My Ghost Story

[Diagoras]

Okay, this is going to sound ridiculous, but I don't believe in ghosts, yet I have a distinct memory of a very ghost-like experience. I was very young at the time, and I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I no longer think it was anything supernatural. Basically, I think my memory of what happened has probably been molded and distorted by my immediate interpretation of the event as a ghost, and the years that followed in which I held that to be the explanation for what happened.

I had gotten up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and on my way back to my room I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. There was enough light to tell there was nobody there, but I could clearly hear the footsteps. That creeped me out, and I simply froze. The footsteps climbed to the top of the stairs and then walked down to the hallway to the room where my brother and I slept. I followed the footstep sounds to the window where they stopped.

I have no idea what that experience was, and I suspect I never will. It's kind of weird to be a staunch non-believer in ghosts but to also know what it's like to have a clear memory of such an event. My whole perspective on it changed several years ago when, in my Intro to Psychology class, I was faced with the data on just how infallible our memories are, and how much our memories are distorted by our interpretations more and more as time goes on. It's really quite amazing. I love when science is counter-intuitive.

 

[Reeco]

I had a similar thing some years ago, in the flat I used to live in. I was in bed, which was a futon and low to the ground. I could hear coughing that sounded like it was coming from the shared corridor adjacent to my bedroom, however it wasn't this that freaked me out. I closed my eyes in an attempt to get back to sleep and heard footsteps coming towards me, right there in the bedroom. I opened my eyes and there was nothing there. This happened three or four times - every time I closed my eyes I heard the footsteps. I remember being pretty scared and checking that I was awake - I would look at something and tell myself what it was - the lamp, the curtains, the bedside table. I was totally convinced I was awake. It was weird to say the least.

I was either actually drifting in and out of sleep and having a repeated dream or was asleep the whole time. I don't know which, but I was shaken for a few days either way. I can still remember the whole thing vividly, right down to me pinching myself and thinking that was corny.

 

[Normal Dude]

I think my favorite was watching my closet door completely close by itself.. with no draft of air flow. That was interesting to say the least. It has never done it again.

 

[MG1962]

A house I lived in for a number of years had some very odd events - I am not going to defend them, or attempt to explain, I just put it down to something I dont understand.

Perhaps the most consistent was the faces that used to appear to the children. There were two main focus points for these - the bathroom and their bedroom - Perhaps the oddest was the one they called the face in the wall - The other faces didn't seem to bother them, but the one in the wall terrified them. Unfortunately being so young, it was difficult to for them to vebalise what was happening

We had a regular routine of footsteps, doors opening and voices calling. But unlike your average horror film or ghost story I never felt unsettled or disturbed by whatever was happening.

It was only when we were moving house, the place was being demolished. That I ever experienced anything like fear. My eldest daughter and I were doing one last run to the house (After dark) to pick up some left behind bits and pieces.

When I got to the door, I could hear both the washing machine and dryer going, and a football match on the TV (Odd cause the power was off and house empty)- My daughter point blank refused to go in. It was only then I realised what I had passed of as my imaginaton was being heard by her as well.

So I got in, got out - and I felt this overwhelming sense of hatred as I moved around the house. Once outside my daughter and I literaly ran to the car. Later she said she fully expected the house to fold in on itself similar to the final scene of Poltigeist.

Can I prove any of this, or am I going to defend it? No - Up to that last night I had always dismissed everything as imagination, random events etc etc. But that last night put a lot of the other stuff into focus

 

[Showmeproof]

This reminds me of Sir Frederics Bartlett theory of reconstructive memory. Basically, when we try to remember something, we reconstruct an event out of our own schemas and life experiences. In essence, who knows how good you can remember to back when you were a child and how much of your own schematic knowledge gets in the way.

 

[lister]

When I got to the door, I could hear both the washing machine and dryer going, and a football match on the TV (Odd cause the power was off and house empty)- My daughter point blank refused to go in. It was only then I realised what I had passed of as my imaginaton was being heard by her as well.

Interesting. Did you actually check the telly or the dryer?
I must say our house felt very weird when we moved out. The acoustics due to lack of carpet and furniture, and the unfamiliar empty rooms felt very strange. I would imagine in the dark and pre-fueled by fear it could seem pretty menacing.
(Not attacking your description, just interested)

 

[arthwollipot]

Interesting. I have never experienced anything of the sort.

 

[MG1962]

Interesting. Did you actually check the telly or the dryer?
I must say our house felt very weird when we moved out. The acoustics due to lack of carpet and furniture, and the unfamiliar empty rooms felt very strange. I would imagine in the dark and pre-fueled by fear it could seem pretty menacing.
(Not attacking your description, just interested)

Well they were at the other house by that stage, we were just picking up some mops and ironing board - the sort of detris that gets over looked in the hurley burely of moving.

As I said, I put it down to sheer imagination till I realised my daughter was hearing it as well. I like to think myself a fairly practical person. So I figure, if it is a natural phenomena, science will figure it out. If it is an un-natural phenomena, then science will one day reproduce it - Till then I will leave it in the to do file

 

[albie]

I was chased by somekind of creature once. After I challenged the evil that was lurking in my unused bedroom.

I didn't see it. I just heard it's claws skittering on the lino of my hallway as I ran.

But I was well stoned.

Oh, and I saw a green John Thaw face when I woke up once.

 

[Southwind17]

OK, somebody explain this then:

I once had a dream that I pushed a metal poker into one of the electric heaters that we had at home and the whole thing kind of exploded, as I guess it would, and shocked me. When did I remember the dream? After I'd woken the next morning and gone to the bathroom to have a wash, only to discover black soot on one of my hands! Incidentally, we had no coal burning fires or the like in the house.

 

[Southwind17]

Oh, and I saw a green John Thaw face when I woke up once.

Thank goodness it wasn't Dennis Waterman. Now that would have been scary, stoned or otherwise!

 

[arthwollipot]

OK, somebody explain this then:

I once had a dream that I pushed a metal poker into one of the electric heaters that we had at home and the whole thing kind of exploded, as I guess it would, and shocked me. When did I remember the dream? After I'd woken the next morning and gone to the bathroom to have a wash, only to discover black soot on one of my hands! Incidentally, we had no coal burning fires or the like in the house.

It probably wasn't "soot" per se. It might have been dead skin. I get small black particles on my hands when I rub them together vigorously.

Um, not suggesting that you had been... rubbing yourself... vigorously... in your sleep...

Shutting up now.

 

[Kiosk]

My whole perspective on it changed several years ago when, in my Intro to Psychology class, I was faced with the data on just how infallible our memories are, and how much our memories are distorted by our interpretations more and more as time goes on.

Steady on there - I had a very similar experience only a year ago.

I was briefly seeing a girl with an "open-minded" attitude to woo, who claimed her building was haunted. I just sniggered at her insistence that strange things happened in her flat, especially as the examples she gave were pretty ridiculous.

I was surprised, then, when one night we were lying in bed talking, and heard footsteps outside the door. Sounded like the living room door opening, and footsteps plodding across the hallway, straight past the bedroom door and off towards the kitchen. She froze and got scared, I turned into some kind of crazy paranormal detective, leaping out of bed and opening the door onto the hallway (she had a flatmate who was away, so I assumed they'd just got back - which is why I put my trousers on before going out there). Of course, there was no one there and the flat was empty.

Still not 100% sure what that was about, and her mockery of my attempts to work out a rational explanation were rather irritating. The point is, I can't put it down to memory issues as this was so recent, and I can't say it was an auditory hallucination as we both heard it, and we weren't sleepy. She said this wasn't the first time this had happened.

My best explanation is this: she had a downstairs neighbour who was a nightbird, and often got in from clubs etc at around this time of night. The building where she lived was very old, and a curious shape: oval (buildings with these kind of curved walls, which you can also see on a lot of Underground stations from the same period, are common in this part of London). I suggested that this might have been the woman downstairs coming in and walking across her hallway, but that odd acoustics in the creaky building made it sound closer than it was. This explanation didn't cut much ice with the lady I was with, despite my patient explanation that however weird and improbable a rational explanation might be, it was still more likely than any kind of paranormal one.

Anyway, for the rest of the time I was seeing her, neither of us heard anything like that again. So maybe the ghost stopped bothering, realising that there was a sceptic in the house. After all, I've heard that psychic phenomena responds in a similarly petulant manner to the presence of rational thinkers...

 

[lister]

Still not 100% sure what that was about, and her mockery of my attempts to work out a rational explanation were rather irritating.

Possibly a deliberate wind up in cahoots with her flatmate in response to your scathing attitude to her haunted tales?

 

[EatatJoes]

OK, somebody explain this then:

I once had a dream that I pushed a metal poker into one of the electric heaters that we had at home and the whole thing kind of exploded, as I guess it would, and shocked me. When did I remember the dream? After I'd woken the next morning and gone to the bathroom to have a wash, only to discover black soot on one of my hands! Incidentally, we had no coal burning fires or the like in the house.

This kind of stuff gives me a real hoot. Perhaps you were bitten by an insect, you dreamed up a reason for feeling pain, and reacted by closing your hand onto the insect. You awoke to find dead insect in your palm. You thought of your dream and then deduced that it must be ash.

I find it hilarious that most of us (including myself) assume that we know just about everything that has occurred in our surroundings. This belief can easily explain many ghost and especially poltergeist incidents. "I just know that there was nobody around to do this!" But what they don't know is that there is a hole in one of their cupboards and a squirrel has been running in and out their home for a good three weeks. Just an example, but I think I made my point.

 

[Southwind17]

This kind of stuff gives me a real hoot. Perhaps you were bitten by an insect, you dreamed up a reason for feeling pain, and reacted by closing your hand onto the insect. You awoke to find dead insect in your palm. You thought of your dream and then deduced that it must be ash.

I find it hilarious that most of us (including myself) assume that we know just about everything that has occurred in our surroundings. This belief can easily explain many ghost and especially poltergeist incidents. "I just know that there was nobody around to do this!" But what they don't know is that there is a hole in one of their cupboards and a squirrel has been running in and out their home for a good three weeks. Just an example, but I think I made my point.

You did make your point, and I have to say that I do, indeed, agree with your in-principle logic, but at the same time I also have to say that your 'squashed insect' scenario is hardly less plausible than the myriad of supernatural theories that it seeks to summarily quash. It gives me a similar hoot when somebody, knowing that anything akin to supernatural cannot possibly be the explanation, seeks to explain something away on the merest amount of information. That, to me, suggests either over-scepticism or a most acute case of un-critical thinking!

 

[Soapy Sam]

I had gotten up in the middle of the night...

And there it is, folks. The opening line of how many "ghost " stories.

Two nights ago, I got up in the middle of the night, because something had gone "BUMP!"
(In fact "CRASH!").
Occasionally I switch the washing machine on before retiring to bed, because the power tariff is lower at night. If the load is imbalanced (say a big bath towel), once in a while the machine jumps a bit as the spin cycle starts. This sounds like the USMC invaded my kitchen .

So I woke, after about twenty minutes sleep and I wandered, dazedly , to the kitchen. Washing machine was stable, in dry cycle. Back to bed. Half way there, I had this wierd feeling that something was wrong and rather spookily scary. Dreamlike. Something was wrong , but I couldn't tell what.
Realising I was only half awake, I went back to bed and went straight to sleep.

In the morning, I found a "temporary" bookshelf I had put up in the spare room had collapsed, bringing two others down and covering the floor with a library landslide. (With a laptop in the middle of it).


There was never a problem with the washing machine.

Here's a fact, which is oddly hard to accept, which involves no over-scepticism (Southwind's point is a good one), yet which goes far to explain any "ghost" story that starts "I got up in the middle of the night". YOU ARE NOT AWAKE. Your testimony is worthless. You think you can tell a ghost from a warthog, but you can't tell a shelf from a spin dryer.

 

[EatatJoes]

You did make your point, and I have to say that I do, indeed, agree with your in-principle logic, but at the same time I also have to say that your 'squashed insect' scenario is hardly less plausible than the myriad of supernatural theories that it seeks to summarily quash. It gives me a similar hoot when somebody, knowing that anything akin to supernatural cannot possibly be the explanation, seeks to explain something away on the merest amount of information. That, to me, suggests either over-scepticism or a most acute case of un-critical thinking!

I simply gave a simple and logical explanation to your incident. I could up with a few more, but I don't want to. To jump to "it must be paranormal" is a severe case of un-critical thinking. In fact, to not try to find a "natural" explanation for something odd is intellectually lazy. It's easy to say "it was a ghost or god". That doesn't require any critical analyst. It's a stock phrase for the intellectually challenged.

 

[Southwind17]

I simply gave a simple and logical explanation to your incident. I could up with a few more, but I don't want to. To jump to "it must be paranormal" is a severe case of un-critical thinking. In fact, to not try to find a "natural" explanation for something odd is intellectually lazy. It's easy to say "it was a ghost or god". That doesn't require any critical analyst. It's a stock phrase for the intellectually challenged.

Yes, you did, 'simple' being the operative word, and I didn't see a great deal of 'logic' there. And who, exactly, has suggested paranormal activity?! Has anybody suggested a ghost or god?! It seems that it is you who has jumped to: "somebody must be suggesting paranormal activity, therefore I must immediately offer an 'explanation'. No matter that I've only got scant information to go on, my priority must be to discount paranormal activity at all cost with whatever 'explanation' springs to mind." Now that's intellectual laziness! Everything seemingly unexplainable can be 'explained' by adopting that approach. I posted a description of a UFO 'sighting' some time ago, and it followed the same pattern. The lengths that some people went to to offer what they claimed to be 'plausibe' explanations was laughable. The memory fallibility explanation turned out to be the most likely in the end.

Asking a few more questions to obtian the facts, like every good scientist or investigator would, to my mind seems like a logical and robust approach!