Everyone has a creepy story to tell. Yes, even you. It may be your own story, or a story that has been handed down in your family, or one that a friend or colleague told you. But the fact remains--everyone has a creepy story.
The following mysterious tales were told by audience members at my 2022 library lecture series. They are transcribed exactly as they were told apart from some minor grammatical corrections. I'm sure you will enjoy this collection of true, creepy, otherworldly short tales told by regular, everyday people like yourselves.
So turn off your lights, sit back, and prepare to be scared.
Kent Library, Kent, New York
I was recently at a friend’s house, an old farmhouse on the Westchester-Putnam County border. The house was over one hundred years old, and the day I was there it was being renovated. I was sitting in the kitchen, and as I was there the workers were taking down the drop-ceiling in order to uncover the original ceiling. I was thinking to myself, ‘Wow, I’m going to see the real, genuine ceiling.’
When they took the ceiling tiles down I saw that, at some point, someone had placed a cross with rosary beads wrapped around it in the ceiling. So I’m thinking to myself, ‘This is suspicious!’
I asked my friend, “Does anybody live upstairs?”
“Yes,” she said, “There are tenants on the floor above, but they’re not home right now.”
“Would you mind if I wait here until they get back?” I asked, and the woman said that I could stay as long as I liked.
I waited for them to come home, and then I approached them. I said, “Excuse me. This is going to sound like a really silly question, but have you experienced anything out of the ordinary in your apartment since you’ve been living there?”
The guy looked at me and he went pale. He said, “We’ve never told anybody, but we’re afraid of our laundry room. The laundry room has some kind of a presence, and we get really anxious every time we have to do our laundry.”
Well, it turns out that their laundry room is right above the cross and rosary beads. So whoever must have been living downstairs must have been hearing things going ‘bump in the night’, and they decided to put them in the drop-ceiling for protection.
Putnam Valley Library, Putnam Valley, New York
My husband and I had some friends over one night. He and his guy friends were on the porch, and I was inside with my friends. All of a sudden we hear them hootin’ and hollerin’ outside! One of the men had an ‘Indiglo’ watch, and all of a sudden it started glowing really bright all by itself, and they all sat there watching it glow and glow and glow.
I have a flat yard that dips way down to a big hill with a stream down below. As the watch was glowing like this, they happened to look down the hill and there was a woman walking across the yard. She came up the hill, then walked across the back yard. They said that she kind of floated. They named her ‘Polyester Patty’ because it looked like she had polyester clothing on, like from the 1960s. A striped shirt and nylon pants.
These are three non-believers that we left on the porch, but to this day they believe they saw a ghost that night. We’re upset that we missed it! But the whole thing started with the glow of the watch.
Note: I pointed out that spirits often influence the behavior of electronic equipment. So, the glowing of the Indiglo watch seems to have been a prelude to the activity that followed.
__________
Back in the 70’s my husband and I moved from the city to Putnam Valley, and I saw a deer for the first time. I know it sounds dumb that I was excited about seeing a deer because you see them all the time, but I had never seen one before. So, I took a picture of the deer. But when I got the picture back, after I developed it, instead of a deer there was a man in the picture. It was the ghost of a man with a beard.
__________
My grandfather built his house in New Jersey, and he lived there with his wife for the rest of his life. He also had a workshop behind the garage. Now, his wife was kind of controlling. They would fight and she wouldn’t want him in the house. So, when they’d have these fights he would go out to the workshop. But even though they were fighting, she would religiously flick the kitchen lights on and off to let him know that dinner was ready and that it was time to come back inside.
My grandfather died first, then about a year later his wife got very sick. She had throat cancer, and they had to remove her teeth and put a port in and everything. So she really needed a lot of help, but she was very stubborn. My mom tried to help her, but she didn’t want anyone in the house and she didn’t want anyone to help her.
She died in the house. She actually bled out when she was there alone one. When they found her, they followed the trail of blood. It was clear that she started to bleed out in the kitchen, then she went to bed and died on the mattress.
So we cleaned out the house and we sold it. We have distant cousins that live behind that house, and my mom still talks to them every now and then. The new owners talk to the cousins, and they said that it’s making them crazy because the kitchen lights turn on and off all the time, and they cannot figure out why. They even called in an electrician but they still can’t figure out why the kitchen lights turn on and off all the time.
Of course, we think it’s my grandfather’s wife turning the lights on and off in the kitchen the way she used to when she wanted my grandfather to come in for dinner.
__________
I was on the Gettysburg battlefield on a ghost tour. I really enjoyed the tour because in addition to the ghosts, there’s real history in the stories. At one point in the tour, they were telling a ghost story. This was one of my least favorite stories that they were telling us that moment, one that I found the least believable of the many that they were telling. So, we’re listening to a story about a little boy that people would see shivering in the cold, and then he would disappear leaving no footprints in the snow. The story goes that he was trapped in the snow and died many years ago.
It was kind of a cold evening as we were listening to this. I was there with my girlfriend at the time, and I put my hands in my jacket pocket to stay warm and I felt my girlfriend put one of her hands in my pocket to stay warm. And I looked over at her lovingly, and her hands were at her sides! So, who was I holding hands with? I really felt the hand go into my pocket. Or, so I thought.
Adriance Library, Poughkeepsie, New York
In Staatsburg, New York is the Mills Mansion. It’s an historic home that you can take tours of. The house was built in 1832, and it was turned into a museum in 1938. I know a man who works at this house, and things happen to him all the time there. Just today something strange happened. Somebody went into one of the rooms where they store the grandfather clock, and he was in there by himself. You know when somebody goes by you there’s a little bit of wind? He turned around thinking that somebody came in the room with him, but nothing was there. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he got very scared.
Another time this same gentleman was in another room. They were preparing for Christmas, and Mrs. Mill’s portrait was there. He looked at the portrait and said, “Well, I hope you like people coming through your house.” In this room is a gold clock that had never worked since 1938 when the state acquired the house as a museum. As soon as he said this, the clock dinged.
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There’s a house near Canandaigua, New York. It’s in Rushville which is the next little town over, up near the Finger Lakes. The house belongs to my friend's family, and nobody will stay there. The house is haunted, and you can see them, and hear them giggling. They’re young. People have heard footsteps in the middle of the night stomping at the door. But like I said, nobody stays there anymore at all because they’re too afraid.
I’ve been in the house, and I’ve actually seen them peeking around the corner. They were young children, and they were all just giggling. They didn’t look solid, just a shape and they were moving. It looked like they’re peeking around the corner. I don’t know why I could see them, but they were there. It was very unnerving. But it got to the point over the years that nobody will go there. The old man who used to live in the house just passed away, so it’s an empty house now.
__________
As a child, my parents moved the family back to Wisconsin. My dad started a veterinary practice, and it was in an old house next door to where they were building a new animal clinic. The whole time we were living there, I went into my brother’s room just once and I never wanted to go there again. I just felt funny about the closet. I was just a kid at the time, and I never thought about it again, but I never wanted to go into my brother David’s room. I always made up excuses and said things like, “I don’t want to go in your room, it’s too cold in there.”
Years later when I had gone to college, I was out one night and I met the family who moved into this house after we left it. They said, “Oh, we’ve been wanting to talk to you. Did you know that the house you lived in before us was haunted?” I said “Wow! I didn’t know it was haunted. I just know that when we lived there I never wanted to go into my brother’s room.”
These people actually saw the ghost. It was the ghost of a little boy who had died in a fire house that had previously stood on that location. They saw this little boy. They researched it, so they knew who it was. One of the people said that as a child, growing up in the house, they saw this little boy. It wasn’t a ghost to be afraid of, it was just a trapped spirit.
The funny thing I remember about my brother’s room was the closet. I remember the one time that I was in the room it felt like there was a green glowing light coming from underneath the door. I just remember that as a kid. But the whole thing is just strange because I grew up in the house and I don’t remember being frightened about anything else. I just never went into my brother’s room the whole time we lived there except for that one time. I would say, “No, it’s too cold in your room. We’re going to play in my room!”
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Roxbury Library, Roxbury, Connecticut
So I live in Marbledale, which is a little town in Washington, Connecticut in Litchfield County. We built a house next to my husband’s mother, next to the house where he grew up. When my dad was a young boy, the lady next door was murdered. It was a horrible murder. We kind of knew the story, but when we built the house we kind of forgot about it.
One night I was reading in bed, and I saw this woman. I saw her scurry across the bedroom floor. She was beautiful, young, and she had this beautiful red hair. So I’m like, that was really weird, but I actually saw that!
So I told my husband and he said, “Oh, you saw the lady who was murdered next door. She had red hair. I had no idea about her features or anything. She was really kind of mutilated, it was a terrible murder. I saw her beautiful face, but she was kind of mutilated. Her body was broken, and as if she was trying to get away from the person, scurrying across the floor. She was just a beautiful young 20-something-year-old woman. So I saw this, and I said to my husband that she was beautiful and red-headed. He said, “Yes, that was our neighbor.”
Barry: So, you saw the scene itself playing out.
Woman: I did. When my dad was a little boy, he was at the murder site when it was happening. He was outside. He could hear her screaming. And then the house was set afire, and her body was burned.
Daughter: So, I’m corroborating the story. She would walk up and down the hall of the house that my dad built, and she would sit in the doorway and watch us sleep.
Woman: And they would see that separately, my three daughters.
Barry (to daughter): And she wasn’t mutilated when you saw her?
Daughter: No, not when I saw her. But she had red, red, very fine hair. Like shoulder length.
Woman: Same features they saw, but they saw her younger and watching over my three little daughters, and I saw her like when she was being murdered.
Barry (to woman): Now when you saw her, was it late at night?
Woman: It was like 8 o'clock at night, and I had just put the girls to bed then went up to my bedroom to read. I was just settling in. My husband was not there because he was usually late coming home from work. I was in bed, propped up ready to watch TV or read. I was not asleep. It was clear as day.
Barry: Did she come through the door when you saw her?
Woman: She just appeared at the side of my bed by my nightstand. She was scurrying right next to my side of the bed, from the head of the bed towards the foot of the bed. And it was clear as day.
Barry: And it was like she was crawling on the floor. That’s a really terrifying thing to see!
Woman: And to this day I can see every bit of it.
Barry: Do you remember what she was wearing?
Woman: It was like casual clothes, it was like from the 70s. To this day it makes me emotional when I think of it.
__________
I used to work in the entertainment industry. We were at a producer’s house. We were just talking, and I looked over to the left and I saw a woman. She had black hair and she had a white outfit on. And I went to him and said “Oh, your daughter’s home!” and he said, “I don’t have a daughter, what did you see?” I said, “I saw a woman and she had black hair. I figured it wasn’t your wife. And she was wearing a white outfit and she was walking up the stairs. And he goes, “Yeah, we have a spirit in the house.
This house was owned by Charlie Chaplin’s mother. He bought it for his mother. But the upstairs area was a private room, and that’s where he brought his mistress. And his mistress kept walking up the stairs, and I saw the mistress walking up the stairs. She looked real solid.
Barry: What was she wearing?
Man: She was wearing a white gown, and she had black hair. And she was just walking right up the stairs. I saw the back of her as she was walking up the stairs.
Barry: How far up did you see her travel up the stairs?
Man: The problem was, there was a wall that started part-way up the stairs.
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Where we live, we have a pool which I’ve been taking care of for years. It used to belong to my wife’s grandfather. I was sleeping one night when I felt something hit my leg like someone was trying to wake me up. I thought it was my wife. I ignored her, and it started hitting my leg harder. I woke up, and at the foot of my bed I saw three three shadows. Two were standing still, the one in the middle looked like it was yelling at me, and I saw that they were pointing. I looked out the window toward where they were pointing and my pool pump had exploded. It was like three, four o'clock in the morning, and the whole yard was flooded. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what it’s trying to tell me!’ We think it was my wife’s grandfather, because it was his pool.
Barry: Tell me about the shapes. What did they look like
Man: Basically, one looked like a black mass.
Barry: Were they human shaped?
Man: They weren’t really human shaped at all. The one in the middle you could kind of see a face, but not really. So all you could see. You could see facial features. That’s how I knew it was yelling because I could see the movement in the face. And that’s when it happened.
Now, to piggy-back on that story. About a week later I got bad poison ivy on my leg because I do work outside. I tend to sleep with the A/C on, and I just have my leg out because when you have poison ivy and you sweat it irritates it. I woke up because my foot was really really cold and I saw a light, almost like electricity coming down and bending over my leg. And as it was doing this my leg was getting colder and colder.
Do you know how it feels when you get the fight-or-flight feeling when something scary happens? Well, I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel threatened at all. It was weird because it was a weird shape, but it was just this white light. Then, it just looked like it turned and disappeared.
My wife told me that her grandmother used to cover her when the blankets were off her. My whole leg was exposed.
Barry: So, you think it might have been related to your wife’s grandmother, and how she used to cover her with the blanket?
Man: I think so.
Barry: Was the light coming from above and shining down on your leg?
Man: I didn’t see a shape, I just saw a white light. It was walking towards my leg, then it looked like it went over my leg.
_________
We’ve lived here in Roxbury. For the last two or three years I can clearly see something that looks like an illuminated window about two hundred yards away from the house in the woods. I told my son, because he’s tall enough to see through the same window as well. And he’s like, “Yeah, I can see it. It’s like there’s a window in the middle of nowhere.”
So the next day we started to walk through the woods. We wanted to see if someone had put some electricity or something there. But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. But we continued seeing this. My son and I looked out the window, and there it was. We both saw it at the same time.
Barry: And you’ve never figured out what it is?
Man: No. It’s not always there. It’s on and off.
Barry: How many times have you seen it?
Man: At least thirty or forty times.
Barry: How deep in the woods from your house is it?
Man: I’d say 150 to 200 yards.
Barry: If there was a house there, and you were seeing the windows of that house, does it look like it’s a bottom floor window or a top floor window?
Man: Bottom.
Barry: So, it’s lower to the ground.
Man: There’s a cemetery at the same sort of altitude another 300, 400 yards away.
Barry: Is it a square window?
Man: No, rectangular.
Barry: A rectangular window, and it’s illuminated from within …
Man: I can’t tell. But it’s more like the light is on it because it’s not coming towards you.
__________
I was taking a class about twenty years ago in Monroe. My class was at 6:30 PM, and it was around this time of year, around October. It was around dusk. There was a church that I would turn at when I was driving home. So, I turned at the church and there was a cemetery there. So I looked over, and I saw a nun in the cemetery. She was wearing a white habit. So I’m driving thinking, ‘I didn’t know there was a convent around there.’ So I take another look and I see her. She’s still there, and she’s very solid looking.
Barry: How far away was she?
Woman: I was in the car, and she was only about thirty feet away. So I got to my class and I said to one of the other ladies, “I didn’t know there was a convent here.” And she said, “Why?” So I told her that I saw a nun in the cemetery. She asked what she looked like, and I told her she had a white habit. The woman told me that people in Monroe have seen this same nun. So, I’m not the only one who has seen her.
__________
My parents built our house here in ‘64. My father was a non-believer in anything spiritual. He had Alzheimer's, and when he was in the nursing home completely incapacitated I would see him walking to the side of the house purposefully as if he wanted to come inside. And that’s where the vision ended.
Barry: And you were awake when this happened?
Woman: Oh yes, it was daytime. Since he’s died, he’s back in the house. He won’t leave. We’ve asked him to leave, we’ve asked him to go. He mostly lives in what had been my mother’s sewing room in the basement. I can smell him. He had a smell about him. It kind of comes and goes. A little less now. Somebody said to my sister, “Tell him that you love him, and that he was a really great guy and a great father”. So she said that out loud and he just flew into her face. She could feel him. Anger. Like, “I’m not leaving. This is my house!”
So, after he died I was in his bedroom with a friend. We were cleaning out his clothes and looking through his stuff. Then we went outside, and I saw him. He always has the same outfit on. The one he always wore. T-shirt, chinos, a belt, and work boots. I saw him walk through the room, through the furniture, and into the closet.
Barry: Does he look solid?
Woman: Yes.
Barry: And yet he walks through the furniture?
Woman: Yes. That was the only time I saw him do that. I’ve also seen him walk down the hall and go towards the basement stairs because that’s where he goes. And there’s a smell in the back bedroom that had been their master bedroom. And it’s very medicinal, and it’s very strong, and I find it very disturbing.
Sometimes it gets stronger, then it fades before eventually going away. I tell him, “Dad, it’s time for you to go. Mom is waiting for you.” But he is not going. He is not leaving.
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Armonk Library, Armonk, New York
Before I moved here I lived in a suburb of Akron, Ohio. So this particular day I was home alone doing laundry. The bedrooms were upstairs and the washer and dryer were in the basement. So after gathering all of my laundry into a basket upstairs I walked down the staircase. To get to the basement you have to turn right at the bottom of the stairs and go through the dining room. So I had just finished going down the stairs and I had the laundry basket in my hands. I turned to my right and went into the dining room.
The room had a table and four chairs, and in the chair at the far end of the table that was facing the window, there was a man sitting in it. He had on a dark blue Dickies work uniform. He was an older man with gray hair, and he was just sitting in the chair looking out the window exactly where I would sit and read when the laundry was going, or when I was knitting or whatever.
When I thought that someone had broken into the house because the patio door was open and unlocked. So when I saw this guy sitting there, I gasped out loud and dropped the laundry basket, and he was gone!
That was the first time I actually saw something. But I would also hear footsteps upstairs. And things would be moved. Like, my slippers would be moved. I would hear pacing upstairs while I was sitting downstairs. I knew it wasn’t my cat, and I knew it wasn’t my dog, and I was the only one home alone.
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About four years ago we were invited to a friend of mine’s 50th birthday party. It was in Woodbury so we needed a place to stay. We ended up staying at the Curtis House Inn in Woodbury, the oldest Inn in Connecticut. We didn’t know that it was haunted. We had no idea that it was a registered haunted Inn.
Some of us got there early. We were downstairs at the bar hanging out and we were drinking before we went over to the birthday party. There was actually the Inn and there was the carriage house. The woman said that there weren’t enough rooms open in the Inn to house us all, but there were rooms available in the Carriage House. There were about three rooms in the Carriage House which was set back a little from the Inn itself. So I said that I’d stay in the Carriage House with my friend Kelly.
When we were downstairs in the bar we had a couple of drinks. Kelly said she was on her way, so we all said that we should get ready for the party. So I went back to the Carriage House, and I’m getting ready waiting for Kelly to come. And there’s a knock on my door and I go to open it. I figured it was Kelly because she called to say she was coming, but when I opened the door no one was there. I looked around, but I was the only one in the Carriage House.
Kelly finally came and I didn’t pay any attention to the knock that I had heard on the door. When she came into the room she started making fun of the place. “This place is so old and dingy,” she said. “What picked this place out? This is awful.”
So we go to the party, then at the end of the night we come back to our room. We go to bed. It’s two single beds together. We’re the only ones in the Carriage House. You can tell, it’s kind of just like spooky. So we go to bed, then all of a sudden Kelly makes this growl. This voice came out of my friend Kelly that you would never even imagine. It was like this crazy voice. It felt like something was in the room. It felt to me, her bed was like by the wall, and it felt like something came out of the wall and it was in our room. I was like I gotta get the light on, there’s something in the room. I was like, “Kelly, what happened?” She’s like, “I don’t know! Did you hear my voice? I don’t know what that was.” And she was the one making fun of the place the whole night.
Barry: Was she saying anything in this strange sounding voice?
Woman: It was just like a growl (demonstrates). It didn’t go on for very long. Just for a few seconds. But it felt like something came into the room. So after a while I was like, “OK, let’s just go back to bed.” That whole night we just couldn’t sleep. I could smell smoke, like someone was smoking in the room. Then I smelled this really foul smell.
The next morning when we woke up, Kelly said, “Oh my god. Somebody was in the bed with me. It felt like it was a woman. A young woman. She had long black hair, and she was tugging on my sheets. She would get really really close to me. So close that I could feel her presence right up against me. She stayed with me the whole night in my bed. I was so scared I couldn’t even move or anything. It was just the scariest night.
So we decided to look up the Curtis House Inn online and we learned that it was haunted. I’m like, “We’re never staying here again!” We met our friends who stayed in the main Inn, and she said that all night long someone kept jiggling the doorknob of her room. Even though she could clearly hear if someone was walking in the hallway, she never heard footsteps when the doorknob was jiggling. She never heard anyone walking past in the hallway.
__________
I want to show you this picture I have on my phone, but I have to tell you the story about it. We grew up in a house in Harrison, New York. When we were kids, we always thought it was haunted because a lot of strange things happened in that house. We would see people standing in the back door. One time we saw a farmer with a pitchfork standing back there. We had a little playhouse, and in the middle of the night it would sound like the pieces were moving around inside. In the backyard we had a swing set, and at night we would hear the swing creaking back and forth. We would look outside and the swings weren’t moving, but then we’d go back to bed and we’d hear the swings swinging again.
So, my mother took this picture of us three kids when we were little. Years later my sister was looking at the photo and she noticed that in the shadow of my brother’s head there’s a face. (Shows me the picture) You can see that it’s a soldier. He has on a general’s uniform with a hat. These are the buttons on his coat.
Barry: Wow! I can see him really clearly. He has a mustache.
Woman: Yes! But it wasn’t until years later that my sister discovered the face. This is just a picture of the photograph that I took with my phone, but in the original photo the man is really clear.
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My mom passed away suddenly in 2019. It was totally unexpected. She hadn’t been feeling well, but she wasn’t sick or anything like that. My daughter and I drove to Michigan to handle everything.
I stayed at my brother’s girlfriend's house, and some nights I would fall asleep on the couch. So I’d be sleeping on the couch and I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I’d smell cookies and brownies baking. Now, I knew no one was baking cookies or brownies in the middle of the night! But my mom always used to bake cookies and brownies.
Also when I was there I would hear sounds. Now, my mom always carried plastic bags in her purse for some reason. In the middle of the night I would hear the sound of bags rustling and they would wake me up. This happened so often that I was like, ‘This is driving me crazy!’
The night before we were to head back to New York, I fell asleep on the couch again. I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was freezing. The TV was still on, but the picture had froze. It was frozen on one of those Alex Trebek life insurance commercials.
I had been watching The Golden Girls, and I was really annoyed. I needed to go back to sleep, I wanted to finish watching my show. I had to drive back to New York in the morning. So I said out loud, “I don’t know who’s here, and I don’t know what you’re doing, but could you just put my show back on so I can go back to sleep? I have to leave at 6 AM.” And as soon as I finished saying this, the TV just started working. I just said, “Thanks!”
A couple of weeks later my brother was living in the house because my mother died so unexpectedly. We had a two thousand square-foot house, eight acres, and we had to clean it out. So as we were going through my mothers things, I was joking about her cooking. Now, there were these pewter plates that had been very sturdily anchored onto the wall for over forty years. These things were really solid in place. They were not moving. So as I was poking fun at my mother’s cooking, one of the pewter plates went flying across the room. I didn’t know what was happening because it happened behind me and I heard the clang as it hit the floor. I was like, “Alright, message received. Sorry mom, I’ll stop making fun of your cooking!”
Even now I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll smell things. When I wake up in the middle of the night and I smell popcorn I know it’s my dad; and when I smell chocolate chip cookies or brownies cooking I know it’s my mom.
I have some of my mom’s things in my house. Some jewelry and other little things that had belonged to her. Well, just a couple of weeks ago I woke up one morning and near my coffee pot there was a rosary. I was like, “Where did this come from?” It was my mothers, but I didn’t even know that I had it. It must have been in a box with her stuff, but I have no idea how it got there.
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This story happened to my grandmother when she was a little girl. Now this was years ago, because my grandmother has been dead for years, and I’m an old woman myself. I’m 77-years-old. But when I was growing up my grandmother always used to tell this story.
When she was a little girl, she and her family lived in a home in New Holland, Pennsylvania. But the family moved out of the house because they experienced so many strange things. Everyone would be asleep, and all of a sudden they’d hear crashing sounds coming from the kitchen like someone was throwing all the dishes to the floor. They would call one another to say, “Are you down there? What’s happening?” When they went down to see what was going on, everything was in its place. Nothing was disturbed.
Another experience they had was when they would go up the stairs they would feel crowded, like they had to go through a bunch of people. There was nobody on the stairs, but they would feel this. So things got so bad that they got scared and finally moved.
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I was once in a religious shop in New Milford. I was just looking around and the lady who ran the place was sitting behind the desk. I was looking at books and stuff, and I saw a book of St. Katherine of Siena. I was looking very much at this book, and I said, “My mother was named from Saint Katherine of Siena.”
As I was leaving she said, “Excuse me, but I just must tell you this. When you were talking about your mother being named for Saint Katherine of Siena, your mother was here. She was here, and she wants you to know she loves you very much.”
Now I saw nothing. I heard nothing. But I believe this woman. She wasn’t a wack-job. I just believe it. I had just lost my husband and I was hurting so bad. So when this woman said to me, even though what she said wasn't about my husband, I believe her. She said that my mother was there, and I believe she was there to comfort me during this terrible time in my life.
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I have a friend, and she had a cat that passed away. In her kitchen is a stainless steel dishwasher, and she keeps finding cat prints on it. She scrubs it down, really scrubs it down. Then like a day later, the cat prints come back, but they’re always in different places. The paw prints keep coming back no matter what she does. She doesn’t know what to do, so she just keeps wiping it down
_________
A long time ago I had to go to a conference in Washington, and I was staying in this really old, old hotel. It was really nice, and it cost a lot of money to stay there. But again, it was really old.
The conference finished about 4:30 and I went upstairs to take a nap. After that I planned on going to bed. It was summer, and still daylight, so I had the windows wide open. The light from outside was bright, so I didn’t put any lights on in the room.
I laid down on the bed to take my nap, and I fell asleep. Now, nothing was on in the room. No lights. No television. Nothing. Suddenly I woke up, because the television was turned on full-blast. That’s what woke me up. It was like screaming.
Like I said, when I went to sleep the windows were open. But now the blinds were closed, and every single light was on including the bathroom.
The first thing I did was shut the TV off because it was so loud. I’m looking around the room and I’m like, “Wait a minute, why would I turn all these lights on.” Then I thought, “You didn’t turn the lights on, because the window was open when you went to sleep.” I looked and the window was closed. So I’m like, what the hell?!
So now I’m really scared to death. I went into the bathroom and washed my face, but I left the lights on. I thought, ‘OK. You want the light on, the lights are on. They’re staying on!’
I went downstairs, and I must have been shaking like a leaf. I was white as a ghost. And the concierge came over and said, “Are you OK?” I said, “The weirdest thing just happened …” and I told him. He goes, “Are you on the fifth floor?” I said, “Yes!” He goes, “They won’t hurt you. But there’s a lot of activity on the fifth floor.” I’m thinking, ‘What does that mean?! I gotta stay in this room?’
So I ended up staying with him in the lobby until one in the morning, and he’s like, “No one is going to hurt you.” So I went back to the room, I kept all the lights on, I turned the TV on. I never went to sleep, and I left first thing in the morning.
The following mysterious tales were told by audience members at my 2022 library lecture series. They are transcribed exactly as they were told apart from some minor grammatical corrections. I'm sure you will enjoy this collection of true, creepy, otherworldly short tales told by regular, everyday people like yourselves.
So turn off your lights, sit back, and prepare to be scared.
Kent Library, Kent, New York
I was recently at a friend’s house, an old farmhouse on the Westchester-Putnam County border. The house was over one hundred years old, and the day I was there it was being renovated. I was sitting in the kitchen, and as I was there the workers were taking down the drop-ceiling in order to uncover the original ceiling. I was thinking to myself, ‘Wow, I’m going to see the real, genuine ceiling.’
When they took the ceiling tiles down I saw that, at some point, someone had placed a cross with rosary beads wrapped around it in the ceiling. So I’m thinking to myself, ‘This is suspicious!’
I asked my friend, “Does anybody live upstairs?”
“Yes,” she said, “There are tenants on the floor above, but they’re not home right now.”
“Would you mind if I wait here until they get back?” I asked, and the woman said that I could stay as long as I liked.
I waited for them to come home, and then I approached them. I said, “Excuse me. This is going to sound like a really silly question, but have you experienced anything out of the ordinary in your apartment since you’ve been living there?”
The guy looked at me and he went pale. He said, “We’ve never told anybody, but we’re afraid of our laundry room. The laundry room has some kind of a presence, and we get really anxious every time we have to do our laundry.”
Well, it turns out that their laundry room is right above the cross and rosary beads. So whoever must have been living downstairs must have been hearing things going ‘bump in the night’, and they decided to put them in the drop-ceiling for protection.
Putnam Valley Library, Putnam Valley, New York
My husband and I had some friends over one night. He and his guy friends were on the porch, and I was inside with my friends. All of a sudden we hear them hootin’ and hollerin’ outside! One of the men had an ‘Indiglo’ watch, and all of a sudden it started glowing really bright all by itself, and they all sat there watching it glow and glow and glow.
I have a flat yard that dips way down to a big hill with a stream down below. As the watch was glowing like this, they happened to look down the hill and there was a woman walking across the yard. She came up the hill, then walked across the back yard. They said that she kind of floated. They named her ‘Polyester Patty’ because it looked like she had polyester clothing on, like from the 1960s. A striped shirt and nylon pants.
These are three non-believers that we left on the porch, but to this day they believe they saw a ghost that night. We’re upset that we missed it! But the whole thing started with the glow of the watch.
Note: I pointed out that spirits often influence the behavior of electronic equipment. So, the glowing of the Indiglo watch seems to have been a prelude to the activity that followed.
__________
Back in the 70’s my husband and I moved from the city to Putnam Valley, and I saw a deer for the first time. I know it sounds dumb that I was excited about seeing a deer because you see them all the time, but I had never seen one before. So, I took a picture of the deer. But when I got the picture back, after I developed it, instead of a deer there was a man in the picture. It was the ghost of a man with a beard.
__________
My grandfather built his house in New Jersey, and he lived there with his wife for the rest of his life. He also had a workshop behind the garage. Now, his wife was kind of controlling. They would fight and she wouldn’t want him in the house. So, when they’d have these fights he would go out to the workshop. But even though they were fighting, she would religiously flick the kitchen lights on and off to let him know that dinner was ready and that it was time to come back inside.
My grandfather died first, then about a year later his wife got very sick. She had throat cancer, and they had to remove her teeth and put a port in and everything. So she really needed a lot of help, but she was very stubborn. My mom tried to help her, but she didn’t want anyone in the house and she didn’t want anyone to help her.
She died in the house. She actually bled out when she was there alone one. When they found her, they followed the trail of blood. It was clear that she started to bleed out in the kitchen, then she went to bed and died on the mattress.
So we cleaned out the house and we sold it. We have distant cousins that live behind that house, and my mom still talks to them every now and then. The new owners talk to the cousins, and they said that it’s making them crazy because the kitchen lights turn on and off all the time, and they cannot figure out why. They even called in an electrician but they still can’t figure out why the kitchen lights turn on and off all the time.
Of course, we think it’s my grandfather’s wife turning the lights on and off in the kitchen the way she used to when she wanted my grandfather to come in for dinner.
__________
I was on the Gettysburg battlefield on a ghost tour. I really enjoyed the tour because in addition to the ghosts, there’s real history in the stories. At one point in the tour, they were telling a ghost story. This was one of my least favorite stories that they were telling us that moment, one that I found the least believable of the many that they were telling. So, we’re listening to a story about a little boy that people would see shivering in the cold, and then he would disappear leaving no footprints in the snow. The story goes that he was trapped in the snow and died many years ago.
It was kind of a cold evening as we were listening to this. I was there with my girlfriend at the time, and I put my hands in my jacket pocket to stay warm and I felt my girlfriend put one of her hands in my pocket to stay warm. And I looked over at her lovingly, and her hands were at her sides! So, who was I holding hands with? I really felt the hand go into my pocket. Or, so I thought.
Adriance Library, Poughkeepsie, New York
In Staatsburg, New York is the Mills Mansion. It’s an historic home that you can take tours of. The house was built in 1832, and it was turned into a museum in 1938. I know a man who works at this house, and things happen to him all the time there. Just today something strange happened. Somebody went into one of the rooms where they store the grandfather clock, and he was in there by himself. You know when somebody goes by you there’s a little bit of wind? He turned around thinking that somebody came in the room with him, but nothing was there. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he got very scared.
Another time this same gentleman was in another room. They were preparing for Christmas, and Mrs. Mill’s portrait was there. He looked at the portrait and said, “Well, I hope you like people coming through your house.” In this room is a gold clock that had never worked since 1938 when the state acquired the house as a museum. As soon as he said this, the clock dinged.
__________
There’s a house near Canandaigua, New York. It’s in Rushville which is the next little town over, up near the Finger Lakes. The house belongs to my friend's family, and nobody will stay there. The house is haunted, and you can see them, and hear them giggling. They’re young. People have heard footsteps in the middle of the night stomping at the door. But like I said, nobody stays there anymore at all because they’re too afraid.
I’ve been in the house, and I’ve actually seen them peeking around the corner. They were young children, and they were all just giggling. They didn’t look solid, just a shape and they were moving. It looked like they’re peeking around the corner. I don’t know why I could see them, but they were there. It was very unnerving. But it got to the point over the years that nobody will go there. The old man who used to live in the house just passed away, so it’s an empty house now.
__________
As a child, my parents moved the family back to Wisconsin. My dad started a veterinary practice, and it was in an old house next door to where they were building a new animal clinic. The whole time we were living there, I went into my brother’s room just once and I never wanted to go there again. I just felt funny about the closet. I was just a kid at the time, and I never thought about it again, but I never wanted to go into my brother David’s room. I always made up excuses and said things like, “I don’t want to go in your room, it’s too cold in there.”
Years later when I had gone to college, I was out one night and I met the family who moved into this house after we left it. They said, “Oh, we’ve been wanting to talk to you. Did you know that the house you lived in before us was haunted?” I said “Wow! I didn’t know it was haunted. I just know that when we lived there I never wanted to go into my brother’s room.”
These people actually saw the ghost. It was the ghost of a little boy who had died in a fire house that had previously stood on that location. They saw this little boy. They researched it, so they knew who it was. One of the people said that as a child, growing up in the house, they saw this little boy. It wasn’t a ghost to be afraid of, it was just a trapped spirit.
The funny thing I remember about my brother’s room was the closet. I remember the one time that I was in the room it felt like there was a green glowing light coming from underneath the door. I just remember that as a kid. But the whole thing is just strange because I grew up in the house and I don’t remember being frightened about anything else. I just never went into my brother’s room the whole time we lived there except for that one time. I would say, “No, it’s too cold in your room. We’re going to play in my room!”
__________
Roxbury Library, Roxbury, Connecticut
So I live in Marbledale, which is a little town in Washington, Connecticut in Litchfield County. We built a house next to my husband’s mother, next to the house where he grew up. When my dad was a young boy, the lady next door was murdered. It was a horrible murder. We kind of knew the story, but when we built the house we kind of forgot about it.
One night I was reading in bed, and I saw this woman. I saw her scurry across the bedroom floor. She was beautiful, young, and she had this beautiful red hair. So I’m like, that was really weird, but I actually saw that!
So I told my husband and he said, “Oh, you saw the lady who was murdered next door. She had red hair. I had no idea about her features or anything. She was really kind of mutilated, it was a terrible murder. I saw her beautiful face, but she was kind of mutilated. Her body was broken, and as if she was trying to get away from the person, scurrying across the floor. She was just a beautiful young 20-something-year-old woman. So I saw this, and I said to my husband that she was beautiful and red-headed. He said, “Yes, that was our neighbor.”
Barry: So, you saw the scene itself playing out.
Woman: I did. When my dad was a little boy, he was at the murder site when it was happening. He was outside. He could hear her screaming. And then the house was set afire, and her body was burned.
Daughter: So, I’m corroborating the story. She would walk up and down the hall of the house that my dad built, and she would sit in the doorway and watch us sleep.
Woman: And they would see that separately, my three daughters.
Barry (to daughter): And she wasn’t mutilated when you saw her?
Daughter: No, not when I saw her. But she had red, red, very fine hair. Like shoulder length.
Woman: Same features they saw, but they saw her younger and watching over my three little daughters, and I saw her like when she was being murdered.
Barry (to woman): Now when you saw her, was it late at night?
Woman: It was like 8 o'clock at night, and I had just put the girls to bed then went up to my bedroom to read. I was just settling in. My husband was not there because he was usually late coming home from work. I was in bed, propped up ready to watch TV or read. I was not asleep. It was clear as day.
Barry: Did she come through the door when you saw her?
Woman: She just appeared at the side of my bed by my nightstand. She was scurrying right next to my side of the bed, from the head of the bed towards the foot of the bed. And it was clear as day.
Barry: And it was like she was crawling on the floor. That’s a really terrifying thing to see!
Woman: And to this day I can see every bit of it.
Barry: Do you remember what she was wearing?
Woman: It was like casual clothes, it was like from the 70s. To this day it makes me emotional when I think of it.
__________
I used to work in the entertainment industry. We were at a producer’s house. We were just talking, and I looked over to the left and I saw a woman. She had black hair and she had a white outfit on. And I went to him and said “Oh, your daughter’s home!” and he said, “I don’t have a daughter, what did you see?” I said, “I saw a woman and she had black hair. I figured it wasn’t your wife. And she was wearing a white outfit and she was walking up the stairs. And he goes, “Yeah, we have a spirit in the house.
This house was owned by Charlie Chaplin’s mother. He bought it for his mother. But the upstairs area was a private room, and that’s where he brought his mistress. And his mistress kept walking up the stairs, and I saw the mistress walking up the stairs. She looked real solid.
Barry: What was she wearing?
Man: She was wearing a white gown, and she had black hair. And she was just walking right up the stairs. I saw the back of her as she was walking up the stairs.
Barry: How far up did you see her travel up the stairs?
Man: The problem was, there was a wall that started part-way up the stairs.
__________
Where we live, we have a pool which I’ve been taking care of for years. It used to belong to my wife’s grandfather. I was sleeping one night when I felt something hit my leg like someone was trying to wake me up. I thought it was my wife. I ignored her, and it started hitting my leg harder. I woke up, and at the foot of my bed I saw three three shadows. Two were standing still, the one in the middle looked like it was yelling at me, and I saw that they were pointing. I looked out the window toward where they were pointing and my pool pump had exploded. It was like three, four o'clock in the morning, and the whole yard was flooded. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what it’s trying to tell me!’ We think it was my wife’s grandfather, because it was his pool.
Barry: Tell me about the shapes. What did they look like
Man: Basically, one looked like a black mass.
Barry: Were they human shaped?
Man: They weren’t really human shaped at all. The one in the middle you could kind of see a face, but not really. So all you could see. You could see facial features. That’s how I knew it was yelling because I could see the movement in the face. And that’s when it happened.
Now, to piggy-back on that story. About a week later I got bad poison ivy on my leg because I do work outside. I tend to sleep with the A/C on, and I just have my leg out because when you have poison ivy and you sweat it irritates it. I woke up because my foot was really really cold and I saw a light, almost like electricity coming down and bending over my leg. And as it was doing this my leg was getting colder and colder.
Do you know how it feels when you get the fight-or-flight feeling when something scary happens? Well, I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel threatened at all. It was weird because it was a weird shape, but it was just this white light. Then, it just looked like it turned and disappeared.
My wife told me that her grandmother used to cover her when the blankets were off her. My whole leg was exposed.
Barry: So, you think it might have been related to your wife’s grandmother, and how she used to cover her with the blanket?
Man: I think so.
Barry: Was the light coming from above and shining down on your leg?
Man: I didn’t see a shape, I just saw a white light. It was walking towards my leg, then it looked like it went over my leg.
_________
We’ve lived here in Roxbury. For the last two or three years I can clearly see something that looks like an illuminated window about two hundred yards away from the house in the woods. I told my son, because he’s tall enough to see through the same window as well. And he’s like, “Yeah, I can see it. It’s like there’s a window in the middle of nowhere.”
So the next day we started to walk through the woods. We wanted to see if someone had put some electricity or something there. But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. But we continued seeing this. My son and I looked out the window, and there it was. We both saw it at the same time.
Barry: And you’ve never figured out what it is?
Man: No. It’s not always there. It’s on and off.
Barry: How many times have you seen it?
Man: At least thirty or forty times.
Barry: How deep in the woods from your house is it?
Man: I’d say 150 to 200 yards.
Barry: If there was a house there, and you were seeing the windows of that house, does it look like it’s a bottom floor window or a top floor window?
Man: Bottom.
Barry: So, it’s lower to the ground.
Man: There’s a cemetery at the same sort of altitude another 300, 400 yards away.
Barry: Is it a square window?
Man: No, rectangular.
Barry: A rectangular window, and it’s illuminated from within …
Man: I can’t tell. But it’s more like the light is on it because it’s not coming towards you.
__________
I was taking a class about twenty years ago in Monroe. My class was at 6:30 PM, and it was around this time of year, around October. It was around dusk. There was a church that I would turn at when I was driving home. So, I turned at the church and there was a cemetery there. So I looked over, and I saw a nun in the cemetery. She was wearing a white habit. So I’m driving thinking, ‘I didn’t know there was a convent around there.’ So I take another look and I see her. She’s still there, and she’s very solid looking.
Barry: How far away was she?
Woman: I was in the car, and she was only about thirty feet away. So I got to my class and I said to one of the other ladies, “I didn’t know there was a convent here.” And she said, “Why?” So I told her that I saw a nun in the cemetery. She asked what she looked like, and I told her she had a white habit. The woman told me that people in Monroe have seen this same nun. So, I’m not the only one who has seen her.
__________
My parents built our house here in ‘64. My father was a non-believer in anything spiritual. He had Alzheimer's, and when he was in the nursing home completely incapacitated I would see him walking to the side of the house purposefully as if he wanted to come inside. And that’s where the vision ended.
Barry: And you were awake when this happened?
Woman: Oh yes, it was daytime. Since he’s died, he’s back in the house. He won’t leave. We’ve asked him to leave, we’ve asked him to go. He mostly lives in what had been my mother’s sewing room in the basement. I can smell him. He had a smell about him. It kind of comes and goes. A little less now. Somebody said to my sister, “Tell him that you love him, and that he was a really great guy and a great father”. So she said that out loud and he just flew into her face. She could feel him. Anger. Like, “I’m not leaving. This is my house!”
So, after he died I was in his bedroom with a friend. We were cleaning out his clothes and looking through his stuff. Then we went outside, and I saw him. He always has the same outfit on. The one he always wore. T-shirt, chinos, a belt, and work boots. I saw him walk through the room, through the furniture, and into the closet.
Barry: Does he look solid?
Woman: Yes.
Barry: And yet he walks through the furniture?
Woman: Yes. That was the only time I saw him do that. I’ve also seen him walk down the hall and go towards the basement stairs because that’s where he goes. And there’s a smell in the back bedroom that had been their master bedroom. And it’s very medicinal, and it’s very strong, and I find it very disturbing.
Sometimes it gets stronger, then it fades before eventually going away. I tell him, “Dad, it’s time for you to go. Mom is waiting for you.” But he is not going. He is not leaving.
__________
Armonk Library, Armonk, New York
Before I moved here I lived in a suburb of Akron, Ohio. So this particular day I was home alone doing laundry. The bedrooms were upstairs and the washer and dryer were in the basement. So after gathering all of my laundry into a basket upstairs I walked down the staircase. To get to the basement you have to turn right at the bottom of the stairs and go through the dining room. So I had just finished going down the stairs and I had the laundry basket in my hands. I turned to my right and went into the dining room.
The room had a table and four chairs, and in the chair at the far end of the table that was facing the window, there was a man sitting in it. He had on a dark blue Dickies work uniform. He was an older man with gray hair, and he was just sitting in the chair looking out the window exactly where I would sit and read when the laundry was going, or when I was knitting or whatever.
When I thought that someone had broken into the house because the patio door was open and unlocked. So when I saw this guy sitting there, I gasped out loud and dropped the laundry basket, and he was gone!
That was the first time I actually saw something. But I would also hear footsteps upstairs. And things would be moved. Like, my slippers would be moved. I would hear pacing upstairs while I was sitting downstairs. I knew it wasn’t my cat, and I knew it wasn’t my dog, and I was the only one home alone.
__________
About four years ago we were invited to a friend of mine’s 50th birthday party. It was in Woodbury so we needed a place to stay. We ended up staying at the Curtis House Inn in Woodbury, the oldest Inn in Connecticut. We didn’t know that it was haunted. We had no idea that it was a registered haunted Inn.
Some of us got there early. We were downstairs at the bar hanging out and we were drinking before we went over to the birthday party. There was actually the Inn and there was the carriage house. The woman said that there weren’t enough rooms open in the Inn to house us all, but there were rooms available in the Carriage House. There were about three rooms in the Carriage House which was set back a little from the Inn itself. So I said that I’d stay in the Carriage House with my friend Kelly.
When we were downstairs in the bar we had a couple of drinks. Kelly said she was on her way, so we all said that we should get ready for the party. So I went back to the Carriage House, and I’m getting ready waiting for Kelly to come. And there’s a knock on my door and I go to open it. I figured it was Kelly because she called to say she was coming, but when I opened the door no one was there. I looked around, but I was the only one in the Carriage House.
Kelly finally came and I didn’t pay any attention to the knock that I had heard on the door. When she came into the room she started making fun of the place. “This place is so old and dingy,” she said. “What picked this place out? This is awful.”
So we go to the party, then at the end of the night we come back to our room. We go to bed. It’s two single beds together. We’re the only ones in the Carriage House. You can tell, it’s kind of just like spooky. So we go to bed, then all of a sudden Kelly makes this growl. This voice came out of my friend Kelly that you would never even imagine. It was like this crazy voice. It felt like something was in the room. It felt to me, her bed was like by the wall, and it felt like something came out of the wall and it was in our room. I was like I gotta get the light on, there’s something in the room. I was like, “Kelly, what happened?” She’s like, “I don’t know! Did you hear my voice? I don’t know what that was.” And she was the one making fun of the place the whole night.
Barry: Was she saying anything in this strange sounding voice?
Woman: It was just like a growl (demonstrates). It didn’t go on for very long. Just for a few seconds. But it felt like something came into the room. So after a while I was like, “OK, let’s just go back to bed.” That whole night we just couldn’t sleep. I could smell smoke, like someone was smoking in the room. Then I smelled this really foul smell.
The next morning when we woke up, Kelly said, “Oh my god. Somebody was in the bed with me. It felt like it was a woman. A young woman. She had long black hair, and she was tugging on my sheets. She would get really really close to me. So close that I could feel her presence right up against me. She stayed with me the whole night in my bed. I was so scared I couldn’t even move or anything. It was just the scariest night.
So we decided to look up the Curtis House Inn online and we learned that it was haunted. I’m like, “We’re never staying here again!” We met our friends who stayed in the main Inn, and she said that all night long someone kept jiggling the doorknob of her room. Even though she could clearly hear if someone was walking in the hallway, she never heard footsteps when the doorknob was jiggling. She never heard anyone walking past in the hallway.
__________
I want to show you this picture I have on my phone, but I have to tell you the story about it. We grew up in a house in Harrison, New York. When we were kids, we always thought it was haunted because a lot of strange things happened in that house. We would see people standing in the back door. One time we saw a farmer with a pitchfork standing back there. We had a little playhouse, and in the middle of the night it would sound like the pieces were moving around inside. In the backyard we had a swing set, and at night we would hear the swing creaking back and forth. We would look outside and the swings weren’t moving, but then we’d go back to bed and we’d hear the swings swinging again.
So, my mother took this picture of us three kids when we were little. Years later my sister was looking at the photo and she noticed that in the shadow of my brother’s head there’s a face. (Shows me the picture) You can see that it’s a soldier. He has on a general’s uniform with a hat. These are the buttons on his coat.
Barry: Wow! I can see him really clearly. He has a mustache.
Woman: Yes! But it wasn’t until years later that my sister discovered the face. This is just a picture of the photograph that I took with my phone, but in the original photo the man is really clear.
__________
My mom passed away suddenly in 2019. It was totally unexpected. She hadn’t been feeling well, but she wasn’t sick or anything like that. My daughter and I drove to Michigan to handle everything.
I stayed at my brother’s girlfriend's house, and some nights I would fall asleep on the couch. So I’d be sleeping on the couch and I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I’d smell cookies and brownies baking. Now, I knew no one was baking cookies or brownies in the middle of the night! But my mom always used to bake cookies and brownies.
Also when I was there I would hear sounds. Now, my mom always carried plastic bags in her purse for some reason. In the middle of the night I would hear the sound of bags rustling and they would wake me up. This happened so often that I was like, ‘This is driving me crazy!’
The night before we were to head back to New York, I fell asleep on the couch again. I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was freezing. The TV was still on, but the picture had froze. It was frozen on one of those Alex Trebek life insurance commercials.
I had been watching The Golden Girls, and I was really annoyed. I needed to go back to sleep, I wanted to finish watching my show. I had to drive back to New York in the morning. So I said out loud, “I don’t know who’s here, and I don’t know what you’re doing, but could you just put my show back on so I can go back to sleep? I have to leave at 6 AM.” And as soon as I finished saying this, the TV just started working. I just said, “Thanks!”
A couple of weeks later my brother was living in the house because my mother died so unexpectedly. We had a two thousand square-foot house, eight acres, and we had to clean it out. So as we were going through my mothers things, I was joking about her cooking. Now, there were these pewter plates that had been very sturdily anchored onto the wall for over forty years. These things were really solid in place. They were not moving. So as I was poking fun at my mother’s cooking, one of the pewter plates went flying across the room. I didn’t know what was happening because it happened behind me and I heard the clang as it hit the floor. I was like, “Alright, message received. Sorry mom, I’ll stop making fun of your cooking!”
Even now I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll smell things. When I wake up in the middle of the night and I smell popcorn I know it’s my dad; and when I smell chocolate chip cookies or brownies cooking I know it’s my mom.
I have some of my mom’s things in my house. Some jewelry and other little things that had belonged to her. Well, just a couple of weeks ago I woke up one morning and near my coffee pot there was a rosary. I was like, “Where did this come from?” It was my mothers, but I didn’t even know that I had it. It must have been in a box with her stuff, but I have no idea how it got there.
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This story happened to my grandmother when she was a little girl. Now this was years ago, because my grandmother has been dead for years, and I’m an old woman myself. I’m 77-years-old. But when I was growing up my grandmother always used to tell this story.
When she was a little girl, she and her family lived in a home in New Holland, Pennsylvania. But the family moved out of the house because they experienced so many strange things. Everyone would be asleep, and all of a sudden they’d hear crashing sounds coming from the kitchen like someone was throwing all the dishes to the floor. They would call one another to say, “Are you down there? What’s happening?” When they went down to see what was going on, everything was in its place. Nothing was disturbed.
Another experience they had was when they would go up the stairs they would feel crowded, like they had to go through a bunch of people. There was nobody on the stairs, but they would feel this. So things got so bad that they got scared and finally moved.
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I was once in a religious shop in New Milford. I was just looking around and the lady who ran the place was sitting behind the desk. I was looking at books and stuff, and I saw a book of St. Katherine of Siena. I was looking very much at this book, and I said, “My mother was named from Saint Katherine of Siena.”
As I was leaving she said, “Excuse me, but I just must tell you this. When you were talking about your mother being named for Saint Katherine of Siena, your mother was here. She was here, and she wants you to know she loves you very much.”
Now I saw nothing. I heard nothing. But I believe this woman. She wasn’t a wack-job. I just believe it. I had just lost my husband and I was hurting so bad. So when this woman said to me, even though what she said wasn't about my husband, I believe her. She said that my mother was there, and I believe she was there to comfort me during this terrible time in my life.
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I have a friend, and she had a cat that passed away. In her kitchen is a stainless steel dishwasher, and she keeps finding cat prints on it. She scrubs it down, really scrubs it down. Then like a day later, the cat prints come back, but they’re always in different places. The paw prints keep coming back no matter what she does. She doesn’t know what to do, so she just keeps wiping it down
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A long time ago I had to go to a conference in Washington, and I was staying in this really old, old hotel. It was really nice, and it cost a lot of money to stay there. But again, it was really old.
The conference finished about 4:30 and I went upstairs to take a nap. After that I planned on going to bed. It was summer, and still daylight, so I had the windows wide open. The light from outside was bright, so I didn’t put any lights on in the room.
I laid down on the bed to take my nap, and I fell asleep. Now, nothing was on in the room. No lights. No television. Nothing. Suddenly I woke up, because the television was turned on full-blast. That’s what woke me up. It was like screaming.
Like I said, when I went to sleep the windows were open. But now the blinds were closed, and every single light was on including the bathroom.
The first thing I did was shut the TV off because it was so loud. I’m looking around the room and I’m like, “Wait a minute, why would I turn all these lights on.” Then I thought, “You didn’t turn the lights on, because the window was open when you went to sleep.” I looked and the window was closed. So I’m like, what the hell?!
So now I’m really scared to death. I went into the bathroom and washed my face, but I left the lights on. I thought, ‘OK. You want the light on, the lights are on. They’re staying on!’
I went downstairs, and I must have been shaking like a leaf. I was white as a ghost. And the concierge came over and said, “Are you OK?” I said, “The weirdest thing just happened …” and I told him. He goes, “Are you on the fifth floor?” I said, “Yes!” He goes, “They won’t hurt you. But there’s a lot of activity on the fifth floor.” I’m thinking, ‘What does that mean?! I gotta stay in this room?’
So I ended up staying with him in the lobby until one in the morning, and he’s like, “No one is going to hurt you.” So I went back to the room, I kept all the lights on, I turned the TV on. I never went to sleep, and I left first thing in the morning.
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