Do You Believe In Ghosts?- Page 2

[Calvin]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 12:34pm

If I was a horror movie character, I would be that guy who denies anything is happening until he ends up being the first or second victim of whatever malevolent spirit is in the plot of the film. Any "supernatural" experiences I've had, I've usually been able to come up with a logical reason behind it.

Like I think sleep paralysis is a big reason for a lot of them. If you've never had it, it can be really scary. It's basically where you regain consciousness from sleep before your body exits REM. You can hallucinate, hear loud noises and feel like someone is choking you, because your breathing muscles work differently when you're asleep than when you're awake. I'm really susceptible to it if I get up early in the morning, do something then go back to sleep, so it used to happen to me a lot in college when I had an 8 am class that I would go to then go crash back at my dorm until my next class, which was at noon. Now that I know what it is, it can still be scary when it happens, but once I truly wake up, it doesn't freak me out anymore.

But my dad, an engineer who was as much or more of a skeptic about these things as I was, swore the spirit of his mother came to him and spoke with him shortly after she died. So, that tends to melt away some of my skepticism.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 12:49pm

In 2005, a couple of months after my Father passed away, I was in Florida visiting my Mom and Brother. I was in the car with her (she was driving) stopped at a red light and I looked out the window and I saw my Dad in a car he had years before. Right as he looked at me the light turned green and the car went straight. We were in a turn lane though but I started screaming at my Mother to go straight and GO GO GO which freaked her the hell out but she did until we caught up to the car which was nothing like the car we had years ago and the man driving looked nothing like my Father.

That combined with a few other odd occurrences around that time plus things I saw growing up make me believe.

[nygrl232]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 4:42pm

I've heard many stories like the ones people are sharing in this thread, and I've seen a few things I can't explain.

My sister's rented home was reportedly so haunted, and violently so, that she and her husband decided to move out. Stuff would be broken, pillows slashed. They thought they had break-ins, but the alarm system they installed was never tripped when they were out. Cold pockets of air, a whispered voice, let's see...oh yeah and constant feelings of sadness, negativity, being watched. It was not a happy ghost.

[StockardFan]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 5:34pm

That's creepy! My ghost never did anything like that........thank goodness. That would have freaked me out.

[Marianne2]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 6:13pm

The one I'm convinced of was a weird experience. Senior staff at my camp had gotten together in the back room of the main office to watch a movie. Everyone fell asleep, but I woke up around 2am, I guess. I decided to walk back to my cabin alone, and I was down there alone for the night because my roommate was still sleeping back in the office. I heard some metal cans being dragged around on the back porch. I thought it was an animal disturbing some art stuff. But, it wouldn't stop, so I looked out the window and saw nothing. That was when the metal noise stopped.

In the morning I went to check the mess I assumed would be back there and probably outside, and saw nothing. I then found out metal dragging is a noise from one of the camp ghosts. Sometimes people said they smelled ladies perfume in the office, when no females were around. this was a boy scout camp, so there were not too many of us.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 7:15pm

I have WAAAY too many stories to tell. Suffice to say, I am an Atheist and do not believe in a giant, judgmental genie, floating in a cloud city with streets of gold. But I do believe in spirits.

I think most of them show up because they are so pissed to find out there is no heaven.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 8:25pm

The Gateway Playhouse in Bellport has a hotel on the grounds where most of the actors stay during their performances at the theater. The hotel is allegedly haunted by the ghost of Lucretia Mott who hanged herself in the attic there.

While I was apprenticing at the theater in the 60's we had an ouija board and decided to use it find out if the place was, indeed, haunted. When it came my turn at the board, the little heart shaped wedge was moving wildly about and spelling out strange answers to our questions. I really felt that the other person was manipulating the darn thing. Then the wedge literally flew out of our hands and onto the floor, where it just rested. That night we heard footsteps in the hallway and also on the roof. We also heard water running in the bathroom but when we went to investigate it (at about 3 AM) neither the sinks nor the shower stalls had any trace of water in them.

Broadway regulars Nick Spangler, Josh Davis, Peter Benson and Elizabeth Stanley have stayed in that hotel in more recent times and have equally bizarre stories to tell about the ghost of Lucretia Mott.

Updated On: 3/3/12 at 08:25 PM

[SNAFU]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 8:47pm

For my senior year of High School. I moved out of my families house and into that of a friend. It was an old farm house on Long Island where Walt Whitman was supposed to have lived in for a number of years.
The kitchen was a homey place with rafters that were used to hang pots and pans and dry herbs from the garden. It also had a root cellar that was accessed by a trap door near the dining room table. During my first week there, while we were eating dinner, I heard creaking on the ladder/stairs under the trap door. then a few seconds later the radio near the sink clicked on. This was the early seventies when radios still had dials you had to turn to turn on the radio (and no, it wasn't a clock radio). The people I was renting my room from told me that they had a ghost who liked to come up from the cellar and play the radio. They called him Harry. It happened a couple times during my stay there. Wasn't scary, just an odd occurrance that we all as a group experienced.

[GlindatheGood22]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 10:09pm

Dollypop, if we're thinking of the same Lucretia Mott (the activist), she didn't hang herself.

[nygrl232]

Posted: 3/4/12 at 1:11am

It's 1:08 AM and I'm reading this thread. One of my neighbors must have burned something in the kitchen, because my apartment vaguely smells of overcooked..something. So my window is cracked open a little bit.

I'm reading this thread, and the wind just rustled the miniblinds. I jumped a little. Jeez, what a wuss. I can't even watch scary movies, why am I reading this thread?

Updated On: 3/5/12 at 01:11 AM

[Dollypop]

Posted: 3/4/12 at 6:53pm

@Glinda: I don't think out Lucretia was an activist. Her story is well known in our town and the portrait of her that hangs in the Town Hall is a bit too frilly for anything one associates with an "activist". I'll check out the story and get back to you.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 3/4/12 at 7:00pm

Okay, I did a Google search and it there have to be TWO Lucretia Motts. The lady who has her portrait hanging in Town Hall has some cleavage showing and has curly brown hair. She was definitely a native of the South Shore of Suffolk County. She's the one who hanged herself upstairs at the Gateway Hotel (which stands on the former Mott Estate).

[juggles]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 11:53am

Yes me and my husband encountered a ghost and we were left an apport to prove it'd helped us. I have also had messages from the other side in dreams. Two of these were names of murderers given to me by the victims. I notified the police and months after, the murderers were caught, brought to justice and the names transpired to be exactly as given to me. I could tell you lots more. I too am an atheist. Not believing in a God as I believe religion is Greek mythology, but I do believe we don't die and live on in another dimension

Updated On: 3/5/12 at 11:53 AM

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 12:02pm

I don't know if I believe in ghosts or not. I remember a few odd occurrences as a child, but they could have been my imagination at at work. What creeps me out most about Eris's post is that I grew up in Spring, TX! It's not a place I see mentioned often.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 12:30pm

Matt, this is the company that led the tour if you want to check it out the next time you visit home :)
Houston Ghost Tour

[Eris0303]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 12:38pm

This is a photo I took on my cruise back in January. I know it doesn't look like much but I was trying to get a series of shots to show the progession of the sun rising over the Panama Canal. The number of orbs in the photo makes complete sense when you think of how many people died in the building of the canal.
Photo

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 1:09pm

When I was 12, I actually led some of the Christmas tours in Old Town Spring. I still like to have lunch at Wunsche Bros. Cafe (Spring Cafe to us old timers). It used to be famous not only for its hamburgers and comfort food, but it used to be entirely staffed by elderly ladies.
Wunsche Bros. Cafe History

[Eris0303]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 1:20pm

We had dinner there and it was one of the stops on the tour.

[Calvin]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 1:38pm

There was a whole book on the ghost history of the area I grew up in south of Houston (Ghosts on the Brazos). Most of them were pretty innocuous. One was the ghost of a fiddler who played out the mouth of the San Bernard River. My favorite was the ghost of Bailey's Prairie, which was supposed to be some spirit (Mr. Bailey, whatever his name was) wandering around carrying a bottle of hooch.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 3:46pm

I'm suppressing the urge to make a Mr. Bailey joke.

I know we have a ghost in our home at the Jersey Shore, built in 1920. There are hot/cold spots, smells, noises...the usual. But what convinced me was one night when we were watching tv on a weeknight with our cats each on one of our laps. They were sound asleep. All of a sudden they both woke up and jumped to the floor with their tails up, fur up and crouching with eyes like saucers. They crouched there and their gaze followed something/someone climb the staircase. It took a couple of minutes and they calmed down and were skittish all night. There's a definite hot spot half way up those stairs.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 4:06pm

Like I think sleep paralysis is a big reason for a lot of them. If you've never had it, it can be really scary.

GAH! I've suffered from that most of my life. It is TERRIFYING. It happened to me most often as a kid when I feel asleep in the car during a family road trip. My mind would wake up and I could hear everything going on in the car, but I'd be completely paralyzed and unable to wake myself up. I'd try to move or talk to signal someone to wake me up. And then you feel like you can't breathe. It is literally living a nightmare. It rarely happens to me now, but it was a regular occurrence for me for over 20 years.

[Calvin]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 4:18pm

It hasn't happened to me in years, either, Matt, but I think it's largely because I keep a fairly regular sleep schedule now and certainly didn't in my college years. :)

The worst one was when I was visiting my parents and was asleep in my old bed upstairs. I woke up, and my grandmother's cocker spaniel was on the bed, shaking and looking terrified. I tried to pet him to calm him down but couldn't move, but then looked up and saw a shadowy man standing over me, who then reached down and grabbed me by the neck and throttled me (hallucinations and the feeling that one can't breathe -- textbook sleep paralysis). When I came out of it, no one was in the room, not even the dog.

I think I recall reading this also is the origin of succubus folklore, which I can certainly understand.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 4:42pm

While that phenomenon could explain some ghostly visits, but wouldnt be able to explain what my cats saw that we couldnt.

[Jane2]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 5:00pm

So it sounds like I may have had sleep paralysis when I had my first ghostlike experience, but during this event, I was aware of someone or something moving closer and closer to me, and finally, the tap on my shoulder. It was identical to the sharp tap of a person's finger. very weird.

[nygrl232]

Posted: 3/5/12 at 5:40pm

Sleep paralysis is very scary. Keeping calm and telling yourself it's only a matter of time before you wake for real is a good thing.