House Ghost?

I can relate to that feeling Elegran

Roses I don't think the electrics were being replaced in that part of the house - tell me why - interesting stuff!

Gally did your DGD have the terrible nightmare before or after you sat up in bed and told the 'thing' to go away?

Having precognition is horrible because it means that sometimes you have a bad thought and wonder if it is happening again!

I suspect many of you have had the feeling that you really must contact someone and when you do you find they really needed some help.

jingle - before. I was alone in the room when I had the 'experience'!

elegran what a beautiful spot.

I read a book recently "The Boy in the River" which was written by the geological forensics professor who helped with the murder investigation of the torso of a little boy who was found in the Thames. Reason I read the book was because I am interested, being from Africa, and the book had African connotations (the child who was ritually murdered was Nigerian), also at one time it was thought that it was a South African "muti" murder but it wasn't, it was a ritual killing. Poor little mite being brought here for that fate. Also I am fascinated that this man could pinpoint not only the region but the village that the murdered child had come from by analysing mineral deposits in his bones. I don't think the case was ever solved (wasn't by the time he wrote this book) but I do remember being deeply touched when I saw one the news that the policemen involved went out on a boat and held a memorial service for the boy and placed a wreath on the river Thames where his torso had been taken out of the water.

This professor of forensics, a highly trained scientist, recounts in his book his own "haunting connection with Africa". He and his first wife, a doctor, worked in the Congo when they were first married and their twins were born there prematurely, the one baby girl died soon after birth and they were obviously devoted to the precious surviving twin, also a girl. He writes in the book (because he says he is compelled to write it down) how one day a dignified local man came to ask for an audience with him, the man was unknown to him other than that he knew this man as the local carpenter. He said the man was dressed in his "Sunday best" and it had clearly taken a lot of courage for the man to come and see him. To his shock and horror, the elderly African man had come to tell him that his toddler was being called by her dead sister and he spoke of the latter as being "dead-alive". To cut the story short, he sent the man on his way with clearly every instinct in his being telling him that it was superstitious nonsense and rejecting this "warning". He does also though recount how sometimes his daughter would be still and stare out of the window as if at something unseen. Within the year their little girl had died from a random fever.

There is much more to the book than the above of course, including fascinating insights into African religion.

Just come into the bedroom to retrieve my iPad. I'm alone in the house and I can hear ghostly whispering. Very spooky.

I realise it's coming from the speaker in my bedroom which links to the monitor in room the grandchildren sleep in when they stay overnight. I put it to my ear and there are definitely whispering voices. Something from the Twilight Zone or perhaps burglars?

Brandishing the rounders bat I keep by the bed a blunt instrument, I throw open the other bedroom door. No-one.

Then the penny drops. I've opened all the windows and the microphone is picking up the next door neighbours talking in their own back garden.

Mystery solved, but just for a minute or two I thought.....

Gally I have read a lot about renovation seemingly bringing about 'hauntings' sights, sounds, feelings etc then after a while all settles down again.Usually the electrics are being brought up to date, new cables sometimes.Electricity is all around us as well, we forget about what's in the earth and rock below our houses, running water, minerals, then there is lightening, and also static that builds up in the atmosphere.Today there is so much techie activity as well adding to all this.People often think because they are renovating, that the 'spirits' don't like it, but I believe it's something much more natural rather than supernatural.For instance, there is a stately home [can't remember where] where there is a dog sighting regularly reported by visitors and guides alike. It's a King Charles
type dog, and it appears on a certain stair in the grand hallway and runs downstairs and into a corridor. It also materializes outside sometimes at a certain spot on the terrace.Now, logic tells us that if this dog [as a ghost dog] really was running around the mansion, it would be seen in lots of places, but no, only on a certain stair and in the hall and in one place only on the terrace.Which doesn't make sense. Somehow the image of this running dog has been imprinted on the atmosphere and is replayed a bit like a minute or two of a dvd.It could be weather related [low pressure?]
Which is why you often hear of sightings of a maid going upstairs carrying a tray or some such thing; for a start , maids didn't often die in employment and a young maid could not keep on working once she married, so that image of a young maid again must be imprinted somehow, and the woman herself died years later in her own cottage!Who would come back to this life and carry on being a servant in any case?So I don't think these sightings are really 'there' in the literal sense.
However, I can understand, that real or not it must be unpleasant to live somewhere [or disconcerting at the least] where sightings happen.One day I do think we will be able to explain things though, and we often forget that we have all our senses tuned to the unusual [like dogs and cats] if we allow ourselves to use them. I have twice felt the urge to 'get out of here' [and do it fast] in situations [non ghostly, in fact as my Grandma used to say'it's not the dead you need to worry about, it's the live ones!'] My instincts told me I was in danger, even though the situation seemed calm.Always go with your instincts.

It wasn't until I was around 44 that I first saw a ghost, but I always had an open mind.

My youngest daughter was under three and had snuggled into bed with me. I was awake in the middle of the night thinking how cold it was and she woke up and looked towards the bedroom door and excitedly said "look at the baby." She said again "look at the baby," while watching something towards the end of the bed. Then she became frightened as something she could see was then at the side of the bed where she was sleeping and she said, "don't get too close". It seemed to me that someone walked around the bed and had leaned over to show her the baby. I couldn't see anything but patted her and told her it was okay and she drifted off to sleep.

Years later I had fallen asleep while reading (we lived in a different house by then). I woke up and the light on my bedside table was still on, I could see a woman holding a baby sitting at the side of my bed. She looked like me, she could have been my sister, even with the same hair but cut in a simpler style. I wasn't scared and they faded away as I sat up. I have wondered if this woman and baby were the same my daughter saw fifteen years before.

Since then I have seen quite a few things, it's definitely not only children who see ghosts etc. I have been scared a few times and other experiences have been fascinating. I believe there is more going on than we understand. There is also another thread of spooky stories for people who may not have read them.

I also experience thoughts that happen. Such as I was for no reason thinking about my SIL's sister and her partner. I thought of them deciding to sell the new house they had built and buying an old one and doing it up. Sure enough a few days later SIL's mother was visiting my daughter and said exactly what I had been thinking. It happens to me often, whole scenarios I had been thinking of then coming about.

About 20 years ago DH (The biggest sceptic you can imagine!) was driving a lorry in Europe. He rang me one day to say he had parked up in the dark and settled down for the night. He had a rotten night and said there seemed to be a horrible atmosphere to the place. In the morning he climbed out of the lorry to have a look round and saw the sign saying Dachau!

My daughter and her family lived in a miners cottage in Cornwall for about a year. My GD was about 2 years old and had a regular conversation with a little girl who she could see in her bedroom either at night or early in the mornings. My daughter also saw not only the little girl but was woken up by a drunken man standing in the door way of her bedroom she woke her husband who was a non believer, he put the light on and the man disappeared. A few days later the non believer husband was coming down the stairs when a hand appeared on the handrail in front of him. My daughter and GD were not frightened by the sightings but after the hand on the handrail incident my non believing son in law decided it was time to move house.

rockgran this sort of thing you mention reinforces my belief that that the person is not really there [or ghost] and we are just seeing what is more or less a photograph. A ghost doesn't need to use a handrail coming down the stairs.Whatever it was, I would want to move house too!

My house is reputed to be haunted by someone who hanged themselves in the eighteen hundreds!
I've never seen or experienced any thing!
The only strange experience I've had was a week after my husband died!
I was in bed and I felt his warm comforting hand on my shoulder!
It felt read during and nice!
I wasn't asleep, drunk, or sedated!
I still can't explain it. I am NOT superstitious or credulous! That was almost eleven years ago!

It felt real. Comforting and nice!

Galen that's a lot of exclamation marks.

So?

It's ok they are free, just never seen so many.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I absolutely love exclamation marks!
I know some don't approve of them, but I think they give emphasis to a sentence or point where appropriate - the exclamation mark police are a dour bunch IMO!

My little DGD (9 nine months) spends an awful lot of time staring into the corner of the living room ceiling and laughing, burbling and squealing with delight. We all look up but nothing to be seen at all.

I know what you mean Flower as our DGS used to do that a lot, also have you noticed how sometimes cats stop washing and stare intently at something?Always a bit disturbing.Do dogs do that as well, I wonder? I know that my Uncle's dog would never go past a certain house on a walk and would growl [there was no other dog at that address.]Spooky stuff.

As children when we used to go out riding there was one particular country lane where all the ponies used to spook at a certain spot. We never did figure out what caused it but we found out later the lane used to be called Gallows Hill.

At my last house there definitely seemed to be 'something' inexplicable. Sometimes my cat would sit on the back of our sofa and just stare at the top of the door for ages and ages and could not be distracted even if we flapped our hands in front of her face. Sometimes she would make her teeth chatter at whatever it was that she saw, but not every time. After she died, it was two years before I had another cat. She did exactly the same thing in exactly the same place . . . It was actually quite freaky to watch.

The other thing, in the same house, I would frequently be aware of someone else in the kitchen and would turn to speak to them thinking it was my OH or whoever else was in at the time, only to find there was no-one there. My Sister iL, without my ever having mentioned anything about this, told me that she often turned to speak to me in the kitchen, but I wasn't there. Whatever/whoever it was seemed benign, I never felt afraid. The house wasn't old and, as far as I know, had no history of anything spooky.

I'm very open-minded and just feel that there's so much we still don't know about our world.

We have had a cat ghost! After DD's cat had a stroke she lived in our spare room till she died. Since then DH ( who I have previously mentioned has no belief in the supernatural) has several times felt a cat walking over his face when he has been sleeping there.

I find these stories fascinating. There is a lot we don't understand. I believe that people's lives / emotions especially if they are in any way intense somehow become part of the fabric of the house and some people are sensitive to these. Children I think may be born with the ability to sense things as they have not learned to be distracted and can focus perhaps more easily on feelings and emotions.