True Ghost Stories: Real Accounts of Death and Dying, Grief and Bereavement, Soulmates and Heaven, Near Death Experiences, and Other Paranormal Mysteries (The Supernatural Book Series: Volume 2) Read online

  Within moments of getting to my position, I heard footsteps. They went into a room, just up the hall but the infrared camera did not detect anything. I thought someone was just trying to scare me. Soon afterwards, the sound moved into the room right next to the one where I was positioned. At the time, I assumed that those two rooms were interconnected, but they weren't.

  After a few moments, and for seemingly no reason at all, I began crying a river. Full sobs and all!

  After a minute or so of me trying to figure out what was happening and what was wrong with me (I didn't feel depressed, scared, or anything similar), I heard sobs coming from the room next to where I was stationed.

  It was only the next day that I found out that this location is where the local weeping lady supposedly resides.

  Her Perfume Let Me Know She Was Here

  My Mother had passed away. I was in bed with my husband (a complete non-believer), watching TV when my Mom appeared to me.

  She looked at me very lovingly as she approached. I tried to call out to Mom and my husband, to get his attention, but I couldn't speak.

  Mom touched my hair as if she were saying, 'Sweet dreams'. It was as if she was tucking me into bed, just as she did when I was a child. She smiled and then faded.

  After a few moments I was finally able to speak to my husband to tell him what I had experienced but before I could utter a word, he said, 'I know, your Mother was here. I could smell her perfume'.

  Young Love

  I was 16 years old at the time and had just started dating a friend who was a couple of years older than me. He was a fellow who I'd always gotten on well with and I cared deeply for him. Fortunately, he felt the same about me.

  It was summer and we, along with some of our friends, were attending the wedding of another friend. In fact, my partner was in the wedding party.

  After the wedding, we all went back to the home of one of the ushers. Given my age, I had to be home by a certain time so, when it was nearing my curfew my boyfriend walked me to my car. Again, being underage, I was not legally permitted to drink any alcohol.

  Upon saying our farewells, he told me how much he cared for me and said 'I will never let you go'. I will never forget those words, as they were the last words he spoke to me while he was alive.

  Early the next morning, my boyfriend and another guy went to a restaurant for breakfast. They were only a block or so from where my partner lived and, on their way home, the driver of the car lost control of the vehicle and it hit a pole.

  It was raining so hard that the car slid when the brakes were applied. The driver broke his leg and my boyfriend hit his head on the dash. He was seemingly, otherwise uninjured and after the crash he headed off for help. He collapsed soon after and died a few hours later in hospital from a brain injury.

  We were all devastated; I was totally devastated.

  The next evening, I went to bed early though I lay awake for hours. At some point, I fell asleep but was awoken by something during the night.

  It was dark in my room, so I couldn't see much but I had an overwhelming feeling that I was not alone. This frightened me so much so that I called out to my parents. My Mom came quickly and I let her know what I experienced. She reassured me; said I was only dreaming; that no one else was in the room or in the house, for that matter, except our family.

  After she left and went back to her room I was unable to fall asleep again. Though I agreed it was most likely a dream, part of me wasn't so sure. It felt too real!

  It wasn't long before that same feeling of not being alone returned but this time it was much stronger. However, rather than frightening me, this time I felt a sense of calm. It's hard to explain. I sat up in bed and was trying to focus my eyes in the dark as I looked around the room.

  In the corner, close to the ceiling I saw a light. It was small and not very bright, at first, but it quickly increased in size and brilliance as I watched it.

  It was not a solid light. It was transparent, similar to a ray of light when it shines through a window into a darkened room, yet it was more solid than that. It wasn't shaped like a ray-of-light either. It was more circular and grew outwards in the shape of a big beach ball, though not as perfectly round. It’s hard to explain what I saw.

  I rubbed my eyes and opened and closed them a couple of times, thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me. The light didn't go away. Instead, within the ball of light I saw my boyfriend appear, not all of him just from about the chest up. I was stunned, overwhelmed, afraid, yet not afraid, happy, and bewildered - at the same time. It's very hard to describe the feeling I had and what my thoughts were.

  I asked, 'Is that you?' He smiled and, without moving his mouth, I heard him speak. It wasn't an audible sound; it was more in my mind that I heard him.

  He said to me, 'I want you to know I'm okay, and I want you to promise me that you won't cry anymore'. I told him I couldn't promise him that as his funeral was the next day.

  He then said, 'After tomorrow, cry no more. I am still here. I am okay'. I agreed.

  Before I could say another word, he was gone; the light was gone; the room was dark once more.

  I pinched myself, not literally, as I thought I must have been dreaming, but I wasn't.

  I then got up, put on the light, looked around the room, went and looked out the window, and looked along the hall. Not sure why I did this. I guess I wanted to be sure that I wasn't dreaming. I wanted to check that others hadn't gotten out of bed and it was actually them that I’d heard, not my boyfriend.

  Everyone seemed to be asleep. I was going to go and wake my Mom again, as I couldn't believe what had just happened. However, I decided not to do this, as I didn't think she would believe me anyway.

  Of course, I really couldn't fall asleep after this. I lay awake trying to make sense of it all.

  The next day I shared my experience with my parents and, as expected, they told me it was just a dream. I could understand their line of thinking and that this was natural, given what had happened, and because I was grieving his death.

  I told a friend as well and she said the same thing. After that, I decided not to tell anyone else. I simply agreed with my parents and my friend that it was a dream, and it was because I was still in shock after the death of my friend.

  That was nearly 30 years ago now, and I still can see, hear, and feel it like it happened yesterday.

  I have thought of him often over the years, and although I still miss him dearly, and smile whenever I hear his favorite song, I have kept my promise.

  After we said our final goodbyes at the funeral, I haven't cried outwardly for him since. However, I have cried in my heart many times.

  This experience was so incredibly real to me. I know in my heart and in my mind that this was not just a dream. I was definitely awake. I believe it was his spirit that I saw and heard that night.

  As you’d expect, that experience changed me forever. It has had a long lasting effect on me. Though I have experienced some other unusual things in my life, it was this experience (and one other that occurred not long after) that ignited my life-long quest of researching the paranormal.

  I have had many other experiences that I can't explain, since that night.

  I have lived in a house that had regular paranormal activity. We shared it with the ghost of an elderly man. I'm not sure if that first experience made me more sensitive to the paranormal. Would I have felt, seen, and heard what I have experienced since if I had I not had that encounter first? I don't know. I guess I never will know.

  Suicide Calls

  On the edge of sleep, alone in a room at a friend's house, I heard a conversation about making (me) jump out a window.

  I rose from the bed to look around, but no one was present in the room with me. I lay back down again and, while on the edge of sleep once more, I heard, what I can only describe as evil laughing, very close to my ear. I assumed I was experiencing nefarious spirits, so I commanded them to, 'Stand in the light of Christ',
and mentally I visually projected white light throughout the room. The ghosts went away!

  In the morning, my friend said that people usually can’t sleep in that room because of the nightmares they have about ghosts trying to kill them.

  He also told me that a previous tenant had died after jumping out of the window in that room.

  The Ghost in the Cupboard

  When I was 16 years old, I was sitting in a friend's bedroom with him and two other friends. The friend casually mentioned that there was a ghost in his closet, which had woken him up intermittently over the years.

  He described experiencing the occasional cold spot in his room too, and the feeling of being watched. At that time, I did believe in ghosts but had never seen or experienced the presence of one. So, I was curious to know more.

  At some point, I tuned out of our conversation and put myself into a quiet, meditative state. Mentally, I popped open the lid of my skull - I am still not sure how I knew to do this - and called out silently, 'Hello. Anyone there?'

  Instantly, I felt I'd been seized by what can only be described as an invisible force!

  I felt the impact on the back of my head and my neck. It was not a physical contact, as such, but it was very real and horrible at the same time. To me, it felt as though my consciousness was being dragged out of my body, through the top of my head.

  I also felt a mild electric shock (physical) run through my body. My vision literally blacked out. I fought as hard as I could to remain conscious. However, the next thing I knew, I was huddled in a ball on the floor, screaming and crying incoherently.

  My friend grabbed me and yelled out for whatever it was within me to get the hell out, and to stay away from me.

  The next day I denied ever having experienced all this because I was so embarrassed. I thought I must have hypnotised myself, and somehow managed to convince myself into thinking there actually was something in that room.

  NOTE: I have never been diagnosed with seizures, epilepsy, schizophrenia, or psychosis. I have never experienced anything like this since, although I have had other, less alarming encounters with ghosts later in life.

  I remained afraid of ghosts for ten years or so following this occurrence. However, after several conversations with a Cherokee medicine person, who was taught by a card-carrying tribal elder, and trained for 20 years in traditional healing ways, I began to see this experience quite differently. I now feel less scared. I’m also confident that I can protect myself and keep such things from happening to me ever again.

  I’m Not Crazy

  Ok firstly, you might think I'm crazy...but I'm not crazy. I have tried to rationalise my experiences and put a lot of them down to some explanation or another.

  I had often felt that there was something not right about the house I grew up in.

  Events happened after we play with a homemade Ouija Board in the hallway at night; we had several seances as kids. Things that happened in the house after that included glasses shattering, windows violently shaking, people being called by family members that were nowhere to be found and a shadow that would dart across the corner of our eyes.

  These experiences were simply brushed off as the results of active imaginations or we to accept these things as just commonplace events. Nothing drastically scary ever happened. Just small things that made us wonder if we were alone.

  The events died down eventually and they slowly faded away as we got older but somehow they started up again when my nephew moved into the house.

  One event that still stands as the major "unexplainable" experience was the time when I was roughly 20 years old.

  I worked late delivering pizzas to pay for school and I'd usually be home around 2am. When I'd get home, I'd jump in the shower and watch a little TV before I went to bed. Usually, my dad would be woken by the sound of the shower or TV and he'd often sneak up to the bathroom door, wait and then bang on the door and tell me to go to bed. It was his little joke. It would scare me most times.

  One night, I had just got into the bathroom when I heard what sounded like bare feet walking towards the bathroom door in the hallway. They got closer and stopped at the foot of the door. I waited thinking it was my dad. I stood there, silent, expecting the knocking to come any second, but it never did. Instead, the footsteps continued, after a long pause and went back down the hallway. I thought this was odd because my dad would always knock. Always!

  I just brushed it off and as I jumped into the shower I heard my sister say "XXX, I know its you. Piss off.” When I heard this, I threw on my pyjamas and opened the door. I turned on the hallway light and stuck my head into my sister's room. She was on the lower bunk with my older sister on the top. She had the covers pulled over her head so I asked what was wrong. She asked if I had been walking in the hallway to which I replied "no".

  She then told me she had seen me, or what she thought was me, walk past the bedroom door and then slowly peer into the room. She said the figure was completely black and stood there for a good 10 seconds before it turned and went back down the hallway.

  I told her it must have been my dad and she said, "No, it was you...or it was like you". My dad was a large man. He had a very built physique and I was taller and thinner.

  I still believed it was my dad and went back to the shower, telling my sister to go back to sleep.

  When I got back into the shower my mum came into the hallway only seconds later. She knocked on the door and told me to go to bed. I told her I had just gotten into the shower. She then replied, "No, you've been walking around the house. Go to bed and don't wake up your dad". This struck me as weird almost instantly I opened the bathroom door and asked if my dad was awake. My mum replied "No, he's in bed, and don't wake him up".

  Right about then my sister, who still had the covers over her head, said, "It's not us".

  At that very moment, I was sure of one thing. None of us had been walking around the house.

  I got goosebumps thinking we had a burglar and walked around the house checking all the doors and windows. I turned on all the lights and checked all the cupboards. I found nothing. My mother didn’t believe it wasn't us. She simply told us all to go to bed. My dad came out of his bedroom and wasn't too happy. He asked why I was using their bathroom. I was totally freaked out.

  "There's someone in the house," I said and walked into his room. He wasn’t happy at all. He told me to go to bed. My parents didn’t’ believe in anything paranormal.

  I had only ever had an interest in horror movies. This event was something quite out of the ordinary. I went back to my room and got ready for bed.

  I turned on the TV and had it at such a low volume that you could hardly hear it. It was an attempt at a little peace of mind - to have something to get my mind off what had just happened. I sat on my bed and heard the footsteps again. Again, they were bare feet and this time they were coming from the bathroom.

  I asked my sisters if either were in the bathroom. My elder sister replied, "Did you hear it too?” I immediately walked into the hallway where I stood quietly. I could still hear the footsteps. They sounded a lot like bare feet on a wet floor.

  I slowly walked through the hallway and turned the bathroom light on.

  As the fluorescent light flickered on I saw what I believe to be someone standing, facing the mirror. A complete silhouette! Only visible for a split second as the light flickered, and then gone when the light was on. I can still remember the feeling that came over me when I saw it. It was like getting hit with an iced cold bucket of water. Almost like the shock of hitting a brick wall, kind of feeling.

  Seeing something I never expected to see standing right there as a reality. I can remember being so startled for a split second that I froze and my heart jumped, unable to comprehend what I was seeing until it was gone.

  The one thing that occurred to me later was the fact that the hallway was the area where we'd play as kids, having our seances and Ouija sessions. Even though those games were quite innocent to us, I
always had a bad feeling about that end of the house as I grew up. In fact, whenever anyone was alone, they'd stay in the front of the house. The back was colder at times, for no apparent reason. We put that down to the front being the only heated part of the house but we'd often wake up almost chilled to the bone in bed. This is one major incident of two I've had.

  The second one was quite scary. Since then, I have maintained my scepticism but have joined a paranormal research team in order to find out more.

  My nephew is living in the house now. Since he moved in unexplainable things have started to happen again. Recently, I stayed a few days at the house whilst preparing to move into my new house. I spent the night sleeping on the couch in the lounge. I woke every night with the feeling someone was there with me, almost hovering above me, floating quite close. It was that feeling you get when someone is right behind you. That was pretty weird.