With Halloween waiting in the wings, I’ve been in ghost mode lately. Personally I don’t know what the hell I believe pertaining to supernatural beings. I’d call me a sceptic. I’ve never had a true ghostly experience of any sort, although I know lots of people who claim they have. I’m very curious about the paranormal – there seems to be a lot of stuff out there that can’t be properly explained, but I’m not sure I’m ready to believe there are spirits hovering around us either, haunting us or helping us, no matter how many “Ghost Hunters” type shows out there tell me otherwise.
Plus come on, if you believed the ghost of your dead grandmother was watching over you, you’d never do that thing with the whipped cream and the drilled out melon again, would you?
My only possible ghost experience was years ago, when my sister, our friend and myself were teens and were driving home from my grandmother’s house on the main motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was night time and dark and the road where we were was starting to wind a little. We were in the middle lane of the highway and there was very little traffic ahead or next to us although there were cars some way behind. We were doing probably 65 mph when we rounded the bend and suddenly, there in the middle of our lane, was the figure of a man in a long overcoat with his back to us walking down the road, with his head down. We had no time to really react, but we swerved hard into the left lane and onto the shoulder to stop, in order to miss him and when we looked behind us he was gone. Just not there. And there were only fields around us. He’d been right there in the middle of the damn highway so if we didn’t hit him someone behind us surely would have, but there was nothing. No one. I never figured out if he was real or not but we all saw him and then he was gone. It was just a weird experience.
I do enjoy hearing other people’s ghost experiences though, so basically if you have any stories of your own, feel free to leave them in the comments so I can be entertained. It’s all about entertaining me you know, even if I don't believe that stuff.
Ghosts scare the heck outta me! But I have to see I've never seen one. The last thing I want to see though, it some fricken creepy guy on the highway!
ReplyDeleteThanks for mentioning mph too, rather than the silly k/m.
The UK uses miles just like you people, dude. :) The rest of Europe though pretty much uses KMs.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, ghosts are some scary shit. I really don't want to witness anything that blows my mind that freakily!
My grandpa used to call and leave messages on the answering machine. (He was dead). They were fuzzy and weird. But it was him.
ReplyDeleteOk, that is officially CREEPY. Did he SAY anything?
ReplyDeleteOh thanks Jules, thanks a lot for that. I wanted to sleep tonight.
ReplyDeleteNo first-hand ghost stories to share here - but I find the idea of ghosts or spirits who refuse to move on intriguing. But just because we can't at this point explain something doesn't mean there isn't a rational explanation. Ancient peoples thought gods made the earth quake, volcanoes erupt and the moon eclipse the sun.
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested, there's a gal who calls herself PaperbackWriter and her blog is called In Progress. She recently (this month) wrote a post about the ghost of her grandmother who apparently has moved from state to state with them. I'd never heard of that before!
I believe that if there ARE ghosts, they sure would be laughing their asses off at that show Extreme Paranormal, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteIf they're real, they'd also better lead me to their buried treasures too. Like "Why the secrets, Uncle Oliver? C'mon, I know you were stashing your collector coins!! Okay, fine, tell me where you hid your big-muffed 70's porn stash, at the very least."
S.E: I think there must be some explanation that has logic attached but I don't know what it is. Like you say, maybe one day we'll know.
ReplyDeleteGod: Haha yeah they always ask the wrong questions. Plus ghosts never have a sense of humour. Also if they can really move things why don't they bonk people on the face with planks more often or throw cakes at them? All this banging three times nonsense is old hat. "Extreme Paranormal" is hilarious. Big, IT dudes going "Whoa, did you see that, that was INTENSE man!" and of course you never see anything.
I've blogged about this before but, a few days after mum died, I fell asleep on the couch at home and she visited me in my dream. Except, I was at home, on the couch, watching the cricket and when I woke up, the cricket was continuing play from where my dream left off. So, maybe it was an out of body experience? I don't know. I certainly wasn't scared. It was almost as if I was expecting it.
ReplyDeleteNo ghosts for me thanks.
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen any and don't want to.
God didn't mean for us to understand that crap, and definitely doesn't want us fooling with it.
It makes for fun campfire stories though.
Tennyson: Wow, that's crazy. Did she talk to you or give you any interesting information?
ReplyDeleteEd: The idea frightens me too. I'm not religious at all though, so if I started seeing spirits I'd probably come up with something semi logical that could be causing it. I'd doubt my sanity before I truly believed I think.
No, she said nothing. Just smiled. I think she was just letting me know that she was ok. My brother, sister and my dad all had similar experiences. It was pretty cool actually.
ReplyDeleteNow, see, THOSE ghost stories I can handle. I mean that's touching and nice. And once again something I can't begin to explain in rational terms.
ReplyDeleteThis is strange; spent about 3 hours last night jabbering on msn to my buddy on this very topic.
ReplyDeleteI dont think you need to have any religious beliefs to believe in the existence of things that cant quite be explained. Personally I'm not sure, but I think it may be possible for something to leave its mark when its no longer around - kinda like a fingerprint in time?
Never had an experience myself - nor do I want to - but I know some many people who have, and quite sensible unhysterical people at that.
Looking forward to hearing what other people say.
Shortly after my dad died a friend took me to see a spiritulist. I have NO TIME for this hokum, and was giving the woman no help to her stupid leading questions at all. SHE was getting annoyed at ME for being rude... Then at the very end of the hour she suddenly said "I can see a Bill. He's on the other side of the river holding a little girl's hand, and he wants to tell Nan he's sorry and it's alright now".
ReplyDeleteMy father's name was Bill, I had an older sibling who died, my mother's name is Nan..this woman 500 miles south couldn't have known them.
Typically I was pissed at my dad getting me to do his dirty work.
Yes. He used to say stuff but it was always muffled.... And you're all welcomed.
ReplyDeleteP.S. He was a nice man AND ghost.
That was no ghost on the freeway, it was me in my black coat. I'm not a ghost, but I can jump really high, that's all.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I can't regurgitate it here, but I did post a few months back on poltergeists which is pretty creepy, check it out if interested (can't link from damn BB!).
ReplyDeleteI’ve had a long fascination with the paranormal, which ties in with my interest in local folktales. I share your own opinion of people living on as spirits – I remember once a girl I knew who said rather whimsically that she liked the idea that her dead relatives were watching over her. I replied with something along the lines that you did. I for one wouldn’t feel comfortable with the idea of all my dead antecedents sitting around while I surfed for Kristin Kreuk porn.
ReplyDeleteBut to be serious, being a sceptic, I naturally ask myself things like ‘Why are ghosts almost always only seen by one person, at night or in poor visibility? If dead people become ghosts, why aren’t we regularly seeing or chatting to them on a daily basis, since the number of dead people vastly exceeds the living? Why are the almost always wearing clothes, given that clothes presumably are not spiritual beings?’ (One nice exception to the latter is a ghost of a young woman alleged to inhabit one of the rooms of an inn in the town I last lived, who was said to appear wearing nothing but a pair of clogs and a smile.)
And though this isn’t an answer as such, you should also remember the very large number of accounts of things we now regard as childish or incredible (fairies, mermaids etc), but which were reported in utter seriousness at the time. If we are to say that people imagined or fabricated these things, why not ghosts?
I must apologise for the length of my piece. I get excited sometimes.
The day I see a ghost is the day I spend cleaning four tons of crap out of my underwear.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen a ghost, to my knowledge. I thought I had once, but it was a white dressing gown hanging on the back of my bedroom door.
ReplyDeleteOh! But I did have that thing where you wake up and you're paralysed once. I couldn't move, and it felt as if something light was blowing over me, like a really really thin sheet was blowing over my body from right to left. That was pretty creepy.
I don't have any ghost stories, I just wanted to tell you that drilled out melon = GROSS!!!
ReplyDelete-Jill
Okay, so weird. My Mom's in town and she has all sorts of ghost experiences as does my boyfriend (why do I surround myself with these freaks?!;) and so last night they exchanged their most recent stories. As I sat in the corner with my thumb in my mouth and then proceeded to have nightmares all night. Thanks guys, ha!!
ReplyDeleteI've never had a ghostly experience, but what Simon said makes total sense to me - if ghosts existed surely there'd be so many you could barely move for bumping into one!
ReplyDeleteI use to work at a guest ranch and in the off season when it was silent and buried in snow we'd hear weird footsteps and rattling doorknobs and shit at night. The place was huge and there were only 4 of us there over the winter. Very "The Shining"
ReplyDeleteExcept I didn't kill anyone with an axe.
I wanted to, but I didn't.
Judearooney: I think you might be right purely because I'm smart enough to realize that there is more out there than we can ever understand and that it's all about energy, but other than that I'm sure. People certainly have experiences and I find them fascinating because they have to come from somewhere, right?
ReplyDeleteMacy: That is FREAKY. It's things like that where I start to wonder. I too am the biggest sceptic about spiritualists and people like that because I do think there are many phonies operating, but then you get some people who are given not just randomly close readings but startlingly spot on ones, like yours, then I start to think "How is that even possible?" because there has to be something going on. I think I'm torn. I've never had an experience, but I see other people's evidence everywhere.
Jules: Wow, that is crazy creepy. Although not nasty creepy, I mean at least it was someone you liked.
Mo: Jesus dude, scaring me like that! Tsk! I will find the poltergeist thing - I love anything like that. I like scaring the bejeezus out of myself.
Simon: I like to put a lot of things down to sleep disruption and waking dreams and things like that but then there are many experiences I can't begin to explain so I have no idea. Like I said, I'm skeptical because I never see anything myself yet the people I know who have are not people who necessarily believe either - they're quite sensible. I agree too - why can't they be imagined? At the other end I also think, why can't they exist as we don't know or understand everything yet either. So I remain skeptical.
Moooooog: The day I see a ghost, so will I. In fact it's entirely possible you'll hear me yell a bad word from miles away.
IR: Hahahaha! I once thought I saw Santa Claus but that turned out to be a red jacket hanging on a door, so I feel your pain. :) I should add I was six at the time. HOWEVER, funny you should mention sleep paralysis because I have suffered from it too - only three times but still. This is why I don't believe people who say they've been abducted by aliens and the like - I am almost entirely sure it's sleep paralysis because having suffered it myself (and you for that matter) you know EXACTLY how real it feels when it's happening. I saw glowing red eyes in the dark of my room darting around me and I could see them clearly. And make out the furniture in my room sure as I can see around me now. And I heard a voice hissing at me. If I didn't know what was happening I'd swear blind it was real. Another time I saw my bedroom door blow open violently and a hissing sound like the voice of evil come through it. I think this sort of condition accounts for a lot of "paranormal" night time experiences. Not all, but a lot. It's a freaky thing the sleep business, isn't it? I was totally freaked out.
Jill: Haha, I know. :)
Buffy: Yeah hearing those stories is fun for a while till you put the lights out. :) Then not so much. Ick!
Soda: Aren't some supposed to cross over though or wherever the hell they go? They don't all hang around. Which makes you wonder why the ones who do, do. I have no idea. But until I have my own experience I can't explain (and I will TRY my utmost to explain it) I will always be skeptical.
ReplyDeleteKim: Scary! That's very Ghost Hunters-y. They deal a lot with that sort of thing and captured plenty evidence of it. I think there has to be an explanation of logic for bumps and rattles and noises but what it is I don't know. I also like those EVP recordings people make where there are clearly voices saying things on tape.
I don't have any ghost stories, but yours gave me the chills.
ReplyDeleteAnd mine weren't very good, so with a real story you'd be jello, miss.
ReplyDeleteGhosts: Because Ceiling Cat isn't the only one watching you wank.
ReplyDeletePart of me hopes there are ghosts, part of me not. It'd be cool and all if they did exist, but I sure as hell don't want to become one. Once around the block is enough for me.
Haha, yeah, there's going to be quite the line for watching people wank soon. :) If I was one I'd do more interesting things than just hang out banging doors and things. If you can bang a door or knock something off a dresser you can do some other crazy fun stuff surely!
ReplyDeleteHer younger sister and I used to tease my best friend Bob mercilessly when we were in high school because she slept with all the lights on in her room. Bob said that sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night and a man wearing a plaid shirt and cowboy hat was standing at the foot of her bed staring at her.
ReplyDeleteThen once after we were in our early 20's and Bob had moved out and gotten her own apartment we went to visit her younger sister who was still living at home. I noticed that the younger sister had all these stuffed animals on her bed (which was weird for her she wasn't that kind of person) and she said she had started sleeping with them AND all the lights on because after Bob moved out she started seeing the cowboy hat man staring at her in the middle of the night. Boo! Cowboymangonnagetcha!
Creepy!!!! I'm not sure those stuffed animals will save her however. But that has to be unnerving. I don't think I'd still be sleeping there if it was me. I'm way too chicken for that shenanigans.
ReplyDeleteI have seen a ghost/spirit twice in the lab I work in. Just slid up beside me then left in a flash...
ReplyDeleteI am working tonight and if I see a ghost I am calling you.....lol
Shoot. I have no ghost experiences to tell you, Veggie. Although in high school I was so pale some of the other kids nicknamed me "Casper" - does that count?
ReplyDeleteVodka: Were you sniffing chemicals again? :)
ReplyDeleteCora: I say it counts, pale-face! Hee, Casper.
But wait there's more! ooohhh...
ReplyDeleteLater that same year a friend of a friend, a gothy into witchcraft and taro card reading person(who supposedly had been told nothing about the cowboy hat man and didn't know Bob and her sister at all and had never been to the house) did a ouija board seance in Bob's old bedroom and the cowboy hat man "visited" and said that he was in love with Bob and missed her when she moved out and he came to her sisters room to ask where she went.
Our goth friend said there were the spirits of many cats outside and she pointed to where Bob's mom's old barn used to be where indeed there used to be many cats most of which were buried near that spot.
She also discovered a mean spirit or possibly a demon living under the staircase who enjoyed hurting people. Everyone was ready to believe that because Bob, her sister and nearly everyone who had lived in the house (their mom, dad and two other sisters - and me) had all at one time or another fallen down the steps and gotten injured.
I spent a lot of time in that house and never experienced such things myself (except for twisting my ankle on the stairs), but it was very exciting all the same.
That's fascinating. I wonder what happened to the cowboy? It's sort of creepy to think he was watching Bob though all the time.
ReplyDeleteThe demon thing is intriguing and scary though. The whole idea of ghosty things is pretty nasty.
I'm haunted by my own failures, does that count or is that too arty?
ReplyDeleteI've never seen a ghost, but I believe that all these stories mean that there is something to it, even if what we traditionally think of as a ghost doesn't exist. I tend to think that it's just a scientific phenomenon that we don't understand yet. Which I also believe doesn't contradict religion or spiritual beliefs in any way. I mean, there has to be some physical mechanism for even the most spiritual of occurences.
ReplyDeleteI am the ghost of Troubled Joe
ReplyDeletehung by his pretty white neck
some eighteen months ago...
I went to Scotland and stayed in this 15th century castle where apparently the laird was rumored to have murdered his mistress. He did this by ceiling off the doors of the tower and let her slowly starve to death. Fun bedtime story, yeah? In any case, I swear I heard a moaning sound in my room at night by the window as the moonlight was streaming in. I promptly woke up, freaked out, and pissed off my sister who was in the room with me. I don't really know whether I was just super paranoid or whether it was something. I'm leaning towards super paranoid.
ReplyDeleteMadame: Well those ARE scary, so I suppose we have to let it count, right?
ReplyDeleteWords: I agree. In fact you pretty much summed up my feelings right there. Too bad I couldn't do it myself. Hmmm.
Hunter: You know, I always had my suspicions...
Lola: Yes, go with paranoid. It's way better than realizing you're dealing with a ghost, right? It's like denial.
I wouldn't call it a ghost, but when I was pregnant, I had to go in for a second ultrasound because they said my blood work showed that "the baby" was at risk of having Down's Syndrome. I don't remember sleeping at all that night, but I do remember hearing my Pappau's voice (he'd been gone for a couple of years) and he said, "Don't worry. Your kid's going to be fine." That's pretty much exactly how he would've said it too.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, dude, that is creepy in a GOOD way. And look how she turned out! Perfect. You should listen to those spirits. :)
ReplyDelete