Thanks to all who responded to our request for true-life ghostly encounters. For more, read Part I of our selections.
The Elementary Incident
In the late 1980's, I was teaching sixth grade at Wheatley Elementary School over on the east side of Lubbock, Texas. It was in April about 2 P.M. in the afternoon on a sunny day with plenty of light coming through the classroom windows. It was just a normal, normal day when I heard a ruckus among some of the students. Many of my six graders were looking and pointing at the desk of a girl student in a row by the windows. She was getting upset and wanted to know what everyone was looking at her for. What everyone was seeing, including me, was a boy about eleven or twelve getting out of the same desk that she occupied. He walked to the back of the room down behind everyone else's desks and out the door.
I went straight to the door, looked down the hall and saw no one. My students were getting very upset, so to take back control of the class I told one of the students to go get the principal and to tell her we might have an intruder. I told all the remaining students to get out paper and pen and write exactly what they saw.
The principal arrived and I went with her into the hall and described what had transpired. She said that she wanted the student reports sent to her as soon as they were finished and that nothing need be said about the incident.
I collected the papers from my class and before I sent them to the principal, I read through them. For the most part the kids had all seen the same thing. They differed on the color of the boy's jacket, some saying gray and others brown. The students also differed on how solid the intruder appeared. For the most part, the reports were surprisingly in agreement with what I saw. The principal and I never again spoke of the incident. I'm sure my class will always remember what we saw that day. I know I will.
--Robert F.
A Family Touch
This incident happened to a friend of mine & his wife. (I shall call them Don & Millie) around 11 yrs ago in the relatively small town of Beatrice, Nebraska. They had had a new addition to their family a few months prior, a baby boy (whom I shall call Sam). With the family now larger & planning more children in the future, they needed a bigger house & found the answer to their prayers in the form of a large 2 story frame home that was owned by Don's father. He hadn't owned it long & knew no past history of the house, but since it needed a family's touch & Don, Millie & Sam needed a home, arrangements were made & they moved in.
The house had been vacant for a while & needed some repair, so they began working in the top floor of the home in one of the bedrooms. Don's father offered to help. After working late into the night one evening, Don's father left for home, Don climbed into the shower to clean up. Millie, (whom I failed to mention, never really felt comfortable in the house) Heard the front door open & close & footsteps head up the stairs.
"Don," she said to him as he came into the room shortly thereafter, "I think your dad is back, he must have forgot something." Don proceeded upstairs to see what his father needed, but found no one there! No sign of any thing out of the ordinary. He called his father the next morning & asked him if he had happened to come back. He did not! He said he went straight home, showered & hit the sack!
A few days later, things got a little creepier. The baby's room was down the hall a ways from Don & Millie's. Millie felt more comfortable using a baby monitor so she could hear him in the night if he awoke.
Don woke up around 3:00 A.M. & could not go back to sleep. As he lay in bed listening to the monitor he heard the soft sound of a mother talking to a baby, but Millie was asleep in bed beside him! Don woke Millie up to listen to make sure he wasn't hearing things. They lay there & speculated where the voice was coming from. Yes it could be that they were picking up interference from a neighbor's baby monitor, but all of the neighbors around them & within range were all older people with no young children! As Millie spoke aloud to Don that maybe he should go to the baby's room & check on him, a loud burst of static erupted from the monitor! They both flew from the bed to the baby's room. Upon entering the room, nothing was out of order, & Sam was fast asleep. The only thing wrong was that the baby monitor had been physically switched off, hence the "burst of static" signal to let you know when the monitors receiver is out of range, or is turned off! They moved out shortly thereafter. Don's father sold the house a few years later after living there himself for a while without incident.
--Mike K.
krakrman@yahoo.com
The Youngstown House
My parents built our home in Youngstown NY (near the famous Fort Niagara) in the early 80's on land that was owned by a woman in the 1800's whom there is no record of her death. It all began with cupboard doors being open, lights on, things moved, and sometimes broken objects in the house that were found by my parents when they arrived to work on the house in the morning. It was impossible people were breaking in and doing this, because all doors, and windows were locked and secure.
Soon after they moved in, my father went into the basement alone one day to find wash clothes hung across the pipes in the entire basement in a triangular fashion. My mother, or father did not do this - and my sister was too young. Soon after they arrived to find a broken house plant pot against the wall, and a clock ripped off the wall. Things began to quiet down after a while - and when my parents became friends with their neighbor they learned of the same things happening there.
One morning my mother saw something she would never forget. While laying in bed in the early hours of the morning she saw a woman with her hair up, in a blue 1800's looking dress "float" past her door down the hall and disappear. She always thought it was odd because we built the house. She never told anyone, until one morning after we had a guest stay at our house... He slept on the couch in the living room and in the morning he told my parents of his encounter. He awoke in the middle of the night, feeling a slight touch on his foot... when he opened his eyes he saw the same lady that my mother described at his feet, and then she vanished in mid air. We have never been able to find much information at all of this lady.
My sister also has experienced a man dressed in farmers clothing sitting at the end of her bed when she was a child, as well as an older lady that she has picked out to be my grandmothers great grandmother (through photos). I have never witnessed the lady, but I have had my own encounters. When I was a little boy I would see a white cat out of the corner of my eye walk through the door frame - when I would turn around it would vanish. As I grew older I would randomly see it, not as often. When my girlfriend was over for the first time in high school she said "I didn't know you had a cat"... to that question I responded "I don't"... and she answered with "I just saw a white cat pass the door frame."
Recently I was walking downstairs listening to my iPod when only to go around the corner and look up into the kitchen I saw half of a man's body, he was wearing jeans and a button up shirt... its not that he was dismembered, it's that it was kind of hazy and disappeared when I looked up. I didn't feel threatened, or afraid. I am used to this now, and accept the other side as part of our everyday lives. I will even talk out loud to a presence if I feel it... I just say "hello" or if I am feeling bothered I will say "please leave". My family keeps experiencing these occurrences, but the lady in the dress has not visited for years.
--Chris B
Sugar, Money, Ghost
In 1953 to 1954 my mother, brother and I took care of a lady and her home with birds. She had diabetes that was not controlled in that she would eat a large piece of lemon pie and then take her insulin shot with 5 units extra because of that pie. She thought she was OK doing it that way. One day she just died from a heart attack because of the diabetes. She would hide money and bags of sugar in the strangest of places like a screen taped to the bottom drawer of the dresser and it would hold $50 and about 2 lbs of sugar. We were finding money and sugar packets with Kool-Aid pkgs. every where.
But we knew she had a green metal box somewhere hidden with a lot of money etc. One morning while getting up for breakfast, I happened to look out the window and saw her standing in the door of the chicken coop. She turned and walked in and I saw a plank being raised just inside. I called my mom and told her what I saw and we went out to the coop and raised that plank and lo and behold there was that green box under it! The large amount of money, Kool-Aid, and sugar plus some papers which was her will was in it! It solved all her wants and wishes plus paid for her bills she left behind. I have seen her many times after that along with many other people who have passed on.
--Lois
A Voice from Beyond
I awoke in the middle of the night, to a voice saying, "Patty, Patty... this is your father." I was only 8 years old, and there was no one else in the room. I was terrified, and my whole body froze. I was unable to move. I laid there, staring at the corner of the room, while listening to the voice, that kept pleading with me. "Patty, this is your father. I love you."
Patty was my friend who lived three houses away on the same crescent. We had played together since we had moved to Edmonton several years before. I tried to open my mouth to say, "This isn't Patty - she lives three houses away," but because I couldn't move, I just focused on thinking it to the ghostly voice that kept speaking to me, hoping he would psychically hear me. I knew Patty's father. I didn't see him often because he was away for work a lot. But he used to call me, "Mike, Mike, the motorbike."
"Patty, Patty, I love you." he kept saying, until the voice faded as the morning sun rose. I was finally able to move, after having been immobile all night. I heard my father, who was a Lutheran minister, get up for breakfast. I quietly sat down with him, eating our breakfast cereal. I asked him, "Do you think God would allow someone who died to speak to someone who's still living?" My father puzzled on my question for a while, thinking. He finally said, "Possibly."
We found out that morning that Patty's father had died in a plane crash that evening. He was a firebomber - a pilot who flew planes that dumped tons of water on forest fires up north. Two planes crashed head-on, and he instantly died. I told Patty about her father speaking to me, and saying over and over that he loved her. She seemed comforted.
We moved from Edmonton a year later, and I lost all touch with Patty. Many years later, when I was 23, I had moved back to Alberta, and had gone to Edmonton for a workshop. I looked up Patty in the phone book, and we arranged to meet for coffee at a local mall. Time hadn't been good to her. She had started to live a difficult life, of addiction and prostitution. She was very pretty, but also looked very fragile. We talked about what we'd been up to since we were kids, reminiscing. Just as I was leaving, she put her hand on my shoulder, and looked me in the eyes. She said, "Do you remember what you told me after my father had died?"
I said, very seriously, "Yes. I do."
"Was it true?" Patty asked.
I said, "Yes, it really happened." A look of peace and comfort washed over her thin face. After all these years, she had remembered when I told her that her father had spoke to me after his death, to let her know that he loved his daughter.
--Michael J.
intertextual@hotmail.com
Along for the Ride
Way back in 1985-86, I dated a redhead I'll call Ann. We went out a few times before she invited me over to her apartment in the older section of the University of Tennessee. The first time I went over she began telling me that the apartment was haunted and that she had named the ghost "Amy" and she felt that it was the playful ghost of a little girl. She told me that things were always getting lost and showing up in the most queer of places. Places that whatever was lost, would never be put there.
After a month or so, I moved in with Ann and began seeing some of the oddities. Among other things, it was like "Amy" became jealous of me being there. I began losing things, only to have them show up in strange, strange places. My key's in the toilet . Shampoo in the freezer. Money inside cereal boxes and my favorite, my boots in the oven. Besides all that, we also had the "basic" feelings of being watched. Cold spots in the middle of summer. Knocking on doors and we both even saw a blue mist one night.
We decided to go spend the weekend in Nashville just to get away. We had been there 4 or 5 times but this time we decided to just drive around the city for a few hours just to see what we could find. We came across this huge gated cemetery, so we decided to go in and look around. This was later in the day and they were about to close up in 30 minutes so the guard ask us to sign the visitors list book that everyone had to sign in when they went in and sign out when they leave. After we signed in, the guard locked the gate behind us as it was closing time.
The entire time, we felt as though "Amy" was with us. We had felt like that the whole trip. We had a habit whenever we went somewhere, we invited Amy along with us. Anyway, as we started to leave the cemetery, there sat the guard and as we passed him, we went to sign the guest book, and there, below our names, written like a child would write, was the name "Amy. " We asked the guard if anyone came in after us and he told us no, that he locked up the place, as he had to unlock the door to let us out. We showed him the book and he thought we were playing with him. To this day, Ann, my ex, still has that page!
--William L. in Knoxville
A Brother's Ghost
This story takes place at my grandparent's home in a small town of Moosehorn, Manitoba in 1984. My grandparents had nine children in all but only two lived at home now as the others had grown and left home. My grandparents bought a smaller farm and moved to a new house on the property.
My uncle who would have been 17 at that time almost immediately started to experience strange happenings from the time they moved in with the activity being focused on him. One day coming out of the shower, the steam on the mirror had the word "Brother" printed on the glass. He thought it was a joke or that someone had maybe written it on the mirror earlier and the steam just brought it out. A few days later he was heading out of the house during a cool September morning and in the condensation on the outside door window the words "I AM A FATHER" was printed. This was a little more suspicious and so he asked my grandparents and his sister (my aunt) who had done that. No one admitted to it.
A few nights later he awoke to a tug on his blankets and a man in his early twenties in Canadian armed forces dress stood at the end of his bed, my uncle said the figure was transparent and a low glowing white. He screamed and the figure disappeared. My grandpa ran in to see what the commotion was about and told my uncle he was dreaming and to go to sleep. Eventually over the next few months everyone came to believe him. Furniture would move by itself and footsteps could be heard, although the apparition was never actually seen again.
About a year later the activity just stopped and never happened again. My uncle a few years later took some time to look up the history of the home. Two brothers grew up on that farm in the 1930's and when World War II came about they were both old enough and enlisted together. One brother died in fighting in Dieppe, France and the other made it home, had a family and moved out of the area of Moosehorn to Winnipeg, Manitoba. My uncle decided to run a check of deaths to see if the other brother was still alive and he found in the death notices in archives that the brother had died in 1985, right around the time the activity ceased. My uncle figures the ghost was the dead brother thinking he was his living brother and when the living one finally passed they were re-united and the ghost moved on!
--Corey L.