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?

Satan as Daddy - not so much.

F

I don’t believe in ghosts.

What I do believe is that our minds can trick us. I’ve got severe anxiety. When I am having an “episode” I sometimes hear voices and see the occasional “shadow person” but in all honesty: I think it’s my mind tricking me: not a ghost or demon

I love reading these but they creep me out at night especially as I am up through the night feeding DS so place marking for later

@Dottybackorcid

Why do people always claim to see only ghosts of people? Thousands more pets, animals die.

Where are the a ghost of a hamster from my deceased pet sat on my table in the morning or a gist of a cow walked through my living room we live in an d converted barn 🤣

It's funny you should say that as I've just come on to say my experience was with an animal and I never believed anything like that at the time but I still swear to this day it did happen. My best friend growing up as a child had a gorgeous border collie called Shep and when he passed away I was just as heartbroken as what she was. A few months later we were playing in my garden, an imaginary game with her dog and I was lying down on the grass and she said get her Shep and I jumped up and screamed because at that point I felt for paw marks on my back the exact weight of a dog standing on it. My friend has never believed me, she thought I did it to upset her but I swear it did happen.

There’s definitely “something” in my mums Victorian house. When I was a child I vividly remember seeing a woman in a red coat walk up the path and enter the house, I used go watch her from the front room window. One day my mum was talking to a neighbour out the front and saw what she thought was a woman in a red coat walk up and into the house, she even asked the neighbour if she had seen anyone she was so convinced! Doors also used to slam,
and a overpowering smell of roses or smoke used to fill the front room, my mums asthmatic so doesn’t use sprays ect.

[quote Blurp]@Packingsoapandwater I remember hearing about a study which said that memory has been found to be partly genetic, so you can sometimes "inherit" a memory from your parents. I guess it makes sense in a way when you look at how animals inherit instincts, it's not totally out of the question.[/quote]
What's interesting is that my mother had a very strong connection to her maternal grandfather. She had a very dysfunctional home life and her grandfather was a source of safety for her (he absolutely adored her as a child).

So you just wonder whether I inherited that imprint from her somehow, like some sort of thought form of a symbol of safety and security.

What I find fascinating, and tend to examine a lot on my free time for various reasons, is what people don't dream or experience. Like, you would think significant numbers of kids might have nightmares about being stuck inside televisions, or being trapped in cars. But they don't seem to; instead, they have fears about "monsters" when, say, wolves haven't existed in Britain for over 500 years.

But you do get culturally specific fears, like Korean fan death. And dreams of being naked in public are culturally specific; some indigenous forest tribes in South America won't have them because they don't wear clothing.

It's all extremely interesting.

• '4 paws' not 'for paws' 😂

Just because something can’t be proved, or hasn’t yet been proved, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

It’s a bit different, I know, but my DM, who was hyper-sensitive anyway (which could make her difficult to live with) was, on two occasions that I know of personally, acutely telepathic over very long distances. I’m talking UK/Canada, U.K./Cyprus here.

But it only ever happened when someone close was under some great stress, or in great distress. It was never a case of being wise after the event - she’d be very worried and relate at the time, in detail, what she’d dreamt - it was always a dream.
Some time sooner or later, we’d find out that she’d been spot on.

Scoffers have often said it must have been coincidence, but I absolutely know they weren’t - she was so specific about detail and the times were 100% accurate.
Obviously her ability could never have been proved under lab conditions, since it only ever happened very rarely and when someone close was in distress.

I dare say that some people’s brains are capable of sending and receiving signals - after all, if a very cheap radio or TV can pick up so much that nobody can see whizzing through the air….

But so far, nobody has managed to record or analyse the process.

My friends son aged 3 claimed to see a cow in his very small garden. Nothing resembled a cow. He was adamant. He didn't know but their house was the house left from a former abattoir.

Why do people always claim to see only ghosts of people? Thousands more pets, animals die

My dog and I both saw the ghost of my other dog who had died a year or so earlier. In broad daylight, walking across our garden, then disappearing as if she was walking behind an invisible screen.

@Tiredmum12389

I was in hospital for induction doing laps to try and start my labour. My husband and I were aimlessly walking just doing as many sets of stairs as we could, paying no attention of where we were going. We both commented how we had goosebumps and had gone very cold and uneasy. We realised we were walking straight towards the mortuary. I've got loads of stories I've either been told or experienced but they are too outing as I've shared them in RL. My dad is very no drama, doesn't care if you like him, in no way tries to impress. He is himself and wouldn't lie or embellish. He experiences things often and has his whole life.

Oh this reminds me of doing laps throughout the night when I was in for induction. The hospital is very eerie at night!

When I was around 10, I woke up to see my mum sitting on my bed. Except it wasn't her. She can't have been sitting there because she was on the side of the bed near the wall, so she couldn't have fitted on that side of the bed. I spoke to her, she turned away and then slowly disappeared. It was freaky, because it really looked like she was there.

She was alive at the time, and asleep in her own bed. Forty years later she's still alive. It wasn't a ghost I saw, it was just a weird vision of my mum. The mind is a very strange place.

As for dreaming, it's been well-known for many years that it's highly likely that many animals dream since they exhibit similar brain activity during sleep as we do when we dream. www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/150905-animals-sleep-science-dreaming-cats-brains

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Op, you might have a nice ghost, I’m sure some must exist!

My house has the nicest atmosphere, one of those places that just feels like home as soon as you come in. The other night though, I was about to go to sleep, and was cuddling the cat on the bed. DCat suddenly perked up and stared at the door, then did that cat thing where they watch something that you can’t see, and watched that “something” move all the way from the door, across the wall towards me, then stop right behind my head. I was joking to dh that the cat was trying to scare me when I felt a little push on the back of my shoulder. Not dh, and not the cat.

Not too scary though as the cat was blinking at whatever it was, so obviously liked it! I also had a weird one when I woke up one morning after a bad dream. It was still dark, and I saw dh was awake and told him I’d had just had a scary dream. As soon as I said that, the light next to the bed came on. It was on my side, so dh couldn’t have reached it (he hadn’t moved anyway) and it’s one of those clip on reading lamps that you tap to turn on, no switch or plug or anything. We weren’t close enough to accidentally touch it, and it’s high up, so not the duvet or pillow touching it (we tested everything!)

Dh and I also will both occasionally be alone in a room and feel like the other one has just walked in (no noise, but just the feeling that someone’s standing right behind you). We start talking then realise we’re alone.

We decided we must just have a kind, friendly ghost that the cat adores, who looks after us if we’re scared and just likes to wander in and see what we’re up to occasionally

I've never physically seen a ghost but something exists, I've had a few experiences and I know that people had died in the houses as they are family houses.

The house we live in is my DH family home which we bought using part of his inheritance, (siblings all wanted it to stay in the family), his Dad died in what is now our family room.

Things obviously moved from where we know they were placed, notably when DD1 was a baby, I put my keys on the side ready to go out. Picked up my daughter and strapped her in her pushchair that was less than two feet away, turned to pick them up and they had gone. Spent 30 mins looking for them, where I'd left them, the usual place I kept them etc etc... Absolutely no sign, went back to where I had put them and they had suddenly reappeared where I'd put them originally.

Anyway DFIL died early 90's in our house and was a smoker.. 10 years later I was standing my our bedroom doors ( all bedrooms doors meet at one point on our landing). Twice I have smelt cigarette smoke right outside the children's doors. We don't smoke. The rooms have been redecorated twice by this point... Carpets replaced..windows replaced, but that cigarette smoke smell was there for a few minutes before disappearing...

My own DF. I rushed to my parents house when my sister phoned me to say that the paramedics had been called for my Dad due to a massive heart attack. I was there in ten minutes and the paramedics were still working on him, he was stabilized enough to be moved, My Mom was faffing about getting clothes for him etc as they were kindly telling her "Get in the car now with Ultrablue" but as they transferred him to the ambulance, one of the paramedics shook her head at me and mouthed "Sorry he's just gone, we will see you at the hospital"

I was downstairs at this point

Suddenly my Dad opened his eyes, took one last look around his hallway, looked at me, smiled, then closed his eyes for the last time.. that was after the paramedics telling me had gone already...

Seriously I wonder why we don't see people in more modern clothes or my 2 year old daughter.

I work at a very old historic house and we sometimes get visitors telling us that there’s a dog running about with no obvious owners around. We don’t allow dogs on the property and it’s fenced with either narrow railings or high walls so unlikely that a dog could make its way in.

@CryptoDad

Combe Abbey is a very interesting hotel especially in the main hotel

A family member described many strange happenings when they worked nights there.

One early morning I woke up and saw my aunt standing in my bedroom. She lived a long way away and I had not seen her for years. She said something to me along the lines of I'm just checking to make sure you will be OK. Strange, but I put it down to a dream of some sort.

I then found out she had died that morning. I didn't even know she ill.

I believe you and think something unexplained probably did occur. I have a PG degree in a science field and I work in projects involving data however I have had some seriously weird and unexplainable events happen that leave me fully believing. The door bell in my previous rental used to go off all the time, except for the fact it was no longer connected to a power source, we also used to hear footsteps from upstairs when we were downstairs, at my first childhood home I still to this day believe I saw an orb float around the room and out again. Another time a dyson shot across the hallway and living room whilst not plugged in, the TV used to turn on randomly and just flicker and in my parents newer house I have experienced a few unusual things such as being sat in the living room and seeing a dark figure walk directly from the kitchen into the hallway and then under the stairs bit and no-one was there it was just a wall! Also things seem to go missing all the time there

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER
I’ve often wondered how birds just know how to build a nest, even quite intricate ones, like weaver birds make. It’s not as if they go to classes or can ask YouTube

No, they use Twitter!

I don’t believe in ghosts and think woo stories are nonsense.

However I did read an interesting piece a while ago (afraid I can’t remember the exact title but I’ll look it up) about a scientist who started experiencing sort of ‘supernatural’ occurrences and there was a bit of phenomena in the lab where people insisted a certain area was haunted.

He became interested and after doing a bit of cursory research discovered it was something to do with mechanics in that area that made vibrations which encouraged people to a ‘spooked’ state of mind. Coupled with working late into the night this was leading to people having these sort of over imaginative fears and seeing things. He linked it to some sort of evolutionary thing about living in places where vibrations meant danger. As I say I can’t remember the fine details.

So to sum up while I think this ‘you won’t know because you’ve never seen a ghost’ or ‘my gran was at the bottom of my bed’ is total nonsense, I do think there’s something very wonderful in what our minds can do without our awareness. Especially in times of stress/upheaval/when we get nervous.

@CounsellorTroi

I've always found it interesting that children all over the world are scared of monsters underneath them when they sleep, no matter the culture. When you think about it, it seems odd. What's the mechanism for that? It seems to be something hardcoded, but how?

I don’t find that any stranger than the fact that certain dreams seem to be common to all of us. Being naked in public, teeth falling out, dirty toilets, being chased.

It’s really not that surprising. It’s a dark hidden place you can’t easily see right under you when you’re at your most vulnerable, right about to sleep. It’s natural to be afraid of that/worried about it and little children don’t have the vocabulary to express that so the fear takes the shape of a real ‘monster.’

We lived in a pub which was once a courthouse (people were hung there) and it had a massive amount of history

Dad (not woo, more DIY expert type dad) locked up and came upstairs. Alarm went off, he went downstairs and found one of the candles relit. Blew it out, took the candle out the holder, locked up, went upstairs
Alarm went off again. Dad "FFS", went back down. Candle back in holder and relit

He had also locked up previously and there was a hallway with a frosted glass door. Went to go through the door and saw a man through the glass so said (as we all did going though there) "oh sorry mate". Then realised he had locked up, pushed the door open and nobody there

It was a really strange place, I felt comfortable there but had the choice of two rooms when we moved in. Next door to each other and originally used to be one room. One was warm and bigger, the other was colder and smaller but the warm room felt SO uncomfortable to me that I didn't choose it