My first post - hello!
Can't say I've ever seen a ghost, but I've definitely had a few spooky encounters. Sometimes seeking an explanation that wasn't "ghosts" threw up more remarkable phenomena that seemed just as unlikely.
In 1996, I was 20 and I'd just got back to England from a year out working in the US, and I was still sleeping off the first "welcome home" hangover when one of my best friends put a letter through the door telling me she was going into hospital to have a brain tumour removed. She told me not to worry and apologised for not having seen me in the flesh before she had to go in, but to come and see her after the op. Two weeks later, she was in intensive care and had never regained consciousness, but I'd heard that people in comas needed to be talked to, and I had SO much to tell her, so I tried to slip in the sort of teasing little gossipy details that would usually have guaranteed her attention. I think I wanted her to wake up and say to me "So, what was that you were saying about..." It never happened though. She died a couple of days later.
When my mum came to tell me she'd just heard from my friend's parents that she was dead, I was devastated. I had been listening to REM's Automatic for the People the night before, and when mum decided I'd probably need to be alone, I pushed the random button on the CD player and it chose "Everybody Hurts" (before it became a daytime commercial radio staple). I felt very strongly that it was my friend communicating with me, as we'd once had a long natter about the band, the song, and the video (I'd been living in Georgia and had managed to walk into at least two places just after members of REM had left). I was very low in the days before her funeral - old people die when you're 20, not your best mates. When the day of the funeral came, 4 of us who considered ourselves her best mates went up to the crematorium together. It was packed with other friends, family and representatives of the school we went to and the businesses she'd worked at, and it being a bright spring day, we all gathered outside. When the memorial service started, they played the music she'd chosen: "Everybody Hurts".
In the following months, I struggled to settle back into life in the UK. Major growing-up-type things'd happened to me while I'd been away, and I had hardly anyone to share it with, most of my mates'd gone off to uni, or were working, and I didn't get myself back into college until September. I remember in that summer that I used to have hypothetical conversations with my departed mate. I knew I was supplying both sides of the conversation, but sometimes, some of the answers I got back from "her" seemed like things that I never would've thought. I shook myself and kept myself on the sane side, knowing it was all just wishful thinking, and gradually got out of the habit.
By early 1997, I'd moved out of my parents house and in with a girl from college, and I was back at the same crematorium, at another funeral for an 18 year old. At college we were always in our little gang of 3, me, my housemate and her boyfriend, and the 4th member of our regular crowd had been his best mate. Just before his final mock A-Level exam, he was at a party, and took himself to bed early. Someone went to wake him up, dragged him downstairs to the kitchen and tried to goad him into a fight. He was stabbed in the heart, and died the next day. Still trying to deal with the first of my losses, I think I was the efficient and stoical friend while the other 2 fell apart. The house was heavy with grief for weeks, but when we started to relax again, we started talking about the guy, and his religious beliefs (stoned on Saturday nights with us, he'd sleep over but leave to take his mum to church on Sunday morning - he was the most popular member of the church's youth group, which surprised us no end!). He'd had a really distinctive way of standing against the door frame to the kitchen, and during one of our conversations, my housemate had her back to the door. I had the oddest sensation that he was there, listening and waiting to say something. Just as I was mentally telling myself to pull myself together, she said to me "He's behind me, isn't he?".
About this time, the male third of our little triplet was working at a pub in the part of the city I'd been born in, miles away from where we were living. It'd been my dad's old local, and I knew it well, but my housemate didn't. We were sitting at a little square table, opposite each other off to one of the sides, she on a little stool, me on a 2seater upholstered bench type thing. I have no idea what we were talking about (possibly discussing her relationship with our barbloke mate) and how things were going at college, when I became really distracted. It was not physical seeing - there was no-one there, but I "saw" my dead friend walk up to the table as if she was supposed to be there. She knew only I could see her, and was revelling in it. She also knew how close I was with my housemate, and let it be known that she didn't trust her. She even sat down next to me to listen in to our conversation. All the time this was going on I was trying to get the thoughts out of my head. I must be going crazy - this was wishful thinking and stupidity, get a grip. I was still however chatting away to my housemate, who stopped, looked to my right where I imagined the "ghost" to be, and said "This is going to sound so weird, but who's sitting next to you?" At which point, my dead friend's response was something along the lines of "Ooh, clever!" and she got up and left us, walking away from the table before I felt she'd really left.
I don't think I told my housemate what had happened til much later. Possibly after we'd had another run in like that.
It was now getting on for winter, and she'd broken up with the bar-bloke, and we were establishing our own ways of getting through college, involving lots of drinking. We found ourselves heading for the Hogshead about quarter of a mile from college, unusual for us because college was surrounded by bars. It was getting dark at about 5pm, and there was a cold wind blowing along the street. We were chatting as usual, but as we passed one of our usual pubs, I had to hurry her along, but as I grabbed her elbow to do it, she was already picking up her pace. We changed our plan right there, and scooted round the corner to the nearest bar. When we got sat down, and were unwrapping ourselves from our coats I asked her why she'd suddenly speeded up. She said I'd probably think she was stupid, and I said "well, I think you'll think I'm stupider." In careful bits of admissions, trying to make sure the other wasn't bull****ing, we managed to work out that we'd both got really spooked just before we'd turned the corner. As we'd been walking arm in arm, I'd looked behind me after we'd passed a door, and (not physically, again) "seen" someone kneeling on the pavement, with his head down, as if he was tying his shoelace, as if we'd just walked around him. As we'd taken a couple more steps, I could see in my head that he'd stood up, and it was our friend who'd been stabbed, but that he had raced up to us from behind to throw his arms around us and give us a hug, I could even sense his smile. My housemate said she'd had a strong feeling that someone was bearing down on us and that although she felt it was him, and that it was a nice thing he wanted to do, she was just too spooked.
I've never since had the same feeling of "seeing" people who weren't there, and I'd never had it before. I can explain it to myself as a result of the incredible stresses I was under - the grief, the horror of their losses, the nature of my social life and mental state after coming home from a year that changed my life in the States, and having to make brand new friends. Maybe I was smoking and drinking too much. But what I can't explain is how someone else could see what I had seen, and ask me about it before I'd said anything.
I've always been interested in spooky things in a vaguely Fortean way, before I knew there was someone's name to it. I've got quite a few little stories, and I'll try to find appropriate places to put them.
Hope I've not blathered on too long!
