2020 has been a challenging year for all of us, to say the least, so it was a real pleasure to be able to give my annual October library lecture series virtually this year thanks to the following libraries: Kent Library, Reed Memorial Library, New Britain Library, Mahopac Library, Danbury Library, Oxford Library, Somers Library, Seymour Library, The Mark Twain Library, and Lewisboro Library.
A tremendous thank you to all of the librarians who made the lectures possible, and to all of the attendees who shared their true ghost stories this year.
So without further ado, please enjoy the following 26 true, ghostly, chilling, thrilling, fascinating, uplifting, spooky, tales.
A tremendous thank you to all of the librarians who made the lectures possible, and to all of the attendees who shared their true ghost stories this year.
So without further ado, please enjoy the following 26 true, ghostly, chilling, thrilling, fascinating, uplifting, spooky, tales.
The house we lived in when I was four years old was a Cape Cod style house. On one side of the upper floor of the house was a nursery, so it had a crib in it, and it was also a play area. On the other side was my sister’s bedroom.
I was upstairs playing in the playroom waiting for my best friend AnneMarie to come play with me because we had a play-date. While I was waiting and playing with toys, I saw her outside the window of the playroom. There was bright, bright white light all around her, and she was illuminated. It was this light that caught my attention, and she was just standing there in the window with all this white light around her. She was standing outside the window looking in, and she said, “I can’t play with you anymore. I have to go.” I got really mad at her and I was saying, “Why? Why?”, and then she disappeared.
I ran down to tell my parents what had just happened, that I saw my friend in the window. I said, “AnneMarie just came and told me that she can’t play with me anymore!” My parents were in the kitchen, and my mom was on the telephone. When I said this, my mother dropped the phone and my father just stood there staring at me. I didn’t know what was going on. My mom was visibly shaken, and very upset. So, that was my memory.
Years later, when I was a teenager, I asked my parents about it. I said, “I have this weird memory. I’m not sure if it’s a memory or a dream, but this is what I remember,” and I told them the story. My mother said that what had happened was, there had been a tragic accident that day. AnneMarie’s parents were about to come over to our house to bring her for the playdate. As her father was backing the car out of the garage, he hit his daughter and killed her. My parents were just getting that news on the phone when I came running down the stairs saying that I saw her in the window, and that she said that she couldn’t play with me anymore.
It was such a powerful memory, but I never really thought about it or talked about it again until I was a teenager and I asked my mom if it really happened or if I just imagined it and my parents sat down and told me the actual story of the events.
It’s funny, because my first reaction was probably like just a little kid. I was angry with her that she wasn’t going to play with me anymore. I didn’t understand at the time how powerful that message was; of her actually coming to visit me in that state before she left the earth.
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I was upstairs playing in the playroom waiting for my best friend AnneMarie to come play with me because we had a play-date. While I was waiting and playing with toys, I saw her outside the window of the playroom. There was bright, bright white light all around her, and she was illuminated. It was this light that caught my attention, and she was just standing there in the window with all this white light around her. She was standing outside the window looking in, and she said, “I can’t play with you anymore. I have to go.” I got really mad at her and I was saying, “Why? Why?”, and then she disappeared.
I ran down to tell my parents what had just happened, that I saw my friend in the window. I said, “AnneMarie just came and told me that she can’t play with me anymore!” My parents were in the kitchen, and my mom was on the telephone. When I said this, my mother dropped the phone and my father just stood there staring at me. I didn’t know what was going on. My mom was visibly shaken, and very upset. So, that was my memory.
Years later, when I was a teenager, I asked my parents about it. I said, “I have this weird memory. I’m not sure if it’s a memory or a dream, but this is what I remember,” and I told them the story. My mother said that what had happened was, there had been a tragic accident that day. AnneMarie’s parents were about to come over to our house to bring her for the playdate. As her father was backing the car out of the garage, he hit his daughter and killed her. My parents were just getting that news on the phone when I came running down the stairs saying that I saw her in the window, and that she said that she couldn’t play with me anymore.
It was such a powerful memory, but I never really thought about it or talked about it again until I was a teenager and I asked my mom if it really happened or if I just imagined it and my parents sat down and told me the actual story of the events.
It’s funny, because my first reaction was probably like just a little kid. I was angry with her that she wasn’t going to play with me anymore. I didn’t understand at the time how powerful that message was; of her actually coming to visit me in that state before she left the earth.
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I was taking a tour of the palace of Versailles in France. I was in the hall of mirrors and I let the tour group go ahead and I stayed for a short while in the hall by myself. One side of the hall is all mirrors, if I remember correctly, and the other side is all gorgeous windows. There are chandeliers hanging in the middle, and a few furniture pieces.
At one point I looked into the mirrors. I stood a few feet away from a mirror looking at myself, and then I noticed that a man was standing a few feet behind me. He looked like a man from the time of the palace, say from the 1600’s or 1700’s. He had long black curly hair, and was dressed in the clothing of that era, and I was really astonished. I was thinking, ‘Is this guy in the hallway in costume or something?’ I really studied him for a short while. It must have been just for a few seconds.
He was a young man about 30 years old and very good looking. I was looking at him in the mirror, but he didn’t seem to see me. I could see him, but his eyes never really noticed me. It was as if he was also, in the old days at one point, standing in that hall and looking at himself in the mirror as I had been doing. I could see he was just studying himself. He had a sort of a sombre expression. I turned around to see who he was, and to maybe talk to him, and there was no one behind me. I turned back to look into the mirror, and the reflection of the young man was gone. Then I quickly went ahead to follow the tour where they had proceeded beyond that hallway.
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At one point I looked into the mirrors. I stood a few feet away from a mirror looking at myself, and then I noticed that a man was standing a few feet behind me. He looked like a man from the time of the palace, say from the 1600’s or 1700’s. He had long black curly hair, and was dressed in the clothing of that era, and I was really astonished. I was thinking, ‘Is this guy in the hallway in costume or something?’ I really studied him for a short while. It must have been just for a few seconds.
He was a young man about 30 years old and very good looking. I was looking at him in the mirror, but he didn’t seem to see me. I could see him, but his eyes never really noticed me. It was as if he was also, in the old days at one point, standing in that hall and looking at himself in the mirror as I had been doing. I could see he was just studying himself. He had a sort of a sombre expression. I turned around to see who he was, and to maybe talk to him, and there was no one behind me. I turned back to look into the mirror, and the reflection of the young man was gone. Then I quickly went ahead to follow the tour where they had proceeded beyond that hallway.
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I was on the Italian Island of Capri. It was New Year’s eve, and I went on a hike to the top of a mountain with my boyfriend to see a palace that emperor Tiberius had built. We did it during the day of New Year’s eve while the museum of that palace was opened. There were very few people there because it was winter and New Year’s eve day, so there were hardly any tourists.
We separated, and there was just me and two or three other people in a huge area. He went to look around at something else and I stayed by myself and was looking from high up on the hill down the pathway that we had walked up to to come up to this palace. It’s along the side of a mountain and it’s quite a steep walk. And I saw an apparition, I believe, of a group of people in Roman clothing about half-way up that pathway. There was a man on a litter, one of those carry-litters where someone was sitting in a chair being carried up the mountain, I guess by slaves. There were about 12 people. It wasn’t a big party, but it was the man sitting in the chair on the litter being carried, several carriers, a couple of guards or something, and some other guy walking behind. They also had a few donkeys. I watched it for quite a while, and then I decided I’ve got to run and find my boyfriend so he could check this out. I ran to find him and I dragged him quickly back to where I had been standing by a fence overlooking that pathway, and of course there was nothing at all on the hill. When we went home we walked down the same way on that pathway that leads up to the palace, but I saw nothing.
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We separated, and there was just me and two or three other people in a huge area. He went to look around at something else and I stayed by myself and was looking from high up on the hill down the pathway that we had walked up to to come up to this palace. It’s along the side of a mountain and it’s quite a steep walk. And I saw an apparition, I believe, of a group of people in Roman clothing about half-way up that pathway. There was a man on a litter, one of those carry-litters where someone was sitting in a chair being carried up the mountain, I guess by slaves. There were about 12 people. It wasn’t a big party, but it was the man sitting in the chair on the litter being carried, several carriers, a couple of guards or something, and some other guy walking behind. They also had a few donkeys. I watched it for quite a while, and then I decided I’ve got to run and find my boyfriend so he could check this out. I ran to find him and I dragged him quickly back to where I had been standing by a fence overlooking that pathway, and of course there was nothing at all on the hill. When we went home we walked down the same way on that pathway that leads up to the palace, but I saw nothing.
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I’m a real estate appraiser, and a few years ago I appraised a house in Weston. I knew that it was vacant because I was there the day after a blizzard, and it hadn’t been shoveled. So, it was a vacant house, it was on the market, but nobody was there.
My process as an appraiser is that I’ll walk all the way around the outside taking pictures of the exterior, and then I start in the basement, work my way up to the attic, work in circles. So I always have the same process in every house so I don’t skip any rooms, so I don’t miss anything. As soon as I walked in the front door of this house I felt like somebody was watching me. But this didn’t make any sense because I knew that the place was vacant, and I’m not particularly sensitive. I kept calling out, “Is anyone there?” but nobody answered. As I walked around the house taking pictures, I definitely felt like I was being followed around.
So I went down to the basement and started taking pictures. Appraisers take a lot of pictures that don’t go into the report. They’re just for our files in case we get audited by the state. So one of the pictures I took was of the oil tank to make sure there was no leaking. I wanted to document that in case somebody came back and said, ‘Hey, the oil tank is leaking. You should have caught that.’ I can go to my folder and say, ‘I did take a picture and here you go.’ Well, in this case, over the oil tank was a shelf. In the middle of the shelf was a resin statue of two angels, and they were hugging, but one of the angels was missing its head. So, I’m framing the picture to make sure that there’s no leaking in the oil tank. I’ve got everything in the frame. I’m looking at it really carefully because I’m trying to make sure that I’m documenting this. I took a picture and then I looked back at my camera. I looked up again, and the statue is now at the end of the shelf about to fall over. It moved all the way to the side of the shelf, and was so close to the edge it was about to fall off.
But it gets better. I get back to my office. I’m pulling comps, and I’m trying to find houses that are similar to this to find out what the value is, and I’m coming up about $30,000 short of all the other comps that are in similar condition and in similar location, recent sales, etc. And I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t think I missed anything. I’m thinking, ‘Why is this thing selling so cheap? It makes no sense to me.’ Weston is not a cheap area to buy in, so somebody got a deal and I wanted to know why. I ended up calling the real estate agent and I said, “What’s going on? Was there some reason this wasn’t an arms-length transaction?” She said, “Well, no but ... I mean, you do know that the last owner killed himself in the basement, right?” True story! Every appraiser I know has ghost stories. That is a true Connecticut ghost story.
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This happened when I was about 12-years-old or so when I was in summer camp in Massachusetts. I’ve always been interested in religion since I was a little kid. I used to like to follow other people’s religions. Just learn about it, just experience it, learn about it. One night we were in a tent. There were just a few of us. No more than four in a tent. I remember going to sleep in the tent and nothing else was happening, and when I woke up I saw the Virgin Mary in the tent in the upper corner of the tent. I just saw her there, and she was looking straight. I saw that her face was very, very vivid. It stayed with me. I said to the person next to me, the other camper, I said, “Do you see the Virgin Mary up there?” and they said, “No, I don’t see anything.” I don’t know why I could see her, but I kept seeing her. I fell asleep, then I woke up startled and there she was again. I just saw her, and it was extremely real. I don’t care what anybody says to me, she was there.
Barry: Did you see her full body, or did you just see her face?
Woman: It was probably from her chest up. But her face was there, and every little detail was there.
Barry: Was she looking at you?
Woman: I don’t know as much as at me, but just there. I don’t know if she was actually looking at me. I don’t remember that part, but I do remember seeing her.
Barry: Was there any feeling associated with her when you saw her?
Woman: Yeah. I felt very eerie about it. Like, ‘Why am I seeing this?’. I went back to sleep, and then I woke up and there she was again. I was like, ‘Oh God …”
Barry: I take it that this wasn’t your faith?
Woman: No it wasn’t. But it was the Virgin Mary, I’m pretty sure it was.
Barry: So, you didn’t grow up Catholic?
Woman: I grew up Orthodox Jewish, but I really think it was the Virgin Mary. I just think it was her.
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My process as an appraiser is that I’ll walk all the way around the outside taking pictures of the exterior, and then I start in the basement, work my way up to the attic, work in circles. So I always have the same process in every house so I don’t skip any rooms, so I don’t miss anything. As soon as I walked in the front door of this house I felt like somebody was watching me. But this didn’t make any sense because I knew that the place was vacant, and I’m not particularly sensitive. I kept calling out, “Is anyone there?” but nobody answered. As I walked around the house taking pictures, I definitely felt like I was being followed around.
So I went down to the basement and started taking pictures. Appraisers take a lot of pictures that don’t go into the report. They’re just for our files in case we get audited by the state. So one of the pictures I took was of the oil tank to make sure there was no leaking. I wanted to document that in case somebody came back and said, ‘Hey, the oil tank is leaking. You should have caught that.’ I can go to my folder and say, ‘I did take a picture and here you go.’ Well, in this case, over the oil tank was a shelf. In the middle of the shelf was a resin statue of two angels, and they were hugging, but one of the angels was missing its head. So, I’m framing the picture to make sure that there’s no leaking in the oil tank. I’ve got everything in the frame. I’m looking at it really carefully because I’m trying to make sure that I’m documenting this. I took a picture and then I looked back at my camera. I looked up again, and the statue is now at the end of the shelf about to fall over. It moved all the way to the side of the shelf, and was so close to the edge it was about to fall off.
But it gets better. I get back to my office. I’m pulling comps, and I’m trying to find houses that are similar to this to find out what the value is, and I’m coming up about $30,000 short of all the other comps that are in similar condition and in similar location, recent sales, etc. And I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t think I missed anything. I’m thinking, ‘Why is this thing selling so cheap? It makes no sense to me.’ Weston is not a cheap area to buy in, so somebody got a deal and I wanted to know why. I ended up calling the real estate agent and I said, “What’s going on? Was there some reason this wasn’t an arms-length transaction?” She said, “Well, no but ... I mean, you do know that the last owner killed himself in the basement, right?” True story! Every appraiser I know has ghost stories. That is a true Connecticut ghost story.
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This happened when I was about 12-years-old or so when I was in summer camp in Massachusetts. I’ve always been interested in religion since I was a little kid. I used to like to follow other people’s religions. Just learn about it, just experience it, learn about it. One night we were in a tent. There were just a few of us. No more than four in a tent. I remember going to sleep in the tent and nothing else was happening, and when I woke up I saw the Virgin Mary in the tent in the upper corner of the tent. I just saw her there, and she was looking straight. I saw that her face was very, very vivid. It stayed with me. I said to the person next to me, the other camper, I said, “Do you see the Virgin Mary up there?” and they said, “No, I don’t see anything.” I don’t know why I could see her, but I kept seeing her. I fell asleep, then I woke up startled and there she was again. I just saw her, and it was extremely real. I don’t care what anybody says to me, she was there.
Barry: Did you see her full body, or did you just see her face?
Woman: It was probably from her chest up. But her face was there, and every little detail was there.
Barry: Was she looking at you?
Woman: I don’t know as much as at me, but just there. I don’t know if she was actually looking at me. I don’t remember that part, but I do remember seeing her.
Barry: Was there any feeling associated with her when you saw her?
Woman: Yeah. I felt very eerie about it. Like, ‘Why am I seeing this?’. I went back to sleep, and then I woke up and there she was again. I was like, ‘Oh God …”
Barry: I take it that this wasn’t your faith?
Woman: No it wasn’t. But it was the Virgin Mary, I’m pretty sure it was.
Barry: So, you didn’t grow up Catholic?
Woman: I grew up Orthodox Jewish, but I really think it was the Virgin Mary. I just think it was her.
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This is actually my father’s story. He’s Native American, and it happened when he was about 13 or 14 years old. One day his dad took him to a yard sale, and my father sat down in a recliner chair that the people were selling. He always had a habit of sliding his hands down the sides to see how much money he could pocket, so he slid his hand around the sides of the cushion; but instead of finding money, he pulled out a tomahawk! He slipped it into his jacket and brought it home.
Now this was back in the 1940’s or early 1950s and they didn’t have a bathroom, they had an outhouse. Between the house and the outhouse was an old T-shaped clothes line. That night my father had to go to the bathroom, so he started walking out and he saw a shadow disappear behind the clothesline on his way to the outhouse. He said that he did what he had to do right then, and then went back into the house.
The first thing he thought of was the tomahawk, so when he got inside the house he gave it to his cousin. She was in the kitchen doing dishes, and she saw a hand outside on the screen right in front of where she was doing the dishes. She let out a scream and everybody came running. They all went outside and walked around the house but nothing was there. My father immediately thought again about the tomahawk, so he ran and grabbed it from where his cousin left it on the kitchen counter. He opened the back door and just chucked it. He didn’t overhand throw it like a baseball. He just tossed it out the back door, so it didn’t go very far. He went to bed, and when he got up the next morning he went out and looked all over his backyard but he could not find that tomahawk anywhere. They never found it ever again. He said that he felt that the Native American it had belonged to had passed, and must have decided that he needed to come back for his tomahawk. He needed that in the afterlife, so he came and got it.
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I’m not the type of person who picks up on things. I’m usually kind of oblivious. But about ten years ago I had gone over to my mom’s house and she was complaining that all of her plants were dying and she’s been getting sick, and that everything was just off. I was coming home from work in the city and she said, “Your aunt just brought some holy water. Could you just say some prayers around the house? She can’t do it because she doesn’t feel well.” I was like, “Well, what do you want me to do?” So, I did as she said.
I went around the house, everything was fine. I went down into the basement and put the holy water around the basement, then started coming up the stairs. All of a sudden I started feeling like a pulling on my body and my face, a downward pulling. By the time I got to the top of the stairs I was kind of nauseous. I sat down and thought, ‘I feel off, I feel weird’ and I started kind of shaking a little. I was like, ‘My God!’ I had no idea what was going on. My mom lived by the water so he said, “Let’s go to the beach. Let’s see if the water helps you.” It was early summer, so I put my feet in the water and started feeling better instantly.
Afterwards I was trying to figure out what had happened and I found out that my mom had been storing some furniture in the basement for a friend who was in a transition. I was telling a friend about the reaction I had in the basement and she said, “Well, you know that that person is cursed, don’t you?” I’m like, “What do you mean? This is the year 2010”. They said, “Well, this person is from Latin America, and they had some voodoo done on them. It was pretty bad apparently. I think it was his ex-wife that did this, but I’m not sure.” So maybe this person’s furniture was also cursed and I somehow picked up on it when I went down into the basement.
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Now this was back in the 1940’s or early 1950s and they didn’t have a bathroom, they had an outhouse. Between the house and the outhouse was an old T-shaped clothes line. That night my father had to go to the bathroom, so he started walking out and he saw a shadow disappear behind the clothesline on his way to the outhouse. He said that he did what he had to do right then, and then went back into the house.
The first thing he thought of was the tomahawk, so when he got inside the house he gave it to his cousin. She was in the kitchen doing dishes, and she saw a hand outside on the screen right in front of where she was doing the dishes. She let out a scream and everybody came running. They all went outside and walked around the house but nothing was there. My father immediately thought again about the tomahawk, so he ran and grabbed it from where his cousin left it on the kitchen counter. He opened the back door and just chucked it. He didn’t overhand throw it like a baseball. He just tossed it out the back door, so it didn’t go very far. He went to bed, and when he got up the next morning he went out and looked all over his backyard but he could not find that tomahawk anywhere. They never found it ever again. He said that he felt that the Native American it had belonged to had passed, and must have decided that he needed to come back for his tomahawk. He needed that in the afterlife, so he came and got it.
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I’m not the type of person who picks up on things. I’m usually kind of oblivious. But about ten years ago I had gone over to my mom’s house and she was complaining that all of her plants were dying and she’s been getting sick, and that everything was just off. I was coming home from work in the city and she said, “Your aunt just brought some holy water. Could you just say some prayers around the house? She can’t do it because she doesn’t feel well.” I was like, “Well, what do you want me to do?” So, I did as she said.
I went around the house, everything was fine. I went down into the basement and put the holy water around the basement, then started coming up the stairs. All of a sudden I started feeling like a pulling on my body and my face, a downward pulling. By the time I got to the top of the stairs I was kind of nauseous. I sat down and thought, ‘I feel off, I feel weird’ and I started kind of shaking a little. I was like, ‘My God!’ I had no idea what was going on. My mom lived by the water so he said, “Let’s go to the beach. Let’s see if the water helps you.” It was early summer, so I put my feet in the water and started feeling better instantly.
Afterwards I was trying to figure out what had happened and I found out that my mom had been storing some furniture in the basement for a friend who was in a transition. I was telling a friend about the reaction I had in the basement and she said, “Well, you know that that person is cursed, don’t you?” I’m like, “What do you mean? This is the year 2010”. They said, “Well, this person is from Latin America, and they had some voodoo done on them. It was pretty bad apparently. I think it was his ex-wife that did this, but I’m not sure.” So maybe this person’s furniture was also cursed and I somehow picked up on it when I went down into the basement.
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I spent a night at the Farnsworth Hotel. It’s right in the middle of the battle of Gettysburg, and it’s probably one of the most haunted hotels in America. During the battle, the Confederates took over and they were using the attic to shoot at the Confederate soldiers’ snipers. When the sharp-shooters were killed in battle.
The room that I was in, The Sweeney Room, is probably one of the most active rooms in that hotel. What you can hear is dragging back-and-forth in the attic. I heard it that night. I was in the room underneath the attic. When the sharpshooters were killed in the battle, they would drag their bodies to the other side of the attic and they would lay there for three or four days. I heard the dragging back-and-forth. The hotel said that guests often hear footsteps in the attic, but I didn’t hear them.
The hotel is decorated in the style of the period, and the crystals on one of the lamps kept swinging during the night. The toilet would flush by itself. The electricity on my phone charger kept getting unplugged throughout the night.
When I was going in I took a video. I didn’t notice it at first, but you see an orb for about five seconds moving around the bottom, and then moving into the bathroom. You can actually see it in the bathroom mirror. It was probably one of the creepiest places I’ve ever been to. I’m pretty sensitive to things myself, and it was a scary place.
I also visited the battlefields in Gettysburg, and I got an overwhelming smell of death on one of the battlefields. It was pretty amazing. What happened is, I saw a person who was farther down who was looking at one of the exhibits. After he left my friend and I went over to where this guy had been standing and I said, “Wow, I can still smell this guy.” My friend said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “I can smell the guy who was just over here, and he was over a hundred feet away from where we had been standing.”
We walked down toward the battlefield and the smell got worse and worse and worse. It was a very putrid smell. I asked my friend and another person, “Do you smell anything out of the ordinary?” and they said, “No, not at all.” It was just an overwhelming smell. This happened on one of the main battlefields. Little Bighorn was the hill, and there was a tremendous battle there. It was a very moving experience. I could feel the energy. The energy of that place was like no other.
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When I was around 17-years-old I had a really close group of friends. We all grew up together since we were in kindergarten, and at this point we were in high school in our junior or senior year.
One night we were at my friend’s house. Her mom had passed away about ten years earlier in a fire in the house that my friend still lived in. So, we were all at the house and we got out an Ouija board. I think it was already in the house. She had two older brothers, and I think they might have had it and that’s why it was there so we decided to use it.
We lived in a town where all the houses are really old, and there’s a lot of history in that town. It’s a really small town. So generations went before us in the same houses that we all lived in, so there was already a lot of history there to begin with. There were always things going on in that house. I was never comfortable spending the night there because it was just really, really creepy. A door would close every night at the same time by itself. I think it was the bathroom door right next to her bedroom. It would close every night in the middle of the night at some specific time of night. Her mom passed away in the front bedroom, and so nobody ever used that bedroom. It kind of became like the room nobody goes in.
So anyway, we brought out the Ouija board and thought we’d try it. There were four of us with our hands on the planchette, and there were three people sitting on the side. They didn’t want to participate, and there wasn’t enough room because the room was small. It started off with the planchette moving in a figure-eight like it always does, and we started asking it questions. We first asked questions that we thought our friends weren’t going to know the answers to. We were testing each other to make sure that no one was cheating. It started off slow. We started asking it questions. We started with basic questions first like, “Who’s here?”, “Who are you?”, “Is so-and-so here?”, “Is somebody else here?”
After a while we tried to get in contact with my friend’s mom who had passed away in the house in the fire. We were teenagers, and she wanted to talk to her mom, so we thought maybe we could get to her mom. Clearly we never got through to her mom, but we got through to something else because that Ouija board gave us answers that have come true even until today.
What blew our minds was that we had to ask it something that nobody else knew, and that nobody could figure out in a really quick fragment of time. There were lots of bookshelves in the room where we were doing this Ouija board in, so we said just at random, “How many books are in this room?” and it gave us a number. We counted the books in the room and it was exact. It told us the exact number of books in the room.
As typical teenage girls, we asked, “Who am I going to marry?” “How many kids am I going to have?” “What are the initials of the person I’m going to be with?” I personally asked it that question, and the answer it gave me actually did come out to be true. I have twin boys, and the initials were the person that they were born with. So, I don’t know how to explain it because at the time, I didn’t know anybody who had those initials. And then we went on to ask it when we would die. Like, we went really far into the water!
I’m still best friends with this person, and we still talk about it today. I was just talking about it again today to her. We still don’t know exactly who we contacted on the board that night, but that was it, and after that we didn’t mess with the Ouija board anymore.
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This story happened right after my father passed away, and after my friend’s boyfriend also had passed away. The two of us went on a trip to Puerto Rico together, and we stayed at her grandfather’s house through the weekend.
We were both sleeping in the same bed in the guest room, and for whatever reason we both woke up at the same time in the middle of the night and we saw a black, smoky shadow. It was kind of long and billowey, and it was just kind of like moving at the foot of the bed, about six feet above the bed, and it seemed to be looking at us. It didn’t have a face or anything, it was just a dark thing.
I looked at my friend and said, “Do you see that?”
“Yeah,” she said, “do you see that too?”
“What do you see?” I asked her.
“It’s a big, black, billowey, smokey looking figure,” she said.
“That’s the exact same thing I’m seeing,” I said
I jumped out of the bed and turned the light on and it disappeared. We both saw the exact same thing in real time, both looking at it at the same time. We initially felt like it was either my father or her boyfriend. They had just passed away within the same week of each other. But we were never really sure what it was; if it was a ghost or what it could have been. But it was really terrifying.
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The room that I was in, The Sweeney Room, is probably one of the most active rooms in that hotel. What you can hear is dragging back-and-forth in the attic. I heard it that night. I was in the room underneath the attic. When the sharpshooters were killed in the battle, they would drag their bodies to the other side of the attic and they would lay there for three or four days. I heard the dragging back-and-forth. The hotel said that guests often hear footsteps in the attic, but I didn’t hear them.
The hotel is decorated in the style of the period, and the crystals on one of the lamps kept swinging during the night. The toilet would flush by itself. The electricity on my phone charger kept getting unplugged throughout the night.
When I was going in I took a video. I didn’t notice it at first, but you see an orb for about five seconds moving around the bottom, and then moving into the bathroom. You can actually see it in the bathroom mirror. It was probably one of the creepiest places I’ve ever been to. I’m pretty sensitive to things myself, and it was a scary place.
I also visited the battlefields in Gettysburg, and I got an overwhelming smell of death on one of the battlefields. It was pretty amazing. What happened is, I saw a person who was farther down who was looking at one of the exhibits. After he left my friend and I went over to where this guy had been standing and I said, “Wow, I can still smell this guy.” My friend said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “I can smell the guy who was just over here, and he was over a hundred feet away from where we had been standing.”
We walked down toward the battlefield and the smell got worse and worse and worse. It was a very putrid smell. I asked my friend and another person, “Do you smell anything out of the ordinary?” and they said, “No, not at all.” It was just an overwhelming smell. This happened on one of the main battlefields. Little Bighorn was the hill, and there was a tremendous battle there. It was a very moving experience. I could feel the energy. The energy of that place was like no other.
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When I was around 17-years-old I had a really close group of friends. We all grew up together since we were in kindergarten, and at this point we were in high school in our junior or senior year.
One night we were at my friend’s house. Her mom had passed away about ten years earlier in a fire in the house that my friend still lived in. So, we were all at the house and we got out an Ouija board. I think it was already in the house. She had two older brothers, and I think they might have had it and that’s why it was there so we decided to use it.
We lived in a town where all the houses are really old, and there’s a lot of history in that town. It’s a really small town. So generations went before us in the same houses that we all lived in, so there was already a lot of history there to begin with. There were always things going on in that house. I was never comfortable spending the night there because it was just really, really creepy. A door would close every night at the same time by itself. I think it was the bathroom door right next to her bedroom. It would close every night in the middle of the night at some specific time of night. Her mom passed away in the front bedroom, and so nobody ever used that bedroom. It kind of became like the room nobody goes in.
So anyway, we brought out the Ouija board and thought we’d try it. There were four of us with our hands on the planchette, and there were three people sitting on the side. They didn’t want to participate, and there wasn’t enough room because the room was small. It started off with the planchette moving in a figure-eight like it always does, and we started asking it questions. We first asked questions that we thought our friends weren’t going to know the answers to. We were testing each other to make sure that no one was cheating. It started off slow. We started asking it questions. We started with basic questions first like, “Who’s here?”, “Who are you?”, “Is so-and-so here?”, “Is somebody else here?”
After a while we tried to get in contact with my friend’s mom who had passed away in the house in the fire. We were teenagers, and she wanted to talk to her mom, so we thought maybe we could get to her mom. Clearly we never got through to her mom, but we got through to something else because that Ouija board gave us answers that have come true even until today.
What blew our minds was that we had to ask it something that nobody else knew, and that nobody could figure out in a really quick fragment of time. There were lots of bookshelves in the room where we were doing this Ouija board in, so we said just at random, “How many books are in this room?” and it gave us a number. We counted the books in the room and it was exact. It told us the exact number of books in the room.
As typical teenage girls, we asked, “Who am I going to marry?” “How many kids am I going to have?” “What are the initials of the person I’m going to be with?” I personally asked it that question, and the answer it gave me actually did come out to be true. I have twin boys, and the initials were the person that they were born with. So, I don’t know how to explain it because at the time, I didn’t know anybody who had those initials. And then we went on to ask it when we would die. Like, we went really far into the water!
I’m still best friends with this person, and we still talk about it today. I was just talking about it again today to her. We still don’t know exactly who we contacted on the board that night, but that was it, and after that we didn’t mess with the Ouija board anymore.
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This story happened right after my father passed away, and after my friend’s boyfriend also had passed away. The two of us went on a trip to Puerto Rico together, and we stayed at her grandfather’s house through the weekend.
We were both sleeping in the same bed in the guest room, and for whatever reason we both woke up at the same time in the middle of the night and we saw a black, smoky shadow. It was kind of long and billowey, and it was just kind of like moving at the foot of the bed, about six feet above the bed, and it seemed to be looking at us. It didn’t have a face or anything, it was just a dark thing.
I looked at my friend and said, “Do you see that?”
“Yeah,” she said, “do you see that too?”
“What do you see?” I asked her.
“It’s a big, black, billowey, smokey looking figure,” she said.
“That’s the exact same thing I’m seeing,” I said
I jumped out of the bed and turned the light on and it disappeared. We both saw the exact same thing in real time, both looking at it at the same time. We initially felt like it was either my father or her boyfriend. They had just passed away within the same week of each other. But we were never really sure what it was; if it was a ghost or what it could have been. But it was really terrifying.
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Some of my family members live in New York City, and when I was about 5-years-old they took me to visit the Morris Jumel Mansion. My aunts and I were talking about the trip about 20 years later and I said, “Oh, I really hated that place.” They said, “Really?” and I said, “Yeah, I can remember being in the attic and I was very frightened. I would never go back there.” They told me that there were supposedly ghosts in the attic, and the day that we had visited the mansion they had actually brought a medium/channeler in. Everybody was supposed to leave the place, all the people who came in for the day, but for whatever reason we were in the attic when they ushered everyone out, so we didn’t end up leaving.
To this day, I remember being there, I just don’t remember why I was afraid. But my aunts told me that while we were there, the medium went into a trance and started speaking French.
I can tell you that I was there. I can tell you that I WAS afraid of the place, and that I never wanted to go back. But I don’t remember it actually happening.
I have to say, there is lore about the Jumel Mansion. Eliza Jumel was married to Aaron Burr, and his ghost is supposed to be down in the district down near Wall Street. I did look into it after my aunts told me this, and apparently there supposedly is a ghost in the mansion, and Madam Jumel was from France.
[Note: As of 2019, The Morris-Jumel Mansion offered Ghost Tours twice a month. You can read more about the haunting in this article:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunting-ghosts-at-morris-jumel-mansion-paranormal-investigator-vincent-carbone/]
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I had gone on a vacation with a friend of mine. We each had our own rooms at the Skyranch Lodge in Sedona, Arizona. When I got there and got to my room I was absolutely exhausted. And I went and I sat down on the end of my bed. I was just sort of sitting there, just sort of meditating trying to get myself together to go to bed, and I felt someone sit down right next to me. Literally felt the bed indent. I looked over to see if there was an indentation, but there wasn’t. But I didn’t feel anything that was a bad spirit per se. I didn’t feel that it was there to harm me or anything, but it did frighten me.
So, after that I got ready, went to bed, got in bed, put the sheets up, and someone sat down right there on the side of the bed again. It sat right on the side of me where I was laying, near where my waist was. I felt the whole bed, just like a man, a large man just sat down there. I could feel it go in again. And it really, really frightened me this time. But I was just too tired, and I just took the sheet, put it over my head and said, “I am really tired. You are not invited. I need you to leave. I know you don’t mean to harm me, but you are not invited. I need you to leave.” And after that, I was there for five days and I never had anything else happen.
[Note: The Sky Ranch Lodge is reported to be haunted. You can read about it here https://www.weirdfresno.com/2011/10/ghosts-and-legends-of-sierra-sky-ranch.html]
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These were actually recorded by one of my grandfather’s siblings, and they both took place in the old farm house they grew up in in Laceyville, Pennsylvania. One story is that frequently, family members were wakened in the middle of the night by a cat batting a marble down the hallway-- uncarpeted--until it reached the stairs and then the marble would bounce down the stairs. But they never had a cat, and they never found a marble. So, that was weird.
The other story is about my great Aunt, the youngest of the family. Over the dresser in her bedroom there hung a mirror. It was just a kind of conventional, not very big mirror. One night she was awakened and screamed because of a thud in her room. The family ran in and they found the mirror laying in front of the dresser. The nail in the wall was intact, the wire that hung it was not damaged, and nothing on top of her dresser was disturbed. So, they carefully hung it back up. It happened again at least once, and then finally one night there was a huge crash. The mirror was across the room in pieces. But again, the nail on the wall was still fine, the wire that hung it had not broken, the piece with the wire was still fine, and nothing on the dresser had been disturbed.
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When I was about six-years-old, my father used to go to work at about 4:30 in the morning, and what he would do is he’d carry me in from my bed to sleep with my mom. He’d put me back in with her so I could sleep in later. One morning I got up. The sun was rising and I had to use the bathroom. I walked all the way to the other end of our apartment, went to the bathroom, and when I came out of the bathroom I saw my father. It was about 7:00 in the morning, and I said, “Hi daddy! Where are you going?” He said to me, “I’m going to work now.” I said, “OK. Have a good day daddy. Bye!” I walked back into the bedroom with my mom into her bed and she said, “Sarah, who were you talking to?” and I said, “I was saying goodbye to daddy. He just left for work.”
Now, the main entrance that we had, if you left the house you would lock it from the outside. So when my father left for work, he’d wake my mom up so she could lock it from the inside because it didn’t have a deadbolt or anything like that that you could slide from either side. So my mom gets up, she looks and the door is still locked like she had locked it after he left. We still don’t know what I saw, who I saw leaving our apartment, or how the door became locked from the inside and not the outside.
I have another story. In 2017 my family moved here to New Britain, and we went to an establishment down the street from us for some pizza. The owner of the restaurant told us that paranormal activity frequently occured in his establishment. We were like, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Well, one day my mom and I were sitting there having some appetizers. It’s was just her and I and the owner in the restaurant. It wasn’t a windy day, there weren’t any windows open. All of a sudden, the door from the basement opened up, and then shut all by itself. No one was there. It was really weird.
The restaurant owner has pictures on his security cameras, of shadows, of men’s faces, of women’s faces. He’s heard voices and everything. So after seeing that door open and close by itself, I’m like, ‘OK, I believe you now!’
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Many years ago I was in a newly-single, providing-for-my-children, no-income situation. My father gave me a one hundred dollar bill, and he said, “I want you to always keep this with you in case you’re ever without money, you’ll know you always have this money.” Twenty-five years later I had a great job and I gave my father back the hundred dollar bill. I said, “I’m good now.”
About ten years later, my dad passed away and I was in the process of cleaning his house. I was going through his desk and looking through things. He was a local deputy sheriff, and I just happened to pick up a folder where he kept his badges. I opened it up and I saw something sticking out from one of the compartments. I pulled it out, and it was the one hundred dollar bill he had given me thirty-five years earlier!
I think that was his sign that he was there with me because right after that, that same day, I was taking my laundry downstairs into the basement. As I walked down the stairs I felt something grab hold of my ankles and I stopped because they were old, old cellar stairs. It was a very old, hundred-year-old house. So I stopped and stepped back and I looked, and my feet were right on the edge of the stairs. If I hadn’t felt that on my ankle I would have fallen down the stairs.
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A 12-year-old girl shared the following story, and her parents were on-hand to corroborate the stories and to provide further details.
Girl: When I was about four years old, I was walking in the hallway between my parent’s room and my room, I saw a cowboy in the corner! I took a picture of it, and my parents were very shocked. The figure actually appeared in the picture that I took. It was very, very shocking to my parents. I didn’t really understand that much of what was going on when I was younger, but I knew that it was a ghost.
Father: She actually walked into the room and said, “There’s a cowboy in the hallway”. So my wife and I were kind of joking around and said to her, “OK, take this camera and take a picture of him.” She went into the hallway and took a picture, and it looks like a picture of the shadow of a cowboy in a duster jacket.
Just a few years ago she saw a train conductor in the corner of our bedroom. We live right near where the old Putnam county railroad had been, where the bike trail is now. She said the conductor told her that he was the brakeman--the guy who used to operate the train’s brakes. She said he was wearing some kind of a patch or a pin, and she was able to describe it to us. I looked it up, and the description of the pin was what the conductor who used to operate the brakes used to wear.
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I have a few experiences I’d like to share. The first two are actual experiences, the last two are dreams.
The first experience was around 1993. I was in 5th grade and my family and I were visiting a family friend in La Rochelle, France. I had one of those calculator watches with all of those digits on them, which Ioved because I was a kid. That night I woke up and the battery on my watch was completely dead, and very bright bluish-white light appeared in the window that was on the opposite side of the room from where my bed was. The light was pretty much the size of the window, which was a pretty big window. It looked like it was a light that was shining from behind the window. It would go bright, and then it would kind of disappear. It would flash, and then it would diminish, back-and-forth with no set periodic motion. It would just be random. I was really petrified and then, fortunately, one of my parents came to check up on me and I immediately ran into their arms.
The second experience I had a few years ago. We were living in Florida. I was walking down the hallway. There were rooms to the left and to the right, and at the end of the hallway was a bathroom and as I walked towards it the bathroom door began to close. I was about five or six feet from the door when it did this. It didn’t close all the way, but it moved about a foot. There were no drafts in the house, and nothing like this had ever happened before. It was really weird because if anything, the air that I’m pushing as I’m going forward would push the door in the opposite direction.
The third experience was a dream I had when I was in my 20’s. A good friend’s mother was really sick. I knew that she was in bad shape. She had cancer, and I knew she wasn’t going to make it because it was terminal. But I wasn’t exactly up to date week-by-week or month-by-month on how she was progressing. I just knew that it was terminal. The morning that she passed away I dreamt of her. She was radiant, she was so happy. She was wearing this beautiful white dress with diamonds.
I took her by the hand, and we were in a place that kind of looked like Grand Central, you know with people waiting in lines; maybe not so tall a ceiling as Grand Central, but there were about eight lines of people waiting to go somewhere. Each line had 20 - 30 people, and they were all just waiting to go through these lines. I didn’t really see what was at the end of it, but people were going through the lines trying to get somewhere.
My friend’s mother was just so carefree, so happy, so full of joy, resplendent. And that was the dream, and that was the same morning that she actually passed. I found out when I woke up. That morning friend texted me, ‘My mom passed’. I called him and I told him my dream. He’s not a believer, so I think maybe she was trying to send him a message through me.
The last experience was the freakiest one of all. I’m 39 now, so I had this dream when I was 33 or so. In the dream I saw the date, a specific date. I don’t know if I want to mention it, because it might come true if I mention it! The date was kind of like an obituary, and I got the sense that it was the date of my death.
Now, at the time, I had an iPhone app called Numerous. The app was kind of cool because it would track things like how many days you’ve been alive, how many days until the next full moon--all kinds of random stuff that you wanted to track. In this app I had saved the number of days alive for every member of our family. The day that I woke up from that dream I plugged the date that I saw in the dream into the app to find out how many days it would be until that date, and it was the exact same number of days that I had lived! So, if that date is true, that was the exact midpoint of my life. So, I don’t know if it was some kind of calculation that I made, but that was really crazy.
[Note: I suggested that this man think back on what was going on in his life at the time he had this dream. Dreams are often a suggestion from our higher selves that it is time to make changes in our lives. I interpret the dream as ‘If you continue along the path you are on now, this is when your life may end. But if you make some changes and lead a healthier, happier, less stressful life, then you can change the outcome of that dream and live much longer.’]
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This is a dream that my grandfather had. It was so vivid that he had told my mom, and my mom had told me. I remember it because it’s a little creepy. But it’s interesting to think that people in your family can still come back in that sense. Maybe not as a ghost. I don’t know.
My mom said that when she was a young girl, when she was around 12-years-old, she remembers her father waking up really startled. You know when you have a really intense dream and you wake up? It’s a really startling wake-up. She remembers him getting out of bed and pacing back-and-forth. The next day he told them what he dreamt about.
At that time his mother was alive, and his father had passed away. Their house was such that there was a long driveway, and there was a backyard. The backyard was kind of fenced, and there was a little stoop that went into the house. In his dream, my grandfather had gone out onto the stoop and he saw his father walking up the driveway, then saw him coming into the yard. My grandfather went up to the stoop and said, “Dad, dad! Nice to see you! How are you?!” and he went out to the yard to see him. His father looked up, and as soon he saw him his father looked a little startled and he turned around and started walking back down the driveway. My grandfather went out and tried to follow him down the driveway, and as soon as my great-grandfather hit the end of the driveway, my grandfather woke up.
About two weeks after he had that dream, my great-grandmother passed away. My grandfather was like, ‘Wow, I wonder if my dad had come back to bring her with him, and he came to the wrong person!’
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My brother passed away unexpectedly a couple of years ago, and something odd happened to me the morning after. At around five in the morning I went downstairs in my home, no one was up yet, it was dark yet. I didn’t turn on any lights. Then all of a sudden I saw something that looked like a spark, almost like static energy. It was a small, yellowish-white spark in the middle of the air that faded away after a couple of seconds. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but it was odd because it was just there in the middle of the air. I was wondering if a spirit could manifest itself like that, like static electricity.
[Note: I told the speaker that spirits are made up of energy, and they often manifest as bright lights, flashes of light, or as orbs. Spirits show themselves to us because they want to be known, and I suggested that this spark was just her brother’s way of showing himself to her. He knew it was something that she would see, and he hoped that she would associate it with him to let her know that he was OK and still around.]
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I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, I have my couch along a window. I’m very sensitive to smells. I’m sitting there one day in the middle of April and I smell cigarette smoke, and it goes on everyday at all different times. I’m looking out the window and there’s nobody out there. I do genealogy. I was going to a genealogy conference in May in Raleigh. I made reservations like eight months prior, and I go start looking through my emails and I can’t find my reservations. I call ten hotels and nobody has my reservation. So I go on AirBnB and I booked a place and it was very inexpensive, and I was like, “Yes!”
When I got to the place I drove around, and the oldest cemetery in Raleigh was three blocks from this AirBnB. Whenever I go anywhere I always go to cemeteries and take photos for genealogy purposes. So I thought, “I’m going to that cemetery.”
I headed up to that cemetery one night, and I had the list of people I was looking for. I found this one name and he was in the back section of the cemetery. I looked at my list and there was another guy with the same name that was supposed to be in that area, but it started raining so I had to leave really fast because I didn’t want to get wet. I said, “I’ll be back”. I talked to the cemetery and I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back and I’m going to find you.” Now I’m in the back of the cemetery and I leave.
The next day I come back and I start on the left hand side of the cemetery just kind of mowing the rows, taking pictures of the stones, and in the middle of the cemetery I smell cigarette smoke. I’m like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ So I talked to the guy. I said, “I know you want me to find you. Just give me time, or give me some hints.” I followed the smoke and looked down and lo-and-behold there was the name of the guy who matched the name of the guy in the backside of the cemetery. I took his picture and I talked to him. I said, “You know what. I’ve got your picture. I’m going to get this to your descendants to let them know where you’re at.” And the smoke smell went away, and I have not smelled smoke since. I have no clue who the guy was. But it was like everything fell into place. He made sure that I couldn’t find my reservation, and that I got into that AirBnB three blocks from the cemetery where I was supposed to find him at.
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So, after that I got ready, went to bed, got in bed, put the sheets up, and someone sat down right there on the side of the bed again. It sat right on the side of me where I was laying, near where my waist was. I felt the whole bed, just like a man, a large man just sat down there. I could feel it go in again. And it really, really frightened me this time. But I was just too tired, and I just took the sheet, put it over my head and said, “I am really tired. You are not invited. I need you to leave. I know you don’t mean to harm me, but you are not invited. I need you to leave.” And after that, I was there for five days and I never had anything else happen.
[Note: The Sky Ranch Lodge is reported to be haunted. You can read about it here https://www.weirdfresno.com/2011/10/ghosts-and-legends-of-sierra-sky-ranch.html]
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These were actually recorded by one of my grandfather’s siblings, and they both took place in the old farm house they grew up in in Laceyville, Pennsylvania. One story is that frequently, family members were wakened in the middle of the night by a cat batting a marble down the hallway-- uncarpeted--until it reached the stairs and then the marble would bounce down the stairs. But they never had a cat, and they never found a marble. So, that was weird.
The other story is about my great Aunt, the youngest of the family. Over the dresser in her bedroom there hung a mirror. It was just a kind of conventional, not very big mirror. One night she was awakened and screamed because of a thud in her room. The family ran in and they found the mirror laying in front of the dresser. The nail in the wall was intact, the wire that hung it was not damaged, and nothing on top of her dresser was disturbed. So, they carefully hung it back up. It happened again at least once, and then finally one night there was a huge crash. The mirror was across the room in pieces. But again, the nail on the wall was still fine, the wire that hung it had not broken, the piece with the wire was still fine, and nothing on the dresser had been disturbed.
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When I was about six-years-old, my father used to go to work at about 4:30 in the morning, and what he would do is he’d carry me in from my bed to sleep with my mom. He’d put me back in with her so I could sleep in later. One morning I got up. The sun was rising and I had to use the bathroom. I walked all the way to the other end of our apartment, went to the bathroom, and when I came out of the bathroom I saw my father. It was about 7:00 in the morning, and I said, “Hi daddy! Where are you going?” He said to me, “I’m going to work now.” I said, “OK. Have a good day daddy. Bye!” I walked back into the bedroom with my mom into her bed and she said, “Sarah, who were you talking to?” and I said, “I was saying goodbye to daddy. He just left for work.”
Now, the main entrance that we had, if you left the house you would lock it from the outside. So when my father left for work, he’d wake my mom up so she could lock it from the inside because it didn’t have a deadbolt or anything like that that you could slide from either side. So my mom gets up, she looks and the door is still locked like she had locked it after he left. We still don’t know what I saw, who I saw leaving our apartment, or how the door became locked from the inside and not the outside.
I have another story. In 2017 my family moved here to New Britain, and we went to an establishment down the street from us for some pizza. The owner of the restaurant told us that paranormal activity frequently occured in his establishment. We were like, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Well, one day my mom and I were sitting there having some appetizers. It’s was just her and I and the owner in the restaurant. It wasn’t a windy day, there weren’t any windows open. All of a sudden, the door from the basement opened up, and then shut all by itself. No one was there. It was really weird.
The restaurant owner has pictures on his security cameras, of shadows, of men’s faces, of women’s faces. He’s heard voices and everything. So after seeing that door open and close by itself, I’m like, ‘OK, I believe you now!’
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Many years ago I was in a newly-single, providing-for-my-children, no-income situation. My father gave me a one hundred dollar bill, and he said, “I want you to always keep this with you in case you’re ever without money, you’ll know you always have this money.” Twenty-five years later I had a great job and I gave my father back the hundred dollar bill. I said, “I’m good now.”
About ten years later, my dad passed away and I was in the process of cleaning his house. I was going through his desk and looking through things. He was a local deputy sheriff, and I just happened to pick up a folder where he kept his badges. I opened it up and I saw something sticking out from one of the compartments. I pulled it out, and it was the one hundred dollar bill he had given me thirty-five years earlier!
I think that was his sign that he was there with me because right after that, that same day, I was taking my laundry downstairs into the basement. As I walked down the stairs I felt something grab hold of my ankles and I stopped because they were old, old cellar stairs. It was a very old, hundred-year-old house. So I stopped and stepped back and I looked, and my feet were right on the edge of the stairs. If I hadn’t felt that on my ankle I would have fallen down the stairs.
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A 12-year-old girl shared the following story, and her parents were on-hand to corroborate the stories and to provide further details.
Girl: When I was about four years old, I was walking in the hallway between my parent’s room and my room, I saw a cowboy in the corner! I took a picture of it, and my parents were very shocked. The figure actually appeared in the picture that I took. It was very, very shocking to my parents. I didn’t really understand that much of what was going on when I was younger, but I knew that it was a ghost.
Father: She actually walked into the room and said, “There’s a cowboy in the hallway”. So my wife and I were kind of joking around and said to her, “OK, take this camera and take a picture of him.” She went into the hallway and took a picture, and it looks like a picture of the shadow of a cowboy in a duster jacket.
Just a few years ago she saw a train conductor in the corner of our bedroom. We live right near where the old Putnam county railroad had been, where the bike trail is now. She said the conductor told her that he was the brakeman--the guy who used to operate the train’s brakes. She said he was wearing some kind of a patch or a pin, and she was able to describe it to us. I looked it up, and the description of the pin was what the conductor who used to operate the brakes used to wear.
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I have a few experiences I’d like to share. The first two are actual experiences, the last two are dreams.
The first experience was around 1993. I was in 5th grade and my family and I were visiting a family friend in La Rochelle, France. I had one of those calculator watches with all of those digits on them, which Ioved because I was a kid. That night I woke up and the battery on my watch was completely dead, and very bright bluish-white light appeared in the window that was on the opposite side of the room from where my bed was. The light was pretty much the size of the window, which was a pretty big window. It looked like it was a light that was shining from behind the window. It would go bright, and then it would kind of disappear. It would flash, and then it would diminish, back-and-forth with no set periodic motion. It would just be random. I was really petrified and then, fortunately, one of my parents came to check up on me and I immediately ran into their arms.
The second experience I had a few years ago. We were living in Florida. I was walking down the hallway. There were rooms to the left and to the right, and at the end of the hallway was a bathroom and as I walked towards it the bathroom door began to close. I was about five or six feet from the door when it did this. It didn’t close all the way, but it moved about a foot. There were no drafts in the house, and nothing like this had ever happened before. It was really weird because if anything, the air that I’m pushing as I’m going forward would push the door in the opposite direction.
The third experience was a dream I had when I was in my 20’s. A good friend’s mother was really sick. I knew that she was in bad shape. She had cancer, and I knew she wasn’t going to make it because it was terminal. But I wasn’t exactly up to date week-by-week or month-by-month on how she was progressing. I just knew that it was terminal. The morning that she passed away I dreamt of her. She was radiant, she was so happy. She was wearing this beautiful white dress with diamonds.
I took her by the hand, and we were in a place that kind of looked like Grand Central, you know with people waiting in lines; maybe not so tall a ceiling as Grand Central, but there were about eight lines of people waiting to go somewhere. Each line had 20 - 30 people, and they were all just waiting to go through these lines. I didn’t really see what was at the end of it, but people were going through the lines trying to get somewhere.
My friend’s mother was just so carefree, so happy, so full of joy, resplendent. And that was the dream, and that was the same morning that she actually passed. I found out when I woke up. That morning friend texted me, ‘My mom passed’. I called him and I told him my dream. He’s not a believer, so I think maybe she was trying to send him a message through me.
The last experience was the freakiest one of all. I’m 39 now, so I had this dream when I was 33 or so. In the dream I saw the date, a specific date. I don’t know if I want to mention it, because it might come true if I mention it! The date was kind of like an obituary, and I got the sense that it was the date of my death.
Now, at the time, I had an iPhone app called Numerous. The app was kind of cool because it would track things like how many days you’ve been alive, how many days until the next full moon--all kinds of random stuff that you wanted to track. In this app I had saved the number of days alive for every member of our family. The day that I woke up from that dream I plugged the date that I saw in the dream into the app to find out how many days it would be until that date, and it was the exact same number of days that I had lived! So, if that date is true, that was the exact midpoint of my life. So, I don’t know if it was some kind of calculation that I made, but that was really crazy.
[Note: I suggested that this man think back on what was going on in his life at the time he had this dream. Dreams are often a suggestion from our higher selves that it is time to make changes in our lives. I interpret the dream as ‘If you continue along the path you are on now, this is when your life may end. But if you make some changes and lead a healthier, happier, less stressful life, then you can change the outcome of that dream and live much longer.’]
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This is a dream that my grandfather had. It was so vivid that he had told my mom, and my mom had told me. I remember it because it’s a little creepy. But it’s interesting to think that people in your family can still come back in that sense. Maybe not as a ghost. I don’t know.
My mom said that when she was a young girl, when she was around 12-years-old, she remembers her father waking up really startled. You know when you have a really intense dream and you wake up? It’s a really startling wake-up. She remembers him getting out of bed and pacing back-and-forth. The next day he told them what he dreamt about.
At that time his mother was alive, and his father had passed away. Their house was such that there was a long driveway, and there was a backyard. The backyard was kind of fenced, and there was a little stoop that went into the house. In his dream, my grandfather had gone out onto the stoop and he saw his father walking up the driveway, then saw him coming into the yard. My grandfather went up to the stoop and said, “Dad, dad! Nice to see you! How are you?!” and he went out to the yard to see him. His father looked up, and as soon he saw him his father looked a little startled and he turned around and started walking back down the driveway. My grandfather went out and tried to follow him down the driveway, and as soon as my great-grandfather hit the end of the driveway, my grandfather woke up.
About two weeks after he had that dream, my great-grandmother passed away. My grandfather was like, ‘Wow, I wonder if my dad had come back to bring her with him, and he came to the wrong person!’
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My brother passed away unexpectedly a couple of years ago, and something odd happened to me the morning after. At around five in the morning I went downstairs in my home, no one was up yet, it was dark yet. I didn’t turn on any lights. Then all of a sudden I saw something that looked like a spark, almost like static energy. It was a small, yellowish-white spark in the middle of the air that faded away after a couple of seconds. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but it was odd because it was just there in the middle of the air. I was wondering if a spirit could manifest itself like that, like static electricity.
[Note: I told the speaker that spirits are made up of energy, and they often manifest as bright lights, flashes of light, or as orbs. Spirits show themselves to us because they want to be known, and I suggested that this spark was just her brother’s way of showing himself to her. He knew it was something that she would see, and he hoped that she would associate it with him to let her know that he was OK and still around.]
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I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, I have my couch along a window. I’m very sensitive to smells. I’m sitting there one day in the middle of April and I smell cigarette smoke, and it goes on everyday at all different times. I’m looking out the window and there’s nobody out there. I do genealogy. I was going to a genealogy conference in May in Raleigh. I made reservations like eight months prior, and I go start looking through my emails and I can’t find my reservations. I call ten hotels and nobody has my reservation. So I go on AirBnB and I booked a place and it was very inexpensive, and I was like, “Yes!”
When I got to the place I drove around, and the oldest cemetery in Raleigh was three blocks from this AirBnB. Whenever I go anywhere I always go to cemeteries and take photos for genealogy purposes. So I thought, “I’m going to that cemetery.”
I headed up to that cemetery one night, and I had the list of people I was looking for. I found this one name and he was in the back section of the cemetery. I looked at my list and there was another guy with the same name that was supposed to be in that area, but it started raining so I had to leave really fast because I didn’t want to get wet. I said, “I’ll be back”. I talked to the cemetery and I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back and I’m going to find you.” Now I’m in the back of the cemetery and I leave.
The next day I come back and I start on the left hand side of the cemetery just kind of mowing the rows, taking pictures of the stones, and in the middle of the cemetery I smell cigarette smoke. I’m like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ So I talked to the guy. I said, “I know you want me to find you. Just give me time, or give me some hints.” I followed the smoke and looked down and lo-and-behold there was the name of the guy who matched the name of the guy in the backside of the cemetery. I took his picture and I talked to him. I said, “You know what. I’ve got your picture. I’m going to get this to your descendants to let them know where you’re at.” And the smoke smell went away, and I have not smelled smoke since. I have no clue who the guy was. But it was like everything fell into place. He made sure that I couldn’t find my reservation, and that I got into that AirBnB three blocks from the cemetery where I was supposed to find him at.
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I don’t have my own story, but my roommate from college and some of his friends had gone to Union Cemetery in Easton. This cemetery is supposedly very haunted, and was investigated by the Warrens. This was in the middle of the day, and they had a recorder with them that they ran the whole time they were there. On the recording you can hear the person holding the recorder going from headstone to headstone saying things like, “Would you like to talk to me? Do you have a message for me?” That type of thing. They played the recording for me, and at one point you can hear a very clear EVP saying in a deep voice, “Get out!” You can hear it clear as day on the recording, and he was kind enough to send that to me.
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When I was in college, some friends of mine were in a local band. One night they called me up and said “Come on over. After band practice we’re going to play around with the Ouija board.” I said, “Ouija board? What’s that?” I didn’t quite understand what that was all about. But, what happened that night. They shut the light out. We were in this room, an anteroom of some sort, and everyone was sitting at a table with their hands on the Ouija board. I think there might have been five or seven people with their hands on the board. I didn’t really participate, I was just there as an observer. What they did, they started moving this board and all of a sudden. I’m looking at the people, I’m looking at their faces, and the table started rising. It rose up about five inches from the floor, maybe more. I said, “What’s going guys? You’re playing with me. Don’t do this.” But their knees were on the floor, their hands were on the table on the board, and the table began moving around and it began spinning. And I just said, “I’m out of here!” It scared the hell out of me. It really did. I never forgot that, and I’ve just stayed away from this sort of stuff ever since.
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About seven years ago my mom passed away in her house, and for a long period of time I could smell her perfume. She lived not within the main part of her house, but in a separate part of the house. Every once in a while, I could smell her perfume. There was no perfume in there. I had cleaned it out. I Cloroxed everything after she passed, but to this day I still smell her perfume. I’m wondering if it’s real, if it’s just my imagination, or if mom’s popping up to say, “I’m still here!”
One caveat to that was I had her cremated and I didn’t know what to do with the ashes for almost three years. I decided, let me throw it into the bathroom into the cabinet that was emptied and cleaned, and the perfume smell was most prevalent during those three years. I finally took her ashes out to the cemetery where my dad is, and it’s not quite as prevalent, but every once in a while, there’s that scent again.
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I have a little story. I was watching a movie called “The Red Violin”. I had hung my grandfather’s mandolin in my house. As I was watching the movie, during the scene when they were burying the violin with this young protege, the mandolin fell. It just leapt off the wall and crashed onto the floor. It was fine. It wasn’t harmed. I watched the rest of the movie and just held it.
My sister-in-law had given me a ceramic mother swan and three baby swans because I have three sons. These little statues were sitting on a table underneath where the mandolin had been hanging. When the crash happened the three baby swans got pushed away from the mother swan, but nothing was broken. The mandolin was hanging over all sorts of little statues and breakable things, but nothing was damaged.
My youngest son had just moved out of the house, and the movie is about the life of the violin after the mother and child die, and then this violin goes on to have it’s own life. To me it was like my grandfather was saying to me, “Your boys are on their own now, but you still have more life ahead of you.”
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When I was in college, some friends of mine were in a local band. One night they called me up and said “Come on over. After band practice we’re going to play around with the Ouija board.” I said, “Ouija board? What’s that?” I didn’t quite understand what that was all about. But, what happened that night. They shut the light out. We were in this room, an anteroom of some sort, and everyone was sitting at a table with their hands on the Ouija board. I think there might have been five or seven people with their hands on the board. I didn’t really participate, I was just there as an observer. What they did, they started moving this board and all of a sudden. I’m looking at the people, I’m looking at their faces, and the table started rising. It rose up about five inches from the floor, maybe more. I said, “What’s going guys? You’re playing with me. Don’t do this.” But their knees were on the floor, their hands were on the table on the board, and the table began moving around and it began spinning. And I just said, “I’m out of here!” It scared the hell out of me. It really did. I never forgot that, and I’ve just stayed away from this sort of stuff ever since.
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About seven years ago my mom passed away in her house, and for a long period of time I could smell her perfume. She lived not within the main part of her house, but in a separate part of the house. Every once in a while, I could smell her perfume. There was no perfume in there. I had cleaned it out. I Cloroxed everything after she passed, but to this day I still smell her perfume. I’m wondering if it’s real, if it’s just my imagination, or if mom’s popping up to say, “I’m still here!”
One caveat to that was I had her cremated and I didn’t know what to do with the ashes for almost three years. I decided, let me throw it into the bathroom into the cabinet that was emptied and cleaned, and the perfume smell was most prevalent during those three years. I finally took her ashes out to the cemetery where my dad is, and it’s not quite as prevalent, but every once in a while, there’s that scent again.
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I have a little story. I was watching a movie called “The Red Violin”. I had hung my grandfather’s mandolin in my house. As I was watching the movie, during the scene when they were burying the violin with this young protege, the mandolin fell. It just leapt off the wall and crashed onto the floor. It was fine. It wasn’t harmed. I watched the rest of the movie and just held it.
My sister-in-law had given me a ceramic mother swan and three baby swans because I have three sons. These little statues were sitting on a table underneath where the mandolin had been hanging. When the crash happened the three baby swans got pushed away from the mother swan, but nothing was broken. The mandolin was hanging over all sorts of little statues and breakable things, but nothing was damaged.
My youngest son had just moved out of the house, and the movie is about the life of the violin after the mother and child die, and then this violin goes on to have it’s own life. To me it was like my grandfather was saying to me, “Your boys are on their own now, but you still have more life ahead of you.”
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About 10 years ago, my husband and I went down to Key West, Florida and someone had told us about a museum down there, and there was a doll. Robert the doll. It’s a creepy looking doll. It’s dressed in a sailor suit, and there’s hardly any face. At the time, the doll was out in the open. It wasn’t covered or anything.
They say that things will happen to you if you make fun of it or if you touch it. My husband was like, ‘I don’t believe in that. I think this is silly.’ I started taking pictures of the doll using a camera that still used film. When we got home, the roll of film that the pictures of the doll was on was gone. Just gone, and we never found it after that. All of the other rolls of film we took on the trip were there, but that one roll with the pictures of the doll just disappeared. We always thought it was strange because of the way my husband was saying that the stories about Robert the doll weren’t true. I guess they were! [Note: "Robert has been said to exact his vengeance in many ways, but especially on electronic devices. Cellphones and cameras have been known to break. Photos in cameras have disappeared or been destroyed. Letters tacked around his plexiglass home attest to that and much more." (1)
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I go to a school called SUNY Purchase, and Purchase is very notoriously haunted. My freshman year I lived in a suite with eight girls, and all of them were home for the weekend except for me. We would hear knocks in the corner where no one could reach, usually in threes which always freaked me out. A couple of times I would wake up in a sleep paralysis. I would feel like somebody was holding my chest down and I couldn’t get up. It just freaked me out. There have been other instances where I would see things out of the corner of my eyes and shadows. There is a cemetery on campus and people have apparently passed away there, so that always freaked me out.
My roommates who lived across from me would hear knocks all night. They would hear shadow figures. We would go through cycles where some of us would have sleep paralysis. We never really thought too much of it, but the more I’ve done research the more I’ve been freaked out. I was talking to someone whose mom went to the school in the 80’s and she said that one of her friends passed away in the same building, and the body wasn’t found for a couple of days until people realized that they weren’t showing up for classes.
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At night, my mom and I share a room and my grandma and brother have two separate rooms down the hall. I wasn’t sleeping, I was just laying in bed facing the wall and my cat was up next to me. Everyone else was asleep, and it felt like someone tapped my right thigh. No one else was awake. I looked behind me, but no one was there. I was so scared, like what the heck just happened. It only tapped me once, but it was like someone was trying to get my attention as if I was asleep.
Also, we have this standup clock next to the mantle, and there were these random prints like someone had put their hand there. It was all covered in dust, and nobody had touched it since we moved. The only time we touch it is if we put coins in this little bowl. That was just on its own shelf, and no one ever touched anything else.
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