When i was ten me and my family moved into this house. The first night we were there there was a constant tapping on the walls in one of the back bedrooms, my mum put it down to the pipes because it was an old house but it sounded nothing like that so i think she was trying to help us not be scared.
I live there for 8 years and in that time the house always felt off. There would be nights were i would be in bed and hear the downstairs door open and footsteps on the stairs with no one reaching the top.
One time i heard the door open so i pretended to be asleep because i had school the next day and i was over my bedtime. I waited for a few minutes and thought it was strange that my parent hadn't reached the top stair, so i got out of bed to check. I looked down the stairs and there was no one, not only that but the frontroom door was still closed and i could hear the tv on and my parents talking. I dunno how i managed to go back to bed but i did.
The next time something happened after that. It was late one night around 2 or 3 in the morning. I was in bed reading this book i had got from the school libary and i turned over on to my side so i was facing the hallway. I saw something out of the corner of my eye that made me look up. It came from my brother room. It was a dark figure, almost shadow like, it had the rough outline of a human but was slightly more rough look. It moved across the landing into my mum's room, i remember the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as i watched it disappear. I was so scared to move to investigate so i told myself that it was late and my eyes were tired and there was nothing there. I managed to turn and face the wall and fall asleep, i dunno if it moved into my room after.
I put it out of my head after that, didn't tell anyone about it. It was a few month later i was downstairs with my mum, we had a living room that went into the kitchen and to the right side was a bathroom. My mum was in there sorting her hair out after a bath, the mirror she was looking into reflected the kitchen and door way off the bathroom.
She asked ' did you see that, that black figure that past the mirror?' i was a little shock by it and she explain it moved fast and she barely caught it but discribed it the same and the thing i had seen upstairs but i knew i hadn't mentioned it so how could she possibly have known.
A few months after that i was old enough to look after my silbings at night, everyone was in bed and my sister woke me up saying that she had heard footsteps up the stairs and she was scared. I managed to calm her down but i know i had heard the same months before.
So the lay out of upstairs you would walk up the stairs then turn and they would be three more that would go into a landing that was a square, then if you walked foward there would be a bedroom and also one on each side. The house next to us mirrored this so the window on the stairs you could see into next doors landing and top stairs.
It was boxing day and i was down the town with my family when my friend from next door rang. She asked if i was home which i responded no no one is. She then proceeded to tell me she was stood by the window upstairs looking through to my room and she could see the shadow ghost just sat on my floor with her back to her. I also hadn't mentioned it to her but she described it the same as well.
Then just before we were set to move out my mum hand clean out this closet that she had in her room. She cleaned it out lots of times but this time she found this drawing of Ballerinas dancers on the back it said for Patricia 1959.
I just read an older post of yours that said something about "Civil War ghosts at my junior prom to childhood fae-related trauma to hooded figures in the backyard." I'd love to know these stories, if you wouldn't mind telling them.
Oh man. Well, there’s not really much else to them beyond what I said, to be honest.
The (Probable) Civil War Ghost
First of all, it wasn’t actually MY junior prom. It was a friend’s junior prom that he asked me to and I accepted (just as an excuse to be at the biggest local Super-Haunted Historical PropertyTM after dark. there was a battle in my town in 1864, and as a result the whole place is now extremely haunted)
It was a plantation
If you're horrified by plantation weddings, get ready for Plantation Proms: Definitely A Thing In Southern Towns With More Historical Sites Than Hotel Ballrooms
I probably should not have gone to this prom but, while already progressive, I was rather less self-aware as a teenager. thank the gods, it was not a themed prom. although then I probably would have realized how messed-up using that space for a prom was
But I digress
My friend and I were hanging out on the huge back porch of the mansion, which has a ton of rocking chairs for people to use while waiting for tours
There was no wind that night, and while we were free to use the porch and the chairs, nobody else had been up there for over an hour
You probably see where this is going
I was leaning against the railing, feeling very dramatic and elegant in my poly taffeta prom dress, when I remarked to my friend that I’d been visiting this place on school trips for years but never encountered any of the famous ghosts
“Um, Marzi?” he said. “You might want to turn around.”
I turned around
One of the chairs was rocking on its own
Have you ever been in a situation you knew could theoretically happen but always kind of figured wouldn’t? Like you almost don’t believe it, even though it’s Definitely Happening? This was like that. I wasn’t scared. It didn’t feel real, even though I was seeing it and my friend clearly was, too
Being the rational firm ghost believer that I am, I tried to consider all logical possibilities first. “Maybe it’s the wind,” I said, knowing as I said it that the air was totally still. This did not, again, feel scary or portentous. I just felt kind of stupid.
The chair rocked forward and balanced on its front rockers. It was a position no amount of wind could have forced that chair into without blowing it over. A long moment went by. The empty chair stayed balanced, as if held in place by someone sitting in it
“...or not?” I offered.
The chair fell back and rocked to a natural halt, as if someone had gotten up from it and walked away
We both looked at each other and quickly decided to go back to the tent where the dance was taking place. I asked him about it again back in college and, unprompted, he recalled the story exactly as I remember it
The Fae-Related Childhood Trauma
I don’t talk about this one in detail. I just. Don’t.
I saw Something. I ran into my neighbor’s garage and stood in the corner crying for a solid 20 minutes, screaming at anyone who got close not to touch me
Maybe it was a hallucination, though other, less traumatic things I’m inclined to believe happened in my neighborhood.
But every time I even come close to describing what I saw, I just- I can’t. I physically could say or type the words, but it feels like an uncrossable mental barrier of wrongness. It’s Not To Be Discussed
I had plenty of neutral and even positive-seeming fae-ish experiences growing up; most of them I don’t even remember exactly. that was the only really bad one, but it was (as you can tell) a doozy
The Hooded Figure
My mom and sister and I were watching Phantom of the Opera (2004) one evening and the sun began to set.
I got up to close the blinds on the French doors to the porch
I saw a hooded figure- not like a Grim Reaper; I got more the vibe of a tall woman wearing a hooded cloak -slowly walk behind a stand of trees in the neighbor’s terraced garden
I saw the figure pass behind the trees, apparently on a straight trajectory across the terrace
The figure never came out the other side. The outline behind the trees just disappeared. From that angle, there was nowhere a person could go that I wouldn’t have seen them. But I never saw her(?) again
revisiting a fond memory — a lucid experience where my astral body was drawn to presence of the a multi-tiered cargo ship in route through an inland-passage somewhere in Savannah, GA; gratified by the momentum before returning to the safety of my physical being in my hotel room..
in tandem, i dovetail this revisitation with the yin to its yang: the spiritual embodiment of a vessel, one i visually internalized during a walk by the Savannah River; and later depicted in a short poem, gradually approached so as to appear before me as i sat in my living room..
mutually exclusive to both memories while making them qualitatively traceable:
• precluding the 1st: my own sighting of another cargo ship in motion from the vantage point of the passenger seat during a drive through Savannah
• …the 2nd: aforementioned
enticing by nature~
polarizing yet just as preternatural (as i never visually came across the following, to my own realization): an encounter with the presence of a lighthouse which spontaneously revealed itself as i stood in my living room, surrounding my being — filling me with fear, transfixing..
to curtail, i reflect on an occurrence, which took place during a shower, cut short, as i had to vacate midway to console myself:
i found my astral body overtaken by an apparition which emerged in the form of a massive orb of white light, emanating from the depths of the ocean.
here i invoke the musica universalis as a source of hope, a celestial harmonization serving to counterbalance the orb’s reverberations as i found myself befallen with vibrations of hopelessness coupling the sheer terror that followed the spectral encounter — a ghostly enumeration
on that note i set the tone of this anecdotal concatenation, invocation by highlighting the oceanic-linked hauntings i addressed, furthermore connecting, sonically-tying them by paying homage to Liz Harris who’s work has also delved into similar content..
Listen to Mary, On the Wall (Second Heart Tone) by Grouper on Apple Music. 2011. Duration: 6:07
(this track in particular i value as it tonally symbolizes the sympathetic vibrations of the music of the spheres — hope, as an idea, reiterated)
I don’t know if I’ve ever discussed this here or not but I’m an empath. Not to be confused with being empathetic (though I am that as well) which means to feel compassion for other people. Being an empath means you feel someone else’s emotions with your own body. I’m not a full-blown empath. At least, I don’t think so. Not someone who can go and investigate haunted houses or anything, but I certainly draw in emotion that doesn’t belong to me, whether it’s from a friend, a family member, a total stranger, or even a place (more like the leftover energy found in a place).
This gets extremely overwhelming at times since I can’t always figure out what emotions belong to me and what belongs to other people. It’s hard to push it back out and send it back to whoever it belongs to.
I also do think that...spirits and energies are drawn to me.
I’ve had plenty of experiences that go beyond simply being a hyper compassionate person. Things like knowing something’s happened before being told or knowing when someone is in distress or feeling the presence of otherworldly things. I’ve even had more than one psychiatrist tell me they think i’m empathic.
Sometimes I get, what I like to call, visitors. I’m absolutely not a clairvoyant of any sort. I don’t see visions of the dead and the dead don’t speak to me (beyond a quick glimpse and sometimes scattered whispers). But sometimes I feel someone with me. The energy in the room changes. The temperature in the room changes. My own emotion suddenly changes.
When this happens, sometimes I feel someone touch me. It’s never been threatening. Mostly it’s been as though someone just wants acknowledgement which I’ll give, but I keep it to a minimum because I don’t want a visitor to think they can stay.
For example.
Last week, Thursday into Friday (3am-ish) I was tossing and turning. I’d had an uneasy feeling all night long. Not my own anxiety, at least, I didn’t think it was. I’m not really an intuitive empath so it’s hard for me to pick apart all the different emotions/feelings inside of me.
But this night, I’m lying in bed facing one away and when I rolled over, a big, black mass flew right at me and said something (too indistinct for me to understand). It left me breathless and I turned the lights on and needed a bit to settle again, but I acknowledged that someone or something wanted my attention and after that the uneasy feelings went away and I was able to sleep.
It does get scary sometimes. Visitors sometimes come through my dreams. And, I know, lots of people will think it’s just a nightmare. Just a dream. But there’s a difference and I don’t expect anyone to believe or understand unless they’ve experienced it themselves. But there is a difference between normal dreams and visitor dreams, and I can tell even in my sleep. (Sometimes it’s sleep paralysis, but again, I can typically tell the difference).
Uh...So, yeah, I don’t really expect anyone to actually believe me. It’s fine if you don’t. But, hey, if you’ve ever had any similar experiences or even totally different but you want to share, I’m absolutely not a skeptic!
Like in all seriousness, you can absolutely “fight a ghost” on a non corporeal, concept driven, energy based sense.
This has always worked for me, at least. Spirits typically need energy in order to thrive and be able to interact in the physical realm more. It’s why most (assuming a good portion of them are true, which I do have my doubts) haunted house accounts progressively amp up in severity of what the spirit does.
The spirit starts out doing things that are small that it can manage to do (scratching noises, footsteps, moving small things here and there) but that are enough to get your attention and get you to notice. Once it has your attention, and therefore you’re devoting more energy to it being frightened by it or reaching out to it or just thinking about it, the more you feed it your energy and make it stronger and the more it can and will do to get more of that energy.
So really, if you wanna fight a ghost off, once you notice odd things going on but you don’t wanna deal with a spirit you just need to tell them to leave. Like, seriously. Stop devoting your energy to them and they’re not going to be an issue for you. It’s why I think a lot of people who are Christian will say they feel like the house or whatever felt safe after having a priest bless their home or the fact that herbs can help you cleanse a space of other energies.
If you believe telling the ghost to get out of your house will get the ghost to leave you alone, it’s going to so long as you actually resolve yourself to not pay attention to it any longer.
This also ties into my theory on why people who don’t believe in the paranormal full stop don’t have experiences themselves but that’s a whole other post I could go into and I have to start work in 15 minutes...
Danny sniffled. He didn’t want to cry, he was four now and big boys don’t cry. His lip trembled as he looked out from his hiding place under the clothes rack. He couldn’t see Mommy or Jazzy anymore. He ducked back under the dresses as lots of big shoes walked by. He had only wanted to pop out and scare Jazzy, but he waited and waited, and she didn’t walk by. By the time he checked where she was, he couldn’t find her or Mommy! He sniffed again and swiped his arm across his face. He was a big boy, but he was still scared.
“Jazzy?” he whispered, hoping that she would hear him and pop out of one of the other racks. Maybe she was hiding too? “Mommy?” he tried. Mommy wouldn’t hide in clothes to scare him. His tummy let out a loud growl, it was lunch time now.
A pair of shoes came to a stop right next to where Danny was hiding. He hugged his knees and tried to be very small. The dresses were parted and a strange grown up was kneeling in front of him. The grownup was really old, he had lots of lines on his face and his hair was all white!
“Are you lost little one?” the old stranger asked.
Danny couldn’t speak to the stranger, but he was lost, so he nodded tearfully. The stranger offered his hand to Danny to help him out of the clothes. His hand was long and wrinkly.
Danny forgot the ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ rule just as quickly as he had remembered it when he blurted out, “Wow! You have a lot of watches!”
The old man smiled and asked, “Do you like them?”
Danny scuffed his foot shyly, “They’re really cool, but I can’t tell time with hands yet.”
Now that Danny was out of his hiding place, the stranger stood back up. Even with his back bent, he was still really tall! Danny then noticed the cool cape his rescuer was wearing.
“Whoa! You have a cape!” he said.
The stranger chuckled, “It’s more of a cloak, but it is pretty nice.”
The man offered Danny his hand and said, “Come little one, let’s go find your mother and sister. I’m sure that they are worried about you.”
The man led Danny up to the customer service desk and told him, “Go ahead and tell them your name and who you’re looking for, they will help you find your family.” The man then took off one of his many watches and placed it in Danny’s hand. He gently closed Danny’s fingers over it and said, “You may keep this so that you know that you aren’t alone, even if you are scared or lost.” He winked and gave the child a small push towards the help desk, “Go on, I’ll be watching.”
Danny turned back and gave the man’s leg a hug before running up to the desk. The lady didn’t see him so he had to speak up, “Excuse me, I lost my Mommy and Jazzy and I can’t find them.”
The lady at the desk peered over the counter at Danny and smiled, “Don’t you worry, we’ll call them over the intercom so that they know where to find you. What’s your name?”
“Danny and Mommy’s name is Maddie, she’s wearing a pink shirt.”
The attendant then pulled up the phone to call out over the speakers, Danny stood on his tiptoes so that he could watch.
“Would Maddie in the pink shirt and Jazzy please come to the customer service desk, Danny is waiting for you.” rang out through the store.
The speaker system popped as she put the phone back on its hook.
“There you go, they should be here for you any minute now.” she said with a smile.
Not even a full minute passed before Jazz came running up yelling, “Danny!” She grabbed him up in a hug and spun around with him. They were both laughing they were so happy to see each other again.
His mother came sprinting up next, “Danny! I was so worried when Jazz said you weren’t with us anymore!” She lifted both of her children up in a hug.
The help desk attendant said, “He was very grown up! He came up to the desk all by himself and asked for help.”
Danny knew that wasn’t all the truth, “A nice man helped me! He showed me where to go!”
“What did he look like?” Jazz asked.
“He was reeaaally tall and old. His hair was all white and he had a lot of watches! He had a cool cloak on and his eyes were red and his skin was really light and his ears were pointy! Jazzy do you think he was an elf? He had a scar over his eye, maybe he got it fighting orcs when they fought Sauron!”
“Elves aren’t real Danny. Everyone knows that.” Jazz stated and crossed her arms. Maddie let her children back down to the floor and her eyes met the attendant’s, Orcs and Elves may not be real, but this was Amity Park, and the cults were definitely real. “Alright kids, let’s not fight about elves right now, and Danny I’m really proud that you came and got help when you needed it.” She took both of their little hands this time thanked the attendant for her help, “Thank you so much for helping us find Danny, we were very worried when we lost him.”
“It was my pleasure.” she replied.
Maddie began to both Jazz and Danny towards the checkout aisles where she had left her cart of clothes and groceries. “I’m so glad you’re alright Danny, please don’t run off like that again.” Once she had the cart again she added, “And please try not to talk to strangers, I don’t want someone to see a cute little boy and take you.”
Danny pouted, “I’m not a little boy, I’m a big boy!”
His mother chuckled, glad that he hadn’t suffered for his brief adventure, “Alright, you’re right. You’re a big boy Sweetie.”
Danny crossed his arms, he was a big boy! He looked at the watch he was still holding in his hand. Nobody had asked him about it. It had a blue face and little hands pointing to the numbers. He turned it over and on the back were some letters. He recognized these, ‘C’ and ‘W’. He put the watch into his pocket, it made him feel safer and more grown up now that he had it.
He turned back to look at the store as they walked out. A swish of purple caught his eye and he waved at the helpful elf-man that saved him when he was lost. The stranger waved back and when Danny blinked, he was gone. His belly growled again, even louder this time, and his little adventure was already out of mind. He hoped they could stop for lunch on the way home, he didn’t like it when the food tried to attack him. Jazzy was good at saving him from scary lunches.
