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Ghost? Timeslip? What Do You Think?

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RealPaZZa

Gone But Not Forgotten
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As some of you will know, i dont believe in ghosts, but a friend told me this a few years ago and ive just remembered it, so thought id share.

In the 1970s a friend lived in a 200 year old terrace house in Gainsborough. It hadnt been modernised, even the toilet was still an outside one, becasue of this, a potty was kept on the landing.

Each night he heard a very odd sound, over the weeks he worked out what it was (or at least what it sounded like). From his bed he heard a marble roll along the floorboards of the landing and a "chink" of it hitting the potty, at around the same time each night. If he stayed up and waited on the landing, he never heard it.

One night he was waiting behind the bedroom door, he heard the rolling, and opened the door very fast, he saw the blur of something going down the stairs (he doesnt recall if there was a "chink" noise). He followed onto the stairs, at the bottom of the stairs he saw a little boy, dressed in scruffy clothes, who looked straight at him, then dissaperead.

He never saw the boy again, but heard the roll and chink each night until he sold the house and moved out.

I ask this - as the "ghost" looked straight at him, did the ghost actually see him? Or did the boy in his time see a "ghost" of my friend persuing him down the stairs? (a window in time opened and each saw each-other briefly)?
 
What a lovely and strange story.

If it were a time slip, it would be happening every night, except the bit about your friend "chasing" the boy down the stairs. And the marble from the past would be hitting the potty from the future, every night.

If it was a ghost (whatever that means), then there was also a ghost marble hitting a very real potty. The boy running down the stairs and looking at your friend could be coincidental, but it doesn't sound like it, does it?

Any chance your friend was on the border of sleep? A rolling marble followed by a "chink" sound could easily be hypnogogic (however that's spelled), but then I have no idea what to make of the night your friend hid behind the door.

Not that I would know what to make of a ghost or a time slip either! ;)
 
but there is also sound, something that is often missing from a "ghost story", i believe its not a "ghost" (in the spirit of a dead person sense). although i also have no answer.

he swears the act of chasing the boy was pre-meditated, planned that day (well the behind the door was, and going onto the landing), and he was awake and did continue own the stairs, to find nothing there.

HOWEVER you have made me wonder about the sound, he interprits it as a marble hitting the potty, did his mind do the rest? perhaps the sound was something explainable (something next door perhaps)?

He always told me his mother was a very "odd" woman, as a child hed listen outside her bedroom door, which was ajar, there would be a glowing light in there, but there was nothing in there that could be the source (no lamp etc), he would hear his mother say something, then some whispering, as if there was someone just too far away to make out what was said. Each time he asked about it, he was told "i was talking to your grandmother" (who was dead).

The night his grandmother died he saw what he describes as a "VERY glowing women in a wedding dress" coming up the stairs (differant house to marble story), "she" followed him into his bedroom, he jumped onto his bed, the woman followed him and leant over him, he says it was like she kissed him, then dissapeared, never to be seen again. he was terrified!

I was told these stories several times each in the 1980s, the same each time - do i believe them? i believe my friend believes does!
 
I believe that the evidence for both the existence of ghosts and the occurrence of "time slips" is very good.

But how to tell the difference between the two, that's the "money" question. Are those "ghosts" we saw in that very old kitchen or living people innocently carrying out their mundane duties centuries past?
 
Many years ago I was renovating an old house and subscribed to a magazine called "Old House Journal" - a "how to" magazine for do-it-yourself types. For their tenth anniversary issue they put out a call to readers to submit "true" stories involving - as they put it - "former occupants" still hanging about. They were amazed by the quantity of stories they received, all submitted by "just plain folks" working on old houses and purporting to be true, and they printed many. My absolute favorite ghost story of all time was one of those, and relates to this thread:

A couple had bought this old wreck of a place and were just starting to work on it. The house was full of junk from years past. The wife was in the kitchen laboring on something or other, while the husband was down in the basement sorting through the rubbish down there.

Suddenly, the wife sees a ghost, a boy, materialize near the top of the cellar stairs. He is holding an antique style lamp in one hand, and is looking at the woman with an astonished and possibly frightened look on his face. He slowly backs away from her, fading away as he goes.

Just as he disappears completely, the husband comes galloping up the steps shouting "Honey! Look what I found!". He is holding the lamp.

The wife freaks.

This is I think the only ghost story I ever heard/read where the ghost pretty clearly sees the living person and has a strong reaction to their presence. Though this could also be some kind of time slip.

The thing I found most intruiging in this tale was how an everyday object seemed to function as the "handle" for invoking the ghost/memory - - and more accurately, the distrubing of the object after presumeably a long time. As I recall it, several of the stories in that collection remarked upon the fact that the ghost activity seemed to commence while the house was being renovated - i.e. distrubed - and then ceased after the renovation was complete.

Oh! I just googled it and the magazine is still around. And its online now, AND they have a ghost stories section! I haven't perused it yet but certaily will.
 
funnier than aladdin for sure! i wish id seen it lol
 
IamSundog said:
They were amazed by the quantity of stories they received, all submitted by "just plain folks" working on old houses and purporting to be true....
Click to expand...

This reminds me of a news story I read within the past four or five years. A group of university-level archaeologists excavated a site in Pennsylvania where in the 1840s (?) a group of Irish immigrant railroad workers had been blown to pieces in an explosion. The remains were rather unceremoniously buried right where the men died.

The final report of the dig recorded not only what the archaeologists excavated and identified (they were attempting to ascertain the workers' identifies) but what they experienced - the dead guys, they claimed, showed up to watch them work.

I saved the article to a floppy disc, but it's now buried among 4000 others. Anybody remember this one or do I have to don my miners' hat?
 
polish that hat and prime your canary OTR, i'm dying to hear this...
 
OldTimeRadio said:
...I saved the article to a floppy disc, but it's now buried among 4000 others...
Click to expand...

You still use floppy disks? OldTimeRadio is OldTimeComputing too lol!!
 
placeholder said:
polish that hat and prime your canary OTR, i'm dying to hear this...
Click to expand...
I can probably find you a Davey Lamp if you're squeamish about using canaries.

(Davey was from Cornwall, so there are probably still a few old lamps knocking about. The RCM must have one I could steal...)
 
RealPaZZa said:
You still use floppy disks? OldTimeRadio is OldTimeComputing too lol!!
Click to expand...

For financial reasons only. Just before Christmas my A-drive finally croaked and I had to install an outside, add-on one (now my F-Drive!).

But it still beats scratching with a sharp stick on the back of a shovel.
 
Duffy;s Cut

placeholder said:
polish that hat and prime your canary OTR, i'm dying to hear this...
Click to expand...

What I did instead was to toss all the related keywords I could think of into Google and what do you know, the story popped up!

The location is "Duffy's Cut," near Malvern, Pennsylvania, where 57 Irish Catholic railroad workers were killed in 1832.

Entering "Duffy's Cut" into Google will bring up approximately 3,000 hits, including many on the ghosts.

This probably deserves its own thread.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
...But it still beats scratching with a sharp stick on the back of a shovel.
Click to expand...

i find my sharp stick essential!
 
Thanks OldTimeRadio for making me aware of Duffy's Cut. It was a story that I'd never come across before - and is just the type of historical mystery I love.

Also, sorry everone else for raising this thread from the grave.:angel:
 
CALGACUS03 said:
Thanks OldTimeRadio for making me aware of Duffy's Cut. It was a story that I'd never come across before - and is just the type of historical mystery I love.

Also, sorry everone else for raising this thread from the grave.:angel:
Click to expand...

Always good to have old stories unearthed. Now I wish OTR would come back as well.

Here's a more recent article about Duffy's Cut:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifes...-murdered-in-philadelphia-in-1832-268069.html

and a song:

https://www.christymoore.com/lyrics/duffys-cut/

 
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