My various experiences
Hi. I'm 34, and I've always believed in ghosts. I've had a few experiences in my life, few of them particularly scary to me, but significant.
There were some fairly minor things in childhood, and some of them can be explained away by my mother not leaving my stuff alone as she always claimed, because nothing ever moved while I was there, only while I was gone.
Most people I know put this down to self-fulfilling prophecy, and I can't really disagree, but it was still creepy. When I was twelve, I was at a sleepover with some friends (it was actually my entire girl scout troop, but we were all friends and it was a pretty small troop). We did a bunch of the typical spooky stuff fairly early in the night, trying the bloody Mary in the mirror thing and stuff like that, so we were already pretty primed to be freaked out when the Ouija board came out. It was the first and only time I ever used one. We got a few fairly innocuous answers, but we quit (and I doubt any of us slept all night) when my friend Nicole asked a question about her death. The reply was that she'd be dead before her seventeenth birthday. She died three days before she turned seventeen. In all fairness, she was seriously freaked out by this, and I think she kind of decided that if she wasn't going to live long, then school and stuff didn't matter, she should try to pack a lot of life in. She died when she wrecked her car. Alcohol was involved.
In high school, a group of us decided to have a seance. We believed that we made contact with the spirit of a little girl. She gave us a lot of details about her life and how she died, and the older woman who was with her. She was pretty fixated on the house where she died. I probably would have dismissed this experience except the more this went on the paler the skeptic of the group got. She had been in the room, but not a part of the seance. When it was over she told us that the story matched that of her great-aunt's life (not local, the aunt had actually lived in Canada, and we were in Kansas, USA). She'd died as a little girl along with her aunt at the aunt's house. My friend had been to the house and she said it was exactly as described. I've never been able to explain it, and have never tried to have a seance again.
I had a lot of experiences in college. We were all pretty certain the dorm room of one of the girls on the floor was haunted. There are a lot of things that made us thing so. This was the honors dorm. We all had private rooms. There were times when we knew Stacy was gone, had even watched her leave, but we could hear someone walking around in her room. One weekend when she had gone home, I heard people talking in her room, but I could never quite make out what they were saying. She also had two toys in her room. One was a Pikachu that when you squeezed it, it's cheeks would light up and it would make a sound. The other was a magnet on her mini-fridge that if you pushed it would giggle. Again, at times when we knew the room was empty, both of those would make their noises, sometimes repeatedly. I've used both of them, and both take a significant amount of pressure to set off the sound. We could be sitting in her room, and all of a sudden the television would turn itself on, and at least once her radio not only turned on, but the station changed. It never felt ominous, but there was just so much stuff that happened there.
Additionally, a friend and I were in the common lounge one night, and I will add the disclaimer that we had been up for about 22 hours at this point, when we heard a noise. I remember looking up and there was a girl I'd never seen before peeking around the corner. My friend said something to her, something simple like, "hello," and she turned around and walked away. We got up and followed her, because there were only 14 people on our floor and it was weird to have someone be there that didn't belong. We were maybe five seconds behind her. Everything echoed at night when the halls were empty, and we never heard a door open or close, but by the time we made it around the corner she was just gone. the stairwell was on that side, and we went there, again we couldn't have been more than five seconds behind. One of us went up and the other went down, but we never saw her or heard a door open anywhere. I never saw the girl again.
It was popular belief that the library was haunted, but I don't think I believe it. There is a particular floor in the stacks that has flickery lights and cold spots (possibly attributed to the lack of heat given off by the lights that the rest of the stacks have), and some people have reported hearing footsteps there, but I never did. The place just doesn't feel right, though. I can't quite explain that other than to say that there are certain places that just feel sacred to me and other places that feel, I guess, profane. It's like there's been so much bad that happens there that it can never quite get washed out. I hated being in the library, I just never felt any kind of entity. If anyone is familiar with it, this was at Emporia State University in Kansas, which was Kansas State Teacher's College before it was ESU. At that time, the library acquired an incredibly large occult collection. They still had the books when I was there. I had to wonder just why teachers needed a vast reference library on demonology.
As an adult, I live in a home with my parents and until her death, my grandmother. The house belonged to my uncle. He left it to Mom when he died on the condition that she take care of his cat and dog. I was acting as a full-time caregiver to my grandmother at the time, and the easy thing was for all of us to just live together. We have always had problems with things not being where we left them, and lights being on that we knew we turned off, that kind of thing, but always just attributed it to being one of the other people in the house. Then something really strange started happening. Mom and I would go out to run errands, and when we got back the water in the bathroom sink would be running. Grandma was left there alone while we were gone, and we kept telling her that she had to stop leaving the water on. Our water bill more than tripled in the couple of months this was going on. She kept insisting that she hadn't turned the water on, usually that she hadn't even been out of her chair the whole time we were gone. We didn't believe her. Then one day, we were sitting at home. We could all see the other two (my dad was at work), when we heard the water come on in the bathroom. A handyman friend told us there was no way for it to come on by itself because of type of faucet we have, and that someone must have left it on and we just didn't notice until later, but we heard the faucet squeak and the water start running. Mom decided that it was my uncle, who had been something of a practical joker, playing tricks on us. She said she felt ridiculous, but the next time it happened when she went to turn it off, she said in a very firm voice, "Now, Uncle Dale, running the water costs a lot of money. If you keep doing it, I won't be able to afford to buy dog food for lady." It never happened again.
There were some fairly minor things in childhood, and some of them can be explained away by my mother not leaving my stuff alone as she always claimed, because nothing ever moved while I was there, only while I was gone.
Most people I know put this down to self-fulfilling prophecy, and I can't really disagree, but it was still creepy. When I was twelve, I was at a sleepover with some friends (it was actually my entire girl scout troop, but we were all friends and it was a pretty small troop). We did a bunch of the typical spooky stuff fairly early in the night, trying the bloody Mary in the mirror thing and stuff like that, so we were already pretty primed to be freaked out when the Ouija board came out. It was the first and only time I ever used one. We got a few fairly innocuous answers, but we quit (and I doubt any of us slept all night) when my friend Nicole asked a question about her death. The reply was that she'd be dead before her seventeenth birthday. She died three days before she turned seventeen. In all fairness, she was seriously freaked out by this, and I think she kind of decided that if she wasn't going to live long, then school and stuff didn't matter, she should try to pack a lot of life in. She died when she wrecked her car. Alcohol was involved.
In high school, a group of us decided to have a seance. We believed that we made contact with the spirit of a little girl. She gave us a lot of details about her life and how she died, and the older woman who was with her. She was pretty fixated on the house where she died. I probably would have dismissed this experience except the more this went on the paler the skeptic of the group got. She had been in the room, but not a part of the seance. When it was over she told us that the story matched that of her great-aunt's life (not local, the aunt had actually lived in Canada, and we were in Kansas, USA). She'd died as a little girl along with her aunt at the aunt's house. My friend had been to the house and she said it was exactly as described. I've never been able to explain it, and have never tried to have a seance again.
I had a lot of experiences in college. We were all pretty certain the dorm room of one of the girls on the floor was haunted. There are a lot of things that made us thing so. This was the honors dorm. We all had private rooms. There were times when we knew Stacy was gone, had even watched her leave, but we could hear someone walking around in her room. One weekend when she had gone home, I heard people talking in her room, but I could never quite make out what they were saying. She also had two toys in her room. One was a Pikachu that when you squeezed it, it's cheeks would light up and it would make a sound. The other was a magnet on her mini-fridge that if you pushed it would giggle. Again, at times when we knew the room was empty, both of those would make their noises, sometimes repeatedly. I've used both of them, and both take a significant amount of pressure to set off the sound. We could be sitting in her room, and all of a sudden the television would turn itself on, and at least once her radio not only turned on, but the station changed. It never felt ominous, but there was just so much stuff that happened there.
Additionally, a friend and I were in the common lounge one night, and I will add the disclaimer that we had been up for about 22 hours at this point, when we heard a noise. I remember looking up and there was a girl I'd never seen before peeking around the corner. My friend said something to her, something simple like, "hello," and she turned around and walked away. We got up and followed her, because there were only 14 people on our floor and it was weird to have someone be there that didn't belong. We were maybe five seconds behind her. Everything echoed at night when the halls were empty, and we never heard a door open or close, but by the time we made it around the corner she was just gone. the stairwell was on that side, and we went there, again we couldn't have been more than five seconds behind. One of us went up and the other went down, but we never saw her or heard a door open anywhere. I never saw the girl again.
It was popular belief that the library was haunted, but I don't think I believe it. There is a particular floor in the stacks that has flickery lights and cold spots (possibly attributed to the lack of heat given off by the lights that the rest of the stacks have), and some people have reported hearing footsteps there, but I never did. The place just doesn't feel right, though. I can't quite explain that other than to say that there are certain places that just feel sacred to me and other places that feel, I guess, profane. It's like there's been so much bad that happens there that it can never quite get washed out. I hated being in the library, I just never felt any kind of entity. If anyone is familiar with it, this was at Emporia State University in Kansas, which was Kansas State Teacher's College before it was ESU. At that time, the library acquired an incredibly large occult collection. They still had the books when I was there. I had to wonder just why teachers needed a vast reference library on demonology.
As an adult, I live in a home with my parents and until her death, my grandmother. The house belonged to my uncle. He left it to Mom when he died on the condition that she take care of his cat and dog. I was acting as a full-time caregiver to my grandmother at the time, and the easy thing was for all of us to just live together. We have always had problems with things not being where we left them, and lights being on that we knew we turned off, that kind of thing, but always just attributed it to being one of the other people in the house. Then something really strange started happening. Mom and I would go out to run errands, and when we got back the water in the bathroom sink would be running. Grandma was left there alone while we were gone, and we kept telling her that she had to stop leaving the water on. Our water bill more than tripled in the couple of months this was going on. She kept insisting that she hadn't turned the water on, usually that she hadn't even been out of her chair the whole time we were gone. We didn't believe her. Then one day, we were sitting at home. We could all see the other two (my dad was at work), when we heard the water come on in the bathroom. A handyman friend told us there was no way for it to come on by itself because of type of faucet we have, and that someone must have left it on and we just didn't notice until later, but we heard the faucet squeak and the water start running. Mom decided that it was my uncle, who had been something of a practical joker, playing tricks on us. She said she felt ridiculous, but the next time it happened when she went to turn it off, she said in a very firm voice, "Now, Uncle Dale, running the water costs a lot of money. If you keep doing it, I won't be able to afford to buy dog food for lady." It never happened again.