Ghostly experiences (ooohh scarrrryyyy)

[Mouth for war]

HAHA I hope you guys don't declare me total idiot now (well not more than usual ) ! I've always been interested in paranormal stuff and I've experienced quite a lot of things I can't explain. I know there are skeptics out there telling people "It's only your mind playing tricks on you" etc. But I have been really freaked out by stuff that's happened to me over the years! Hearing laughter in closets even though being alone in the room....being hit over the back while being alone in my apartment etc. Anyone here who believes in stuff like this and have any experiences to share?

[Oliwerko]

It was a few years ago and we were at our cottage when a neighbor there died. Two days after his funeral, all of the clocks in the cottage stopped at the same time (3-5 of them, certainly at least 3). I changed the batteries, no effect. After a certain amount of time (not long really, tens of minutes at most), they all got going again.

That's pretty much the only first-hand experience I have.

[Mouth for war]

That's pretty weird :S Glad someone else posted so i don't feel alone hehe

[NickyNyce]

When my father passed away in 2001, I was pretty bummed out when his birthday came around that year. I left my house on his birthday and low and behold....a small tree in front of my house had a birthday balloon stuck in it. (I cried like a baby for ten minutes) ... What are the odds....I don't know....But if you can hear me or read this pop....I love ya!!!

I'm not sure what happens when you pass on or where you go....but where ever he is...that's where I'm heading

[Stupot]

One of the creepiest things that ever happened to me was on a school trip to Prague years ago.  I'm a skeptic now but in those days I was well into anything remotely paranormal.  We went into this Church next to the George bridge to watch this concert, and as we were sitting in the pews, I swore someone touched me on the shoulder.  I looked around, and nobody was there, and nobody could possibly have touched me and hid without me noticing.  My only explanation is that it was a weird twitch or something that fellt like i was being tapped... but at the time I thought it was a ghost or I was going insane.

[Khris]

If all other natural explanations fail, the one that's left is schizophrenia. It covers pretty much everything. That and coincidence. (As an example: the balloon became significant because it was your father's birthday. At any other day, you most likely wouldn't have noticed it at all. It only gets weird if two unrelated, extremely unlikely events happen at the same time. Say a shut-in leaves their home to collect lottery winnings and while they are outside, a meteor demolishes their house. Still, it's a coincidence until proven otherwise.)

There are also mini-strokes were a small clot blocks a blood vessel in the brain, then dissolves. Those can cause all kinds of weird effects and hallucinations. Also, epilepsy. Afaik it doesn't have to cause seizures, but you see or experience all kinds of things that aren't there.

There's also the fact that we tend to jump to conclusions ("I'm not aware of any natural explanation so it has to be supernatural") or become victim of "after this, therefore because of this".

Also, as you might know, there isn't a single case in the history of the world were somebody was able to conclusively prove the existence of anything supernatural. All evidence is exclusively anecdotal (i.e. meaningless to science).

If you assume (which I do) that the cause for every event reported as supernatural is either an overlooked banality or the result of hallucinations, there isn't much left of the "other realm".

There's also no soul, btw. And spirituality is a completely meaningless, ill-defined concept.

(If you don't want to discuss skepticism here but merely exchange ghost stories, I'll happily leave the thread. Just give me a hint )

[NickyNyce]

You are exactly right Khris. It's just us as humans, always need to make some kind of sense to what ever happens around us, even if that takes us to the supernatural realm. I do agree that these things are just coincidence, especially because coincidence is everywhere. But it does feel good to link something that you probably know is coincidence,  just to give reason to think , and cry like a baby for the next ten minutes, that it just might be true  .

[Darth Mandarb]

I too am not so sure I believe in the supernatural but I have had some strange experiences.  I don't really lump them into the supernatural category I just call them "unexplained".  I have had several of them...

one of my experiences...
A few years back I was sleeping.  It was around 5:30 am and I sat up, wide-awake.  I didn't have any grogginess or any of the normal "shaking off sleep" stuff.  I was wide-awake like I'd been up for hours.  About an hour later my phone rings and I knew what had happened.  It was my dad informing me that my grandmother had died (about an hour prior to his call).  Right about the time I snapped awake.  We had known she was going to die so that's why I knew what the call would be about (because people aren't in the habit of calling my phone at 6am) it wasn't some sense of dread upon waking up or anything.  In fact it wasn't until a few days later that I connected the two events.  In the grief of getting the phone call I had forgotten the reason I was awake.

So why do I lump this into "unexplained"?  Because while I don't really believe in the super natural I do believe there are aspects of life, the world, the universe, that we measly humans aren't in on (yet) or haven't discovered.  Sure there could be a scientific explanation for why I snapped awake so suddenly, in a way I'd never before or have ever since, almost to the minute my grandmother passed away... but I don't know.  It's unexplained.

I do tend to take the rational explanation for things though.  I was horribly sick the week before Christmas and was running a very high fever.  I thought there were bugs all over the ceiling and that my legs were on fire ... I commented on it, but didn't flip out because even in my fever-reduced capacity for logic I still knew that I was hallucinating because 1) I knew I was sick and 2) I highly doubted Tarah would be ignoring either of those things

I take the same attitude Khris has on most of this... Human beings have a tremendous ability to "fill in the blanks" as it were.  See a light in the sky you don't know what it is and immediately it's a viral video of aliens.  It is a UFO but only in the sense that is flying and you can't identify it.  Not little green men from Alpha Centauri!!

So yeah... I'm a skeptic on most of this stuff.  But I also really firmly believe that there are just some aspects of the universe we aren't privy to.  The unexplained...

[NickyNyce]

See a light in the sky you don't know what it is and immediately it's a viral video of aliens.  It is a UFO but only in the sense that is flying and you can't identify it.  Not little green men from Alpha Centauri!!

You obviously have not played my game the Visitor

[Mouth for war]

I can't explain when I sat home one evening by myself and suddenly someone hit me hard over the back (Like I mentioned in my first post) There was nothing imaginary about that...no drugs involved...it felt like someone hit me with a whip (I was sitting in my dead girlfriend's old chair btw) hehe......Or when I visited my brother in his house in the countryside...in the middle of the night in my room, someone laughed from the closet...we were the only in that house and my brother was several rooms away from me...that freaked me out MAJOR!!! hehe

I have much more to tell....hehe

[WHAM]

Readin a good horror story on the internet (creepypasta), really creeped out.
Alone in an apartment on the third floor of an apartment block, girlfriend is out with her friends, it is 2 AM.

I hear footsteps in the stairwell and rattling of keys at my apartment door. The door does not open. I dismiss the sound as "figment of imagination".

Minutes later, the noises repeat and this time I stand up to go take a look through the peep hole in the door. There are no lights in the stairwell, no sign of anyone outside the door. Nobody in their right mind would be running around in the stairwell without light on in there...

Put on the safety lock on the door, and turned on all the lights in the apartment before going to bed.

It was simple, subtle and perfectly explainable with logic, but still creeped the ever living shit out of me!

[Mouth for war]

I can't wait for the movie "I am ZOZO"

[Darth Mandarb]

Many years back I dreamed of a medium-sized white airplane, with a dark blue rear stabilizer, nose diving and crashing into water killing all aboard (at the first part of the dream I was on the plane but when it crashed I was watching it happen from outside).

Two days later Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California killing all aboard.  It really creeped me out!  Now people dream of plane crashes all the time (usually in the days/weeks before they get on board) but I wasn't flying anytime soon and the dream was very vivid (I remembered the look of the plane even days after when I heard the story of the crash).  Sure it was probably just wild coincidence... but who knows?

--

A few years later, while sleeping, I awoke from a terrible dream that my father had been admitted to the hospital for a heart attack.

The very next day I got a phone call from my mom that my dad was in the hospital (had some chest pains).  He turned out to be fine (not a heart attack but similar symptoms) but it was just like in the dream.  Coincidence?  Maybe...

[Mouth for war]

Darth...Were you the inspiration for Final destination? haha

[LUniqueDan]

I was dating that girl for 2 weeks. Then she started taking weird and cryptic stuff 'bout moving to my place and having babies.

Then *poof!* she magically vanished. No clue, nothing. Her phone number get erased from my cellphone. Her mail disapereared from MSN messenger. Dunno what happened.

I guess she was a spirit of some sort.

[Stupot]

Hahaha.  That is creepy.

[monkey0506]

I don't tend much to think of things as "supernatural" as I feel that my religious beliefs and the scientific community could get along much better if it weren't for the latter feeling so threatened by the former...of course that's a tale for another thread. 8)

However, there once was a time when me and my two younger sisters were the only ones at home. The doors were locked, windows shut and the like. It was the middle of the day (sorry, no, it wasn't a dark and stormy night). We were all in the living room, together on the couch, watching TV. Our couch was against a wall, so no, no one snuck up behind us.

To our left, there was a sort of tapestry hanging on the wall. It was a heavy rug with a deer and a forest scene on it.

As we were watching TV, the bottom left corner of the rug moved away from the wall. It then appeared as though there were a figure standing behind the rug, between it and the wall. The impression extended about a couple of feet up from the bottom of the rug, and it was clearly visible that the rug was no longer touching the wall behind it. This impression then appeared as if a person were walking along the length of the rug, from left to right. The rug uniformly pulled away from the wall, and then fell back, exactly as though there was a physical presence holding it out from the wall. When this impression reached the end of the rug, it was simply as though the apparent figure walked out from behind it, and the rug fell back flat against the wall.

None of the three of us ever saw a physical presence in the room with us, or any type of spectral apparition. My youngest sister at the time was about 11 or 12 at the time. I was about 16 or 17 I believe. All three of us independently saw this take place. After it happened, we all confirmed it with each other. I personally walked over, and touched and felt the rug and confirmed that there was no strings, no mysterious gusting, nothing that could apparently have caused what we had just seen. All three of us witnessed it, and vividly remember it. None of us can explain it, and still we are very unsure what exactly it was that took place that day. We all agree that the rug, without any apparent outside force acting on it, moved away from the wall, in a fashion mimicking someone walking along behind it.

At the time, we were all watching Unsolved Mysteries.

This is a serious story, and none of us were under the influence of any type of drug, medication, alcohol, or otherwise, that any of us are consciously aware of.

[NickyNyce]

none of us were under the influence of any type of drug, medication, alcohol, or otherwise, that any of us are consciously aware of.

Is anyone noticing a pattern here?

From all the storys we have heard, not one person has said anything about being ON any type of drug, alcohol or medication when these things happened!

It's pretty clear to me kids...If you wanna stay away from demons, ghosts, coincidences and hallucinations, you should probably drink , do drugs and take medication.

Just take it from me...I've been ghost free for 11 years!!

[Spummy]

As a skeptic, I will say that talking about personal stories of stuff that you can't seem to explain is interesting and can produce some great stories.

My only personal issue is "Heard/felt/saw something I can't explain? Must be the remnant of a person who once lived but now their mind/soul/spirit is still around manifesting itself as sound, vision, etc etc. Despite the fact the only other 'evidence' for soul/spirit/mind-separate-of-body even existing is other stories exactly like this." Just because you can't find a "normal" explanation doesn't mean you get to pick the unjustifiably precise one of your choice. And why always ghosts? I mean, come on.

For an interesting twist, I encourage future posters of their paranormal stories to explain them in terms of leprechauns instead of ghosts.

I was dating that girl for 2 weeks. Then she started taking weird and cryptic stuff 'bout moving to my place and having babies.

Then *poof!* she magically vanished. No clue, nothing. Her phone number get erased from my cellphone. Her mail disapereared from MSN messenger. Dunno what happened.

Obviously she was a leprechaun in disguise and is forbidden to have relationships outside of their society, so her family took her away and used their leprechaun magic to wipe the number and mail.

I swore someone touched me on the shoulder.  I looked around, and nobody was there, and nobody could possibly have touched me and hid without me noticing.

Leprechaun. They're short and you didn't look down far enough.

As we were watching TV, the bottom left corner of the rug moved away from the wall. It then appeared as though there were a figure standing behind the rug, between it and the wall. The impression extended about a couple of feet up from the bottom of the rug, and it was clearly visible that the rug was no longer touching the wall behind it. This impression then appeared as if a person were walking along the length of the rug, from left to right. The rug uniformly pulled away from the wall, and then fell back, exactly as though there was a physical presence holding it out from the wall. When this impression reached the end of the rug, it was simply as though the apparent figure walked out from behind it, and the rug fell back flat against the wall.

None of the three of us ever saw a physical presence in the room with us, or any type of spectral apparition. My youngest sister at the time was about 11 or 12 at the time. I was about 16 or 17 I believe. All three of us independently saw this take place. After it happened, we all confirmed it with each other. I personally walked over, and touched and felt the rug and confirmed that there was no strings, no mysterious gusting, nothing that could apparently have caused what we had just seen. All three of us witnessed it, and vividly remember it. None of us can explain it, and still we are very unsure what exactly it was that took place that day. We all agree that the rug, without any apparent outside force acting on it, moved away from the wall, in a fashion mimicking someone walking along behind it.

Invisible leprechaun decided the room need reorganizing to perfect the feng shui.

Many years back I dreamed of a medium-sized white airplane, with a dark blue rear stabilizer, nose diving and crashing into water killing all aboard (at the first part of the dream I was on the plane but when it crashed I was watching it happen from outside).

Two days later Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California killing all aboard.  It really creeped me out!  Now people dream of plane crashes all the time (usually in the days/weeks before they get on board) but I wasn't flying anytime soon and the dream was very vivid (I remembered the look of the plane even days after when I heard the story of the crash).  Sure it was probably just wild coincidence... but who knows?

--

A few years later, while sleeping, I awoke from a terrible dream that my father had been admitted to the hospital for a heart attack.

The very next day I got a phone call from my mom that my dad was in the hospital (had some chest pains).  He turned out to be fine (not a heart attack but similar symptoms) but it was just like in the dream.  Coincidence?  Maybe...

Leprechauns were spying on your dreams and decided they seemed like pretty cool ideas and enlisted the help of the leprechaun mob to make it happen.

Readin a good horror story on the internet (creepypasta), really creeped out.
Alone in an apartment on the third floor of an apartment block, girlfriend is out with her friends, it is 2 AM.

I hear footsteps in the stairwell and rattling of keys at my apartment door. The door does not open. I dismiss the sound as "figment of imagination".

Minutes later, the noises repeat and this time I stand up to go take a look through the peep hole in the door. There are no lights in the stairwell, no sign of anyone outside the door. Nobody in their right mind would be running around in the stairwell without light on in there...

Put on the safety lock on the door, and turned on all the lights in the apartment before going to bed.

It was simple, subtle and perfectly explainable with logic, but still creeped the ever living shit out of me!

Leprechauns arriving home late, they have good sight in the dark so didn't need the lights on.

I can't explain when I sat home one evening by myself and suddenly someone hit me hard over the back (Like I mentioned in my first post) There was nothing imaginary about that...no drugs involved...it felt like someone hit me with a whip (I was sitting in my dead girlfriend's old chair btw) hehe......Or when I visited my brother in his house in the countryside...in the middle of the night in my room, someone laughed from the closet...we were the only in that house and my brother was several rooms away from me...that freaked me out MAJOR!!! hehe

I have much more to tell....hehe

You said something to offend an invisible leprechaun. Really you should try to be more culturally sensitive. Leprechauns like to read joke books in closets. Everyone knows that.

Well, I've had my fun. But I do seriously encourage it. It'd make the thread quite amusing.

[Anian]

Coincidences and patterns, it's part of our biological evolution and senses. Humans have highly emotional and evolved minds, I mean, just look at all the art, stories and media we developed over time. There is such a thing as forgetting you know, like you don't remember if you locked the door on your way out, but you probably did because it's a habit, why wouldn't the other way around work as well, you'd selectivly remember things that fit patterns, you certainly don't remeber every dream you ever had, yet people do remember some dreams rather clearly.

You meet a person with dark hair and you meet another one with dark hair, that does not mean the incidents are conected nor that you changed somebody's hair color. You guess a few numbers on a lottery, that doesn't mean they're connected to you in any way, just imagine how many numbers you see every day of your life and yet not all of them get picked.

That's not counting in all the complex processes in our body and milllions of thoughts and impulses you ever experience and all the chemical and physical reactions that happen in billions upon billions of cells in your body (and some of them might not be your own cells, like from parasites, bacterries etc.). Just think of all the times you had an itch, were you ever aware that you were about to have an itch before it started to itch? Did that stop an itch from happening? So much things are happening so many variations that have so much more importance and are not based on supernatural that you should consider before thinking of supernatural occurences and yet our imagination gets the better of us, it cannot be helped.
How about deja vu, something happens that you swear you thought of, now think of again infinitve number of thought you had before and after that, just based on that many variations and events, some are bound to happen, and some memories do get distorted which is a whole other layer as well.

Okay, you take into account every single process in your cells and you molecules, that still leaves everything that surrounds you, every process in every thing and lifefrom around you - do you really think some of them would not appear to be or actually occur at the same moment or at the right interval that they form an interesting pattern that your mind at a certain moment along with your personality and memories and your current senses?

There is so much things that we DO know now and yet people more than often choose to label as something that cannot be explained at all...it's what makes humanity interesting and progressive and holds us back at the same time.

That is not to say that ghost stories aren't creppy or entertaining.