House Ghost?

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.....

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.

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

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.

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

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

I can relate to that feeling Elegran

DH and I took our caravan for a weekend in Fife, intending to stay at a 5-van site near the ruins of Newark Castle (5-van site = small area with minimal facilities owned by local landowner and listed in caravan Club handbook)

We settled into a nice peaceful grassy field out of sight of habitation, only facilities a cold tap, with a close view of the castle and the Forth beyond. Beside us was a path down the cliff, with a blocked doorway which must have led into a passage immediately below us.

That night I was woken by the strongest sensation of illwill towards me. Someone/something resented our presence there and wanted us to leave. Next morning DH suggested we move to a different site. When I asked why, it turned out he had felt the same force.

Neither of us was given to morbid fantasies about melodramatic events in lonely castles, so it was not imagination. That passageway beneath us must have witnessed something which would not stand scrutiny.

PS We were parked in the little field in the foreground of picture 3

Not quite a ghost I think but spooky all the same.
Some years ago I was an examiner for course work studies. The schools sent me the work and as I received it I opened it up and checked the contents and then put it in a pile. One school enclosed a note to say that one pupil had not handed hers in in time and it would be sent later. A day or two later it arrived with another note to say who it was from. I placed the script in it's place with the others from the same school. (I remember it was 3rd from the top). I finished the scripts from one school and went down for a coffee. On my return I started the scripts from the school in question, got to the third one and it was not there. I was in the house alone and searched high and low. My neighbour came in to help but it had gone and was never seen again. I then had to explain to the exam board ! I could have taken the easy way out and say I had never received it but had I done that the poor girl would have failed the exam and I had the two notes. I am still not sure that my explanation about ''ghoolies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night'' was believed but I had no other explanation at all.

What a thread to be reading at 4.30 in the morning!

When I go back to sleep I'm leaving the light on.

My friend ,whose son died a year ago, has battery operated candles in her lounge and sometimes comes downstairs to find them lit. Problem is she is on her own when it happens. she asked me what I thought and I think it is probably electrical interference maybe from a mobile or TV remote.

My youngest daughter had a premonition about the collapse of a balcony in a London theatre in the 80s. A rock band was playing at the time, can't remember who it was though. She had told me about it an wasn't it terrible. I didn't know what she meant but the next day, sure enough, a balcony collapsed in a London theatre as she had described. She still remembers how she felt and she felt terrified, shaking and sobbing and hoping she never had another one. So far she hasn't.

I may have told this story - forgive me if I have - It relates to the little black boy mentioned in my post above. I used to see him when I was small and was unwell. I would see him running down a long road away from me (the next day I was usually feeling better)

I had forgotten about this until my eldest son, then aged about 3, was suffering from tonsilitus He was running a high temperature and kept saying to me to tell the little boy to stop bouncing on his bed.

A few years later my eldest daughter,7, was in hospital with meningitis - I was breast feeding her baby sister at the time so couldn't stay overnight. On the fourth day when I arrived in her room her nurse said that she had been delirious in the night and insisted that a little black boy was jumping on her bed. (I did feel chills then)

About 25 years ago I went with a friend to a Psychic Fair where a woman was giving random readings to a crowd of people. I stood listening and she was talking about Spirit Guides. She looked at me and said 'Your Spirit Guide is a small African boy who's dream was to be a doctor but he died before he could realise his dream" I still get goose bumps when I think about this.

I had never spoken to my children about the boy and my daughter still remembers him on her bed. Very strange, but somehow comforting.

I don't have a faith and don't believe in an afterlife and yet I have seen a ghost, in my house, in broad daylight and when DD was a toddler an imaginary friend as we thought at the time, used to smile a goodnight to her apparently, we genuinely thought it was a little quirk of hers. She called him Daddy David. Now grown up, daughter is quite unsettled by the whole thing, she could describe him so well.
Some things are just unexplained. In my mid 30's I worked in an old Victorian shop with a handful of other ladies. The shops were part of an old Victorian Arcade, they were literally one door in and out and on 2 levels, like a small parlour size room with a noisy wrought iron staircase in between. One quiet afternoon myself and one other lady were chatting away a very quiet afternoon when a small elderly lady walked in and asked if she could look upstairs. Our only customer I let her literally pass us both at the bottom of the spiral staircase and then followed her up. She had vanished, just gone. The lady working with me completely flipped, wouldn't talk about it at all. There was nowhere she could have gone. Most strange.

We always thought the theatre I worked in in Cornwall was haunted because the beer taps in the cellar were always being mysteriously turned off at inconvenient moments. No one ever saw anything, but a friend took some photos at a dance there and a strange white shape appeared among the dancers in one shot. The chap who processed the film couldn't explain it at all.

I`ve always said that I don`t believe in ghosts, that was until I had a very un-nerving experience about 35 years ago. I may have told this tale before, if so, I apologise for repeating it.
One night, as hubby and I were going to bed, we found that the light bulb in our bedroom had "gone", so we got undressed by the light from the landing. He got into bed first, leaving Muggins to walk across the landing to switch off the light. As I got back to the open bedroom door, I could see hubby in bed, but something, I don`t know what, stopped me going through the doorway, it was like an invisible barrier, and for about 30 seconds I couldn`t get into the bedroom, hubby said "Are you coming to bed, or not?" Then all of a sudden the "barrier" was gone, and I fairly flew into that bed! It had never happened before, and didn`t happen again, but it scared me summat rotten. My MIL used to attend the school over the other side of the street, and said that our houses were built on the site of a former sand pit, and when she was about 5, a little boy fell in there and suffocated to death, she said she was sure it was connected to my experience.

Oh yes! Uri Geller! We were watching him and my DD (about twelve at the time) tried the spoon bending thing. With the spoon, nothing happened. BUT, the next time she used her bike and took out her bicycle lock key, it had bent right over! There was no way she could have done that! (Apart from the paranormal )

One evening, whilst watching Uri Geller do his fork bending act on TV, the hour hand of my watch bent double under the glass. I can think of no way that could have happened! I am a natural sceptic, but have to accept that there are some things which cannot be logically explained.
I have goose bumps on reading the above posts.

Gally I posted and then saw and read your post...... you say the room was being drastically renovated, does this include the electrics?

Although most noises in the house are a result of wood expanding and contracting due to heat/cold etc[which explains creaky stairs and so on]that doesn't explain 'sightings' does it?There are lots of accounts of children seeing people, when adults can't, but hard to explain why that should be?I would not write off all accounts as being either lies/mistakes/confusion [though some, obviously] there is a lot that we don't know still.However, I can't think that anyone would 'come back' and then turn on a food processor, that could well be dodgy electrics.Interestingly there does seem to be a lot of paranormal activity around electrics, so it makes me think it's the elctricity itself recreating scenes[think of how a camera works.]Does every sound made and every sight get recorded in the atmosphere? Could be that physics and geology play a big part in this.
Feelings are something else though; I have had bad feelings about certain rooms/houses in the past, perhaps we are all more sensitive to our surroundings than we think.

I have never believed in any of this mumbo jumbo and have never felt any unease or spooky feelings - until I stayed with my DD's in-laws for Christmas 15 months ago in their newly acquired farmhouse. I shared a small room with our mutual DGD and woke suddenly, feeling something horrible creeping over my face. I remember sitting bolt upright and pushing whatever it was off, and telling 'it' to go away and feeling exceedingly uncomfortable - almost scared. DGD had a terrible nightmare and was removed to her parents room in the middle of the night. I left early the next morning and my SiL moved that night into my bed to be with his daughter. I didn't shared my experience with anyone until later when DD told me that Dan too had felt very unsettled and spooked. The house dates, in parts, back to medieval times and is being drastically renovated. The room was used as a sewing room by the previous, deceased occupants but other than that there is no known history of the property. Such was the effect it had on me, I have decided that I will never sleep there again . I am sure that some spirit from way back in history is not happy with what is going on.............