A big THANKS to all who responded to our call for ghost stories. We received many great submissions and have posted several below:

Still Watching Over Me

My father died in 1987 on my birthday and the last thing he told me was that he would always be watching me and my mom. Well, soon after he passed me and my mom started noticing things were moved. We packed up his things and sealed the box then went to dinner. Nobody else was in the house. When we came back to put the boxes away, the box was open and his stuff was right back in the place he had them before he died. I have a few of his things at my house now 20 years later. I went to move things when I moved and again the box was opened and his things were right back in the same place I had put them. All i can say from this is that my father is still watching over me and letting me know.

--Peter Mattice

pmattice@nycap.rr.com

Child Ghost

In 1994, my sister moved to her new home (house was 80 yrs old). During the first month of occupancy, they remodeled this house which apparently stirred up spirits. One spirit was a boy who was seen by my then-4-yr-old nephew. One day when a real estate appraiser was visiting, both my sister and the appraiser heard the steps of a child wearing hard soled shoes running down the hallway. At first, the appraiser thought she had awaken my nephew but after learning my nephew was not home at the time, the appraiser literally ran out the door in a panic.

Another incident involving this child ghost occurred one night when my sister heard what she thought were her two boys playing with toys in the closet. As she quietly approached the closet, she heard the sound of a toy being played, then stopped, and a child's voice say "Shhh! She's coming!" which infuriated my sister because she thought her two boys were up in the middle of the night playing with their toys. She quickly opened the door ready to yell at them but upon opening the door, she saw no one in there! Then she went to the boys room only to find them sound asleep.

In another incident, while my nephew was taking a nap, my sister was in the master bedroom nearby and heard a man's voice gently telling my nephew to lay down and go to sleep while my nephew was talking to this man about a toy he wanted off the shelf. Startled by the thought that a burglar was in her son's bedroom, she ran into the bedroom ready to take on whoever was in her house but when she arrived at the doorway, no one but my nephew was there. She yelled at him asking whom he was just talking to, and he said "E.T." with "glowing eyes".

They no longer reside there, but these and other events occurred for a period of a month or so, then died down. My nephew, now 14 yrs old, does not remember any of this.

--Big Nate

Malevolent Spirit

I moved into an older home in a small town in Colorado. Everything was great until I started moving furniture in the house. At night I would awaken to the fact that my head was pinned down and a raspy voice was trying to talk to me. My cat was being attacked, and thrown by an unseen force. The floor would shake violently, and objects would fly across the room. My dog whom was accustomed to living out of doors with a dog house would not stay outside and would not stay inside the house alone. If anyone was to visit and bring their dog along, it would try to dig its way out of the yad or jump through closed windows to get out of the yard. I and my wife became so plagued with terrible incidents in the day and night, I began to record all night time activities with a micro cassette recorder. I have captured many noises both indenfinable and not. I have experimented with photography but have not captured any more than cloudy type images.

Whatever resides in the house, has pushed people, locked doors, broke numerous items, tried to kill all animals that live in the yard and house, has a very strong effect on electronic items. People who do not believe, have came to visit only to leave and never return. I did not believe in the paranormal until after the first time I was pinned down to my couch by whatever was or is in the house. I not only heard it, but saw it and witnessed it pass through wall and door. I have since moved from the house, but it remains empty to this day. I have taken a few people into the house since I left, for them to form there own opinion, all of which I know wouldn't return even to retrieve a diamond.

--Bob S.

Ouija Board Adventure

Back in 1995 I was living in a small town outside of Sarnia in Ontario, Canada. Anyway, three friends and I were renting my one friend's mum's old house. We were convinced the place was haunted (I'd say the house was about eighty years old, give or take.) Example: we'd all be sitting in the living room and hear footsteps upstairs (nobody was upstairs at the time.) Those kinds of things. David, my one roomie, woke up in the middle of the night one night absolutely certain someone was standing at the foot of his bed-everyone in the house was dead to the world, so to speak, okay? So one night, all of us were talking over this stuff with another friend, Brett, who decided to bring over his Ouija board, which he'd picked up at an occult store in Toronto (this was no Parker Brothers board; it was old!) Well...none of us had anything but the most rudimentary idea how to use a Ouija board, so, after a few minutes of messing around, trying to contact the spirit of Jimi Hendrix, and so on, we got down to brass tacks. Brett, who had the most knowledge, basically took charge and we defintely succeeded at conjuring up some sort of spirit. After a few routine "yes" and "no" questions -"Have you been dead twenty years or more?", and so on, David asked, "Have you ever lived in this house?" And the candles we had lit blew out. Well...Dave bolted up from the chair claiming that the planchette had gotten "too hot to touch." Brett took over, and indeed found the thing warm. Nobody else wanted to even touch the board, so he took over...and over the course of his interrogating this spirit, was able to discern that, back in 1946, there had been a domestic murder/suicide in the house. The husband -our Ouija spirit- had killed (stabbed, as I recall) his wife in the backyard and then went upstairs and did himself in in the master bedroom, which was Dave's in 1995. Anyway, there are basically two morals to the story: a few days after our Ouija adventure, Danny, whose mum owned the house, brought up all this stuff. When he mentioned the murder in '46, his mum just said, "How'd you find out about that?" And I have not touched an Ouija board since!

--John Russell

Japanese Ghost

I've lived in Japan now for over 12 years and I can tell you that Japan is full of interesting ghost stories, many of which I have collected over the years. Every summer, during Obon (Japan's equivalent of Halloween), I make a point of asking my students to share their stories as part of my English classes. Just recently I gave the assignment to one of my English classes at Waseda University and received the following most interesting story: The mother of one of my students had a disturbing, recurring dream. She dreamed that her late father was standing next to her futon weeping uncontrollably. When she asked what was wrong he wouldn't answer. The woman said that he was dressed in his white burial shroud, and looked exactly as he did in life, except that he had no legs--a traditional characteristic of Japanese ghosts. After a week of these dreams, the woman attempted to rise up and touch her father. "Don't come here!" He told her. "I don't want you here!" The woman found the harsh language that her father used odd indeed. In the final dream, the father reached down and touched his daughter on the breast and disappeared. When the woman woke up she felt that the dreams and her father's touch had some special significance. Later that day she went to the hospital and had her breasts examined and the doctor found a tiny cancer. The doctor was astonished because the cancer was so small no one would have noticed it except for another specialist. The woman had an operation and is now perfectly healthy. She thinks, or so her son told the class, that her father did not want her to go to "Annoyo"--the other world, or the land of the dead--where he was. That's why he told her not to come near him, and touched her breast. The incident happened about ten years ago, and is told by the family every year at Obon.

--Jesse Glass

An Entity Attack

This happened on 2 separate nights. I was sleeping soundly in my bed at home. On the first night I was awakened from a sound sleep by a strong COLD hand and arm grabbing me near the middle of my arm. I shot awake, and jumped up onto my knees, dragging my arm from the grasp of the unknown hand. I then immediately searched the bed, quickly and desperately, to find absolutely nothing was there with me. My arm was tingling strangely ... it was cold and stinging but only in the middle near the elbow where the hand had grabbed me. I have a tendency to sleep on my side, often putting one or the other arm asleep, and I am very familiar with that feeling, and this was completely different. Much more localized. Then a few days later I was sleeping in the same bed, but this time my girlfriend was sleeping there next to me. I am prone to having sleep paralysis, and this night it happened to me, but this time I was attacked... and it felt like a real attack, I have had a lot of strange things happen to me in dreams, but this felt different, very real. It started out with me in sleep paralysis. I was starting to try to work myself out of it as I have learned to do, but suddenly something crawled on top of me. It was the sized of a 30 lb. dog, green and sort of iridescently glowing. It seemed to be trying to dig a hole in my chest, much the way a dog would dig in the yard... it was as if it were trying to crawl inside me. I panicked as you might expect, and started doing everything I could to make noise. Luckily my girlfriend heard me, and shook me awake. And it took a lot for her to wake me. Usually if I have sleep paralysis and I manage to make some noise, all she has to do is call my name and I will snap awake, but this time it took a lot of shaking for her to snap me out of it. The strangest part of it all is that I have been hooked recently on Dead Like Me, ... and I would swear that the Gravelings are nearly exactly modeled after what tried to climb into me that night ... the only difference being the color... otherwise their look is perfect, their movements are perfect, even the way they stand is perfect - it was enough to really creep me out.... After the second occurrence, we consulted a friend who knows about clearing people and buildings, and cleared both the room and ourselves, and never again had any problem with that sort of thing. And not only that, but the general feeling in the room was greatly improved.

--Chad

Becky

What I am about to tell you is an absolutely true story. It happened to me back in 1969 and made a believer out of me concerning ghosts and their existence.

I was attending Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY and had moved into a room in a house on Henrietta Road specifically because the house was supposed to be haunted by a ghost.there was a cold spot on the third step going upstairs where a former tenant had fallen to her death from the upper landing.this was documented.lights would turn on as you sat there in the living room and the shower upstairs would turn on frequently when no one was up there!

One night as a group of six was in the living room messing with a Ouija board, I decided i would once and for all try to see if this ghost stuff was real. I went upstairs and got a ladder from a back closet and went into the attic where this dead woman was supposed to have played as a child. She was developmentally challenged and apparently her parents had been ashamed of her and kept her upstairs for most of her life. We had even found old doll clothes stuck under floor boards up there.

I went over and sat at the top of an old laundry chute that went from the attic to the basement two stories below. The ghost was supposed to haunt the chute as well as the house. I turned off the light and sat in darkness and thought about speaking to "Becky", the ghost's name. I swear to you that I then saw a transparent blue filmy light start at the bottom of the shaft and come up to where i was sitting. It stayed right in the middle of the shaft, like a fog. I was very concerned for my sanity to say the least.

As there was a board across the shaft, I took out my pocket watch and put it on the board thinking "O.K. Becky, do you want to play?" the blue light engulfed the watch for about thirty seconds. At this point, I was at my limit of experimentation and switched on the light and went to go down through the attic door. This door was a hinged door that was leaning back at a sixty degree angle. As i went through it onto the Ladder the door came swiftly down on both my hands and cut both my knuckles. They were bleeding.

I was now scared to say the least but tried to remain calm. I went downstairs to the living room and all the people who where originally there were still there and still working the ouija board. I then said to them, "Why don't you see if you can contact the ghost in the house?" they began to call for "Becky". The board then spells out "What do you want". I then say "If you are real and can talk with us, tell Everybody what just happened". The board started to spell out "Tic Toc Tic Toc Tic Toc Ha Ha Ha Ha" and then the planchette went flying off the board and hit the wall about twelve feet away. I am now and forever will be a believer!!!

--Bruce Randall

bruce randall@hotmail.com