Ghost Stories
Everybody's got one. Maybe more than one.
Usually they happened to a friend-of-a-friend. A conveniently removed acquaintance. Or a family member, or heard in passing. It rarely seems to happen directly to us, and so remains in the grey area of disbelief, slightly above campfire tales but below firsthand memories. Still, they're as old as time and always intriguing, regardless of the personal beliefs of the listener.
Ghost stories.
Whether they support or conflict with one's religious tenets, it's undeniable that the concept of life-after-death is a universal curiosity. As humans we can comprehend a lot of things, but the concept of not existing is nearly impossible to grasp. When the body dies, what happens? We have come up with countless theories over the millenia, and yet have no hard proof of any of them. Still, it's hard to imagine the cessation of life, of perception, of emotion. It may be the scariest concept of all. So we create images of afterlives, places where the souls of our dear departed can travel to, to await our inevitable arrival, where we can all be together again, as we once were. Or places of eternal punishment, with which we can frighten others into a certain type of behavior that suits our society, and feel that some form of cosmic justice will be served. Or perhaps there's some sort of spiritual recycling plant, where the life forces of the deceased are inspected for quality and reissued to another material form as deemed appropriate, in some kind of ethereal resource-recovery system. Or none of these, or maybe a form of all. Since no one's managed to investigate very far into the matter in an empirical way, we're left to speculate and believe what we like.
For the most part.
Still, there's something about the idea of a face in the window, a movement in the corner of the eye, a whispered voice out of nowhere, an unexplained breeze in a still room.....it will put even the most jaded and wooden mind at unease. And make one question everything they believe.
We need ghost stories. They define us, I think, as a species. I doubt that animals ponder the fates of their dead. Do dolphins fear the dark, do gorillas pray at shrines? I don't think so. But we have built entire mythologies - and civilizations - around the idea of eternal existence, and how to deal with it. Fear? Reverence? Adulation? All three? At its core, it probably boils down to one thing: curiosity.
We've all seen supposed "ghost photos", online or printed in Time-Life books. We've heard stories we know are fake, but are still fun to tell, and manage to send a little chill up our spines anyway. The photos are mostly all faked too, and yet get the same response. We watch movies where the phantom children stare from the dark corners of rooms, or swoop vengefully from the sky, or direct us to their maligned remains, or long for some form of earthly closure or merely want attention. Murdered lovers seek their mates, confused spirits don't know they're dead, maniacal killers wreak more havoc from the grave. Most of these stories are closed up neatly at the end of a couple of hours (until the sequel anyway) but they often leave us a little unnerved about what may be lurking around us, watching us, peeking through floorboards or waiting around corners. It's hard to not think that way, at least for a little while. But eventually things are back to normal and nothing has leapt from the shadows or crawled out of the TV at us, and fears are forgotten. And dismissed as "silly".
Are they?
I don't know. But again, everyone has a ghost story. Or knows someone who has.
And so the idea lives on, if not the spirits themselves.
My uncle supposedly had a poltergeist in his house. Back in the 70s, he lived in a very old colonial home in Rhode Island. I mean like, late 1600s-early 1700s old. I looked for it online but I can't find a photo of it. It's historic anyway. Just a little house, no big deal, but really old. I had never been inside it, he moved out around the time I was born. I hear it had little hiding spots in it, where they'd hide the women and children during Indian raids. Or so it's said. Anyway, my uncle, who was the world's biggest hardass when it came to having his way and was not prone to fanciful imaginings, would hear things falling and being thrown about in the house at night and would yell out to "knock it off". He didn't live there long, but my grandmother says stuff got broken a lot. Could it have been a restless spirit, of some former inhabitant or perhaps an irate Native American soul? Who knows. I never really talked much to my uncle, and he's been dead for over ten years so if he gives me an answer now, you'll be sure I'll let you know.
A friend of mine from college knew a girl who moved into an older home in my town (again, in RI) with her husband after they got married. It was a bigger home, with three floors and an attic. Maybe two and a full attic. I forget. But the attic stairs were in a closet off the bedroom. Anyway, her husband was an EMT and left very early every morning. One morning she awoke to see the closet door open, and who she thought was her husband sitting on the attic stairs. Since it was past his time to leave for work, she asked him what he was doing. When he didn't respond, she realized it wasn't her husband at all. Frightened, she ran downstairs, called her husband - who was at work - and told him what happened. He came home and they went upstairs and checked it out......no one there, and the door to the attic was left open. There were a few sightings after that, and some music heard in the background sometimes.....older rock-n-roll music....and they started calling the ghost "Vinny". (Hey, it's Rhode Island.) Then one day the girl was at a gas station filling up, and another customer mentioned that she was the one who moved into the old house on her street. The girl replied that she was. "Ah," said the other woman. "That used to be Vinny's house."
Turns out a guy - Vinny - lived there all his life, with his mother, and after she died he kind of made the attic his personal space, hanging out up there and listening to music. Eventually he passed away. When the new couple bought it, they started renovating it. The sightings started when they began working on the attic. After they found this out, they decided to leave the attic alone. As a result, they didn't see Vinny anymore. She said they still feel as if he's there, but they don't see him or hear any more music. And they don't go in the attic much.
Eerie. But again, it's hearsay. I have never had anything like that happen to me, and although it would be pretty freaky, it would also be nice to have some first-hand experience to maybe change my perception a bit. Then again....once you open that door, where do you stop?
Anyone else have any experiences like that? A figure on the stairs, or some mysteriously shattered dishes? It would be interesting to hear some other stories. Whether we believe them or not, they're always entertaining.
**passes the flashlight**
Comments
Technically I don't believe in ghosts. I am pretty boring in that I think our souls are meant for heaven or hell and they lay dormant until God's return.
But my faniful mind does consider other explanations at times. I have several examples.
In college I lived in a new dormitory rumored to have been built on sacred native american ground (do you know the name Sam Houston? Well the dorm was about a quarter of a mile from the home he lived with his wife and children in). I was a resident assistant, which meant that I shut down the dorms during winter and summer break. This meant inspecting the rooms and such before we left for the break. During Winter break, the students left their belongings in their rooms for the month of break, since they would be returning in the Spring. This was always an unnerving time to do inspections, as you never quite knew what you would walk in on in each room..... (once a life-sized cutout of Tom Cruise stood in front of a window... nearly scared the life outta me before I flipped on the light and saw it wasn't an actual MAN standing in front of the window as it seemed in the dark... just old scientoligist cardboard head.)
My first break inspection in this dorm was for Winter break... I was staying a few days to hang out with friends before we all headed home. So I was in one wing of the dorms entirely by myself. We are talking about 200 rooms unoccupied, with me in the far corner room.
One night I left and didn't turn on the window heating unit we had, cause it was a mild night. I had all my paper work laid in piles on the floor to complete my checkouts the next day. When I returned later that night, the AC was on full blast and the papers were in disarray across my entire room. And it may have been my imagination, but there was an eery feeling to the room when I returned... a wierd kind of energy. How did my AC come on in the middle of December by itself? And with enough force to blow paper around the room?
I had bought a new TV at the start of the semester, exactly 2 days after plugging it in and turning it on it stopped working. I lugged it back to Best Buy and got an exchange. Exactly 2 days later that one stopped working. Third time I tried a different brand TV. Before plugging it up I had a little discussion with the "spirit" rumored to live in the dorm. I asked him/her to have fun at my expense but to please not break my TV anymore, because it was expensive and a long drive to houston and too heavy to keep carrying down three flights of stairs. Never had a problem after that. Was it the "chat" or the changing of brand? Who knows?
Throughout the school year, I was having to key into rooms of students in class because their radios would suddenly turn on full blast, or their alarms would not go off unless you unplugged it from the wall. Showers would turn on with no explanation.
Another R.A. friend of mine swears to this day something grabbed her ankle in her sleep one night and the next day she had two finger-shaped bruises.
Other than that... my daughter when she was a baby use to talk to one corner of the room... almost at the cieling. She would chatter and giggle away as if someone were there. My mom use to say she was talking to her Guardian Angel. A few years later, when she was first starting sentances and explanations, she said she missed her "Papa John" (he died two months before my husband and I got married, so she never met him). She would tell us stuff like "he was so funny" "he made me laugh" "he showed me funny tricks"... which is all stuff he WOULD have done while alive. Crazy huh?
When we were living in Texas I saw a ghost in my house. I was sitting on the couch one afternoon while the kids were taking their afternoon naps (I was babysitting at the time). I saw a woman in a long flowing peach colored dress walk down a hallway through two walls to another hallway and out the front door.
The next door neighbor saw a man in a light blue suit in her house. He was kind of wandering around lost looking, when an Angel came; took his hand and they disappeared. (She had her house blessed by a priest that told her the Angel came to lead the man to Heaven.)
Three doors down my friend Rhonda is visited by a ghost quite a bit. She says she sees the door knob turn like someone is trying to come in, but the door never opens. As she is standing in the kitchen washing dishes someone will come up behind her, but no one is there. I don't remember what all other things she's experienced. Rhonda says it is her mother-in-law checking on her house...Rhonda says she tells the 'presence' "Hi. I've got things handled you can go rest now." and it will leave her alone for a few months.
Fun.
Many years back, I was in Joliet, Illinois, for a wedding of someone in my now-ex-in-law family. We were staying at the Holiday Inn. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and when I came back into the room, I stopped cold.
Was that my husband over there in the corner or someone else? There was someone there.
I froze and then I saw - but really mostly felt - someone, something go past me to the door. I stayed still for a long time before I woke up Husband and turned on every light in the room.
It was pretty damn freaky and more than a bit scary. Especially in a prison town. o_O
When my son was almost three, I woke one night to him talking loudly in the living room around 3 am. When I went in there and asked why he was up, his reply was that he was talking about THE WAR with a solider. Gah.
Ever since then, books have flown off shelves at home, cupboards open, beds become unmade and my son, who is now seven, still refuses to go in his room alone, because he says that guy bugs him. His closet, regardless of outside temprature, stays about 50 degrees year round. Our house was being built when we bought it so it's not an older/historic home.
This weekend I'm doing a voice recording at my house to see if I can capture anything. From the pictures my son has drawn in the past, the guy definately looks Civil War related. I'm scared shitless, but curious to hear the tape. I'll let you know the outcome! :)
M does your daughter remember any of that? I wonder. And although I've had some weird electronic gremlins over the years nothing as crazy as that. Although you could attribute it to a bad batch of TVs off the line or someone coming into your room while you were gone. If it's at all possible. And I know people who wake up with weird bruises all the time. Some people bruise strangely easily.
ILE: Those are eerie. And although I don't really believe in angels or Heaven per se, they must have seen something. Maybe I would believe had I seen that first-hand. Then again, maybe I won't.
Amy: That's just scary. Holy crap. I really hope in that case it WAS a ghost and not just some creep in your room. Ew.
I was in the living room. I was like 11 or 12. My mother and my younger sister were in the kitchen getting ready to leave. Then they left but I didn't know this. So I heard someone yell my name from the kitchenish area and I went out thinking it was my mother. Of course no one was in the kitchen and her car was already gone out of the yard so they obviously were not home anymore. I had always had people tell me the house we had lived in was haunted. I never believe it though because that was the first and only thing that ever happened to me there and I had lived in that house off and on my whole life (a few years here and then a few years there, it was a duplex and my grandparents lived next door, the man who used to own it died in their half of the duplex.) No biggie. I haven't had anything else ever happen to me. But that doesn't mean I dont believe that it hasn't really happened to anyone else.
When I first saw him, I thought it was a real person. But a moment later he was more a presence than a physical being. When he went by, I could feel something but couldn't see anything. Even with my horrible eyesight, I knew it wasn't a real person but it was SOMETHING. Freaky.
I would have pissed myself.
No, not really. She knows who "Papa John" is, but talks about him different now... as her grandad that is in pictures and died of lung cancer. She was only about 2 when she talked about him... (she talked in full sentances at a very young age). I've had people with "claimed" psychic abilities tell me she has an old soul that has lived many lifetimes. And others have told me she has the eyes and outlook of someone much older and more experienced. Meeting her most people are drawn to her. She has an AMAZING intuition too. Very often I am on the phone with someone and she will guess what that person is talking to me about, without me saying anything. For example, my mom will call talking about the carnival that just open down the street. I am just say "wow that sounds cool, I'll look into it." Jenna meanwhile will be tapping my leg and saying "Mom I want to go ride the ferris wheel... can we find a carnival?"
It's really unsettling at times to be honest.
She and her husband were at his mother's wake (our firm had helped to prepare her will years ago) when her husband got a phone call. He answered, said "Hello... hellooooo? Hmm, no one there" and hung up. He looked at his phone and it said that he had one new message. So he checked the message and heard "Hello... hellooooo? Hmm, no one there" but in the background was a very faint "help meeeeee. heeeeelp meeeeeeee."
I was sitting there, writing this in a long message to the lawyers wondering what kind of people they dealt with and I had to take a call like this on the second day on the job.
She said that they had gone to Verizon to have it checked out. Yes, they did receive a call at that time, no, the incoming number did not exist, and no, it's not possible to record a phone call like that into a message.
Why call the law firm? Who knows, maybe the mother wasn't happy with her will/probate work. The woman, after that super long and somewhat embarrassing message, wanted to know if her lawyer knew of anyone that could analyze the message left on her husband's cell phone.
I'm not sure what happened with all that, but I kind of don't want to know.
I've seen my family deity at our family temple in my dad's native place (I'm raised Hindu, so we're polytheistic and each family has it's own guardian deity.) Other than that, I've sometimes felt parakinetic forces and eerie presences in my room. But rarely. My idea is, leave them alone and they'll leave you alone.
However, almost every friend of mine has reported a ghost or spirit encounter, but mostly felt rather than seen.
I ask only because one of the big reasons I have trouble signing on to a religion is because there are just so many of them, past and present, and therefore how can one be the right one and all others be wrong? And if they are all right, then the spiritual world must be one very busy place, with all those deities pandering to us.
And yes, I think the spiritual world would be a busy place indeed. In fact, I have plans for a graphic novel regarding the same, but I need to get some time off to work on it. ;)