• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Anyone Seen A Ghost?

100% agree with you Pete. Thousands of people see things every day that doesn’t have a (as yet) scientific explanation, and we can’t all be mistaken, liars, or insane.

Yup. Our Escet, with his PhD in particle physics and his highly niche prominence as Top Higgs Analyst at CERN, was once a callow student who, with me, witnessed certain inexplicable events.

At the time he was baffled but has now explained it all away as some kind of mutual self-deception. Who's right? Who can say?
 
One of my ghost stories is unusual. I was about 8 years. Brother/sister in living room. Mum in kitchen doing washing. Father in toilet upstairs. I came round to face the stairs and was astounded to see, facing me, at the top of the stairs, an old-fashioned ''ghost'' standing at the top. Thinking it must be my dad I slowly took steps towards it. This ''ghost'' was very tall with which looked like a white sheet from top to bottom. It did not step down the stairs it glided!!! There was no bending of the knee as it descended. It was about a third of the way down and I was about a third of the way up. That's when my legs gave way. I crawled and clawed my way down as fast as I could. Panic had set in. Regaining my legs in the lobby and without looking back, I kicked and pushed at the living room door to get in but my brother had blocked it. I bust into the kitchen to receive a rebuke from mum. She calmed me down and told me it was my dad. I knew it wasn't. He denied it was him later. This was a strange house and as I've stated in another post, I've no psychic powers that I know of. This was the second of some very weird happenings in this dwelling. I've no idea what it was but still can't understand why a ''ghost'' would appear in that form - like a panto spirit. Oh there was two dark holes for eyes, no mouth. Yes I know - madness. Thanks

With your father upstairs and your brother blocking the door to stop you escaping, this sounds like an elaborate practical joke by him and your father.

Everyone denies it though so I dunno, especially as there are other interesting incidents which we'll need to hear about, please!
 
The 'sheet like' entity sounds remarkably like what I saw, aged about four or five, in the dark corner of my parents' bedroom. I saw it only in reflection in a mirror, and, as I watched, it collapsed down and sank into the floor.

But, being so young, I wonder if it was what I subconsciously 'expected' to see in the corner of a dark bedroom as I peeped in. Maybe it was what I 'feared' I'd see, and so I created it somehow out of my own mind? Children can confuse memory, dream, imagination so easily.

Nobody has ever reported anything in that house, apart from my sighting (which I never mentioned to anyone). So, was it just me?

Your view may vary, of course, but I was just struck by the similarity.
 
With your father upstairs and your brother blocking the door to stop you escaping, this sounds like an elaborate practical joke by him and your father.

Everyone denies it though so I dunno, especially as there are other interesting incidents which we'll need to hear about, please!
Sorry Escargot. I can understand my dad being involved, but not my brother. He had no idea what had happened. I could hear someone in the toilet and I think that is when my legs gave way. But this thing didn't walk down the stairs. I would have seen the bending of the knee. It floated.
 
I've never seen a ghost that I can remember. Apparently I used to ask "who is that lady in the funny clothes?" when I was little but I can't remember it myself.
I've got 2 second hand stories though about seeing a ghost.
1. My dad was taking his dog out for a walk about 6am on a winter's morning , he goes past a farm and across some fields. As he was walking down the lane he saw a bloke walking towards him with his hands in his pockets, head down. My dad got ready to say "morning" and do the obligatory nod as you do , anyway when he glanced away and looked back nobody was there.
2. My friend started renting an old terraced house off the landlord of a pub she was working at. She had a dream about a lad in stripey pyjamas and my friend was laughing at him in the dream because he looked daft. He says "why are you laughing ? These are hospital pyjamas?" Then he proceeded to tell her he had died in a car accident and told her his name. In her dream she said "are you a ghost?" really blasè because I suppose you do in dreams, and he said yes. He told her his first and last name. She woke up really creeped out . She had a pull light switch above her bed and kept pulling it but it wouldn't come on, she turned to her boyfriend next to her in bed because she was going to say "I've just had a horrible dream" when she turned though, this lads face was there smiling and then he just faded away. When she was next in work the landlord showed her the deeds to the house and the surname she had been given was the name of a family who had once owned the house. She never found anything with his first name on though or any history of someone dying in a car accident but still weird.
 
My Dad saw a ghost. In the early 80’s we were on holiday in a campsite in southern France. One night My Dad woke up in the middle of the night desperate for the toilet so he climbed out of bed, put his shorts on and went to walk to 100 meter or so to the toilet block. It was around 2:00am and nobody else was around. He walked down a path with trees either side and came to a T junction on the path. Ahead of him was a large hedge behind which was a vineyard, turning right would have taken him to the beach and left was the route to the toilet block. He was about 3 meters from the T junction when he noticed from the left a white cloud moving slowly from left to right. My Dad stopped and watched. As it got closer he could see it had a vague basic human form ie head, torso, arms & legs but no features at all and was slightly transparent. He guessed it was about 6 foot in height and moved at a slow walking pace across him. As it moved across the T junction it carried on towards the beach before very slowly disintegrating.
 
First time visiting the new boards, have been an on off poster for quite a few years. Anyway, finally an interesting new experience where my first thought was I must post that.

I didn't SEE a ghost, but I heard something that a lot of people might call a ghost a few days ago so it's fresh in the mind.

To give some context: I live and work in a very old town in the UK with the old medieval street layout and a lot of medieval buildings still intact. I work in a new ish retail complex on the boundary of the old town, with medieval buildings/walls on two sides although as far as I know its been open ground since at least 19th century and post war mostly used as car parking. Across the road from the complex runs an old footway, part of intermittent network around the town which I suspect are again medieval at least because that's the boundaries they respect.

Anyway, it's late (dark) and I leave work on one of my usual routes, cross the lit road and then pass through a hedge, 2 steps across the unlit path, through another gap and into a lit residential cul de sac. As I stepped though the hedge I was immediately acutely aware of a sense of "something" on the left side on the path. I didn't look or see anything, it is pitch dark and it all happened in a second as I took 2 steps at a brisk walk. The moment my trailing foot left the path and into the hedge gap I heard running, starting from the far end of the path to my left (about 50-60 yards away) up the path, straight past the back of me and stopping as suddenly as it started about 20 yards further up to my right. I saw nothing, felt no one pass, heard no breathing. The footsteps were pretty loud and running fast but light, I could distinctly hear the feet scuffing the path. This was right past the back of me - I had stopped in the hedge gap, the path is narrow there and enclosed by high hedges, anyone passing especially at speed would have created turbulence, even brushed against me.

It was one of those strange ones where I just carried on walking processing what had just happened thinking "that was weird". I wasn't scared or freaked out it was all matter of fact and very odd.

I am open minded and neutral in my view of ghosts, have only once "seen" one before, and my personal view is what we describe as ghosts is likely a lot of different phenomena, many mundane, some unexplained.

As far as local ghost stories go I don't know of any specific ones of these paths being haunted, though most people I know seem to find them creepy and won't use them even in the day, especially in the areas like this where they're bounded by a mixture of high hedges and 10ft medieval boundary walls. They're certainly atmospheric but I've never been put off using them or had any previous strange experiences there, and I've used them a lot at different times of day over many years.

Any ideas? I don't know what the current thinking is about audio "hauntings" and what they may be.

NB: it also strikes me as a little odd that as I crossed the path initially the feeling that something was to my left felt like it was literally something stood right next to me, but the running footsteps started almost immediately from a long way down the path in the darkness.
 
I have seen two that I am sure, in my own mind at least, were ghosts.

The first was one of my dogs that had died a few years previously. It was in 2009 when I had first moved out of my parent's house, I remember waking up during the night and he was sat next to the bed, resting his head next to me. I remember that I wasn't scared, or surprised at all, and just thought "oh it's Toby" to myself and went straight back to sleep. He wasn't "ghostlike", he seemed quite solid as if I could have touched him. I woke up feeling relaxed and like he wanted me to know that even though I had moved out, he could still find me for visits!!

The second was at the Best Western Hotel in Fulford, York in about 2010. I woke in the middle of night and I clearly saw the figure of a man at the end of the bed wearing an odd hat. The hat was very much like that worn by David Bamber when he played Mr Collins in the BBC Pride & Prejudice, wide brimmed with a small dome. This one did make me feel scared and I immediately put my head under the covers! I couldn't see any details other than the outline, he appeared very black, like a dense shadow.

I'm really interested in the man in hat ghost. I didn't know it was a thing until now.My mother told me of a story of when she was pregnant,{I was the unborn child}At the time I think we lived in Brighton but would need to check. She told me that when she and my father {pre divorce} woke up one morning all the doors in the house were open.First thoughts were of the house being ransacked, but nothing had been taken or disturbed.They both thought it odd and couldn't explain it.As the morning progressed my mother put it to the back of her mind.She got on with housework and was hoovering at the bottom of the stairs when a man in an odd shaped hat and old short cloak type garment appeared at the top of the stairs. She thinks she screamed and he vanished. The odd thing about it was they never had any other experiences after that, and odder still there was sightings of the man in other houses in the same week.She definately dosn't think he was some peeping tom/burgular who likes to dress up. But then..
 
I have seen and heard a number in my time, animal ghosts also, a ghost cat which I've written about at this forum before.
The one which stands out to me was the first that I saw and it happened in 1979.
My parents divorced when I was 8 and my mother met another man some years later. In 1979, we moved two hours south of Sydney to large property in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia.
The house we lived in was built by the son of the founder of Sydney's first newspaper and was (and still is) what could be termed a grand mansion. It was a 'u' shaped house, had 16 bedrooms, 49 rooms in total, a separate ballroom (we used as a billiard room), plus there were two other houses on the property, one by the gate (which I've written about here also) and the stable keepers house.
One portion of the house was two stories high and also contains two large cellars. This section of the house was previously the staff quarters and in comparison to the rest of the house, was rather dilapidated.
For me, who'd grown up in the city, I found this part fascinating. There was lots of junk left from the previous owners (a doctor and his family) plus my step father's collection of stuff that his mother had collected on the journeys around the world.
One afternoon after school, I was upstairs exploring through boxes of books and old photos when I needed to go to the bathroom.
The only bathroom upstairs had a toilet which faced directly away from the door. When exiting the room, you then looked directly toward the landing of the staircase that you walked up to get there and a large window looking out into the paddocks/fields outside.
After finishing and washing my hands, I walked out to continue my explorations when I saw a man with his back towards me, on the landing looking out the window.
He was quite a purple colour and though someone had drawn his outline in thin air. The outline however, was fuzzy and seemed electric, insomuch as it appeared to be moving. He had his arms behind his back and appeared to be wearing a military uniform. I could see epaulets on his shoulders, although he had no hat on.
I stared at him, unable to move, terrified for some seconds, at least 10, if not more. He was blocking my only way downstairs. The figure continued looking out the window as it slowly faded away before me eyes.
I stayed where I was and took a step closer, only 2 metres from where it stood and waiting a few more moments before running down the stairs to tell my mother.
She didn't disbelieve me, though told me not to be frightened. A year or so later, she had her own experience, seeing a lady in a dressing gown walk out of an open bedroom door, down a hallway and into another bedroom late one night.
As mentioned, I've seen a number since, but this was my first and most memorable.
 
Yeah. Seen a couple. One was in my old house in Birkenhead (looked like our lodger, Jimmy,)but when I spoke to him he just dissolved.

I woke one night in that house to see a man in a checked dressing gown crawl up the stairs and past my open bedroom door and off down the landing... I got up straight away to see what was going on, of course, no one there.

It turned out that the house had been bombed during the Liverpool Blitz and my house stood where the old one had been.

More scarily I was walking my dog in Stanmer Park in Brighton one October evening when my ex wife stopped me to ask who the man ahead was. The Dog was going absolutely bananas at this point, whimpering and hiding behind me, so I looked at this chap, who was tall with a heavy beard and long coat, but he was just staring at me. I said, “probably just some nutter” and started to continue towards him but found, after one or two steps, that I was seemingly rooted to the spot with terror, the man then seemed to “jump” to the left but an impossible 20ft or so and was now nearer to us, but still just staring blankly.

I decided not to push it so turned and walked, calmly, back the way we’d come.

Fast forward about 10 years and I’m on a Brighton fans forum at Halloween when someone in Australia posted a line about having seen “something” in the great wood at Stanmer...intrigued I dropped him a PM and he told me he’d seen...you guessed it, the same fucking bloke!

I have contacted various paranormal groups and read about the woods there and have discovered that the Priest of nearby Ditchling was murdered there in 1735 by some criminal associated with the smuggling of Brandy, the priest has been seen several times since. He was involved with the smuggling btw.

I’ve also met another guy who tells a tale of being in the grounds of Stanmer House on a bright summers day when he was surprised by a man who was sweating and out of breath asking him for the time. My friend looked down at his watch and then back up. The man had vanished. There was no one nearby and my friend was standing in the middle of a cricket pitch so the “jogger” could not have hidden.

What does this all mean? Who knows.
 
more!!!!!! more!!!!!!!!

He went into the depot and could hear men talking in low voices. Couldn't make out what they were saying. He assumed there were people inside. As he was hot from cycling he went outside and had a drink from his bike-bottle.

As he stood there he heard a huge bang from inside the building, apparently through the the window he was standing next to.
So he thought there were blokes inside messing about - unlikely at that time of night, when the day shifts are mainly over and the night staff aren't in yet.

At this point I texted him to say I was walking over so he went to meet me. He was away a couple of minutes and we both went in together, and nobody was there. He'd have seen anyone leaving.

The murmuring and bangs are heard regularly in the building. There's also... the Face.
 
He went into the depot and could hear men talking in low voices. Couldn't make out what they were saying. He assumed there were people inside. As he was hot from cycling he went outside and had a drink from his bike-bottle.

As he stood there he heard a huge bang from inside the building, apparently through the the window he was standing next to.
So he thought there were blokes inside messing about - unlikely at that time of night, when the day shifts are mainly over and the night staff aren't in yet.

At this point I texted him to say I was walking over so he went to meet me. He was away a couple of minutes and we both went in together, and nobody was there. He'd have seen anyone leaving.

The murmuring and bangs are heard regularly in the building. There's also... the Face.
Oooooh!!!!! A FACE!

Am loving these latest additions. Men jumping 20ft and running footsteps and a putative FACE - these are the proper, old-fashioned sort of ghosty things that I used to gobble up in my teens.
 
Oooooh!!!!! A FACE!

Am loving these latest additions. Men jumping 20ft and running footsteps and a putative FACE - these are the proper, old-fashioned sort of ghosty things that I used to gobble up in my teens.

The face appears in a small window panel in the door to the ladies' toilets/shower area. It's as if someone's in there peeping out at passers-by. People have been known to go inside and search for whoever it is in case they're a trespasser or dosser, and are rattled when they find nobody there!
 
I believed I saw a ghost when I was quite young. I screamed for my Mum who told me it was only a dream. The block of maisonettes we grew up in were reputedly haunted and me and my siblings encountered “weird stuff” on a quite regular basis. As I grew older my experiences diminished and apart from a few instances in a hotel whilst working abroad and a peculiar incident at home in 2007 I haven’t experienced much at all, only the very rare sleep paralysis which I don’t believe is paranormal.
The funny thing is, after decades of getting on my soapbox about the paranormal to non believers, I am becoming increasingly sceptical about it all.
Whilst I still like to read or view paranormal articles I am actually questioning what I experienced as a kid and trying to find an explanation of the causes that are not paranormal or supernatural.
I sometimes wonder if we are possibly more “in tune” with the other side when we are young and as more important things come into our life, beer, women, mortgage and sprogs, we tune out?
 
I have mentioned this before so apologies for those who recall it. Years ago we went on a ghost tour in Edinburgh, and ended up in the Covenanters Prison in Greyfriars Kirkyard.

Having previously read 'The Ghost That Haunted Itself' about it, I recall reading of people coming back with scratches on their body, but feeling no sensation from them.

I asked to stay in the 'haunted' tomb for 30 seconds or so on my own while everyone left. I caught up with the other people on the tour. Afterwards, in the hotel room I was getting changed. My wife asked what was that on my back. I said 'nothing' because I couldn't feel anything. Looking in the mirror there was a 15 or 20 inch red scratch down my back, with no pain whatsoever, if she hadn't pointed it out, I wouldn't have even known that it was there.

I now really regret not forcing my wife to photograph it, as she said that I must have caught it on something. But at least I would have had some proof of a scratch.
 
As I sit home alone in the dark night, reading all these posts, I keep hearing strange little noises . . . :cskull:
 
I believed I saw a ghost when I was quite young. I screamed for my Mum who told me it was only a dream. The block of maisonettes we grew up in were reputedly haunted and me and my siblings encountered “weird stuff” on a quite regular basis. As I grew older my experiences diminished and apart from a few instances in a hotel whilst working abroad and a peculiar incident at home in 2007 I haven’t experienced much at all, only the very rare sleep paralysis which I don’t believe is paranormal.
The funny thing is, after decades of getting on my soapbox about the paranormal to non believers, I am becoming increasingly sceptical about it all.
Whilst I still like to read or view paranormal articles I am actually questioning what I experienced as a kid and trying to find an explanation of the causes that are not paranormal or supernatural.
I sometimes wonder if we are possibly more “in tune” with the other side when we are young and as more important things come into our life, beer, women, mortgage and sprogs, we tune out?

I don't know whether it's children being more 'in tune' with the other side, or whether children have an innate inability to distinguish between 'real' 'imagined' and 'dreams'. Very small children will often swear that their dreams were real, because they haven't got an understanding of the way that the world works yet. Things that happen, happen, right? Well, not always, not when you're asleep...

I would love to see a study done into the minds of children before they gain the knowledge that not everything they 'see' is real.
 
I sometimes wonder if we are possibly more “in tune” with the other side when we are young and as more important things come into our life, beer, women, mortgage and sprogs, we tune out?

I do believe this to be true to a point. That's not to say that aging rules us out from extraordinary experiences, though I do have the belief that we are more ''in tune'' when we are younger (and not necessarily children).
I used to also consider myself reasonably psychic or very intuitive if you'd rather. I was (and still am) a chronic headache sufferer and have been since my early teenage years. For the past 8 years they have been mostly held at bay by medication, however I used to find that I was more ''in tune'' when my periods of headaches were at their very worst, sometimes for weeks at a time. Now that I rarely suffer them, I've found that this ability has lessened enormously. I am also now in my 50's, so maybe getting older has just diminished it. I really just don't know.
 
My other thought, on the days I get time to ponder, is as a youngster we had children’s hour on TV after school and occasionally we were able to watch some adult tv. The rest of the time we listened to music or laid on a bed and read. Kids today have 24 hour tv, playstations and x-boxes, social media on their pc’s phones and iPads and I often think they are overloaded and don’t have the opportunity to think. Too much data in. And that can equally impact on adults as well. Then add a 10 hour working day, an hour travel each way, and going to bed with your head spinning and trying to line up the ducks for the following day.
Is that why we tune out?

The victorians had many a ghost story to tell, is that because they had more “me” time and the opportunity to tune-in?
 
I do believe this to be true to a point. That's not to say that aging rules us out from extraordinary experiences, though I do have the belief that we are more ''in tune'' when we are younger (and not necessarily children).
I used to also consider myself reasonably psychic or very intuitive if you'd rather. I was (and still am) a chronic headache sufferer and have been since my early teenage years. For the past 8 years they have been mostly held at bay by medication, however I used to find that I was more ''in tune'' when my periods of headaches were at their very worst, sometimes for weeks at a time. Now that I rarely suffer them, I've found that this ability has lessened enormously. I am also now in my 50's, so maybe getting older has just diminished it. I really just don't know.

Was the tuning in the cause of the headache perhaps?
 
Back
Top