To think ghost stories are BS, but my experience was a bit odd?

[BigMoan]

I moved into a 1950’s house previously occupied by a couple. They were the sole occupants since it was built. The husband died, and a few years later the wife moved to a care home. The house was then put on the market.

Our first night in the house, we’d put a car seat centrally on a table. It fell off.
Few days later, I heard our piano being played - I went in the room and no one was there.
Then a week or so later - daughter went to the bathroom, froze and said there’s someone in there. She described the person as a male, like a shadow and wearing a suit. I hadn’t mentioned anything about ghosts to her, and told her it was just a shadow - perhaps Daddy had walked past when she was about to go in. For a few weeks after she was scared of the bathroom, wanted an adult with her. And now - if ghosts come up in a book/on TV - she always refers back to this experience.

A few other weird things happened. And then nothing else. The house felt ‘creepy’ for a while. Absolutely nothing creepy about it now.

If course it’s ridiculous to think it was a ghost, but what was I experiencing? Was it just the strangeness of moving somewhere new? Just wondered if anyone else had had a similar experience?

I’m not 100% certain that ghosts don’t exist but I don’t think it’s “ghosts” as such … just “time residue” if that makes sense. Presence from the past that lingers on for a while.

Sure ghost stories are BS.

At the same time, my husbands dear and elderly friend passed away and amazingly, left us her house.
When we were living there, I saw a female figure walk past the end of the bed. I wasn't sleeping. I was feeding baby DS to sleep.

I think it’s a bit arrogant to say that there is 100% no chance of ghosts existing. Perhaps not ghosts in the sense of ghoulies with white sheets but I just don’t think we know enough to also disregard energy / presence / something spiritual.

I love ghost stories though!

I saw my friend before she died. She was standing in the park six foot away from me, and then she wasn’t.

She was gravely ill in hospital so there’s no way she’d have been in the park, and that afternoon she died.

Thank you all! That’s interesting! I was almost afraid to post - I though people would jump on me for being ridiculous.
@100daysandBeyond that made my hairs stand on end a bit! And I can’t say I ever felt ‘scared’ - and my daughter didn’t scream/cry etc - it was just a feeling if oddness.
Another weird thing was that I was woken up by an alarm clock. I don’t own an alarm clock, and though there was something that was beeping in my bed. Couldn’t find anything, and no noise when I was fully awake.

Then later on, I looked through the photos of the house on Rightmove. There used to be twin beds in the bedroom, with an alarm clock between the two beds - exactly where I would have heard the sound - central to my double bed.

I’d say after a few months of living here, all the strange experiences stopped. Which - when I reflect on them now - makes me feel a bit ridiculous for thinking anything about ghosts.

@WheelieBinPrincess did you think - that’s my friend, I’ll try and say hello/talk - or did you know it wasn’t real?
Sorry for your loss btw

@BigMoan

I’d say after a few months of living here, all the strange experiences stopped. Which - when I reflect on them now - makes me feel a bit ridiculous for thinking anything about ghosts.

Out of interest, did you give much energy to the experiences you did have? Like when the seat fell off the table, did you flap and go on about it for ages and start talking about ghosts or did you brush it off as unexplained and move on? Reason I ask is that I wonder if giving energy to these things encourages them to linger? The fact that all weirdness has now stopped makes me wonder if you didn’t give it all enough energy to continue?

I believe in presence ...i lived with one for a whole year...gotb used to it after a while.

@Pikaso
I set of gave it energy as I mentioned it at work, to my sister. Not so much to DP - although he was aware and witnessed my daughter freezing when she thought someone was in the bathroom.

I’m giving it energy now by discussing in here - but there is absolutely no part of me that thinks something odd will happen again. The oddness has definitely gone.

Sort not set…

I moved to my current property many years ago with my mother and sister. We were teenagers. It was built in the late 1870s. A number of events happened when we first moved in.

On occasions I heard someone sighing and breathing loudly in my bedroom. On one occasion 2 sets of Russian dolls which I had left ‘stacked’ were neatly set out in rows on a bookshelf in my room.

My Mum used to go away on occasion. One Saturday night I was annoyed at my sister for coming in late and stomping up the stairs and leaving the hall and stair lights on - I got up twice to switch them off. I was in the kitchen at 8:30am when she walked through the front door. I had been alone in the house all night. This happened again on occasion. Notably also years later when I acquired a housemate I didn’t get on with.

When we first moved in there were continuous issues with a kitchen light going off and on. An electrician replaced the switches and wiring but it continued.

After a while, all this stopped.

I later learned that an occupant of the house had died during the ‘flu pandemic and wonder if that accounts for the sighing I heard in my room.

I still live there and it has been a happy place for me and my family. My husband and DDs say they saw a woman in black Victorian garb on occasion but I never have and they did not find it frightening.

I’m a sensible and rational person but I think it’s a bit arrogant to brush all of these experiences aside. Sometimes we are all guilty of not stepping back and wondering at the planet we inhabit (4.5 billion years old approx.!) and the mysteries it holds. Not everything can be explained and that’s ok. As you were…

@BigMoan all the emotions at once! Firstly oh there’s my friend in that crowd of people so I took a step towards her and then stopped still because it couldn’t be her. But it was, I can’t explain it. But it was a second or two and then she wasn’t there anymore.

She had a very distinctive look, steampunk and always wore a long velvet coat. She didn’t look like anyone else.

When I was 13yo I knew when my grandad had died. I turned to my mum in our kitchen and told her he’d died. I’d just heard very clearly his distinctive living room clock chime. But his house was 60 miles away. My mum heard nothing. My aunt rang ten mins later to say he’d died.

@Wolf1970 that’s fascinating! Wow. Similar in that it wasn’t a terrifying or frightening experience. I actually think I’d be MORE scared/or jump more if the car seat fell off the table for a legitimate reason! Whereas I didn’t jump - even though it was the middle of the night. I just thought ‘odd’.

I’m more of the view that it’s something internal in the human brain making you see things, rather than something physically present. There is much we still don’t know about the subconscious, that weird state between wake and sleep (notice how many ‘ghost’ sightings are when people are in bed?) and other as yet unknown functions of our psyche.

That doesn’t explain the car seat though but if you’re supposing that ghosts have the ability to move physical objects, that’s quite a big statement. Plus no one ever sees it happen, or films it. They’re always in another room or upstairs.

[quote BigMoan]@Pikaso
I set of gave it energy as I mentioned it at work, to my sister. Not so much to DP - although he was aware and witnessed my daughter freezing when she thought someone was in the bathroom.

I’m giving it energy now by discussing in here - but there is absolutely no part of me that thinks something odd will happen again. The oddness has definitely gone.[/quote]
It’s strange isn’t it. We’ve had a few weird things happen here. The house is around 25 years old so not your usual “Victorian haunted house” but someone did die here and the owner was so desperate to sell it we got £10k knocked off the price! It had a lot of viewings but nobody liked the atmosphere here apparently. We got an amazing price considering it’s a 4 bed detached with double garage (under £160k) in nice area.

Things that have happened …
Light switch flipped on by itself (I actually saw the switch flip).
Bathroom door opened by itself.
I left the living room and then tried to go back into it … a small table had been moved slightly so was now in front of the door blocking access (there was nobody in that room).
Footstep sounds on the landing.
Sounds of stuff falling over upstairs
Figure of a woman in the bedroom at night (although with this one it could be as I was half asleep and hallucinating).
Dogs stood at the foot of the stairs barking and growling.

DH doesn’t like to talk about it as it scares him so I don’t mention it anymore but as I was typing this (giving energy to it) I just heard something fall over upstairs.

DH sees things like this quite lot.

@BigMoan

Thank you all! That’s interesting! I was almost afraid to post - I though people would jump on me for being ridiculous. *@100daysandBeyond* that made my hairs stand on end a bit! And I can’t say I ever felt ‘scared’ - and my daughter didn’t scream/cry etc - it was just a feeling if oddness. Another weird thing was that I was woken up by an alarm clock. I don’t own an alarm clock, and though there was something that was beeping in my bed. Couldn’t find anything, and no noise when I was fully awake. Then later on, I looked through the photos of the house on Rightmove. There used to be twin beds in the bedroom, with an alarm clock between the two beds - exactly where I would have heard the sound - central to my double bed.

Don’t worry, someone will be along soon to tell you that you’re ridiculous

However, I believe in stuff like this, it’s intriguing but I’m glad it feels ok now.

I've had loads of odd things happen over the years that I haven't been able to explain to my satisfaction rationally. I try and keep an open mind. The house my family moved to when I was 13 had a decidedly odd atmosphere especially in the dining room. I absolutely hated going in there ( it's where the phone was, so I had to go in a lot as a teenager!) and used to fly in through the door, grab the phone and spin round to face the room. The thought of standing with my back to the room gave me the horrors.

Many years later my mum agreed with me, saying she had had the same revulsion of that room. She hadn't told me as she hadn't wanted to stoke my imagination further! Things used to move around in the kitchen particularly ( which shared a wall with the dining room) and I had some of the most dreadful hallucinations ever there when I was around 16 or so.

We had moved from an 18th century cottage which had been properly haunted with people and animals and I think she was terrified that she'd brought some of them with us. It took about 5/6 years for the feeling in that room to simmer down to something I could bear. She still lives there now and although I don't feel anything in the dining room any more the whole house feels unwelcoming. I should add I love my parents dearly and it has nothing to do with transference of feeling about them to the house.

I'm not sure I beleive in ghosts, but I do think there's somethings we can't fully explain or understand.

I've lived in my current home for around 4 years, our last home gave me a bit of an odd feeling on occasion and a couple of strange things that I can't really explain happened there.

Our new home hasn't been like that really, though it was built in the same era (victorian) and very much a fixer Upper, so had general creepy house vibes when we moved in. Have had a odd feeling occasionally when walking into what is now DS room, but that was it. Until six months ago. I was strapping my son into his buggy by the back door, but in a lean to outside of the house, so sort of bent over and looking downward. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man walk from the hallway, through the dining room, directly past the door I was stood next to, and into the bathroom. I saw him through two separate windows (at right angles to each other) and the open door. Dh was at home and had actually just been in the loo, I finished strapping my son in and went into the bathroom (ironically, to take the mick out of my husband for needing the loo again having only just been) and there was no one in there.
I called out to my husband thinking maybe he'd walked back past me and I hadn't seen him, but he answered from upstairs and said he'd not just been downstairs. I was that convinced someone was in the house I checked the front door (locked) and ran back into the bathroom, convinced some random person had wandered into our house and was now hiding in it. There was no one and no way a person could have got in or out of our home, but I definitely saw someone. I left for work that day crying I was so shaken up by the experience.

We haven't talked about this pretty much since it happened (Dh is easily freaked out), but DS has recently stated saying "scared" and when questioned about what he's scared of, the reply is"the man".

I think it's hilarious that credulous posters think that not believing in something for which there is zero evidence, despite all efforts at recording/proving/documenting etc.

I realise you didn't say this, OP. I think you are right in what you said in your OP, you were probably just sensitised to anything that struck you as a small oddity because you were living somewhere new, and your young daughter was a bit unnerved by being in a new place.

Children are imaginative, easily spooked by strange places, and not good at distinguishing real from imaginary -- I was terrified of a 'witch' in my bedroom as a child, which was my mother's dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, but I never thought to take it down during the daytime, and another longterm poster on here has written more than once about an apparition she described in detail over months and months as being in a particular room in her house as a child, which turned out to be a picked-off area of paint that looked like a face on the underside of a table that was only visible from the height of a small child.

I believe in ghosts.

We went to a castle in the West Ccountry last year (West Country itself has a very spooky feel to it) and we were all having a look around when we came to a room that was meant to be haunted. There was a sign up that said what some peoples experiences had been from people that had worked there. My DD who is Autistic and has difficulties with her receptive and expressive language and wouldn't have known what was written on the sign or that that room was meant to be haunted completely refused to go in there and that was the only room that happened with.

Aah OP you star, I was just thinking last night we hadn't had a good woo tread in a while, and here it is!

Settling in to have the bee jeebies scared out of me