Let's Talk: Real Life Ghost Stories/Experiences

That's really awesome Sevej- your other story was too. I love hearing those kinds of things form other cultures...your other one, isn't that thing your grandmother mentioned some kind of sex monster?

On that dog story...yeah, that one still gives me chills. I saw that guy Ricky I dunno, about 15 years ago and caught up with him for a while...I said "you remember that time we saw that dog" and he said "oh yeah, that was fuckin' crazy."

Michael Barnes wrote: That's really awesome Sevej- your other story was too. I love hearing those kinds of things form other cultures...your other one, isn't that thing your grandmother mentioned some kind of sex monster?

One thing I always pick up (that I like) about the supernatural in other cultures is that isn't all so fucking... sinister? Just an impression, but it feels like only a few spirits or supernatural phenomenon are these angry evil spirits. A lot more mischief than Western Europe-centric, often Christian, supernatural lore. Same with American Indian lore that I've read about.

Michael Barnes wrote: That's really awesome Sevej- your other story was too. I love hearing those kinds of things form other cultures...your other one, isn't that thing your grandmother mentioned some kind of sex monster?

Actually that it's a sex monster is a much less popular knowledge even around here, but yes, it is. Most of the time the genderuwo is just a big ghost with dark color, long fangs and long hair.

There are some very similar things though. We have here what we call "ketindihan", which literally "being pressed on" in english, as if something is pushing you down hard when you're sleeping. The more skeptics dismiss this phenomenon as health/breathing issues that give the sensation of something heavy on top of your chest.

Then there's "tuyul". Spirits shaped like small, bald children which more or less treated as pets. They'll get their owner money during the night, but a female must breast feed the tuyuls. Instead of sucking milk though, they suck blood. Or another is about black magic that turns a person to a pig (which can only move backwards) to steal money and valuables, the "babi ngepet". An accomplice of that person must guard a candle. If the candle's fire flickers that mean the pig is in danger. We also have our own version of penagolan and female ghost. Two versions of female ghost actually... one with a hole on its back caused by dying when being pregnant and the baby burst off its back "sundel bolong", and the other, which also death-while-pregnant related, "kuntilanak", which you can actually take as a wife if you can plant a nail on its head. Until someone pull off the nail, that is...

So many excellent stories! It feels rude not to add to the fun...

In 1986 I attended one semester of college in small town Marshall, Missouri (Go Vikings!) Small school, small population but a lot of big fun!

The school had 3 dorm facilities for general students and there was also 3 Fraternity houses. As the school was Christian aligned the dorms had very strict rules such as no alcohol, no opposite sex in room after 9, curfew etc. The frat houses did NOT have such rules. So while I don't subscribe to the frat ideal, I convinced a bunch of my fellow theatre types to join one of the houses to have better living arrangements I am not sure the football team, traditional keepers of the house, were thrilled to see us arrive...but we did win the skit comp handily during Greek Week

One of the general dorm buildings was 3 stories tall...but the third floor had been closed for ages. There was a story about a student , Steven, who had died in his room on the third floor...but this was just a sad fact. It hadn't been a gruesome murder, or some crazy suicide...in fact it happened so long ago that the few teachers who remembered it seemed to think it was just natural causes of some sort. It wasn't in any way a campus ghost story at all. The fact that the floor was closed was also coincidence...just bad repair. It had remained open for years after the death.

Halloween week rolls around. One of the theatre boys, Bobby, thinks it would be fun to do a seance with a Ouija board Halloween night. So about half the fraternity jams into Bobby's room around 10pm. Small room...typical double bunk box but now stuffed with about 15 of us...most football players. It was drunken, rowdy and had all the the classic jibes and cat calls you would expect from young men in this scene. We turned off the lights and had a few candles around for atmosphere.

Dave, the punter, was on the Ouija board with Bobby. The mucking around settles as Dave starts a beautiful monotone delivery that was very hypnotic. A bunch of cartoon style Halloween invocations are made...the dial on the board is pushed around, but nobody is really sure what is supposed to be happening.
We are about to call it a night when one of the guys suddenly says, "Hey, why don't you two try and make contact with Steven?"
Dave agrees and begins once again with the intonation but the focus now makes everything suddenly seem more eerie.
"Steven...join us in the room Steven...we want to contact Steven...step through the veil Steven..."
Suddenly the dial flips off the board and clatters to the floor, startling the room. Dave bends to retrieve it...when he sits back up with the dial a shrill gasp escapes his mouth as he sees Bobby. Bobby is now slumped Forward, head on chest. He is gurgling. Gutteral sounds pushing through spittle and much lolling out of his mouth. Half the room is suddenly terrified, other half skittishly joking about Bobby faking it.
Dave starts asking questions.. Are you Steven, tell us what happened Steven, and so on. Bobby never says anything intelligible. Just groans, quiet murmers...and a lot of nose and mouth snot oozing and flapping around.
This lasts maybe 3 to 5 minutes. Finally our running back freaks right out. Leas off the bed, snaps on the lights and rushes out of the room.

Bobby suddenly sits up straight...and in a very confused voice asks what is happening.

He says he didn't remember a thing. In his version of the story the dial had just hit the floor and suddenly Jason was running out of the room.
Dave quizzed him, we all tried to get him to admit he was just faking us out...but he seemed terribly confused. Adament it had not happened. He wanted to know what prank WE were playing on HIM!

That was that. We dispersed. Many of the team wouldn't hang with Bobby for weeks. Bobby never understood why he was treated with spooky concern.

What do I think? It was weird. Bobby was a terrible actor so I really dont think he had the chops to do what I saw. He was also terribly vain. Had he pranked....I would have expected grandiose dialogue from the "possession"...and certainly not a bucket of mucous all over his shirt. I also would have expected him to eventually come clean, just to show us how good he was to fool us all. Never happened.
Weird.

Other note not related...my buddy Dave got a bunch of us into the RPG "Chill". We used to play in the school Theatre. Players would sit on the stage and Dave would GM the game from the sound booth. So he was always a disembodied voice doing NPC voices and other biz. Also let him use light effects and sound stuff...nothing paranormal happened...but we very much scared the shit out of ourselves every session Good Times.

My girlfriend Kendall and I were in DC visiting family and friends in the fall of '97. She and I had been drifting apart for some time and were pretty much done, but this was in the middle of one our last 'good weeks.' It was a pretty cold night in late September and we were meeting friends at the 9:30 club to see Helmet with the Melvins.

She parked the car a couple blocks from the club, so we bought a couple beers to drink on the walk. When we turned onto V street there was a bus parked half on and half off the sidewalk in such a way that it created a pretty narrow corridor between it's side and the building that ran the entire length of the block. The street was clear, so we didn't think twice about walking through to get to the venue two blocks up.

As soon as we were between the bus and the wall this homeless guy who I figured had been in front of the bus where I couldn't see him turned into the corridor at the far end and started shambling towards us. He was wearing what looked like three or four ratty layers of coats and pants and had his head down so far that you couldn't see any part of his face as he moved slowly towards us.

The space between the bus and the building was wide enough that Kendall and I could walk side by side holding hands but just, and there was no way in hell three people were going to fit through. The guy didn't seem to notice us at all, and as a collision became imminent I said something like "yo, on your right." No acknowledgement whatsoever and no sign of stopping. When he was a step or two away I said "yo man, watch it," more aggressively. Without looking up he says "don't mind me, I'm dead already anyway" and pushes right through the middle of us making us lose hold of one another's hands and pushing Kendall against the bus knocking loose the beer she was holding to the sidewalk where it shattered.

Now I'm fucking pissed. I turn around saying something like "what the fuck man?" and dude's just gone. Nowhere to be seen. I ran around the bus to see where he went and there was no one around. We looked under the bus; nothing. The guy had just fucking vanished.

We were both pretty spooked, but there was nothing to do but head on to the show. The Melvins fucking killed it, and even though Helmet played a bunch of stuff off of Betty, they were pretty great as well. We didn't say anything about what had happened, and as far as I remember it only came up once or twice in conversation before we broke up for good and was quickly shut down. Twelve or so years later I ran into her and her husband at a bar where a mutual friend from out of town was hanging out. We had a great time and lots of laughs talking about the old days, but when I tried to bring the homeless guy up by saying something like "hey, remember that time on the way to the Melvins..." And her eyes went hard and she just shook her head slowly without breaking eye contact stopping me in mid sentence.

Thinking of this still makes my blood run cold. Things like religion, astrology, and belief in the 'supernatural' don't really hold much water with me, but I'm at a complete and utter loss as to where that man went.

Wow, I've really enjoyed these!

I don't know if I'm just super skeptic, or haven't been to enough graveyards at night, but I've never experienced anything like this before.

Some people never have anything like this stuff happen to them. Some people have it happen all the time. Some of it does have to do with interpretation, I think...how you perceive anomalous events. I'm sure that 99.99999% of ghost stories are misinterpretations or have some kind of scientific explanation...but maybe sometimes it's a scientific explanation that doesn't exist yet. And the other fraction of a percent are things that COULD really be something categorized as "other".

Gary Sax has a great point...in other cultures, spirits come in all kinds of varieties...Americans, Christians tend to think of ghosts and spirits in very distinct moral classifications...usually bad. But I just don't think that's really the case at all. If you talk to people that are highly sensitive to these kinds of things, they'll tell you that sometimes energies/entities/forces/spirits are sometimes not really in line with human values of good or evil. They're either outside, above or beyond them.

I was raised Catholic, became a born again evangelical Christian, and have since reverted back to my Catholic roots. Which is to say, I don't believe there's much to ghosts or ghost stories. They don't fit in my beliefs about the afterlife. This in spite of my large family who all think ghosts are real and who frequently share ghostly experiences. Moreover, my dad's ghost is said to haunt the home I grew up in. That is a different story than the one I'm going to tell. Like most ghost stories I think it's bunk anyway.

Despite my skepticism, I can't explain what happened one fall night when I was pledging a fraternity at a mid-sized state school with a leafy campus surrounded by hundreds of miles of farms and small towns. In the 1980s, in such an isolated setting, fraternities and sororities thrived and were the center of a great swath of student life.

I was an unlikely fraternity candidate, having already been born again hard. I didn't drink or fool around with girls and I spent a lot of my time in bible studies and mounting efforts to win more souls for Jesus. This was in fact my motivation for joining a fraternity. Along with my roommate, a good friend and fellow believer, we planned to join the fraternity that his brother was in and be witnesses for Christ. We rushed the fraternity and became pledges. My roommate and his brother were both tall good looking dudes. Based on my roommate's family ties, good looks, and easy manner, he was an auto-pledge. I rode in on his coat tails.

The fraternity was known for having a lot of rich boys with nice cars, and lots of drugs. As I got to know people, I found that this was more or or less a false reputation. There were a few high-profile guys that fit the bill, but the fraternity seemed mostly full of former high-school athletes who had become disaffected slackers. They partied like pagans. In my other life - at the bible studies - my roommate and I were viewed like God’s own Navy Seals taking the spiritual fight into the heart of darkness.

It It didn't seem to matter to the guys in the house that my roommate and I were born again Christians. In fact, many of the brothers seemed to welcome the diversity and often checked in to make sure we could handle the awkwardness of being at events specifically designed to force alcohol consumption and vomiting. They didn’t try to force behaviors on us or make us conform. Yet other brothers were silent and kept their distance. At first I took this as dislike of my beliefs, but would soon learn that these were the guys that would do the hazing. They were simply keeping their distance to make it easier to be our nemeses.

All the varieties of hazing we experienced back then have today been banned. It was pretty harsh at times. Had I no sense of spiritual mission, I’m sure I would have walked away from it. And the way the guys would tell it, our hazing experience paled in comparison to the stories from alum who had pledged in the decades before. The “traditions” we were subjected to went back that far and even farther. Even to the very boys that founded the fraternity - who then a year later marched off to fight in the Civil War. Some of the founders fought for the North while others fought for the South. As pledges, we had to memorize the names and stories of these founders, and the ideals that they purportedly gave to the fraternity. We would get grilled on these details during pledge meetings and hazing events. If you didn’t know the material, you suffered. I did not do well in such an adversative environment and generally hated the experience.

Which brings me, finally, to my ghost story. At 10pm one weeknight during pledgeship, our dorm room phone rang. My roommate and I had come to expect nighttime calls from a fellow pledge on the phone tree. Be at the house in 20 minutes. Wear running shoes. Running events tended to go late. If you had a test or paper due the next day you might end up pulling an all nighter.

As instructed, we showed up at the house and the class of 20 or so pledges started the run, led by a couple of the brothers. Luckily it was an ideal fall night - not too cold and not to warm. We ran along one edge of campus and were soon out into the farmland roads. We trudged along in the dark in quiet. After a few miles the group filed off the road and into an isolated graveyard.

By this point in the year, the leaves had all fallen from the trees and rustled among the old grave markers. There was a certain creepiness to the setting, but we were a mighty throng and I felt no fear. Our pledgemaster and a few brothers had been waiting. Near a couple parked cars was an open case of beer and more than a few empties littered the ground.

LINEUP they shouted. LINEUP! We pledges could never lineup fast enough or straight enough. Once we were in order, the pledgemaster stepped forward and stood next to a tall obelisk grave monument. It was an old one. The edges of the obelisk, which must have been 8 feet high, had softened and become chipped. A name and inscription were faded but still visible.

‘Who can tell me who this person is?” the pledgemaster asked of us pointing at the marker. He was a big funny Irish kid from Chicago. Having had a few beers, his speech was a little slurred. He was trying to act stern and serious though. I was amused and little worried. I hadn’t done the greatest job of memorizing all of the founders and I assumed that one of them was buried under the obelisk.

Everyone peered at the stone trying to make out the name, but it was too faded and too dark to see from a distance. “I’ll read you the name,” said the pledgemaster. “Thomas Stern. Who can tell me who he was?” (I am making this name up because I don’t remember the real name).

Now I was more worried. I had no idea who Thomas Stern was. In fact I was sure I hadn’t heard the name before. That wasn’t the name of any of the seven founders. Or was it? Did I forget something? While my mind tried to figure out why it couldn’t recall a name that it was supposed to have memorized, all the other brothers stood in a silence. Did they not know either?

“Okay,” said the pledgemaster “I’ll tell you who Thomas Stern was. Thomas Stern was a fucking nobody. A loser. You know why? He wasn’t a member of our fraternity. Once you become a member of our fraternity, you become somebody. For the rest of your life." "This guy," he said pointing at the marker "never became anyone. He’ll never be anybody. Forever. And if you don’t make it through your pledgeship, you’ll never be anyone either…” He had stepped forward slightly and was practically shouting, glassy-eyed with spittle on his chin.

Once I had realized the initial question of the person’s identity was merely an opening for the brainwashing that followed I mentally checked out. I felt bad for any of the other pledges that might be eating this shit up and I feared what jerks they might become once members. Who would demean a dead guy to make a rah-rah fraternity speech? Wrong wrong wrong I thought.

The pledgemaster stopped his rant and scanned our faces. Challenging us with his fierce drunken eyes - daring us to not give a shit.

Then the 8-foot obelisk toppled over missing the him by an inch. He was standing two feet in front of it when it landed with a giant thud next to him. “FUCK!” he shouted, turning to see that nobody was near enough to have pushed it over. Nobody other than him was within five feet of it.

“FUCK!” he said again, turning back to us his face stricken with shock. A giant murmur ran through the line of pledges. I was too shocked to say or think anything. “Holy shit” the pledgemaster said, a giant grin appearing on his face. “What the fuck!”

Laughter - nervous laughter - overtook the group. One of the other brothers spoke up: “Everybody - time to leave.” While we hadn’t toppled the monument ourselves, clearly some transgression had been committed.

The brothers who had driven got in the cars and left. And we jogged back to campus.

The experience was largely dismissed as a coincidence. An old decrepit monument ready to fall had finally fallen. But the timing and the context hinted at other forces for those inclined to believe such things. In this case, I was inclined.

I finished pledgeship (made it through hell week) and spent a couple of my college years living in the house. I hated it. It was too stressful. I dropped out of the fraternity. Then I dropped out of my faith. After graduation I fell out of touch with everyone related to that time of my life.

Fast forward 25 years and I’m friends again with my old roommate. He’s pretty much an atheist now. His older brother - well he became a Christian while we were living in the house and is still pretty devout. Twists and turns.

Two years ago my roommate and I went back for a reunion at the frat house. I had a great time seeing everybody and felt a genuine connection. For a change I got genuinely drunk.

I asked my old pledgemaster what he remembered about that night in the cemetery. He said he doesn’t remember any of it. I told him the story and he shook his head. My roommate doesn’t recall it either.

Did I imagine all of it? Had I hallucinated? I know I hallucinated during hell-week, but had put that up to sleep deprivation. All I can say is that I can recall that night in such detail that I believe the story is true and I think there was a force from beyond that moved the stone.

I think we are all made of meat, that we perceive about five percent of reality through our veil of flesh. It's also interesting how nobody dreams or really talks about dreams, or forgets them, when they used to mean something. I like science, but I feel like science is like using a pair of long barbecue tongs to juggle toothpicks. It's a set of limited tools that can do amazing things but have their limits. I don't have any real ghost stories, just strange experiences from time to time, usually tied to religion. It's a shame that we go through life and just see our little corner of reality. I say this as someone who is not a new age or mystic, who sticks with science most of the time.

Damn, Dan, that is a scary story. Oh, not the obelisk part, the rest.

*Bump*

Every year the website Jezebel posts a collection of supposedly true scary stories. They're a great read. Enjoy:
jezebel.com/10-terrifyingly-true-tales-o...te-terror-1847888097

Oh I forgot all about this thread, what a delight to read through it again!

About a week ago I sat down to eat my breakfast and said “Good morning,” to a room with no other people. A music box about 3 feet away from me started playing without my touching it.

I've never put much credence in ghost stories or claims of the paranormal. I WANT to believe, and I'd say that horror and supernatural fiction are the genres of books I read the most, but nothing in my experience has ever led me to believe that there's more out there than what I can see and feel and touch and smell with my five senses. All that being said, I have had one experience that I still think about from time to time and that I can't really explain. It still gives me goosebumps every time I think about it.

In college I spent a semester abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico. I lived with a Mexican host family. We had longish lunch breaks between classes so I generally caught the bus back to my host home for lunch. There was nothing unusual about this particular day - sun was bright and shining and the weather was perfect - and I was walking back to the bus stop to attend my afternoon classes after lunch. The host family lived on a bit of a hill, so I had to walk down the hill - probably all of three or four blocks - to catch the bus. There was no one else on the sidewalk except for one guy walking up the hill - we passed each other walking in opposite directions - it all seemed so very mundane - and I can't even recall what the guy looked like. I don't think we even made eye contact.

But as soon as I passed him, WHAM! I was overcome with this intense wave of...something. An utterly unique sensation that I had never felt before nor since. About the best I can do is describe it as pure evil. My heart started racing. My skin started to crawl. My breathing became labored. Most of the houses in the neighborhood had fenced walls up against the sidewalk and I just happened to be next to one that had a bit of a ledge on the wall. I had to sit down and collect myself. It was an intensity of feeling that I had never felt before - it was almost like a physical blow. I remember looking back up the hill towards the man I had passed - he was still there - walking slowly up the hill. He didn't look back. There was nothing remarkable about him. And the feeling gradually faded as he continued on his way.

And that was it. Was the guy the devil? A serial killer? A loving husband? Something else? Was it just me having a bad reaction to lunch? I dunno - but that feeling. Wow. It was so powerful and unique. It really truly felt that I was in the presence of evil. And it has stuck with me to this day.