods, but it was simply Mrs W, in her floaty white cotton nighty, having a midnight stroll with Angus.

Saggy This is AIBU...of course we all know everything

I've never seen such a good-natured AIBU - maybe we're being blessed with spirit loveliness.

Or Mary.

Vodka, Gin and Scary Mary...it's all a thread needs.

Richard Wiseman's done interesting research on how infrasound frequencies can 'cause' people to experience ghosts - Something in the Cellar' paper.

I think eventually scientist will find an answer to the question of ghosts.

Also, at the risk of hurting the feelings of all those who do, everything I have seen and heard about mediums looks like a load of old crap. The half messages, hit or miss answers, 'name beginning with S' stuff doesn't look at all convincing. I know it brings comfort to some though.

And, I have to say, that I have never heard a credible story of a ghost having a chat with anyone so I would think that the OP's child was mistaken.

And to OP, DD insists there's monsters under her bed. There aren't, but if I crouch down and talk to the space under the bed telling the monsters that if they don't go home right now their mummies will be cross, she's fine.

And what Saggy said at 11:44:16.

< putting sensible hat on >

I think your toddler needs reaasurance from the adults she trusts ie YOU

"Hey dd, I don't know what you might have seen but I know it's just me, DH and you guys that live here. I've had a good look upstairs and there's no-one there now. But you did the right thing to tell Mummy if anything scared you."

Something like that. I don't think it would be that good for your DCs to think the house may be haunted by ghosts, but I accept that's coming from someone who doesn't believe in them ! Good for them to know you take their concerns and well-being seriously though.

Hope dd is fine now and the experience (whatever it was) hasn't scared her.

I saw ghosts once. Over a period of about a week, I saw various ghosts and odd people, some were frightening, some were strange, some were lovely and happily chatted to me. Some of them encouraged me to do strange things like trying to buy £1000+ worth of clothes at H&M one afternoon, waking my kids up in the middle of the night to play with them, and refusing to eat or drink anything that wasn't green or pink.

Then my DH started getting seriously worried and took me to the GPs, and they found out that I was experiencing a strong allergic reaction to the medication I had been given for bronchitis, and it was giving me euphoric psychotic episodes and hallucinations.

The medication was changed, I was put on mood stabilizers and eventually the ghosts went away :( and I have never seen them since.

I second that there's a man living in your loft. Go check yourself! Although I'm too much of a wuss

OH OH! I saw a tv programme on tv the other day that actually showed a homeless man living in the communal loft in ablock of flats...

"I gave my DD, 10 the phone and said if I scream, take the others and run out of the house."

Well that's nothing! Sometimes if my Mum heard something upstairs and we were home alone at night (without Dad) she used to get the biggest knife in the kitchen and walk upstairs with it!!!

No one was ever there, and no one was ever hurt.

I'm not going to get into any believers V non believers debate bollox, I think Frogs has already summed that one up beautifully.

Haunting I had a similar experience as a small DC, regular grey DC visitor to my room claiming it as his & staring at me, used scare the crap out of me, my Mum played it down, told me I was having bad dreams etc etc - that was until years later when I was an adult & she owned up to having seen him too - we didn't live there long & I did wonder why she suddenly became best friends with the local Priest & had us carted off to Sunday School every weekend -

I've had many other experiences since & yes they do at times wear Nike, my DD also has seen several visitors, including DHs Dad, who died before she was born, yet she described his older self to a "the man who always comes with Nana X" yet at that point, had only ever seen young photos of him

I think the advice on speaking with your local spiritualist church is a good one, & if its not been said already, try talking to your Ghost & reassuring him, it can make a lot of difference - I lived in a flat for years that sounds similar to your own - a lot of goings on surrounding my renovating the place were put to rest by my doing just that, I ended up sharing my flat with a spirit that instead of being a nuisance & trying his best to scare me, he took to putting the kettle on for me, just before I got up on a morning & before I got in from work :)

Thing is, if you entertain the notion that there are actually ghosts etc above the wealth of scientific data to the contrary you might as well believe someone has put a curse on you every time you get ill/suffer a mishap. There's just as much 'evidence' for witchcraft as there are ghosts. How come one is more accepted when both are equally groundless. Furthermore it's for the believer to provide the proof. Not the sceptic. I was having a discussion with my sister the other night and we got on to the supernatural. I told her I didn't believe in ghosts seeing as there isn't a shred of evidence to which she replied 'there's footage of ghosts all over YouTube'