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?

My childhood home gave me the creeps all the time. Constantly felt like I was being watched.

One day my mum was stood at the window washing up and looked out onto a field that was outside and a boy was stood just staring at our house. She sent my sister out to ask if he was ok. He said he used to live there and described my mum And dads bedroom with the fireplace etc. as mum sister walked back my mum looked up and he had vanished. Few weeks later my other sister woke up to him stood at the end of her bed in my room.

First one, from another site:

Even to this day it freaks me out because I cannot explain. Anyway, this was about 1986/87 (I was about 16) and this is set at secondary school.
Next to the secondary school is a park and at the far end of the park was a little brick building with no roof, where the newspaper boys would dump their local newspapers. This was a place where me and my best friend would have a smoke during the lunch-break. This little building was surrounded by trees.
We would go there every day and have a cigarette and gossip.
Then one day, this girl approached us and asked us for 'a **', which I gave. My friend (who was the chattier of the pair of us) got chatting to her and her name was Cindi and she was an orphan. Her parents were killed in a plane crash about a year earlier. We both felt sorry for her. She would then come round every lunch-time and we would have a cigarette, chat and a laugh. My friend even invited Cindi to her parents place (mine would go mental if I bought anyone home) and my friends mother even got on with Cindi. Cindi said she was living with her grand-parents, but ran away.
Then about 6 weeks later, there was no sign of Cindi at lunch-time. We got worried but then thought maybe she had moved on or something like that. She was roughly about our age.
Then, one lunch-time, me and my friend were in the little building and just as I was about to sit on a stack of news-papers, there on the front page was a picture of Cindi and that she had been reported missing by her parents!!!!! We looked at each other in shock, took a copy of the paper and when school was finished, we went to her mums house and showed her. She said we should call the police, which we did. After about an hour, the police turned up and asked us loads of questions, which we answered. But we didn't know where she was, or anything else about her. Her name wasn't even Cindi, it was Samantha and she was about 16. After talking to the police, we heard absolutely nothing more about 'Cindi', but it was so strange to see this girl who we felt sorry for on the front page of a paper where we would have a smoke.
To this day, I am non the wiser.

Second story, not mine either-

December 1981 I was living with the current Mr H, and one night, close to xmas, we went to sleep as per usual. Around 2am, I woke him up, screaming my head off, and trying to find the light switch in the dark room (Was a new flat we'd not long moved into). I told him about the dream I'd had which had been so terrifying, it had woke me up screaming, and that desperate search for the light switch. In the dream, I found myself in the sea, in a storm, with men panicking in the water all round, and the wreckage of a boat. There was this very calm, middle aged man who was trying to help people and he turned to me and said words along the lines of "It's OK, you're like me, you're not really here. Hold on to the wreckage, and you'll be alright." And I remember even in the dream, thinking "I'd never think of that for myself." And I looked around, and saw the shoreline and all these xmas lights along the shore. Even though I knew i wasn;t going to drown, the thing was very vivid, and terrifying.

I was busy all the next day and it wasn't til the evening news, we saw about the Penlee lifeboat disaster on the news. Mr H looked at me, and I looked at him - and he knew my account of the night before, and the details of the men in the water, the calm middle aged man, and the xmas lights.

I think it is a coincidence. The statistical odds of dreaming something might happen- and it happening at the same time - are probably not as long odds as you'd think. It was the xmas lights that got me but even so - well it was xmas.

Mr H remembers it as well as I do, to this day. Both of us did not see or hear the news til the following day and had heard or seen none that evening (I rarely watch the news at all, but he's a fan).

The thing that did strike me was, there were women and children also in the water that night and in my dream, I only saw men.

Years later, doing my family tree, I discovered I had an ancestor who in the 19thC was one of only 3 survivors of an accident where 11 people drowned. I read the inquest reports (of my middle aged ancestor giving evidence) and he remarked that he survived because he held onto something in the water - and a man on the shore shouted "Hold thy hold, lad!" This is in black and white and in a newspaper from over 180 years ago - an account I had no way of reading til the 2000s. Mr H also was shaken when he first read this - one of the first things that came to his mind was the dream I had, back in 1981.

Still, despite this, I think it was a statistical probability that I might be the descendant of a survivor of drowning, who survived by holding onto something, and dreamt of a lot of people drowning, but was told to hold on to something!

It is creepy but thankfully I only had one similar bad dream after that and then none since.

ETA: Looking back, I think I was more nonplussed at the time by the fact there were women in the accident but none in my dream, and also I kept wondering who that man was, and why 'he' wasn't on the news! It was the xmas lights along the shore that really freaked me out. To this day I find xmas lights creepy and horrible.

I shouldn’t have read this.

Third story, not a ghost story but quite scary for the poster ;

Many years ago I worked at a Golf Club, there was a guy that used to come into the restaurant and have lunch and sometimes an evening meal, he never played golf. He was very friendly and polite and used to chat to me. He was or seemed very wealthy by the way he spoke and dressed, he certainly drove a very expensive car. I was married at the time with children, he knew this and often used to come in with tickets to theme parks etc and offer them to me, I always politely refused. One day he came in with glossy brochures for houses for sale at about a million pounds and asked me which one I liked the most. A few days later he came in with a Diamond ring in a box and told me he was going to give it to me when we went out for dinner that evening. I had to stop being polite and tell him straight, he did not take it well.

About a week later, on my day off I received a call from the Golf Club to say that a lady with a very similar name to mine had a call put through to her, the caller said “Hello (not her name but mine) this is * you had better watch out because I am going to Kill you” !!!!!

The police had been called and came to see me, there was not much they could do, no one knew this guy, they gave me advice on how to stay safe etc. Well the next few months I was terrified of my own shadow, and it debilitated my life quite a lot, but this guy was never seen again.

.

@Iamthewombat

Either a deity has visited you or you’ve read about ‘Lugh’ in a book about the supernatural - which you are clearly interested in - and dreamt about it. Which is the most likely explanation, do you suppose?

I'm really sorry to disappoint you but no, I hadn't read anything about the supernatural or Lugh at that time. I had been off work sick and was home a week after surgery. I assumed it was some form of hallucination from my medication.

I’m not “spiritual” in any way. I don’t believe in God, The Tooth Fairy, afterlife, hell … none of it.

When my cat died, I used to wake in the middle of the night, to feel him padding and kneading the bed. On the bit he’d curl up on, at night. It’d wake me up and I’d turn the light on… nothing, obviously 🤷🏻‍♀️

Still don’t get what was going on.

The post about the dog that stopped sleeping in the MIL’s room the night she died reminded me of something we always remarked on as rather striking and odd.

My grandparents were serial cat thieves. As in, they always had a cat there, but the cats always belonged to someone else. There were a series of these feline ‘visitors’ over the years. They would feed them and let them sit by the fire, and on their knees, but they were never allowed upstairs.

That was until my grandmother was very old and dying. Then, my grandfather started letting their current borrowed cat go upstairs to where my grandmother lay bedridden. The cat visited every day, and would curl up on the bed with her. Even when she had faded so much that she wasn’t really responding to anyone any more, the cat still came and sat with her.

She died, and was taken away. The next day the cat turned up and meowed at the door that led to the stairs as usual. My grandfather opened the door, the cat ran up to the bedroom, looked around briefly and then left.

The cat continued to visit my grandfather, but it never went upstairs again, or meowed at the door to the stairs. If he left that door open, it wouldn’t go through, just stayed downstairs.

To be fair it’s not that I’m dead against people believing in ghosts, it’s more the ‘sorry to tell you but they DO exist’ attitude and the immediate anger if someone questions whether the shadowy figure that appeared at the end of your bed might have been, you know, a shadow.

Plus the anger if you suggest that people’s evidence is irrelevant. I’ve been called ‘thick’ on this thread for suggesting a Netflix documentary edited to make things look unexplainable doesn’t really amount to ‘tons of evidence’ and that ufo footage doesn’t serve as proof of the supernatural.

I'm certainly not angry at anyone trying to debunk my personal experience. As surely that is the natural approach we all take straight off the bat when we hear about something strange happening. I just don't have time for people who say ghosts definitely are not real because they haven't ever seen anything.

I can say it is real because I saw it. It doesn't insult anyone for me to say that (unless they want to claim that it offends their intelegence or something) where as people who say its not real...that insults a the beliefs of people who do believe. And also, denies the experiences of those who believe they have seen things.

As for shadows, I'm sure they explain many suposedly ghostly scenarios. But would not debunk my own experience as the thing was two feet from me, in the middle of the room where there was nothing to cast a shadow...and pretty damn solid.

If you had suggested it was a very stealthy burglar who had a pair of tights on over his head and somehow silently picked my locks, avoided every creaky floorboard like a ninja by crawling my bedroom floor and springing up into existence the very second I turned the lights off...maybe that would be fair. Bit coincidental that he picked that day over all others to break in and stand staring at me for twenty minutes though xD

But that would have been my go to debunking if I didn't...know it wasn't human. Say, if I'd just woke up and only saw it fleetingly or something and my brain hadn't taken time to register things. The fact is, if a situation is truly terrifying, most people give anything to debunk it. But there has to be some element of doubt there for us to do that. Which for me in this specific case unfortunately, there was not. I knew it was there, I knew it was watching me, I knew it was angry and I knew it was not human.

...woooo!
Sleep well guys lol.

Right. So basically we can say we don’t believe but we’re wrong because you know ghosts definitely exist.

And there’s no way you have an overactive imagination/night terrors/hallucinations/are lying. We can all either agree that ghosts exist and you’re simply the chosen one who can see them despite absolutely no evidence ever in history or we’re wrong.

Technically yes. Then no. Then no again. There is evidence, you just don't personally agree that millions of witnesses for thousands of years opinions count. I disagree.

I think whilst many of people's experiences can be explained as any number of natural occurrences, the liklihood is that some of those experiences cannot. But it looks like we'll have to agree to disagree.

My Gran lost her parents close together and used to swear she woke up one morning and saw them standkng at the end of her bed.

@Pinkbonbon

Technically yes. Then no. Then no again. There is evidence, you just don't personally agree that millions of witnesses for thousands of years opinions count. I disagree.

I think whilst many of people's experiences can be explained as any number of natural occurrences, the liklihood is that some of those experiences cannot. But it looks like we'll have to agree to disagree.

What evidence? And not a Netflix programme or a Reddit board or some random online saying they saw a shadow in the night and knew it wasn’t human because that’s not evidence.

Peoples' experiences are evidence. Otherwise courts would not call witnesses.

That doesn't mean that everyone who claims to have seen something supernatural, has. But it's still evidence.

@Pinkbonbon

Peoples' experiences are evidence. Otherwise courts would not call witnesses.

That doesn't mean that everyone who claims to have seen something supernatural, has. But it's still evidence.

Courts can’t convict based purely on witness statements. There has to be other evidence also. Otherwise you could be accused of murder and say ‘er no it wasn’t actually me, it was a man with red hair’ and they would just have to let you go.

People’s are 100% entitled to their beliefs but they don’t count for evidence. At best it’s anecdotal information.

Also, there have been things caught on cameras and various other devices by people all over the world. So it's not as if these things are never filmed. You could argue as to the validity of the footage of course. But still, evidence.

I just don't have time for people who say ghosts definitely are not real because they haven't ever seen anything.

I'm not sure anyone is saying that, though, are they? I doubt the existence of ghosts because the majority of the evidence has other explanations that are a lot more plausible. I couldn't say for sure they don't exist. What I wouldn't do is say 'sorry to tell you this but they are 100% because I've seen one'. That's just ridiculous and yes, if you say something that definite you really ought to hedge it with 'in my opinion, sorry to tell you this but they are 100% because I've seen one'. Which is an entirely different statement. The IMO is not implicit in the '100% real'.

I think what's going on in these sightings is more to do with the way our brains function and how we process information from our senses. It's why, despite thousands of witness statements, we've failed to detect ghosts using instruments which don't have that extra interpretive layer that our brains have. That in itself is very interesting. And it's also why, as PP have said, we don't convict on witness statements alone and will also ignore witness statements that conflict with physical evidence. We're not great witnesses.

God there are some tedious people on this thread.

And yes, I mentioned the Netflix programme because it's bloody interesting. It's not some nonsense presented by Yvette Fielding. I'm not saying it's evidence, I'm saying it's a good discussion point given the sizeable sections that are led by scientists and academics.

And as for evidence. Well, there's nothing you would accept as evidence is there? The clearest of footage would be put down as 'photoshop' by people of your mentality. So it's a non-starter of a conversation.

You want this whole arena to conform to what is most likely, our primitive methods of measuring these things. One day we'll understand. But until that day, it's not really up to people on this thread to bring you 'evidence' imo.

Everybody is discussing their personal experiences and that's valid. People are allowed to do that. As somebody else said up thread 'this isn't a courtroom'.

@Hearwego

First one, from another site:

Even to this day it freaks me out because I cannot explain. Anyway, this was about 1986/87 (I was about 16) and this is set at secondary school.
Next to the secondary school is a park and at the far end of the park was a little brick building with no roof, where the newspaper boys would dump their local newspapers. This was a place where me and my best friend would have a smoke during the lunch-break. This little building was surrounded by trees.
We would go there every day and have a cigarette and gossip.
Then one day, this girl approached us and asked us for 'a **', which I gave. My friend (who was the chattier of the pair of us) got chatting to her and her name was Cindi and she was an orphan. Her parents were killed in a plane crash about a year earlier. We both felt sorry for her. She would then come round every lunch-time and we would have a cigarette, chat and a laugh. My friend even invited Cindi to her parents place (mine would go mental if I bought anyone home) and my friends mother even got on with Cindi. Cindi said she was living with her grand-parents, but ran away.
Then about 6 weeks later, there was no sign of Cindi at lunch-time. We got worried but then thought maybe she had moved on or something like that. She was roughly about our age.
Then, one lunch-time, me and my friend were in the little building and just as I was about to sit on a stack of news-papers, there on the front page was a picture of Cindi and that she had been reported missing by her parents!!!!! We looked at each other in shock, took a copy of the paper and when school was finished, we went to her mums house and showed her. She said we should call the police, which we did. After about an hour, the police turned up and asked us loads of questions, which we answered. But we didn't know where she was, or anything else about her. Her name wasn't even Cindi, it was Samantha and she was about 16. After talking to the police, we heard absolutely nothing more about 'Cindi', but it was so strange to see this girl who we felt sorry for on the front page of a paper where we would have a smoke.
To this day, I am non the wiser.

@Hearwego - interesting you should say this.

A few years ago I worked in Canary Wharf. It was fun at the time because a close friend of mine also worked there and we often went to the bars/pubs after work.

One day she said she'd bumped into a younger woman having a drink at one of the bars with her friends who said she'd just been made redundant from her job. My friend was in recruitment (but different industry), bought her a drink and gave her details of another friend in recruitment in same area who could help and wished her luck.

A month or so went by. Friend didn't see this person again but was out in West End and suddenly saw this woman looking the same (she recognised a necklace or something she had been wearing the last time, very distinctive). Funnily enough this woman was speaking to some other people (including men) who my friend knew of through a friend of a friend. Young woman went to toilet and my friend spoke to her friends, just to say hi to them. Asked name of this person - turned out to be different first name to what she'd been told originally. Job she was doing was very different too and even age, she said she was older now. My friend wasn't sure if this person was a doppelganger - but with the necklace she thought not.

My friend hadn't felt sorry for her as such but when she had seen her in Canary Wharf she said this woman had seemed very desperate, no boyfriend as such around, mum lived abroad and dad she said was dead and no siblings.

@YourVagesty

God there are some tedious people on this thread.

And yes, I mentioned the Netflix programme because it's bloody interesting. It's not some nonsense presented by Yvette Fielding. I'm not saying it's evidence, I'm saying it's a good discussion point given the sizeable sections that are led by scientists and academics.

And as for evidence. Well, there's nothing you would accept as evidence is there? The clearest of footage would be put down as 'photoshop' by people of your mentality. So it's a non-starter of a conversation.

You want this whole arena to conform to what is most likely, our primitive methods of measuring these things. One day we'll understand. But until that day, it's not really up to people on this thread to bring you 'evidence' imo.

Everybody is discussing their personal experiences and that's valid. People are allowed to do that. As somebody else said up thread 'this isn't a courtroom'.

@YourVagesty - I agree with you.

No one knows or will know for sure what happens when we die. We think that when we die our brain stops working, the body is just a shell and the soul (if there is one) disappears.

So how on earth do people explain the cats (or dogs) on beds after they die? What is that?

Like I said I haven't actually seen ghosts ever myself. Have had strange experiences but never seen a ghost.

And as for evidence. Well, there's nothing you would accept as evidence is there? The clearest of footage would be put down as 'photoshop' by people of your mentality.

Well, given that people on this thread are posting as 'evidence' anecdotes they cut and pasted from a random website, posted by a complete stranger, many of which don't appear to even purport to be anything to do with the supernatural, I'm not sure many posters have a clear grasp of the concept of evidence, period.

One thing that emerges very strongly from these threads is how afraid of the idea of death in the home people are -- I think this must be a cultural thing, and maybe also generational.

People seem to 'explain' an experience they believe is supernatural by subsequently discovering that someone died in their house in the past. Which is mad. Unless you buy a newbuild or a very new house, numerous people are likely to have died in your house. Because of someone else's family history researches, I know a lot about the two generations of the large family that owned our (Victorian) house from 1909 to the late 1950s -- ten deaths took place here during that period (that I know of).

@Poundlick

And as for evidence. Well, there's nothing you would accept as evidence is there? The clearest of footage would be put down as 'photoshop' by people of your mentality.

Well, given that people on this thread are posting as 'evidence' anecdotes they cut and pasted from a random website, posted by a complete stranger, many of which don't appear to even purport to be anything to do with the supernatural, I'm not sure many posters have a clear grasp of the concept of evidence, period.

One thing that emerges very strongly from these threads is how afraid of the idea of death in the home people are -- I think this must be a cultural thing, and maybe also generational.

People seem to 'explain' an experience they believe is supernatural by subsequently discovering that someone died in their house in the past. Which is mad. Unless you buy a newbuild or a very new house, numerous people are likely to have died in your house. Because of someone else's family history researches, I know a lot about the two generations of the large family that owned our (Victorian) house from 1909 to the late 1950s -- ten deaths took place here during that period (that I know of).

@Poundlick - ok - not my story but friend of my mum's story. My mum had an experience in a house she lived in years ago - not ghostly as such but very unpleasant - more like voices in her head.

Years later a friend who'd lived in this house at the same time or just after her recounted a ghostly apparition - she didn't tell anyone else about it - but another friend in another room saw this.

They then discovered a woman had been murdered there.

So you'd say to the women who'd definitely seen something (no alcohol maybe at most a glass of wine) that they'd seen nothing, or it wasn't a ghost. People know what they've seen and have not seen.

So how on earth do people explain the cats (or dogs) on beds after they die? What is that?

Sleep paralysis hallucinations?