The Weird, Wicked, and Wonderful: A Collection of ATS Paranormal

Weird

Old English wyrd ‘destiny’, of Germanic origin. The adjective (late Middle English) originally meant ‘having the power to control destiny’, and was used especially in the Weird Sisters, originally referring to the Fates, later the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth ; the latter use gave rise to the sense ‘unearthly’ (early 19th century).

Is it weird that we all crossed paths here? I would like to think so.
I’ve been meaning to write this thread on the paranormal for some time. The paranormal has fascinated me for as long as I remember, and although I fully enjoy the physical, I am most fascinated by the metaphysical.
One of my favorite aspects of the internet was combing its depths for stories of the paranormal. There was a time in which those stories could still chill my blood (I suppose one or two still worm their ways in), when certain “ghostly” images could still stop me cold. I’ve read thousands of tales about ghosts, angels, demons, blessings and curses, fountains of youth, relics, destiny, coincidence, dimensional shifts, as well as all the horror fiction I could get my hands on.

ATS has some paranormal gold mines. I read through “When the Woods Get Scary” with wonder and fascination. I love hearing people’s stories of the unexplained.

So, before my days of writing threads here are over, I thought I’d start my own treasure trove of stories. I hope you could add to the collection, but if you have no tales of your own, please sit back and enjoy all of the creepy tales I can get my hands on. I’ll be updating the thread over time with stories I find.

However, I thought I’d start with the only two really scary stories that personally happened to me; my own little brushes with the dark side/unexplained. The first story I’ll tell is about my one and only experience using a Oujii board, and the second is about the night I think I saw a demon.

Despite my obsession with the occult and the paranormal, I’ve not really dabbled in the former (nor am I in the least bit interested in doing so anymore), but for one night with a Oujii which seriously creeped me out and which I never properly ended either btw. My ex husband had the board, and one night my brother and I gave it a go. We decided that he would close his eyes and that I’d read the responses. Soon, we were talking to a “young boy” (stupid memory won’t allow me to recall his name) who said he’d died of a head wound. My brother asked if it liked my dog, to which it responded, no. When I asked why not, it spelled out “violent.” (My dog did in fact develop a crazy streak while living in that house, but I still chalk that up to a number of traumatic experiences like having neighbor kids torment her and a pit bull randomly attack).
We asked other questions and I don’t remember the answers but here comes the creepy part!
My brother asked: Can we see you?
It started to answer. I...N...V...I… then the planchette started to circle furiously (in a figure 8, which later I read was associated with Zozo). The crazy thing is that I know why it stopped! I was thinking that my hand was about to spell out INVISIBLE, and my will disrupted the true message.
A minute later, the planchette started up again. It spelled out I...N...V...I...T...E……..M…E…….I...N.
HOLY CRAP was that scary. The session ended there. But I never said GOODBYE, as is advised (stupid me knew nothing of this then). We threw the board right away. I definitely think we were messing with unseen forces we’d have no idea how to control.
I won’t be doing that again

My only other brush with the paranormal (on the scary side of things) was one night while out on a walk with a friend. We were passing a bus stop which (as I recall) had a few people standing near it, when I happened to casually glance at a figure standing slightly off.
What I saw turned my body instantly to ice.
It was a shell of a middle aged woman, wearing totally innocuous clothes (gray hoodie and jeans) and a ponytail. It was glaring at me with a look of pure unabated hate. The thought flashed through my mind that this thing could look directly into my soul. The absolute worst was the eyes. The thing had no whites in the eyes, no scelera. From rim to rim, these eyes were completely black. I had read about “black eyed kids” (BEK) in one of many paranormal internet searches in the past, but had yet to hear about these things as adults (I’ve since found reference to black eyed adults and found that people experienced the same abject terror and vulnerability as I).

I couldn’t speak and could only think about getting the F away from there, fast. I sped up and my friend hurried to keep up. It took a few hundred yards before I could speak and the first thing I asked was for my friend to pray.

Yeah. That was freaky. As soon as I got home I told my husband about it, who drove off to see if he could find anyone fitting such a strange description, but he came back and told me the bus stop was empty.

Well, my friends, I hope you’ve enjoyed the read! I will be posting more creepy stories as I go along with some tales of the angelic and sublime.

Love to you all! Let’s enjoy this site while we can!

a reply to: zosimov

The Ouija board story sent chills down my spine.. Oh my goodness, that was scary.... truly creepy.
My kids once mentioned a Ouija board and I told them I forbid it in my house and advised them to forbid it in theirs
too. I said there are some things that are just better left alone. I know some people don't believe in it, but I sure do.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: zosimov

The Ouija board story sent chills down my spine.. Oh my goodness, that was scary.... truly creepy.
My kids once mentioned a Ouija board and I told them I forbid it in my house and advised them to forbid it in theirs
too. I said there are some things that are just better left alone. I know some people don't believe in it, but I sure do.

I think you made a very wise choice there, my friend. Agreed that I can understand why/how some don't believe, but I do.

I'm also fascinated with the paranormal. Here's a thread I did about 10 years ago. Its a good story. Hope you like it.
Strange pond

ETA: Your ouija story is scary!

a reply to: zosimov

Here’s a thread with some scary stories:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

And something I’ve never told anyone, one time taking out the trash when I lived in Los Angeles I saw a guy with what looked like a digital screen for a mouth. He was in the alley beside the dumpster and he didn’t know I was there.

I still remember what it looked like. It was a bluish screen with some kind of images on it.

a reply to: ColeYounger

Very cool, and I recognize your username as the author of the really great thread I mentioned in the OP about scary woods stuff.

Thanks for linking that other story! Very well written, makes one go hmmm, and I love that it involved a Fleetwood Mac song.

a reply to: underwerks

Thanks underwerks. I'll have fun combing through that one.

Weird kind of thing you passed in the alley. Definitely intriguing, thanks for sharing!

Here's a few of my threads from a few years ago:

Haunted Ohio University 1
Haunted Ohio University 2
Haunted Ohio University 3
Haunted Ohio University 4
Haunted Theta Chi House

a reply to: jtrenthacker

Awesome. I'm looking forward to reading through all of these. So far that first link looks super interesting!

I heard a good spooky story many years ago that I don't think I ever posted here.
I was visiting a relative, and a neighbor of theirs told us the story. We were sitting around chatting, and the discussion turned to the paranormal, which was right up my alley.

The neighbor and his sister were "Army brats". Their dad was a colonel, and they lived all over the world moving
from base to base every few years. They lived for a time at a base in Belgium, and befriended some civilian kids
who they would hang out with. He said a couple of the kids spoke English fluently. They would sometimes go to this kid's house, which was a big old mansion. The Belgian kid joked that his grandmother was a witch. They just laughed and thought he was joking.

One evening when they were visiting the house, the grandmother was sitting at a big table, and asked the "little American friend" to join her. There was a big mirror on the wall across from the table. The grandmother asked why they
seemed to be frightened of her, and he told her it was "because of the witch stories".

She laughed and pointed at the mirror. The guy swore that "when I looked in the mirror, my reflection wasn't doing what I was doing!" He said he was looking straight ahead, not moving, not even flinching, but his reflection turned its head, and even looked up. While he was completely motionless, his reflection wasnt. He even saw "his" neck as "he" looked up. After a few seconds, the reflection "became normal", and stared back at him.

He said his brain just couldnt process something so weird. (Understandable) The grandmother just grinned and sipped her tea. The Belgian kid came over to the table and suggested they go outside. When he told the Belgian kid the story, his was reply was "You probably should just forget about it. Dont tell anyone about it."

a reply to: zosimov

The session ended there. But I never said GOODBYE, as is advised (stupid me knew nothing of this then).

A simple "no" also suffices, such as:

"No! No! This can't be happening!"
"AAAAAH! AAAAH! Throw it away! NO! Not the can in the room! Outside! Outside!"

So many stories! Where to begin?

Okay, I was attempting to develop a theory once (later abandoned before completed) and used a story for illustrative purposes. Consensual Reality or Consentual Reality?

I didn't write it to sound scary but rather pedantic, no creepy music or anything.

Haunted Hotels

What a coincidence that my friend called me today telling me her story of staying in a haunted hotel last night! Her story, which I’ll share here, reminded me of a few other paranormal stories of mine.

Have you ever slept in a haunted hotel? I can think of three hotels in which I’ve spent an uncomfortable and/or uncanny night (the last two being prety horrific now that I think about it). First I’ll tell you my friend’s story, then I’ll get into mine.


Tutwiler Hotel

My friend is in the midst of a road trip from FL to MO, and found a beautiful historic hotel in Birmingham to stay. She told me the place was really beautiful, but also eerily empty and big. Even though she knew that there were other guests, she never saw anyone. In fact, she told me the whole town seemed deserted.
As she was walking up to her room through Shining-like halls, she suddenly heard knocking sounds everywhere.
She got to her room, which gave her a creepy, uncanny vibe, and once she was settled in she heard more knocks. She told me it sounded like they were coming from the walls. She searched the hotel’s name and sure enough, the place has quite the reputation for hauntings.
www.hauntedrooms.com...
The room and the view have a really otherworldly vibe, don’t they:


This is when she decided to sleep with the tv and lights on. She got some premonition that the tv might turn off and told me she kept waking to check if it were still on. At some point in the night, she woke up and the tv was off--the remote on the opposite bed stand. She called the front desk to see if the tv was on some kind of timer, found out it wasn’t, turned it back on, and spent a rather restless night.
In the morning, she asked at the desk if people ever said the rooms were haunted, and the receptionist laughed. Indeed, she’d heard plenty of stories. My friend returned to her room to pack up and heard a little girl’s voice in the hall, but opened the door to a silent and empty hallway.
Brrrrrr. Chilly yet?

I’ve also stayed in three places I can remember that truly seemed to have something else going on.

The first would be Building 500 of the Hotel Provincial in the French Quarter, New Orleans. It’s built on the site of a military (in the 1700s) and later a civil war hospital. Read here for some of the chilling tales from past guests’ stays:
ghost.hauntedhouses.com...#
Here’s some info about Building 500, where I stayed and had (small in comparison) paranormal experiences.

Building 5
Has many paranormal hot spots of activity.
Second floor – Witnesses have seen a garish Civil War hospital scene for a moment, when the elevator opened up. Probably the result of residual energy.
Guests and maids have noticed blood stains that appear and disappear at will on bedding in some rooms.
Entities of doctors and wounded soldiers have made themselves visible to the living, sometimes reaching out for help. Moans and groans of the wounded are heard

I’ve stayed in the building twice, and the first time was just creepy and fun. The hallways and rooms seem to lead to another time. The second time I stayed, I walked into my room for the first time, and all of the drawers/cabinets/doors were wide open. It was the strangest way I’d ever been greeted to a room, but also know that there is a (tiny) chance that the staff had left the room like this? The hotel doesn’t go out of its way to advertize its haunted history, but maybe someone did that as a joke.
My parents also stayed in that hotel, and across the road is an old convent (the Ursuline Convent). www.oldursulineconventmuseum.com...
One stormy night, my parents were disturbed by the sounds of clattering shutters and a rustling sound in the walls my mom described as maybe mice, or sand. Neither of them could sleep well.
When they went to the window to see about the shutter, they saw a figure of a woman standing in a window of the convent across the street. She was backlit by a dim light, and my mom described her as waving her hands and that she had “weird hair.” My mom’s words. When I asked her to explain what that meant, she said, I don’t know. It was almost like she was wearing something over her face.
So our family seems to have had several ghostly encounters at the Provincial Hotel.

Ok more to come on the other two soon.

a reply to: ColeYounger

Very creepy story. I am also fascinated by mirror stories and black mirrors. Thank you for sharing that one!

a reply to: pthena

Oh man I'm sure looking at that experience from an analytical perspective (consensual and consentual reality) gives it a nice comfortable distance.

Scary stuff though!!

Great to see you around my friend.

These last two are just really disturbing stories.

My husband and I stayed in a cabin-like motel in the Rocky Mountain foothills. I had mistakenly picked that place (a friend had recommended a different spot), it advertised a personal outdoor hot tub, but when we got there the room was worn and creepy looking. I didn’t vocalize the weird feeling I got there because, frankly, my husband (we were engaged at the time, actually, which is a detail that I think makes the coming events that much more creepy) is a city guy and getting him to the mountains at all isn’t easy, and I didn’t want to project my instincts which I guess I decided not to trust.

We took a small “hike” on the hills by the room. There was no path, so we forged our own. I remember hearing the shrill lonely call of a hawk (why I remember that and not other stuff I do not know).
We settled down on a rock from which we could see down the slope into the parking lot. What we saw there still seems unreal! There was an ambulance parked to one side, a woman dressed as a bride off to another, being held back/comforted by a few others and we heard her scream for her groom, that her groom was dead. For the life of me I can’t remember her exact words. The whole scene is fuzzy, as if a dream. At the time my husband and I were just shocked and confused and wondered if we were looking at something real or (we really thought this) a film crew making a movie. I searched the internet in the days/weeks following but never found any story about a groom dying on his wedding day in the foothills of Boulder/Nederland.

My husband had to get back to his little girl, so I drove him home, but for reasons now completely unknown to me, drove back and spent a night in that creepy grimy room alone. (I think I assumed that I would enjoy the room and especially waking up in the mountains the next morning) I slept with the lights on. When I told my fiance the next day that I had gone back, he looked at me incredulously and for the first time expressed his idea that he thought that room was haunted, and I agreed--what an uncanny and uncomfortable night I spent alone in that room. The details elude me but I know that I felt wrong being there.


My last story happened in a hostel in Innsbruck, Austria. I travelled there without a good sense of its history, and have to wonder if I got a weird history lesson of my own by spending the night in a dark room in some corner of a hostel. I took a couple of pictures from the window from which you can get a sense of just how dark the hostel was. That is the feature which most impressed me from this place--the rooms had dark wood too if I can remember.

My companion and I both had nightmares in that room. I don’t remember my friend’s, but I will never forget mine. It was the only dream I’ve ever had in black and white. It was like watching an old snuff film--that’s how I felt when I had it. I was horrified and wanted to look away. What I saw was a line of people, completely dehumanized, hadn’t bathed or washed in weeks, chained together and being forced to march. People were sick, hurt, and they (horrible detail I am sorry) were vomiting and had diarrhea. It’s truly the most horrific thing I’d ever seen. I woke up firmly believing the room had sent me that dream and then my friend woke and told me she’d had nightmares too. ((Shiver))
The next day my friend and I had a friendly cab driver who told us about Innsbruck’s Nazi past. Here is more information on the subject:

After the Nazi rise to power in Germany had increased antisemitism in the city, a silent boycott of Jewish firms began. The first steps of the Nazis in Innsbruck after the annexation of Austria (1938) were "Aryanization" of all Jewish firms, confiscation of the community archives, and seizure of the passports of all Jews. The institutions of the community were able to continue their activities for a time but in the fall of 1938 the community was ordered to disband and the rabbinate was dissolved. The Jews prepared for emigration. On *Kristallnacht (Nov. 10, 1938) the houses of all Jews still living in Innsbruck were raided and demolished, and the synagogue and the cemetery desecrated; 18 Jews were attacked and arrested and three community leaders brutally murdered. Subsequently nearly all Jews left Innsbruck, some of them settling in Ereẓ Israel.

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org...


Woah. I can't belive I had forgotten about those places. Any guesses on what is behind the haunting phenomena? Is it dimensional/delusional?

The footage here... is this real?
Now this is where I start to feel a bit gullible. Definitely in the end a living and breathing person comes to the door, which does make me wonder about the rest.
Even so, there seems to be so much going on in this place! Right about 2:42 things start getting active and weird.
"Willow's Weep"

www.hauntedjourneys.com...
ETA:

a reply to: zosimov

Dimensional or delusional? Is there a third choice?

I personally know, for sure for sure, that so called paranormal phenomena exists. I suppose it takes direct personal experience, and perhaps some repetition, to hammer home the fact that most of our wise establishments of science, capable of so much, have this completely wrong. I know there are serious people who give it credence, but it's still a rare minority due to our general inability to study or measure it in a significant way. The numerous fakers do nobody favors, either.

I sincerely wish this would finally advance from the grey area. It is the missing knowledge that will advance humanity... I'm fairly sure about that, too.

a reply to: Baddogma

Yes, was hoping for other suggestions (although don't think I expressed that).
Do you have any third/forth/beyond ideas to advance?
Agreed that this type of phenomena holds some insight into the deepest mysteries surrounding our existence.

Thanks for reading/responding.

a reply to: zosimov

Other explanations have been primary in my thoughts for decades. It's one of the few really important thought endeavors.

It's incredibly problematic due to a lack of good, repeatable information and so much opinionated noise.

My own experiences in a couple "haunted" houses made me think some version of intelligence was at work, but something kept it from interacting intelligently for any length of time. Time variance? Difference in basic sentience... lacking human sensory input? A mere fragment of human intelligence remaining? A form of sentient energy mimicking human behavior? Far more questions than answers.

One thing was that both "disturbances" were stopped after addressing the seemingly empty home, saying something like "I know you are there. If you are trapped, there must be a way to go elsewhere. Try calling for help with your mind."

It doesn't really give much information, but I suspect the 'lost soul' model might have some small degree of truth in at least a few instances. If so, I feel that helping these people, or remnants, is rather important. From the acting out I experienced, their experience must not have been very pleasant. Our general information pool is so poor that we cannot even judge the various models offered, though.

All I know is there is some form of truth regarding non physical intelligence. Frankly, realizing cognition after physical death might be possible is not completely comforting. Training one's mind might be the only important task... it might be futile... but either way, it likely warrants more attention than Western civilization informs us.

originally posted by: Baddogma
a reply to: zosimov
All I know is there is some form of truth regarding non physical intelligence. Frankly, realizing cognition after physical death might be possible is not completely comforting. Training one's mind might be the only important task... it might be futile... but either way, it likely warrants more attention than Western civilization informs us.

Baddogma, thank you for elaborating with your post; this final thought is particularly worth a sober consideration. It really stopped me kind of cold reading that. You make a very profound point, especially about mental discipline/training to prepare us for whatever lies at the end of this existence.