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I grew up in an old area of Charleston, SC. My childhood home had a ghost, my brother and I called him the gray man, because he looked like a tall skinny grey mass of smoke. We shared a bedroom growing up and both he and I had the same experiences on a regular basis. I would be sleeping, get a feeling that something was wrong, or that I needed to wake up, and this feeling was usually enough to wake me. Upon waking, I would always see the gray man in the same corner of our bedroom, he would stand there, not moving. I was always terrified of this even, to the point where I couldn't even scream out for my parents. This happened all the way through childhood, up until I was 16-17 years old. So I can't attribute it to night terrors. We also would be wakened in the middle of the night by our piano playing. Not so much music, but usually one or two taps on the keys.
I have also seen the gray man walking down the hallway, and in our back yard.
What's more alarming to me is this. It seems also that my grandmother's home in Asheville, NC was haunted as well as my cousin's home in Union, SC.
Both of those homes we have had multiple paranormal experiences witnessed by many people. In my grandmother's home, she had a basement, the kids (me and my cousins) were allowed to play downstairs while the adults did their thing upstairs. On two occasions, we could hear footsteps coming down the stairs (wooden pine planks), and going back up. This was with us standing at the base of the steps, laughing, and experiencing this event together. It was so scary we laughed. I don't know why but the laughter was a way of coping with the fear I think.
The most unnerving was the experiences I had at my cousin's home in Union. They also had a gray figure, it was seen several times in the home. But, the scariest entity that we encountered was during a night of ouija board play. The home sat on a hill, and my cousin's bedroom was perched on the second story, but was really more like 3 stories high due to the way the home was build on the hill. She, her sister, myself, my brother, and my other cousin were all asking the ouija board questions and it started to respond. A string of really unexplained things then started to happen in rapid succession of each other, and these will haunt me forever. First thing that happened was that my cousing had a poster taped to her wall, it was taped on the bottom corners and pinned on the top two corners (I think it was a poster of Prince and the Purple Rain bike), well, suddenly the poster flapped up or rolled up or did something so that it was still pinned by the top two pins, but rolled up like a new poster would be. Seconds later her phone rang, startled, my cousin jumped up to answer it, and she picked up the receiver, turned white and dropped the phone. She couldn't speak but the look on her face said it all, and she was pointing to her bedroom window. I looked up with everyone else and there it was, plain as day, an old lady standing in the window looking at us. She had a mean snarl or frown on her face, some type of bonnet on her head and grey curly hair. She also had like 1800's bifocals on. We all screamed at the same time and ran out of the room as fast as we could. I didn't dawn on me till an hour or two later that the bedroom window she was looking into was 3 stories in the air. There's no way a person was standing outside the window, not without a ladder anyways.
Now, I'm not afraid of ghosts. I haven't had anything since I was probably 18 happen to me. I'm now 41. The closest I've come since to the weird stuff that happened to me as a child was a feeling of being watched once or twice.
So, do I chalk this up to childhood imaginations? I know what I saw on multiple occasions, I have many other witnesses to back me up on what I saw.
My parents will even tell you the house was haunted.
Why would the ghosts seem to have followed our family around?
Why have they stopped?
Has anyone had similar experiences?
When I was maybe 3 or 4, my grandmother (who dabbled in the occult) and her cousin (who was supposed to be some sort of medium) had a series of Ouija board sessions which my mother participated in. I was in bed when they did this, but I have vague recollections of something strange going on downstairs with shouting and loud thuds. Years later, my mother said the table would move or "walk" around the room, so they finally freaked out and burned the board in the back yard. After that, I started hearing my voice called on occasion, and the attic stairs became a source of dread to me. A lot of other strange things happened over the years: disembodied crying, apparitions, beds shaking, dark shapes attempting to crawl into my brother's bed ...
When I was 19 or 20, I moved out of the house and rented an old farmhouse with a couple of friends. Things were much worse there (I've written about that in other post ... cold spots, apparitions, very creepy sounds and touches), and one of my sisters wouldn't even come over to the house to visit. A year later, I moved away to college, and that was pretty much the end of the strange stuff. Except for a seance my brother had over the holidays in the 1970s in the house we grew up in, where something seemed to be trying to possess my youngest sister. Or she was just hysterical ... but I've never seen her lose it like that, before or since.
Since then, nothing of note has happened to me (with a few exceptions). I've avoided anything involving the occult, but my brother has gone into "ghost hunting" and has a group of people he does this with several times a year. I don't know what to say about these experiences ... maybe it was suggestibility, maybe it was a series of what you might call mass hallucinations or mass hysteria. But it's odd that my experiences of what you might call paranormal phenomena surrounded two particular houses I've lived in, and no where else. They don't fit easily into my rational view of the world, and they seemed real at the time ... but they might have been purely psychological in nature (though much of what I experienced was experienced by several people at once).
And I'd suggest to anyone reading this ... stay away from Ouija boards, in my experience, nothing good can come of them. My experienced of these phenomena was, nothing that was ever human is behind them.
When I was maybe 3 or 4, my grandmother (who dabbled in the occult) and her cousin (who was supposed to be some sort of medium) had a series of Ouija board sessions which my mother participated in. I was in bed when they did this, but I have vague recollections of something strange going on downstairs with shouting and loud thuds. Years later, my mother said the table would move or "walk" around the room, so they finally freaked out and burned the board in the back yard. After that, I started hearing my voice called on occasion, and the attic stairs became a source of dread to me. A lot of other strange things happened over the years: disembodied crying, apparitions, beds shaking, dark shapes attempting to crawl into my brother's bed ...
When I was 19 or 20, I moved out of the house and rented an old farmhouse with a couple of friends. Things were much worse there (I've written about that in other post ... cold spots, apparitions, very creepy sounds and touches), and one of my sisters wouldn't even come over to the house to visit. A year later, I moved away to college, and that was pretty much the end of the strange stuff. Except for a seance my brother had over the holidays in the 1970s in the house we grew up in, where something seemed to be trying to possess my youngest sister. Or she was just hysterical ... but I've never seen her lose it like that, before or since.
Since then, nothing of note has happened to me (with a few exceptions). I've avoided anything involving the occult, but my brother has gone into "ghost hunting" and has a group of people he does this with several times a year. I don't know what to say about these experiences ... maybe it was suggestibility, maybe it was a series of what you might call mass hallucinations or mass hysteria. But it's odd that my experiences of what you might call paranormal phenomena surrounded two particular houses I've lived in, and no where else. They don't fit easily into my rational view of the world, and they seemed real at the time ... but they might have been purely psychological in nature (though much of what I experienced was experienced by several people at once).
And I'd suggest to anyone reading this ... stay away from Ouija boards, in my experience, nothing good can come of them. My experienced of these phenomena was, nothing that was ever human is behind them.
Yeah, I don't know if that was the cause of our experiences though, since it was only used once, and we experience ghosts my entire childhood. I'm wondering if the ghosts followed me or my family. It seemed that wherever we were the ghosts were there. When I'd go to other people's homes, and say spend the night with a friend, I never had a issue.
My brother did report one ghost sighting outside of the home once when he was about 17. He and a bunch of friends were down on Folly Beach (many civil war skirmishes on the island, there's a confederate graveyard they dug up back in the 90's) and he reported that he and two friends were standing near the ocean on the beach, it was a warm summer night and he saw a man walking towards him and his friends, he didn't think much about it until the guy got closer to passing by them, my brother noticed his clothes were very ragged and old and he said hello to this man. The man never acknowledged them and passed by. My brother noted that you couldn't hear any footsteps and the whole situation felt scary and weird to him and his friends.
Why is it that he and I were able to experience these issues together growing up and in different locations and at different times?
They say children have imaginary friends. I said my imaginary friends known as ghosts and spirits never left me.
See, that's where we differ, mine did leave me. But I know I wasn't imagining these ghosts. So my theory is that they weren't attached to me, and as I grew up and left home, they just stayed with the home. It's just that I didn't notice this fact until later on in life. I bet if I called the homeowners of my childhood home now, I bet they'd say they have ghosts.
Your theory about them not being attached to you is right. I read your posts and I think these were all warnings. Especially the old lady with glasses. She was scorning you and very disappointed in your actions. Honestly, I like any other kid, tried an Ouija board and it didn't do anything. SO, I just took it as whatever spirit was there, or if anything was there.. didn't have the gonads to face me. I personally think Ouija boards are a joke but I think they can turn the individual messing with them into one big joke. That and its not going to take very much to scare people that are messing with these boards. SO, if a vase falls off the wall and someone automatically goes into shock and runs screaming, they've done their job. I think it would be laughable gesture ( to say the least) on the other side. It would take more than that to convince me or raw power. I think I would personally do very well with poltergeists, but they are scarce too ( around these parts anyway)
Seriously, people are people and do not want to be toyed with in life or death. They didn't live life to be at your disposal.
Last edited by thegreenflute334; 04-20-2014 at 04:05 PM..
Your theory about them not being attached to you is right. I read your posts and I think these were all warnings. Especially the old lady with glasses. She was scorning you and very disappointed in your actions. Honestly, I like any other kid, tried an Ouija board and it didn't do anything. SO, I just took it as whatever spirit was there, or if anything was there.. didn't have the gonads to face me. I personally think Ouija boards are a joke but I think they can turn the individual messing with them into one big joke. That and its not going to take very much to scare people that are messing with these boards. SO, if a vase falls off the wall and someone automatically goes into shock and runs screaming, they've done their job. I think it would be laughable gesture ( to say the least) on the other side. It would take more than that to convince me or raw power. I think I would personally do very well with poltergeists, but they are scarce too ( around these parts anyway)
Seriously, people are people and do not want to be toyed with in life or death. They didn't live life to be at your disposal.
Well spoken and thanks for your thoughts. I am still convinced that the spirits I grew up with were real, the other members of my family would vouch for them. My parent would tell you that the spirits are evil because they are devout Christians and don't believe in ghosts biblically.
Do you think that because I'm older I don't have the capacity to see ghosts anymore, or that I just haven't been in a ripe environment to see them? It's been 25 years since I saw my last ghost, and back then we were seeing them once or twice a week.
Well spoken and thanks for your thoughts. I am still convinced that the spirits I grew up with were real, the other members of my family would vouch for them. My parent would tell you that the spirits are evil because they are devout Christians and don't believe in ghosts biblically.
Do you think that because I'm older I don't have the capacity to see ghosts anymore, or that I just haven't been in a ripe environment to see them? It's been 25 years since I saw my last ghost, and back then we were seeing them once or twice a week.
Well really, there are so many positive outlets to concentrate on bedsides the dead. But, it's hard to say really. I would say a change is in order here. You sound pretty adventurous and earthy. So, I think you be content with a trip to Texas or Arkansas or Louisiana. You know.. rocks and hills and water. Kind of a country vibe with history. If that makes sense. New Orleans is loaded with history. Their graveyards are even above ground but I get more of a cowboy country feel to you. Sure you've never been to Texas? There are a lot of dead gunslingers there! The wild-wild west!
Last edited by thegreenflute334; 04-20-2014 at 08:35 PM..
Well really, there are so many positive outlets to concentrate on bedsides the dead. But, it's hard to say really. I would say a change is in order here. You sound pretty adventurous and earthy. So, I think you be content with a trip to Texas or Arkansas or Louisiana. You know.. rocks and hills and water. Kind of a country vibe with history. If that makes sense. New Orleans is loaded with history. Their grave yards are even above ground but I get more of a cowboy country feel to you. Sure you've never been to Texas? There are a lot of dead gunslingers there! The wild-wild west!
I've lived in New Orleans (garden disctrict) and also in Hurst, TX and Houston, TX. Moved around in my early 20's for a little while before coming back home.
I didn't get any bad vibes from New Orleans. I did, however, get robbed twice during my six months there.
I've lived in New Orleans (garden disctrict) and also in Hurst, TX and Houston, TX. Moved around in my early 20's for a little while before coming back home.
I didn't get any bad vibes from New Orleans. I did, however, get robbed twice during my six months there.
You are kidding me! Gosh! WOW! I don't know what to say! So you have lived in both places? I am shocked! I'll get back with you on that one while I catch my breath!
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I think I would personally do very well with poltergeists, but they are scarce too ( around these parts anyway)
WOW! I don't know what to say! 
So you have lived in both places? I am shocked! I'll get back with you on that one while I catch my breath!
