Anyone else have a ghost in their house?

[smoogatz]

I'm not a person who believes in this sort of thing, generally speaking, but it's getting a little weird. My wife's been seeing blurs and movement in her peripheral vision for a few weeks now near the stairs (fatigue?), and for the last two nights this plastic baby toy we have that plays a frantic refrain of "Old MacDonald" when you touch it has gone off spontaneously in the guest room around 4:00 a.m. (it now resides in the trash). Coincidentally--or not--the woman who lived in this house for forty years, from 1958 to 1997, died in a nursing home in January. Do we have a ghost, or are we both just a little crazt from overwork and lack of sleep? If it is a ghost, how do we get it to stop doing creepy shit in the middle of the night?

[redqueen]

1. No ghosts

but I've had baby toys go off by themselves. I attributed that to old batteries. That's not too unreasonable, is it?

:shrug:

It is creepy as hell, though. Yes, indeed. These toys -- like I said, the batteries were mostly used up -- so instead of the usual high-pitched voices and cheery music you got slowed down, drawled, distorted speech and eerily slowed music.

VERY creepy. :scared:

[ewagner]

2. I would keep an open mind

on the subject....because nobody knows for sure.

About 15 years ago we had a very similar experience in our house only it was perfume smells and the wet residue of perfume (my wife doesn't use perfume of any kind) on the surface of phones and running down walls....to this day, I believe there is some "good explanation" for it but after 15 years I still haven't found it.

I suggest you remove all the obvious causes and get a good night's sleep and then re-evaluate after that....

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. Not really a ghost. Just a short, uber pale female.

But I kinda like my fiancee so I won't exorcise her just yet. :evilgrin:

[Borgnine]

4. None personally...

...although my Aunt and Uncle's 120-year old farmhouse (which they've since moved out of, though not because of haunting reasons) had some peculiar things going on. Bedroom doors swinging open in the middle of the night, children heard laughing in their cellar, and glowing mists.

It was a pretty creepy place to be, especially the cellar.

[Mutley]

5. i don't know about ghosts

but electronics such as my tv or radio turn themselves on and off all the time. and my alarm clock will ocassionally go off about 10 or 15 minutes before or after it's set to go off....

who knows... :scared:

[Modem Butterfly]

7. Dust will do that

Dust will cause electronic arcs that cause things to turn on and off, or to start scrolling through channels, menus, or stop playing in stereo periodically. We had a big problem with that at our old house. It killed our last TV in fact.

[Mutley]

9. i guess i should dust more often nt

[Modem Butterfly]

6. Could be cataracts

A friend of mine has a condition that causes cataracts in his vision. He's had surgery three or four times. Anyway, IIRC, blurred peripheral vision is one of the first signs of cataracts. Get your wife's eyes checked. It might be an early warning sign of something natural.

[stinkeefresh]

8. I think we had one in the house I grew up in.

The odd thing was, no male ever heard or saw anything, but pretty much every female who lived in the house would eventually report the distinct sound of typing.

My mom is an intellectual atheist who believes nothing without proof, but after many years we could find nothing to account for the typing sound, she had to admit she believed.

Later we discovered a cardboard box in the attic filled with unfinished plays written by my great-grandmother several decades ago on an early manual typewriter. There were perhaps 40 manuscripts.

so, maybe.

Everything I know about science tells me that there's an infinite amount of knowledge we still lack. So absence of proof is no assurance on non-existance, to me.

I am male, however, and never heard a thing.

[rene moon]

10. When you heard the noises or see movement

Be polite and ask them to leave. Tell them to go to the light, that their time on Earth is through and they need to move on.

That's what I did. It worked.

[lady lib]

22. That worked for us as well.

We moved into a relatively new house, but the wife of the couple that we purchased it from had passed away the year before we bought it (she may have died in the house but we really don't know and don't want to know). We also purchased the couple's dining room furniture which she apparently liked because we started having spooky experiences in that combined living room/dining room area fairly soon after moving in. My daughter had a sleepover in that area and her CD player went on by itself while the girls were telling ghost stories. Another time one of my cats started looking above the china cabinet and meowing frantically, then he suddenly ran from the room - there was nothing there that we could see. One night I walked by the dining room table and felt someone's fingers go through my hair. We've also had lights flicker at times.

My sense with all of this was that this woman was a nice person who was just curious about us and never meant any harm. We never felt threatened by her. (And I think she was just teasing the kids when they were telling the ghost stories.) Anyway, once we started talking about all of the events making it clear that we didn't want the visits and that they were making us uncomfortable, they stopped. You need to be FIRM and believe that you don't want the ghost to stick around (just like any unwelcome guest).

Hope this helps (and that the rest of you don't think I'm nuts...just being honest) :shrug:

[Book Lover]

11. Fatigue and aging batteries

I recommend that your wife see an opthamologist - blurred peripheral vision should be checked out. Have you thought about taking the batteries out of the doll?

[jukes]

12. i used to see stuff like that!

usu on the 3rd day of a cocaine binge.

i don't really believe in ghosts, but am more likely to believe in them than jesus.

if the creepy shit isn't too annoying, i say "live & let..."

never mind.

[Modem Butterfly]

15. ROFLMAO!

The house we live in now was supposedly haunted. Weird moans and cold spots and the like. We got the chimney cleaned, serviced the furnace and sealed the duct work. Never heard it again.

[jukes]

21. if you don't wakeup

coated w/ ectoplasm, there's really not a problem!

[Sequoia]

13. Who ya gonna call?

That's right.

[ronnykmarshall]

14. We've got one.

[smoogatz]

16. A ghost who irons...

Some people have all the luck. Ours just wakes us up in the middle of the night.

[WI_DEM]

25. Irons? who is your ghost--Hazel?

[bridgit]

17. had one, that had a freaking portal to the underworld too...

but then they raised the rent so i moved

[MissMarple]

18. Try telling it to leave you be. Who knows, it might help.

I've read that it may, if such things occur. Also, just to cover the bases, consider getting some lubricating eye drops for your wife. Perhaps her eyes are a bit dry. :-)

[skygazer]

19. I have a ghost

Or rather a family, I believe.

I live in a small cabin that was built in (I believe) the 20's or 30's. I have no idea if anyone died here or anything like that but both my husband and I have heard our ghosts many times. Sometimes we just hear thumping and bumping downstairs which is where they seem to be most of the time, though one evening, I felt someone sit on the other end of the sofa.

We hear them quarrel sometimes - most of the words are garbled but you can tell it's an argument from the tones. Every now and then a word comes out crystal clear, often a name (Michael). Also we occasionally hear a child crying.

We've never had any sort of feeling of malicious intent and, in fact, they make less noise when we acknowledge them. Whenever I go downstairs, which is sort of a storage area, I say hello and inquire about their health - never get a reply but I also don't hear any strange noises. On those occasions when I forget, I almost always hear a door slam down there after I've returned upstairs.

A lot of people think I'm either nuts or making it up. I'm not making it up though the jury's still out on whether I'm nuts. Still, the things I describe are real - whether they are ghosts or not, you can decide. I've always kept a pretty open mind about those things.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

28. Pretty cool story.

I think ghosts possibly exist. I've never seen one, but that doesn't mean they aren't real.

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

20. I have a story but you decide what it was.

My parents bought their retirement house on a lake in Texas. The previous owner had died a few years before and they bought it from his son. The first day they moved in they were cleaning and setting up house and had put a painting they like over the fireplace. They had to go out to get something and when they returned the picture was laying face down on the hearth(I think thats what you call that brick area in front of the actual fireplace). My dad asked my mom why she had laid it there...she said I didn't do that. If it had fallen it certainly would have shattered the glass covering and damaged the frame...they just decide they had actually put it there and forgot doing it...YEAH RIGHT.
The first time I went to visit them there I brought my beloved labrador retriever. This dog loved me...I MEAN LOVE...she wouldn't let me out of her sight and so would follow me everywhere I went. That night it was time for bed and my dog would always sleep at the foot of my bed. I was going upstairs and I realized she wasn't following me so I turned and looked and she stopped at the foot of the stairs and the hair on her neck was raised straight up and she wasn't about to go up those stairs....believe me when I say she wouldn't let me out of her site...she was obviously agitated and scared...oops gotta go but you get the drift...what do ya think?

[MissMarple]

26. I think it's a cool ghost story.

:D

[catmandu57]

23. We've got a ghost cat...I think

I see it every now and then out of the corner of my eye. Our house was built in 1931 so I'm sure there are many previous owners who are no longer with us, but, they must be content being dead, it's only the cats that come see us.

[WI_DEM]

24. take the toy out of the trash and sleep in the guest room tonight

and see what happens. Will it have cold spots?

[lady lib]

27. So, are you going to tell us what happened?

Did you try any of the suggestions?

[nytemare]

29. My nextel pinged a co-worker while I was asleep

He pinged me yesterday morning, saying, "What's up" I said "well, I am now, I was sleeping." He said that I just pinged him, that my name was on his phone.

Freaky!

[Borgnine]

30. Do you have a ghost?

"WE'RE READY TO BELIEVE YOU!"

[leftofthedial]

31. can't tell if you have a ghost

I do

perhaps two of them, one "old woman" on the main floor

one scary one in the basement

We encounter the "old woman" much more frequently

[enigmatic]

32. Yes

I posted this awhile ago:

This is a true story.

In the early 90's, I owned a Restuarant in a small town.

The Resturarnt was located in a
buliding that also housed a Mansonic Lodge on the second floor
as well as a Post Office next door. I was living in what used to
be the town barbershop, which was in the basement area below the
PO.

Although I had always been interested in the paranormal, I'd had
nothing remotely "ghost-like" ever happen to me, until about 6
months after I had moved in to my basement studio.

During that time, I had gotten to be good friends with the man
who was the postmaster in town from the late 40's until the late
80's; he had eaten in the Restuarant with his wife many times,
and I had picked his brain about the history of the building,
and the town, while drinking coffee with them after their meals.
They had a son who died in the Viet Nam War; my parents had both
passed, so we deveopled a kind of a parent/son relationship in a
way. He had told me about my apartment which had once been the
barbershop, and talked about the barber, who was one of his best
friends but had died in 1982.

One Friday night a few monhts after I had moved in it had been a
busy night in the Restuarant, and after we closed I headed down
to my apartement with my then-girlfriend, who was visting for
the weekend from Cincinnati. I had to get up the next morning at
7AM to open up the Restuarant for Breakfast, so after I drank a
Mickey's Malt Liquor, we went to bed.

About 3:30AM I woke up to go to the bathroom, which was a few
steps away from my bed in the one room apartment. I walked
inside the bathroom and sat down with the light off, doing my
business and thinking about what I had to do later that morning
in the Restuarant. After I was done, I started to walk out the
door and towards my bed. "Something" told me to look to my left,
toward the other end of the rectangular room. I slowly turned,
and through the shadows in the corner of the room, I saw a man
cutting a little boy hair, who was about 9 or 10 years old and
sitting in a barber chair. I couldn't see the man's face in the
shadows, but I could see the boy's clearly.

He turned and "looked" at me with a kind of half-smile on his
face. I then literally backed into the bathroom, closed the
door, and sat on the john, freaking out. After about 25
or so minutes, I realized that I couldn't stay there all night,
but I was literally scared to death. After another 5 minutes, I
got up enough courage to open the door and walk to the bed. I
looked straight ahead as I walked, and when I was in bed, threw
the covers over my head and tried to forget what I saw. I ended up sleeping for about 2 hours, and when I awoke, was still freaked out, to put it mildly. I never told my girlfriend, or anybody else, what happened.

About 4 months later I had decided to sell my part of the
Restuarant to my friend and move to Phoenix with my girlfriend.
The last day I was working in the Restauant, the old postmaster
and his wife came in to have a last meal there with me. He had
brought a stack of photos that he had taken while he was
postmaster of the building and the town itself, and I was really
excited to pore through these since I had been gently bugging
him to see them since the first time he mentioned having them to
me.

We looked through them, and there were pics of the building in
the 50's; the town's main street, and of people he had known at
that time. He then picked up a picture and handed it to me. I
looked at it, and my heart literally stopped. It was a picture
of a man dressed up in a barber's smock standing next to a
little boy, who was smiling. I recognized the boy. He was the
one I had seen in the middle of the night 4 months earlier. I
asked the old postmaster who the people were.

He said, "Well, that's the barber of course, the one who's shop
is where you've been living in. The boy is my son; he had just
gotten his hair cut by my friend the barber when I took the
picture."