What's your most memorable personal paranormal experience?
I was at a gathering over the weekend with some other people who are interested in the metaphysical and paranormal. As we sat around, drinking margaritas and nibbling tortilla chips and salsa, the discussion turned to odd experiences (anything utilizing the word "odd" is bound to be a personal favorite!). I always appreciate the opportunity to be reminded that consensus reality is an illusion and the universe is much more amazing and strange than we usually allow.
Speaking of "odd," has anyone seen that bizarre show "Dexter?" It's a Showtime production being re-run on network TV, Sunday evenings. Very unusual. The hero is a serial killer.
Anyway, somewhere between margarita #2 and #3, I shared an unusual experience from my eccentric life. I was 20 years old, working as a singer in a rock and roll band in Detroit. The entire band had rented an old house in a questionable -- but historically fascinating -- part of the city. The house was clearly haunted. (I'm the one who made the decision to rent the house. The moment I walked inside with the owner, I knew it already had several inhabitants. Ghosts were an everyday occurrence in my childhood.) I was sharing a bed with the drummer -- who would soon be my first husband and the sperm donor -- er, father -- of my darling son. The drummer's father had died when my bedmate was a young child and I'd seen photos of his dad (very Antonio Banderas-ish). Meanwhile -- the house had a basement with a locked entrance. Bwwwwaaaaa. You know I had to find a way down there. I had the guys in the band remove the door by its hinges and we all crept down the dilapidated staircase. (Cue the scary music.) It was very creepy and dark down there. The entire basement was filled with discarded, ancient furniture, broken mirrors, boxes and crates (big crates -- like the dirt-filled ones Dracula used to transport himself across long distances! ARGH!). One lone, dim light bulb swung from a cord. We'd all just seated ourselves among the ruins, making a pitifully transparent attempt to show how brave and unafraid we were, preparing to ignite the tip of an illegal substance, when a voice ordered "GO AWAY!" The sound seemed to reverberate from several locations at once. My stomach clinched and I got a BAD FEELING. This wasn't Casper. We practically trampled each other to get up the stairs. From that moment, there were constant noises -- thumping, and what sounded like muffled voices -- coming from the basement. I didn't venture down again, but what did happen was that my awareness of "otherness" was blasted open. One night shortly after our basement adventure, I woke in the middle of the night to find the drummer's father standing at the foot of the bed. Something about my open-ness must have sent an invitation and he answered it. My talking to the spectral soon-to-be father-in-law woke the drummer, who sat up and rubbed his arms, saying he was freezing. I hadn't noticed the low temperature until he mentioned it. The ephemeral Antonio only spoke for a few minutes, giving me a rather standard message for his son, who had gone back to sleep by the time the conversation ended. (I should say that the drummer was very used to me talking to people he couldn't see. I don't think he ever believed me, but he humored me. Maybe that's why I married him?) Our time in the historical house didn't last very long. We got a gig in North Carolina and hit the road. The drummer's dad never did appear to me again (but my second husband's mother was a regular visitor, years later). But, something about that house expanded my awareness and I've never been able to close the door entirely since then. I have to agree with Stephen King about houses . . .
How about you?
posted by Lynda Hilburn at 6:22 PM
13 Comments:
That's a hard one to answer! I, too, grew up with ghosts and paranormal happenings. I suppose the one that stands out most in my mind at the moment happened when my now 21 year old son was about
15, we were arguing, he was standing with his back to the TV which had some vcr tapes on top of it. I was facing him about 6 feet in front of him. He started yelling at me and one of the vcr tapes lifted straight into the air and flew across the room hitting him in the back of the head. There was no one else in the house. I just started laughing and told him, "D***it! That will teach you to yell at me!" Needless to say, he's never yelled at me again! LOL.
Great Blog!!
Sedona Raye (from myspace)
About twenty years ago, my parents renovated thier old musty basement into a den and office for my dad. The door to my dad's office was constantly rattling. My dad being an architect and skeptic of the paranormal, always said the door did that because the heater vent about it. The door would rattle and get louder, until someone would go open it. If we ignored it, it would get anngry and sound like someone was thrashing behind it.
About eight years ago, My boyfriend (now husband) and I were laying on the fold out sofa bed watching tv and laughing. And very clearly I heard someone whisper loudly my name. I knew it was not Steve. It was not the voice of anyone in my family. We were home alone. I asked Steve if he heard it and he said yes. We heard it again. The office door began to shake and rattle again. Steve, who is Lakota and very connected to spirits, hurried me up the stairs and out to the deck in the backyard. He said he could feel it was something evil in the basement. He smudged the den and office for my parents but my sister who still lives there said the door still does it's thing and still gets angry when ignored.
I have volumes to tell. My grandmother was a very powerful psychic/medium so we all grew up with the knowledge ghosts were very real, as well as prophetic dreams, etc.
One particuluar incident that stands out in my mind out of the many happened when my children were very young. I would get up in the middle of the night to check on them.
One night I had a strange dream about my middle son (about four y/o at the time). I went to the room and he wasn't in bed which really freaked me out. I found him asleep in the closet! I tucked him in and returned to my bed.
I was just about to lay my head down when I noticed a golden haired boy standing next to me. I thought it was my son who had followed me so I said, "What are you doing up baby?"
The "boy" leaned over with the most glorious, angelic smile. He was wearing a white shirt. He seemed happy that I had acknowledged him and then he was GONE!
I thought I had dreamed it, imagined it but then I realized...it was a ghost or an angelic being because he was so beautiful.
Not long after the purchase of our used bookstore, I was at work early(not usual back then)and was shelving books when I heard a smacking sound at the back of the (5700 sq ft warehouse)building coming closer to me. I was close to the middle and stood up on a love seat (surfer girl style) and looked at the tops of the shelves all the way back and nearly passed out. On top of the shelves, the previous owner had tied up whole series and we sold them as bundles, they were standing up. But right before my eyes they were being "knocked" over systematically as if someone was walking and was kicking left to right. Heading straight for me, I did what any red headed Irishwoman would do, I SCREAMED! The business next door (Rent-to-Own)had the regional manager in and we had a adjoining door, to which he and another man were fumbling with a key, trying to get inside to me. I screamed right up to when the last bundle toppled off the shelve three feet in front of me and fell down on the cushions, just as the black guy (now a shade of gray at this point)kept me from falling off the love seat. He said the only thing they could hear was me screaming, but they both saw all the bundles on the floor. Thank goodness the manager was a lush, and we went next door for a little vodka and orange juice. From then on I greeted my ghost as "Cass" every morning and bid him adieu each evening. Spooky! --Rayne
Whenever I was sick, my dad was the one that would stay up with me. I can remember when I was younger with fevers, he would be the one rubbing me down with rubbing alcohol to break the fever. When I would have the flu and have to go to the ER (I dehydrate in half the time it takes the average person), he would be the one to sit with me.
In January 1997, my dad passed away rather unexpectedly. Although it was for the best, it was still a shocking and painful experience. That spring, I got sick. Wanting to have some kind of connection with him, as silly as it was, I grabbed his robe from the closet. I laid in bed clutching it and sobbing; not only from feeling lousy because I was sick but because it was the first time I was sick and he wasn't there to "make it all better." As I laid in bed wishing for relief, I felt the edge of the bed dip as if someone sat down. A hand gently stroked my forehead a few times. I remember smiling to myself before whoever was sitting on the bed got up and walked away.
I wouldn't have thought anything of this except for the fact that I was home alone. Was it actually my dad checking in on me? I don't know, but soon after that I felt better.
I was only about 3 years old so I don't really remember but my mom always tells this story. When I was 3 and my brother was 1 we lived in this older house in NY. My brother would always sit at the bottome of the stairs staring at the top and just babble away. And when my mom would come in to put me to bed she said I was always having a conversation with no one. But when she asked who I was talking to I always said "the man in the wall". This happened on a regular basis. And more than once my mom came home to folded laundry that had been in the washer when she left.
a few. be careful of that third eye... sometimes you have to consciously close it.
Ok.. This sounds weird my two weird experences are first. i was staying at my aunts and she has had alot of volince in that house over many years. I was home alone and i felt a very evil vibe i was by her room changing the laundry. the crazy vibe scared me so bad that i grabbed my cat freckles and ran to the back bedroom and locked the door. i sat with my cat staring at the door knob only to watch it turn but thank god it was locked. finally 3 hours my cousin showed up and i was so happy. second one is i have had a couple of times i have had it when i was a wake and asleep. well first it happened when i laided down it felt like some one was slowly holding my legs down and it would go up my body. then finally i couldnt move until it would just stop. then it started happening i would wake up cause i felt a weight on my legs and so on. then i woke up completely and it was if a person had me pin down. my husband was laying right next to me. like 2 inch and i couldnt move and couldnt yell for help. talk about scary... thank god that stopped. my husband belives me so i am not crazy.....he he
I have had some but the one I remember most is when I was about 10 years old. I was sitting in the living room, behind a coffe table doing my homework, with the radio blasting. I mean you would have to yell for me to hear you. At about 3:30pm my mother comes home from work and goes stright to the bathroom. She comes outs moments later and tells me that she is going to the post office. She walks off and I wait until I hear the car pull away before I turn my radio back up. Then about 2 mins. later I hear someone call my name. But the thing was it sounded like someone whispered it and right next to my ear. I looked up from my homework and looked where I thought my mother would be standing,but she wasn't there. So I continued my work and about a mintue later I hear it again. I get up and turn the radio down and call for my mom. I get no replie so I go back to doing my work with the the radio up again. about 2-5 mins. later I hear it again. So this time I know I hear it, I get up turn the radio down and walk to the back down to open it and see if my mother was home. I walk outside see that the car is not there, I walk around the intire house and no one was home but me. After that I never heard it again. To tell you the truth I hate that house, I will never go back into the house again. I really don't like having the feeling of eyes on me the entire. Just for a little persective point. When I would lay down to sleep, I literally felt like someone was just 3 inchs. from my face stareing at me, I was afraid to open my eyes. I'm so happy I don't have to go back to that house.
Between the ages of 9 and 14, I lived in a creepy house. During this time, my family was also part of a fundamentalist Christian cult and from childhood we had been taught anybody outside of our "church" was going to hell to be torn apart by fire wielding demons. This included me. But I couldn't be baptized until I was a teenager. My mother assured me that God would keep me safe until that time, but I was too terrified at the thought of spending eternity in hell, I couldn't bring myself to have faith in her assurances. God was a vengeful god, after all.
In this house, I lost numerous pens and hairbrushes. These were the only two things that would ever go missing - the hairbrushes being the most frustrating. My parents would get annoyed every month when I asked for a new hairbrush, blaming their disappearance on my carelessness.
I was deathly afraid of the dark during my life in this house. I had several strands of Christmas lights strung about my room which I used as night lights. I'd lay awake in bed, certain the shadows in the corner of my room, unreachable for my night lights were shifting forms. Shadow demons, I called them, hovering and ready to take away my soul to the fiery pits of hell the very second I departed this world.
Sometimes, while I huddled underneath my blankets, praying fervently to God and Jesus to protect me from the shadow demons, tears streaming down my face, I'd feel fingers poking my legs or the bed shifting under the weight of something that wasn't there.
During my life in this house, I often had particularly vivid dreams about various people visiting me in the night. Though there's nothing I could say to convince people, especially since I've always had an overactive imagination, but I know these "dreams" were some kind of ghostly visitations.
I had an eighteen year old uncle that died when I was six. Though I was too young to remember details, it was said that my uncle and I were extremely close. When I was about eleven, I heard a noise in our kitchen and got out of bed, thinking I'd find my dad rummaging for a midnight snack, as was usual. Instead, I found my uncle, a bag of bread and lunch meat in one hand, a jar of mayonnaise in the other, his face illuminated by the bright light from the half opened refrigerator.
"Hey, Boo," he said, using a nickname given to me when I was a baby.
"What are you doing here, Jim?" I asked, not sure if I should be scared or happy.
"Making a sandwich," he smiled.
I was eleven, and knowing I was seeing a ghost didn't make me happy, so I ran from the room crying and slammed the bedroom door shut behind me. Christmas lights weren't enough that night. I slept with the overhead light on.
I never told my parents about these experiences. They were too busy saving souls for Jesus (i.e. recruiting fresh bodies to pay for our leaders extravagant houses and ivy league education for their kids). They would have only told me to pray the demons away anyways. I prayed hard, but it never made a difference.
Anyway, we moved from the house when I was 14 due to a bankruptcy and were forced into a modern townhome complex where we lived until I was 18. During that time I had only bought a brush once and that was because I wanted a different shape, not because I lost the other one. My pens stayed put at their desk and my vivid dreams were kept to their usual zaniness, void of visitations from dead relatives.
I left that cult when I was 20 and my parents followed suit. A few years ago I revealed my experiences about that creepy house to my mom. I could see tears glisten in her eyes when she said, "I thought it was just me."
In my enlightened state of mind, meaning I no longer subscribe to Christian explanations of the supernatural, I'd love to revisit that house and see if I still am tuned to the phenomena in that house. I wonder, had I been raised sans the strict fundamental Christian beliefs, would my experiences have been more curious as opposed to terrified...
About six years ago, I lived in an apartment with my then jerk boyfriend. We had a ghost. I first noticed it when I had the weirdest feeling someone was always watching. The boyfriend worked midnights, so I was alone at night, and usually slept on the couch. For some reason I couldn't sleep in the bedroom alone. I often heard sounds coming from the bedroom, which was down a hall from the living room. It was kind of like the door closing, or doorknob turning, but it never did. I even put a tie on the door to hold it shut. (don't laugh, it was scary)
Sometimes, while sleeping on the couch, which sat with it's back toward the dining room where you could walk around it, I could feel him walk by and bump the couch. You notice I called him, 'him.' One day while the jerk was sleeping during the day, he suddenly woke to me calling his name. He said it was as plain as day! I was at work, not there, it wasn't me. He opened his eyes, and he saw our ghost standing there in the doorway. He was a young guy about 19 years old with a baseball cap on, kind of cocked to the side. It freaked him right out.
Then one night while I was sleeping, I heard my boyfriend's voice call me by the nickname he gave me. I sat up, thinking he had come home from work. No one else called me that, or knew it. I woke up, very scard. I called him at work, and couldn't get back to sleep. Sometimes at night, while trying to sleep, it felt like 'he' was stamding right beside the couch watching me. I kept my eyes closed afraid for him to know I was awake. I always felt a chill or some feeling I still can't describe when he was near me.
When we moved out I talked to him before leaving, telling him to go to where he was supposed to be, that he could be at rest. I always wanted to investigate that apartment to see if someone was killed there, but never did. I have chills talking about it now.
I have a few that have happened to me and other family members. When my nephew was about 4 he used to play around with a tennis racket and ball at his grandparents court on their estate in Virginia. He had a great vocabulary at the time and spoke very clearly so it was unusual enough when we heard him speaking and the words were not making much sense. We asked him what he was doing and he said he was talking to his friend a Chinese boy who played tennis with him. Many thought he was making up the language as a by-product of an intelligent child plus too much time. Turns out he wasn't. I'm significantly older than he is and I had several friends who were Chinese. I picked up several words that I had learned through "diffusion" with my friends as perfectly enunciated Mandarin.
The other one was when my father passed away in 1989. For about four years following his death, I felt him hanging around at various moments. Since I was a teenager when he died and the only child who grew up when he was home full time (the others are total military brats), he and I had a close relationship. I graduated from high school that year and dad would always make his feelings known when I was considering doing or actually doing something that was not so wise. He would express his displeasure by changing radio stations or the television channels, depending on what was on at the time. Mostly he did this when I was alone and he would stop after I would answer, "okay, Dad, I get it" and proceed to change the direction in which I was headed. I haven't heard from him in a long while now but his stamp on me after his death and the occasional sightings of him by other family members will always stay with me.
I haven't had much for real life experiences but I've had a couple of really wild dream/visions. The first one was a dream I had of my late grandparents argueing. I was in their house and I was looking at a curio cabinet with curved class doors. Grandma was very angry at me and Grandpa was trying to calm her down. I described this dream to mom the next morning and that cabinet hadn't been in that house while I was alive.
My next dream wasn't near as scary as much as it was comforting. I'd gotten into witchcraft (in the closet) a few years ago and my very christian aunt didn't approve of my not attending church. After she died from cancer, I dreamed of her in our usual seats at church. She apologized to me for her lack of understanding. That my choice of religion she finally understood and she was okay with it. A heavy weight left my shoulders when I woke up.
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