Haunt-ish Experience

First let me say I am a skeptic of 'hauntings', but also always interested in whatever information
I can fill my brain with on the subject.
But this is weird and worth recounting, for those who are interested in this kind of thing.

In late 2002 I was in my attic having a smoke, outside was a bright autumn day but the wind was wild, hard and cold. I was thinking, for some odd reason, of the Tory spy who was hanged in this town during the Revolution, and of his ghost still in that tree swaying frigidly in this wind. When suddenly out of nowhere I hear a raspy whispering voice say "I was murdered".

Naturally the hair on the back of my neck, and my scalp stood on end.
I slowly turned around to scan the attic, finding no aparition.
Took the rest of the time to finish my smoke with ears perked up for more ghostly communication, but none came.

The voice, was totaly like a last gasp kind of sound.

I went on an internet hunt for the hanged man, only to find a single sentence from the diary of a Revolution era land owner from this town stating that he had witnessed the ghost of the hanged man swinging in the tree on his property one evening. I know the tree should be near my house, I was told some time ago that he was hanged very close to the high school, and I live two houses away. I think the school has the oldest trees in proximity, river edge trees of age have given way to erosion.

About two years pass and nothing strange happens.

Then I'm upstairs in the attic, and its another of those wild hard cold wind times, the wind is actually howling into the attic with that wooowooowooo scarey movie noise.
When my daughter starts calling me from the apartment door, something she never does. So out goes the smoke and I go running downstairs and she tells me a ghost was calling her name from my computer equipment, saying her name over and over. She says it was coming from the blinking lights on the router. Ok weird enough. I try to settle her down by giving her my explanation of ghosts and tell her never to be afraid of them and to invoke an angel to take them where they belong.

That night my wife was driving her sister's car home from Detroit and brought a friend along for the ride so the friend is staying at our apartment, they arrived about an hour after this incident, I didn't tell anyone and told my daughter not to mention it so it wouldn't spook her mom.
In the middle of the night, this friend who claims to be sensitive to psychic forces, wakes up screaming in panic about a presence, then goes back to sleep, like nothing ever happened after my wife asks her whats wrong?
Literaly, wife asks question and the woman just lays down and goes out like a light.

I didn't tell my wife about the child ghost incident, until the next day when she tells me about her freaked out friend. (Shows what a heavy sleeper I am)

I didn't tell my room mate about my wife's friend, but he'd already heard my daughter's story as it happened live.

Within that week, he asks me "Did I wake you up last night?", he hadn't and asks "You really didn't hear me screaming at the top of my lungs? I thought I woke up the whole house"

I said "No, didn't hear anything, why were you screaming?"

He relates that he was having a very strange dream and woke up with the feeling of a wet dead child's hand gripping the back of his neck, and the feeling of her against his back, which caused him to scream, jump out of bed, and flip on the lights. This is a big 240+ pound man too.

Kinda funny, if it wasn't for the other spooky happenings.

Now my daughter is at the invisible friend stage of life and her friend is named, (ready for this?) ghost.

Kinda freaky eh?

I told my mom about these things, and she says "You better get the hell out of here", but I aint 'fraid o'no ghost, at least not until it starts throwing things or wakes me up with its ugly rotten face in my own.

And thats my own personal ghost story.

And yet after all of this you are still a skeptic towards hauntings?

You really should get a sage smudge incense, and burn it in all areas of your house. This CLEANSES negative energies............you can clean negative things from your home. You don't have to move, you can make THEM move.

Originally posted by Majestic12
And yet after all of this you are still a skeptic towards hauntings?

Sure. There could be very logical explanations for all of this.
The whispered voice could have been a combination of wind and my imagination, possibly even some paper moving against cardboard. I've replicated the whisper sound with my coat brushing against a carboard box, but never with anything approaching speech, just a "hushshshsushsh" sound.

My daughter could have just confused the endless whirring of hard drives and fans from my computer equipment coupled with the woooowoooo of the wind outside. There are four external drives and two computers running, for a total of five fans.

My wife's friend could have simply had a stress induced nightmare from the long drive from Detroit, coupled with sleeping in a strange bed, with a woman instead of her husband, along with the constant howling of the wind.

My room mate could have simply suffered sleep paralysis.

Everything can be explained rationally. If there were consistant repeat events, then I might be less skeptical.

RiverGoddess, I burn other herbs, no need for sage, wink wink nudge nudge.

Also when I talked to my daughter about ghosts, I was very clear, and very much of will, to impress the reality that ghosts are confused stagnant energy that can and should be taken by the angel of death. In other words I evoked that force for the specific purpose of claiming any such energy, like a sheet of fabric softener on wool socks.
Me and the old skull have a personal history together, no soul can resist his kiss, and he can't resist my attention, so few in flesh share a personal relationship with him. Ya know what I mean?


Anyone confused by or curious about the above comment should visit the Westgate with an open mind.

Here is a simple way to explain it. set a tape recorder out somewhere and a webcam. Record the normal sounds for your everyday life. Sooner or later you will get these sounds that you think aren't ghosts and then you will have something tangible to make your decision about. As for me, I am sure they exist. There are plenty of things which are invisible but yet they are there. Electricity for example.


-Aza

There is never silence in this place.

This is what a tape would sound like "whiiiiir, vrooom vrooom vroom vrooom vrooom, whiiir, tktktktktktktktktktktktkt, daddy I have to pee pee, whiiiii vrooom vroom vrooom vroom tktktktktktktktkttktk, creak creak creak, thud thud thud tktktktktktktkt whiiiiir vroooom vrooom vroom, beep beep, krklrklrklrk thud thud chirp chirp chirp tweet tweet"

If hell froze over and sent me snow cones, I'd still not sit through a tape of that, a total waste of time.

Even at three in the morning, the hard drives are running, the fans are whirring, the AC is on, the refrigerator is cycling, the kid downstairs is coughing, cars are whizzing by, some drunk outside is arguing with someone. I can just imagine a ghost screaming
"HEY CAN I GET A WORD IN HERE!" and then being immediately drowned out by everything else,
followed by "Screw this, nobody around here listens to me, I'm leaving".

EVP here would be like panning for gold in the bathroom sink.