Legends, haunts, ghost stories, paranormal experiences..what's your story? (spirits, strange)

[The_GarGars]

Since it's nearing the month of October, I would love to hear about the spooks/haunts/urban legends that people have in their city and/or state. I've already read about the urban legends and paranormal experiences in my homestate of California and am very curious to read about them from people in other states.

So....what's YOUR paranormal experience???

[Icy Tea]

Well... my ghost story relates to the family cemetary in an old coal town in Pa. We'd stop there whenever we visit relatives across state to stretch our legs, grab a sandwich and have a cold drink. Its a kind of a sad place, lonely being on a mountainside with a coal bank across the valley and not too much around it. There's a chapel and the lower level no doubt stored bodies over winter until burials were possible. It was a late October day, just before Halloween and a very warm day, just about 80 degrees. A perfect fall foliage day. So we had taken the trip up there.
We'd been dragged there as kids by our father and uncles. There were some mausoleums nearby. We'd always dare each other to look in and maybe see a ghost or a vampire. This was around the anniversary of the great flu pandemic and I saw the date on the outside as being 1917, I think. I was curious to see if maybe some family had died to the disease. I looked in and noted that the first person interred in it was a little girl about 8 or 10 years old, who died in 1916. Probably not the flu, but still a tragedy. Then I checked the rest of the dates and they ranged up until about 1960. Just then I heard someone walk up behind me. I turned thinking it was my brother who wasalong but nobody was there. There was no wind rustling the trees nearby. I just got a feeling that I was trespassing, and I was being being watched. Not a malevolent feeling, just one of something seeing what I was up to..
I got spooked and ran for the car and drove out of there fast and to this day I've never gone near that mausoleum again.

[sheena12]

Originally Posted by Icy Tea

Well... my ghost story relates to the family cemetary in an old coal town in Pa. We'd stop there whenever we visit relatives across state to stretch our legs, grab a sandwich and have a cold drink. Its a kind of a sad place, lonely being on a mountainside with a coal bank across the valley and not too much around it. There's a chapel and the lower level no doubt stored bodies over winter until burials were possible. It was a late October day, just before Halloween and a very warm day, just about 80 degrees. A perfect fall foliage day. So we had taken the trip up there.
We'd been dragged there as kids by our father and uncles. There were some mausoleums nearby. We'd always dare each other to look in and maybe see a ghost or a vampire. This was around the anniversary of the great flu pandemic and I saw the date on the outside as being 1917, I think. I was curious to see if maybe some family had died to the disease. I looked in and noted that the first person interred in it was a little girl about 8 or 10 years old, who died in 1916. Probably not the flu, but still a tragedy. Then I checked the rest of the dates and they ranged up until about 1960. Just then I heard someone walk up behind me. I turned thinking it was my brother who wasalong but nobody was there. There was no wind rustling the trees nearby. I just got a feeling that I was trespassing, and I was being being watched. Not a malevolent feeling, just one of something seeing what I was up to..
I got spooked and ran for the car and drove out of there fast and to this day I've never gone near that mausoleum again.

Creepy story! Where is PA is this place? I live in PA and it seems to have more than it's fair share of hauntings.

[noihoforus]

When I was in college I use to waitress in the evening and weekends at a resturant in an old gold mining town that is still in existence as a town today. Anyway...it was abour an hour after closing and all of the patrons had left but one. He was sitting at a far table alone. I went over and told him it was after closing and we had to close up for the night and if he liked he could hang out in the bar. He just kind of looked through me and did not respond verbally at all. I walked across the resturant, heading to the only door out of the room...turned around to see if he was following. When I looked back he had vanished and the chair was pulled out in the same position he had left it. I rushed into the bar and told the bartender....(who had worked there for many years)....what had happened. He was not surprised at all. Apparently there had been a shooting during the late 1800's that had died in the dinning room.

[animalcrazy]

I live in a strange house and have had some down right scary experiences here. Something walks up and down the stairs and through the hallway upstairs. A door opened up by itself while I was walking up the stairs. A towel was yanked off of the towel bar on the shower door while I was alone in the house taking a shower. Dishes would rattle in the early morning hours. It was a gloomy morning after a severe storm here with massive flooding. I was alone in the house and had just let the dogs in from their morning duty call. We have large pocket doors that separate the living room from the foyer. I keep them closed to keep Satan's spawn Yorkie puppy from using the bedrooms as his personal toilet area. There was another rain storm brewing and the kitchen was unusually dark for early morning. I was half asleep when I heard the familiar sound of the 100 year old rollers of the pocket doors ever so subtly moving along the rails. How could this be? I was alone in the house. I thought finally I was going to be able to catch a glimpse of what ever it was that has been here these 20 some years. Then I saw her. We both let out a scream. There she was my friend Annie who I had given a key to our house a couple of months back. She couldn't get home due to the flooded streets and came to sleep here after working nights. She expected me to still be asleep but the Yorkie nightmare needed to go potty ahead of schedule. It scared the crap out of me and was kind of disappointing. While I can hear it I've never seen what walks up and down the stairs.

[Spirit Chaser]

Dhenn12 menioned an interest in "ghosts", plus living in PA, try Gettysburg,PA, some argue it is the most 'haunted" location in the US.and among the top 10 in the world. A word of caution unless you love traffic jams, bad drivers, no places to park, avoid the place the first week each July. Paranormal "stuff' goes on year around plus if you go in the Spring or Fall, you might miss all the other tourists.

[victimofGM]

Fall 1990 I was in Orlando, Florida. I had just dropped out the Navy's Nuclear Power School and was awaiting orders to a ship. In late October 1990 off the coast of Bahrain, the USS Iwo Jima LPH-2 suffered a major steam leak killing 6 engineers to die instantly, 4 died later from being steam cooked with superheated steam at over 800 degrees. Soon after, my orders came in to replace one of those killed. Went through Desert Storm and returned to USA around May 1991. When we returned to home port Norfolk Virginia, we shut down the boilers, engine, and related equipment. Half the ship went on leave while the other half remained. The engine room and fire (aka boiler room) were strangely quiet. We heard the usual noises of thermal contraction of the metal cooling and shrinking. These noises we could explain. We went "cold iron" and set up the cold iron watch. One person standing watch in the engine room for 4 hours at a time and another person standing a similar watch in the fire room. We all began seeing shadow images of people walking by through the engine room. We realized that these were the spirits of those killed in the steam leak. I've heard their approaching footsteps though no one was around. Didn't let it bother me. One day we received a new guy. We warned him about the ghost, but he was adamant that there was no such thing as ghost. One night he stood cold iron watch. Before his watch was over, he was found on the pier curled up in a fetal position shaking and crying in terror. He was brought to the hospital. 30 days later he was finally able to return to the ship, but he was changed. His absolute certainty of the non-existence of ghost made him unprepared to deal with the reality of that which he denied.

[Some_Random_Guy]

Originally Posted by noihoforus

When I was in college I use to waitress in the evening and weekends at a resturant in an old gold mining town that is still in existence as a town today. Anyway...it was abour an hour after closing and all of the patrons had left but one. He was sitting at a far table alone. I went over and told him it was after closing and we had to close up for the night and if he liked he could hang out in the bar. He just kind of looked through me and did not respond verbally at all. I walked across the resturant, heading to the only door out of the room...turned around to see if he was following. When I looked back he had vanished and the chair was pulled out in the same position he had left it. I rushed into the bar and told the bartender....(who had worked there for many years)....what had happened. He was not surprised at all. Apparently there had been a shooting during the late 1800's that had died in the dinning room.

How was this guy dressed?

[Chango]

Here's my latest ghost story, from just this morning.

I woke up at 6:45 when my alarm went off, got up and used the bathroom.

As I was washing my hands, I accidentally knocked the (plastic) handsoap dispenser onto the floor between the sink and the toilet. I thought: "meh... I'll get it later"; turned off the faucet, walked back to my room and laid back down in bed.

I then heard what sounded like the soap dispenser knocking around and quickly realized I cold hear the water in the bathroom running too. I got back up (maybe a minute elapsed since I was in there... not a long time otherwise) and found the soap dispenser was now in the sink and the hot water tap was on full blast onto the dispenser (also not how I normally turn on the sink faucet).

I clearly saw the soap dispenser on the ground; I even thought about picking it up but didn't out of lazyiness. I also am sure I turned the water faucet off all the way... and besides I habitually just turn on the cold tap in the mornings to splash cold water on my face.

I checked on my kids; they were still in bed; I woke them up and asked them if they had just been in the bathroom but they said no. They were still very groggy I had no reason to doubt them.

It was nice of the ghost to clean up after me, but still weird. Stuff like this seems to happen on a regular basis since we moved there several years ago and I've experienced an entire laundry list of inexplicable events since then, so much that stuff like this morning's incident don't even raise the goosebumps anymore.

[jrsydevil82]

Originally Posted by animalcrazy

I keep them closed to keep Satan's spawn Yorkie puppy from using the bedrooms as his personal toilet area.

This made me laugh so hard. I have a yorkie, too...and she is sooo cute yet quite the little devil. She's not a puppy, though