my true ghost story

[ungoliant]

first, i must tell you that i am an avowed skeptic who does not believe in ghosts. i do have a story to tell about some strange phenomena i encountered about 18 years ago.

my father died while we were on vacation in sicily. we were staying at my family beach house which has two stories, tile floors and high ceilings. the occupants of the house had been myself (16 yrs), my father, my brother (10 yrs), my sister (14 yrs), my aunt and my uncle.

my father had been in the habit of waking up in the middle of the night, putting on his slippers, shuffling downstairs to the kitchen and getting a glass of water, then returning to bed. he did this most nights.

on the night after he died, i was sleeping in the bedroom he used to share with my brother, to keep my brother company. i had just turned out the lights when i heard shuffling footsteps coming clearly down the hall.

i sat up in bed, thinking it was my uncle coming to console us or somesuch, my brother had been very upset all day and my uncle was a priest. also, he had the same shuffling gait as my father.

much to my surprise and terror, when the footsteps reached the doorway no one was there! it was a fully moonlit night, the windows were open all over the floor because it was hot, i could see the hallway quite clearly. the footsteps continued into the living room and proceeded to walk in circles for an hour or so then just disappeared.

this continued for the remaining two weeks we stayed in sicily. both my brother and sister heard the same thing every night. a few times i ventured out into the hall to find out what the heck it was, because i don't believe in ghosts. but when i would get up the steps would cease.

many ghost stories sprang up about my house in town, and many people have claimed to have heard or witness things. i cannot verify anyone else's experience but my own.

i do not believe that the dead still walk. i try and steer clear of woo in all its forms.

but i DID have this experience. i am not sure what it was, and i wish i could have it again so i could investigate it further.

but in the meantime i just classify it as something mysterious that happened to me.

btw, my brother and sister are convinced it was my father's ghost and get incensed at me when i say otherwise. "don't you believe your own ears?" they say.

i do. i know i heard footsteps. but i can't explain what i heard. that's alot different from thinking i heard a ghost.

 

[Starrman]

i was sleeping in the bedroom

Mystery solved. Are you sure you were completely awake - 18 years after the fact?

http://www.skepdic.com/hypnagogic.html

http://www.skepdic.com/hypnopompic.html

 

[ungoliant]

oh, yes, i am sure. i had just turned out the lights the first time. and the rest of the two weeks i was too stimulated to sleep right away. these sounds began as soon as the lights went out. i was most definitely awake.

when i said "i was sleeping" i meant i was staying in the room to sleep, not that i was actually asleep at that moment. in fact, i had just turned out the lights and was adjusting my pillows when i first heard the footsteps.

 

[aargh57]

I guess this is a little bit of a dig but: Why didn't you get a tape recorder or something if you kept hearing it for 2 weeks?

 

[ungoliant]

i wish i had thought of that. i really wish i could go back and investigate it proper so i could have more questions answered nowadays. but if wishes were fishes...

i was young, 16. i hadn't had enough experience to question myself as much as now. i hadn't seen any ghost hunting shows like now. i had no idea how to handle it except to go look.

not that i believe it was a ghost, or that ghosts exist, but after the idea of tape recording, like EVPs and such, is introduced to you, you will think of it when you hear strange sounds and you need to record them for further analysis. i guess i hadn't been introduced to any serious scientific investigation techniques yet.

maybe also i was a little frightened. it took alot to screw myself up in order to go out into the hallway and look for what the source was.

 

[Starrman]

Could the footsteps have been, in fact, your uncle's - perhaps carried to sound like they were in the hallway by a vent that connected to the other floor?

 

[Hellbound]

Another thought (admittedly a stretch, but not as much of one as ghosts), was the house on a slab foundation or was there a crawlspace underneath? Is there a possibility that what you heard as shuffling footsteps may have been an animal of some sort under the house? Stray cats, racoons, rats, mice, skunks, snakes, etc? Just a thought, but an animal rummaging around under a house could sound a lot like shuffling footsteps. Might expalin why they'd stop when you came out, as well...the animal heard you walking and froze.

Of course, if you're on the second floor or it's a solid foundation then this theory is a little farther fetched than ghosts (or we've discovered a concrete burrowing species ).

Although, in theory, something on the roof or in the attic could be misinterpreted as to location.

 

[ungoliant]

Could the footsteps have been, in fact, your uncle's - perhaps carried to sound like they were in the hallway by a vent that connected to the other floor?

i have wondered if in fact it was an echo of sound i heard.

i can say i clearly heard the steps move along the hallway and then go in circles in the living room.

but there were no vents or crawlspaces in the house. very solid, basic sicilian construction from the 60s. no housing codes there .

also, my uncle did not spend every night in the house. i can say for sure that he spent saturdays at his apartment in town due to his having to say mass early sunday morning at the convent in town. and the steps were every night, no exceptions.

but keep going, guys. i need some more brains working on this. to the limited extent that we can investigate an 18 year old mystery half a world away.

 

[ungoliant]

Another thought (admittedly a stretch, but not as much of one as ghosts), was the house on a slab foundation or was there a crawlspace underneath? Is there a possibility that what you heard as shuffling footsteps may have been an animal of some sort under the house? Stray cats, racoons, rats, mice, skunks, snakes, etc? Just a thought, but an animal rummaging around under a house could sound a lot like shuffling footsteps. Might expalin why they'd stop when you came out, as well...the animal heard you walking and froze.

Of course, if you're on the second floor or it's a solid foundation then this theory is a little farther fetched than ghosts (or we've discovered a concrete burrowing species ).

Although, in theory, something on the roof or in the attic could be misinterpreted as to location.

i was, in fact, on the second floor for all but the last night. i heard the steps on the second floor, as did my brother, every night of those last two weeks.

my sister heard them on the first floor, where her bedroom was, but not every night.

the last night, i slept on the first floor and did not hear them.

but animals is one theory i have often considered. though we never found any other evidence such as footprints or spoor.

and it sounded enough like my dad's shuffling gait that i assumed, quite convinced, that i was hearing my uncle walking. for what that's worth.

 

[chillzero]

I have an idea based on what happened to me when I was a kid.
I used to wake up convinced I could hear someone shuffling up the path under my window. It used to really freak me out. What was worse, was every time I lifted my head to listen harder, the footsteps stopped. When I lay down again it wasn't long until they started again.

Now that used to really freak me out, and I thought someone was after me. I was beginning to entertain thought sof the bogeyman being real, and so on.

After some time it stopped, and didn't happen again.

Until, I got new pillows one time - and they were harder than before. When I lay on them I could just hear the pulse from just behind my ear because of the way the pressure was on my skull. It sounded like shuffling footsteps - like on snow or something. When I lifted my head, it stopped. This time someone else was in the room, so when I asked if they could hear the steps, they said no. Then I had to think harder about what it might be.

Perhaps this is what happened - you were in unfamiliar surroundings - different pillows and beds than usual, and also in a more emotional state than usual.

 

[fishbait]

we were on vacation in sicily......beach house which has two stories....tile floors and high ceilings..... the windows were open all over the floor because it was hot,

Sounds to me like the house absorbed a lot of heat in the Sicilian beach sun during the day and made strange sounds as the tile floors cooled and contracted at a different rate from the framing due to the on-shore night breeze through the open windows.

 

[Soapy Sam]

When alone in my parental home in my early teens, I was spooked by what I took to be movement upstairs. After listening carefully, I realised it was vibration due to heavy vehicles hitting a pothole on the main road about 40-50 metres away.
The ground vibration actually did cause the windows upstairs to vibrate slightly. Normally there was enough background noise to swamp it.

It can be very hard to tell where sounds originate in a building.

I wonder- the footsteps started when the lights went out. Did they stop again if a light went on?

 

[ungoliant]

Perhaps this is what happened - you were in unfamiliar surroundings - different pillows and beds than usual, and also in a more emotional state than usual. [/B]

well, i was sitting up the first time i heard them. also, i was not the only one, my bro and sis both heard them.

the surroundings were not quite unfamiliar, i have stayed at that housed many months throughout my childhood. it's pretty much my family house and we all have lived there at one time or another.

definitely in a more emotional state at that time. my dad had just died.

but i was in no way hysterical. my bro was for sure. but me and my sis were taking it quite well. he had been sick for years and it was no surprise. in fact, it was a surprise that he lasted so long, to tell the truth.

maybe our emotions or our subconscious at work? but that seems like such a cop out...

 

[ungoliant]

Sounds to me like the house absorbed a lot of heat in the Sicilian beach sun during the day and made strange sounds as the tile floors cooled and contracted at a different rate from the framing due to the on-shore night breeze through the open windows.

good possibility. but why did we never notice it before? i mean we had lived there many times, for months at a time. we had never noticed anything similar. my family has lived there since the 60s when we built it and there has never been anything like that reported before or after. nor have i ever heard anything like it before or after.

 

[ungoliant]

When alone in my parental home in my early teens, I was spooked by what I took to be movement upstairs. After listening carefully, I realised it was vibration due to heavy vehicles hitting a pothole on the main road about 40-50 metres away.
The ground vibration actually did cause the windows upstairs to vibrate slightly. Normally there was enough background noise to swamp it.

It can be very hard to tell where sounds originate in a building.

I wonder- the footsteps started when the lights went out. Did they stop again if a light went on?

the lights had no affect on the steps. usually, when i would get up and start moving towards the switch they would suddenly stop. i never made it to the switch before they stopped.

i truly do not believe the dead walk the earth and i do not for a second suggest this was an actual haunting.

my whole family, many of my friends, and indeed most of my small town believe my house is quite haunted and tell all sorts of stories about this house.

all i know is what i experienced. since then, since my siblings and i experienced these sounds, the house has become a full blown local legend. there was no stories or anything like that before we had this experience.

as the only skeptic in this whole situation, i have tried for years to figure out what it was. i am being totally honest with you all about the facts. i am not trying to bring this to the conclusion that this was any sort of a ghost.

but i have a very clear memory of it, and have no idea what it was.

keep up with the help please! as i said, i am the only one who doesn't believe the woo about this.

 

[Nucular]

my father had been in the habit of waking up in the middle of the night, putting on his slippers, shuffling downstairs to the kitchen and getting a glass of water, then returning to bed. he did this most nights.

Another wild stab in the dark - do you know he did this because you heard his shuffling footsteps every night? Could the noise have had another source all along, but you assumed it was your dad because it sounded like shuffling footsteps?

 

[Soapy Sam]

(snip)...the lights had no affect on the steps. usually, when i would get up and start moving towards the switch they would suddenly stop. i never made it to the switch before they stopped.

I wonder how accurate your recall is after all this time?

Note that first you say "usually the steps would stop..", but then add " I never made it to the switch before they stopped." ( My emphasis.)

There is some inconsistency here.

Perhaps your weight on the floorboards restricted the actual cause of the sound, which may have been thermal contraction?

One reason you heard the sound after the death may have been the same reason I heard the vibration when alone in the house- simply that it was quieter than usual. The usual routine was broken.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

good possibility. but why did we never notice it before? i

One explanation could be that normally the house was full of noise and that you rarely spent much time lying awake (or sitting quietly). Given the circumstances I would be very surprised if the house was not a whole lot quieter than normal and that you and your siblings were not sleeping terribly well. Therefore you were in a position to hear sounds that you would not normally notice due to there being less background noise to drown them out and a longer period when you would be aware of them.

 

[Minkster]

Why do most living people wander around during the day and sleep at night, and yet most dead people never appear during the day and spend all night pacing around?

Its something I never understood

 

[roitrieux]

Freud?

I grew up in a little rural farming town in the south (US). As I read this thread, about all I can think of is how most kids I knew growing up would probably (still to this day) just say "wow!" if this story where relayed to them, believing every word. I suppose this is true of everywhere though.

I understand that ungoliant is seeking resolve for this mystery, but the bottom line is the best you could ever hope for is a logical explanation, 18 years after the fact. Based on perfectly obvious sound origins (that may not be so obvious at first) as I'm sure you've experienced throughout life, the closest thing you can imagine is as close as you're going to get. I swear I'm not trying to be a dick, but the way a hormonal 16 year old, and the way a logical 34 year old relate to the world around them are two different ideas. There are a variety of bazaar incidents that occurred in my youth that don't seem so bazaar to me now in my 40's. By basing my life's experience and applying those resolves to the bazaar stuff that happened 20+ years ago (in as much as I can accurately remember them mind you) I come to a satisfactory resolve.

We all here at JREF could offer you a list of perfectly logical explanations, but we were not there (18 years ago). I'm sure in your life there are plenty of odd noises that you identified instantly so you forgot about them equally as instantly. Unless you are willing to go back to this house and "do the math" this is the best you can expect.

And now for you enjoyment, I offer you this shot of Jenna and Barbara Bush wrestling at some silver-spoon beer bash...