It's that time of year: Ghosties and Ghoulies are on the forefront. Who among you have had what you perceive to be a REAL experience with a poltergeist or apparition?
When I was a kid, my mother told me that she'd seen her grandmother's ghost. It is my opinion that she could have perhaps saved that information until I was older than 7 years old, but that's just me.
Her grandfather had remarried after his first wife died, and my mother was staying at his house, with his new wife, Sally Bennett. While staying the night with them, my mother awoke to find her grandmother standing at the foot of her bed. She was transparent, and mom said she rubbed her eyes and sat up, to ensure she wasn't dreaming.
Mom recounted the story to Sally, who replied, "Yes. She's here all the time."
I can still feel the sensation of my hair standing on end, as I asked my mother, "weren't you scared?!!" Mom gave this matter-0f-fact answer: "well, no! She's my grandmother! I loved her."
Still!
I was very very close to my own Grandma Stewart. While most of my cousins were older, and off having god-knows-what-kind of fun in 1974-75, I was but 11/12, and happy to travel and hang out with my Grandma.
She died when I was 12 years old; I had spent the night with her, which I did often. My father just happened to be traveling that weekend, and my mother and sister, on a whim, decided to stay also. An odd turn of events, as we lived less than a mile from one another, and it had never occurred to my mother to sleep over before. But this particular night, while my Grandmother decided to sleep on the couch, my mother just took the spare bed in her room.
We could not wake her the next morning.
I really thought I might die from grief.
And, on the day we auctioned off her belongings, and my father had worked so hard to settle her estate while siblings fought tooth and nail over petty issues, he walked back into her house, one final time.
As he walked into the house, a small card, as from a floral bouquet, fluttered down from above, landing at his feet.
"Thank you" the card read.
Had it been on a doorsill?
Holy crap! I was 12 years old, my mother had claimed to talk to ghosts, and now eerie messages were falling out of the sky to my father. I was NOT interested in having any part of this, and that very day, I made one big, big change in my life:
My prayers, which used to start, in my mind, as "Dear God" or "Dear Jesus"... morphed into a whole new format. They went something like this:
"Hey God, how's it going. Can you put Grandma on the line? Thanks.
Grandma. Look, I have to be straight with you. I love you and miss you like crazy, all, but I'd really appreciate it if you could just refrain from any extraterrestrial visits; I'm just not sure I could take it. I'm not as strong as Mom is. I mean it, Grandma, you will scare the CRAP out of me if you show yourself.
And tell jesus forgive me for my sins, and I'm sorry I made Teri eat dirt, and all that jazz.
Amen."
So far so good.
Have you any supernatural tales to share?
At the risk of sounding crazy(er), the hubster and I are still quite convinced our first joint apartment was haunted by a child spirit. Over the nine months we were there, both of us and my daughter (who we never told our thoughts about it to and told us things on her own) all had some very strange experiences there, practically from the first day we lived there. It was mostly auditory stuff (we both experienced voices in the room independently and one night from the back hallway when all three of us were snuggled on the couch together), though the most terrifying incident was when the kidlet awoke in the middle of the night screaming about a light in her bed. Shortly after that, it all just got too weird, and I took a job here so we moved.
ReplyDeleteI ain't afraid a' no ghost.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid my neighbors’ house, at once stage, would randomly catch on fire. We found out later that a friend that was staying with them had pissed her in-laws off, and they set a Tokoloshe (South African evil creature, you can google it) on her. So that everything she touched would catch fire. My neighbors kid was 4 and said that he saw the little bad guy. In the two months their guest stayed with them the fire brigade had two come by 4 times to put out the top or bottom level of their house. Most memorable was my mother, standing with the garden hose, helping put out their lounge curtains.
My aunt lost a baby when she was in her early twenties. And my mom thinks this was just a sign of her grief but she swears that when she visited her dad's farm that summer and that she saw her grandmother standing by the porch swing one evening at dusk holding a baby in her arms. She said as she walked closer that the image faded but that Grandma was smiling.
ReplyDeleteThe farm had been her home and she had past it down to her son. I was always facinated by that story but not scared. No one else ever saw her.
do you remember when you recommended The Shaman's Apprentice? Well, one night when DH was at work at Silvercreek and I had fallen asleep after reading a particularly riveting section of that book, I awoke to the image of a witch doctor standing beside my bed. He raised his arms, shaking a gourd rattle in each hand, and grimaced at me. I sat bolt upright in bed, which I had never done before and haven't ever since, and he disappeared. THAT could have been overactive imagination, but those shamans can send their spirits places...
ReplyDeletethen there was the American Indian standing in the doorway to my bedroom when I was a child living in Tucson. He just stood there gazing sadly out my window. That one didn't scare me so much as fascinate me.
no personal experiences, and I'm a bit of a skeptic. I'm not sayin' it's not possible---I've heard some stories from some very "unflighty"-type folks, so it does make you wonder. However, I DID just find out that the Toys R Us by my house is known for being haunted. That just cracked me up for some reason, but hey! Anything's possible, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteOne summer night, when I was around 12 or so years old, I laid with my head at the foot of my bed in order to take advantage of the breeze coming through my window. Just as I was about to fall asleep, my bed started vibrating. I froze in fear, of course, and eeked out a cry to my older sister in the next room, "Are you shaking my bed?"
ReplyDelete"No," she said. "Your bed is shaking?"
"Yes," I said, as it began shaking again.
"Well, stop doing that." She wasn't helpful, wasn't shaking the bed, yet I somehow managed to fall asleep.
The next day, I found out that there had been some fairly large tremors along the New Madrid fault. Durrr...
Oh! Oh! I do have a very vivid memory of waking up one night in the first house I lived in (I had to be three or four years old at the time) to the sound of a voice saying, "I'm gonna eat you UP!"
ReplyDeleteAnd I haven't slept since. Well, except for the night of the earthquake.
(O.K. So I guess I really don't have any supernatural tales to tell. I'll shut up now.)