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Hypermetropia

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Dec 5, 2007
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115
I am 60 this year, and I have been amazed just how many rational people have admitted they have either seen or felt a ghost. I got to talk intimately with men and women when I was a nurse and carer, so perhaps they felt they could confide in someone who would give them a sympathetic ear.

I have never doubted a single story because they are all fleeting, and occur in such mundane and undramatic circumstances.

Here are a few to amuse you.......

The 50 year old mother of a friend bought a fisherman's cottage in Mousehole, Cornwall. She did some major alterations, including the insertion of a new door. One evening, as she sat knitting alone in the lounge, she felt 'aware' of something, and looking up, saw a small man in old fashioned dress, standing in the new door frame. He appeared to look the frame up and down, looked at her and smiled, then faded away. She said that as a child they moved into a semi and she saw the figure of a woman who was 'shaking', in the corner of her bedroom. Eventually she found out the previous owner had died in the room and suffered from Parkinson's disease.

A carpet layer told of how he was alone in an unoccupied Victorian villa, and had started to lay carpet, under the window, with his back to the door. He heard heavy footsteps coming towards him on the bare boards and when he turned to see who it was, found he was still alone!

Only last year an elderly couple told of how they were taking a walk in the meadow at the bottom of their large property when they both saw a figure walking across the meadow in what looked like sacking with some kind of belt. He was invisible from about the knees down, they observed him for a few seconds, then he faded away. Others have seen this man, who is believed to be following an old track from the village to the sea.

I was at nursing school with a lass from Yorkshire who said her farmhouse was built around the remains of a monastery. The whole family had regularly seen what appeared to be flickering candles in some kind of procession. Nothing else was visible.

A boyfriend said that he and a mate left a pub in Exeter? (memory fading, it was definitely in Devon), and found a phone box. They were looking for a taxi number when they heard the sound of a horse galloping. They both looked and saw a horse and rider galloped past at full speed. The rider had a billowing shirt, long flying hair and a distraught look which both blokes witnessed. They stepped out of the box to get a better look of him riding up the street, but he was gone. No sound. He was not sure if it was a ghost or real, but at about 11.00pm, he had his doubts.


My deceased Mother in Law said she went down to make a cup of tea one evening and saw her dead husband, standing at the sink.


An ex husband said that while he was in hospital and fearful for his life, he had a visit from his ex wife's uncle who walked up to the bed and said words to the effect that all was going to be OK and he would make it. The man had died two years before. He said later that had he wanted to conjure up a guardian angel, the ex wife's uncle would not have come to mind!


My favourite seems more of a time shift than a ghost and was told by the son of a very educated and down-to-earth Hunting Estate manager in Scotland. His father had been stalking, observing his deer in the summer, flat to the ground, lying very still. He saw a near naked man, with tangled hair and a beard and a long spear, silently 'loping' across his field of vision. The fleeting 'vision' then faded away and he was left with the impression he had seen a Prehistoric man.

I am not a writer trying out my skills on you all, these are genuine!
 
Hypermetropia said:
I am 60 this year, and I have been amazed just how many rational people have admitted they have either seen or felt a ghost.

Do you feel that a rational person who sees a ghost should dismiss it as imagination?
 
norton51 said:
Hypermetropia said:
I am 60 this year, and I have been amazed just how many rational people have admitted they have either seen or felt a ghost.

Do you feel that a rational person who sees a ghost should dismiss it as imagination?

Ouch!

You've misread the sentence, or I wrote it badly. I am not amazed anyone I consider rational could say they've seen a ghost..... I said I was amazed HOW MANY of us there are. This includes my late mother. I have also had a few encounters with Polts, but sadly, they have not shown themselves.
 
I like the Prehistoric man story! Who knows how many woad-slathered apparitions are wandering the wilds of Scotland with nobody to see them?
 
Hello Hypermetropia. I found the post interesting, especially the introduction saying how you heard the stories, as well as the parkinsonian apparition and the one with the sackcloth.

Although I'm deeply sceptical of poltergeists, If you've got time and don't mind I'd be interested to know a bit more about this

I have also had a few encounters with Polts
 
Fascinating tales! I enjoyed that.
The prehistoric man apparition is particularly rare, I think.
 
oldrover said:
Hello Hypermetropia. I found the post interesting, especially the introduction saying how you heard the stories, as well as the parkinsonian apparition and the one with the sackcloth.

Although I'm deeply sceptical of poltergeists, If you've got time and don't mind I'd be interested to know a bit more about this

I have also had a few encounters with Polts


Thank you kindly for that - it is always a quesy moment when you press the submit button!

The polt was considered by many to be the spirit of a young woman who was deserted by her fiance and hung herself in the cottage I lived in, sometime in the 30's. This was in Longridge, Lancashire. We had three crashing bangs on a glass door, the outside space was visible from the window, we were convinced nobody was there. As I was packing up my son's room, I vacuumed the entire floor thoroughly. I unplugged the hoover, took it out, returned to the empty room and found a toy in the middle of the carpet. After I left, my partner saw the whispy outline of a female coming down the (original) staircase. I never see anything!
 
Hypermetropia said:
Ouch!

You've misread the sentence, or I wrote it badly. I am not amazed anyone I consider rational could say they've seen a ghost..... I said I was amazed HOW MANY of us there are. This includes my late mother. I have also had a few encounters with Polts, but sadly, they have not shown themselves.

Recent surveys suggest that a large proportion of people in the UK believe in the paranormal. Since it is safe to assume most people are rational, otherwise society would quickly break down, we can reasonably infer that a lot of them have no problem with the idea of ghosts.

Of course, we cannot assume that all, or even most, irrational people believe in the paranormal. There is no obviouis evidence for that.

My point is, assumptions are one of the biggest problems in studying Fortean subjects.
 
norton51 said:
Hypermetropia said:
Ouch!

You've misread the sentence, or I wrote it badly. I am not amazed anyone I consider rational could say they've seen a ghost..... I said I was amazed HOW MANY of us there are. This includes my late mother. I have also had a few encounters with Polts, but sadly, they have not shown themselves.

Recent surveys suggest that a large proportion of people in the UK believe in the paranormal. Since it is safe to assume most people are rational, otherwise society would quickly break down, we can reasonably infer that a lot of them have no problem with the idea of ghosts.

Of course, we cannot assume that all, or even most, irrational people believe in the paranormal. There is no obviouis evidence for that.

My point is, assumptions are one of the biggest problems in studying Fortean subjects.

Are you suffering from a dose of the 'semantics'? :lol:

Most people will get my drift............ the stories were told to me by men and women who were not apparently suffering from a Mental Health problem. I used to work in Mental Health so know visual and auditory hallucinations can sound very convincing.
 
Just recalled a great story, while posting elsewhere. When I was a matron at Brentwood Prep School there were quite a few ghost stories based around the time it was a private Edwardian 'Mental Home'.

The two most convincing was that when a former Headmaster was walking down the stairs, the ghost of a female glided up towards him and passed through his side. The cleaners told me that they once had a trainee teacher staying up in an attic room (former servant's quarter). They took him a mug of tea every morning. One morning they found him drenched in sweat and in a state of shock. In the small hours something had woken him and he saw a female figure, dressed in old fashioned costume with a mob cap, standing looking over him. He had pulled over the blankets and not moved until the cleaners found him.
 
You have some very good stories here, thanks for posting them. I particularly liked the one about the ex-wife's uncle. It's unaccountable stories like that which always seem to be the most credible to me, ones with no neat explanation to them.
 
Sogna said:
You have some very good stories here, thanks for posting them. I particularly liked the one about the ex-wife's uncle. It's unaccountable stories like that which always seem to be the most credible to me, ones with no neat explanation to them.

Yes, I like that story too. It has something of a miracle about it, which I hesitated to post........

The ex was alone in a two bedded room in a Liver transplant unit, when the Uncle appeared and although befuddled he remembers saying "Thanks for visiting, I know you hate hospitals" (referring to a conversation they'd had years before) The visitor replied that he was fine about them now.

Yes, he might well have been dreaming, but the amazing thing is, after the 'visit' he made what the doctors told me was a near miraculous recovery from both liver and kidney failure. Instead of a threatened transplant, he walked out of the ward two weeks later with virtually no ill effects. ( massive paracetamol overdose).
 
Really interesting stories Hypermetropia, thanks for posting them. I liked the one about the old guy and the door frame in particular.
 
Thanks for the reply. Did the door actually shake or move in any way, or was it just the sound? I ask as I've had a similar series of events myself, sound only.

No offense but personally I don't think the patient's ex wife's uncle flies. There are far too many more mundane explanations there. Firstly patient's actual recovery or otherwise don't necessarily fit the given prognosis, and due to his condition it's hard not to think of conditions like ITU psychosis first.

I'm not saying that it's possible to say one way or the other, just that I think there are far more likely explanations.
 
I liked the one about the carpet fitter, and it's very similar to many experiences I had whilst working in a (vaguely) similar job in London. I worked for a property maintenance firm, and the vast proportion of our work was in peoples houses/flats whilst they were at work. There is a spooky feeling you get being in someone elses house when they are out!
 
Hypermetropia said:
Are you suffering from a dose of the 'semantics'? :lol:

No, just trying to dispel some common misperceptions about ghost experiences.

Most people will get my drift............ the stories were told to me by men and women who were not apparently suffering from a Mental Health problem. I used to work in Mental Health so know visual and auditory hallucinations can sound very convincing.

With the way the DSM is expanding the range of 'mental health problems' all the time there can be few people left who still qualify as 'normal', whatever that is.

People without any 'mental disorders' can and do have hallucinations - sleep paralysis, for instance.
 
oldrover said:
Thanks for the reply. Did the door actually shake or move in any way, or was it just the sound? I ask as I've had a similar series of events myself, sound only.

No offense but personally I don't think the patient's ex wife's uncle flies. There are far too many more mundane explanations there. Firstly patient's actual recovery or otherwise don't necessarily fit the given prognosis, and due to his condition it's hard not to think of conditions like ITU psychosis first.

I'm not saying that it's possible to say one way or the other, just that I think there are far more likely explanations.

We were sitting about 8 feet away from the door which opened directly into the lounge - the sofa was under the window, so we could see the front door area and the path away from it. The door was behind us, so sound effects only. I have to say, it was so loud and reverberating, you'd have to wonder who would risk their fist on a glass panel. Yes, could have been a kid doing a knock and run but within seconds we looked out to check.

I agree about the ex husband (not my wife!) possibly tripping in the ITU. If it does not stretch your credulity too far, when he was admitted to the Unit and I was told he was probably not going to make it, I did pray, fervently to "anybody who is on the other side" to help him. I did it with little conviction but I had had a conversation with Judge Smith the musician (currently writing a book on the paranormal), who told me the 'spirits' can sometimes intervene. Those who have recently passed being the most potent.

I have now made myself sound like Mystic Meg, I do assure you I thought myself a fool while doing it, but did it with a passion! I keep an open mind but the coincidence of asking for spirit help, then the NEXT DAY the Uncle making his visit, certainly raises an eyebrow. (PS, no I did not warn the ex to expect divine intervention). How boring life would be without these Fortean moments!
 
From what you say I don't for a moment think it was someone banging on the door, and as I say years ago almost exactly the same thing happened to my family and I regularly. (In my case though it seemed to be action replays of the dog's favorite trick of plowing into the door, even if she was asleep and locked in another room in front of up to three witnesses) Thing is though if it's just sound doesn't that make it a auditory type apparition rather than a poltergeist? or at least unclassified as either.

I agree about the ex husband (not my wife!)
Sorry about that, for some reason I got really confused there.

I don't think you need to feel foolish for praying in a situation like that.
 
There are no atheists in ICU waiting rooms.

When a friend of mine was dying I would find myself constantly making mental calls to a friend who had died several years ago, who had never met him but would have liked him, to come and help him.

It may not accomplish anything, but neither does wringing your hands and at least it feels like it might possibly accomplish something.
 
PeniG said:
There are no atheists in ICU waiting rooms.

When a friend of mine was dying I would find myself constantly making mental calls to a friend who had died several years ago, who had never met him but would have liked him, to come and help him.

It may not accomplish anything, but neither does wringing your hands and at least it feels like it might possibly accomplish something.

I fully understand how we do desperate things at desperate times, but I AM an atheist. God didn't come into my 'entreaties', I'm afraid - I was following my friend's advice and calling on the recently passed to intervene. The more I repeat this story, the sillier it sounds. You and I know how it feels to be helpless.

Judge Smith (hurry up and get that book written) has a circle of friends who do a form of seance where they call upon the spirit of one, or two (can't recall) dead doctors who they claim, can give advice and sometimes healing. This is in the depths of Norfolk (where else!). Sometimes you hear these stories and your eyes roll, but talking to him, you cannot doubt his sincerity. Wish I'd asked him more about it now, maybe I will get back to him.
 
What a really interesting thread, I guess most sightings come from perfectly ordinary people just going about their business.

Stories like these tend to get me thinking, that maybe we are not seeing ghosts at all, but real life scenes perhaps from another dimension, it’s quite hard for me to put into words, maybe if the conditions are right there is some overlap? Maybe they have seen us, and are telling friends about a really strange encounter, I wonder if there are any records from the past about someone seeing someone dressed in what we would call modern clothes?

There is the other theory about recorded images, which I guess is quite plausible, it would be good if true to find out how it actually worked, or they could be just ghosts!
 
The more I repeat this story, the sillier it sounds

Please don't think that, there's nothing silly about your reaction at all.


I wonder if there are any records from the past about someone seeing someone dressed in what we would call modern clothes?

I wondered that, but never came across any. I'd say if that had happened you'd be likely to have heard someone from whenever trying to describe a car.
 
oldrover said:
I wonder if there are any records from the past about someone seeing someone dressed in what we would call modern clothes?
I wondered that, but never came across any. I'd say if that had happened you'd be likely to have heard someone from whenever trying to describe a car.
I think we discussed this idea on some other thread, but it's difficult to search for!

My idea, IIRC, was that the person describing the car wouldn't really have the vocabulary to do so. He wouldn't have the word 'car', but if he noticed it had four wheels he might have said "it was something like a cart/carriage". But he wouldn't have had words for features like bonnet, bumpers, indicators, windscreen-wipers, go-faster stripes, etc.
 
I've tried searching for this myself as road ghosts/ghost vehicles are a favourite topic of mine, and haven't come up with much at all either.

Good point but they might refer to glass eyes or lamps for headlights, grills have been around in one form or another for thousands of years too. Possibly though the overall effect may drown out individual details.

I can't follow this sort of thing for long but isn't there something about it may be possible to travel forward in time (apart from the obvious) but not back, which if ghosts were a sort of time slip might explain why they only seem to go one way. I'm not suggesting that's right.
 
Good point about vocabulary

Sometimes you read stories about the person and the ghost looking at each other, but thinking about it, in times gone by people did not have access or the means to publish information, so your ordinary chap of say 200 years ago might have saw something, and only told his friends and family, or as in many cases just kept it to himself, even today how many paranormal incidents go unreported I would say the majority.

Perhaps we see "ghosts" from the future and do not recognise them for what they are
 
Further to my ghost stories from everyday people..... I have just stood transfixed in my garden, while my new neighbour, Martin, has told me a great modern ghost story.

He said that when he, his ex wife and son (now 42), moved into a recently refurbished flat in the East End of London, things began to happen.

Their 7 year old son complained that two little 'black' boys were coming into his bedroom in the evenings saying "play with us, play with us", but when he got up to join them, they, in his words, 'went away'. "Why won't they play with me? he asked. His mum put it down to dreaming, despite him repeating the story over the next few months. When they got into discussion about the flat and the refurbishment, their neighbour said that it had been gutted by fire. A woman, working as a prostitute had abandoned her two boys in the flat and deliberately set it alight. Martin said that he also witnessed a photo in a frame turn to face the wall. They eventually got a Catholic priest in to give the flat a blessing, but the wife insisted they move on. Martin is a no-nonsense East Ender himself.
 
Re: something in the present seen in the past: Edith Fowke's 1976 book Folklore of Canada reprints a 1932 article by a nun named Mary L. Fraser on Nova Scotia folklore. It seemed that "fifty-one years ago" (circa 1880) a young man from Mull River, Inverness County was carrying a message to a neighbour's house when he came upon a horrible monster.

"It was large and black and had a red light in the middle of its back. A stream of light came from the front of it, so bright that he could see the shingles on the house to which he was going. It went up to the house, passed around it, and then came down the road so swiftly that he jumped aside to let it pass." (p. 121)

The man crossed himself as the monster roared off into the night. Twenty-five years later he realized the "monster" was an automobile, encountered many years before the first Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line.

Sister Mary adds that she got the story from the witness's sister. She also says that trains were heard and seen in Nova Scotia before railways made their way there. "One evening a man who lived a mile above Mabou River, when returning from feeding his cattle in the barn, heard the sound of a train passing . . . over the grassy slopes and wooded hills." He called out his wife and children, who also heard the train. Several years later, "contrary to all expectations," a railway was built through the area -- along the very route apparently taken by the phantom train.
 
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