Your home town ghosts & legends

starting this to avoid spoiling 'what got you into paranormal?' thread.

many places already have their 'haunted' site, but lets hear about those who don't.

i'll post some of my stuff as soon as i find the time.

To save reposting, this thread describes all the ghostly tales from my area. I investigate them!

i have read that. keep up the good work

thinking of starting my own investigations around here but with working & other stuff can't find the time.
but when i do, you'll be the first to know.

Theres a Church a few miles from my house that is apparantly haunted by an old lady.

More specifically, a Grey Lady. The story goes that she worked there as a housekeeper, but when her husband died, she would sit next to his grave for hours on end until she herself died at her husbands grave.

Sometimes she can be seen kneeling next to the grave or tending the inside of the church.

Creepy stuff, but I've never seen anything.

this is the link to some of the hauntings around me


www.shropshiretourism.info...

I live in LA and since it's a relatively young city I feel that there is low potential for ghosts here. I feel that 95% of those hollywood ghosts are BS. The jury is still out with the Queen Mary which I feel may be haunted but that the ghosts stories regarding the ship are largely fabricated and not close to the real ghosts stories associated with the ship.

I know that I personally grew up in a haunted hause. Pleny of people from workers there, to nannies/babysitters, to family members, to random visitors, to new owners of the house, to even psychics all feel the house to be haunted. There was some mild poltergiest activity, some shadows, and alot of cold spots and creepy feelings. If anybody lives near Hollywood or are in the area the house is on the SE corner of Outpost and Castilian Dr. Off of Frankelin Blvd and La Brea. Large spanish style house. it's been remodeled to look new but it's actually built in the 1900's and about 100 years old.

We sold the house to a celebrity who later shared the same experiences with the property and sold it after a few years. His career tanked when he lived in there (it was doing fine before) and started to pick up the second he moved out. Everybody who has lived there has felt that the house is cursed too. Everybody has had bad luck with the place.

SOme say that the house of Houdini is Haunted on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Wonderland (right down the street from the murders) people hang out there on holloween but there are no real reports or photos of ghostly activity. The Roosevelt Hotel is said to be hauntedc but since it's in touristy hollywood it could be part of their PR campaigns.

interesting posts guys

@BASSPLYR. like i said somewhere before, i'm an architect so its kinda my job to be interested in 'haunted' houses

did house had bad feeling or messed up atmosphere in general or just when those things happened?

(mod edit - please refrain from circumventing the censor)

[edit on 20-3-2007 by pantha]

Denmark is pretty old, but a small country. To my knowledge the only "confirmed" haunted places are the odd small castles scattered around, and people seem to believe these hauntings are more the for cause of contributing to the income rather than being true

What's funny is... if you talked about "real" hauntings in Denmark, they seem to be focused around common houses and buildings. Maybe a restaurant or two (but then again... income income ).
The most typical type reported to my knowledge is poltergeists in common houses and white ladys / caretakers in the castles.

It's hard to know what to think about these reports here in Denmark, as we are brought up by an unwritten "law" we call "janteloven". In basic it's about: "Don't think your anything special" So I wonder if being brought up like that could reinforce the need to be different and want to see ghosts.
It certainly does enforce people to keep their experiences to themselves.

this one is about that giant i mentioned earlier.

there was this ruin of a house on a west end of Dubrovnik, near the harbour, around 200 years old. city bought the land and decided to build apartments 60-70 years ago. while demolishing the foundations workers found a corpse burried in the basement. it was about 2.5 meters long, wrapped in a sheet, chained, with a big nail in his forhead. they removed the remains to whereabouts unknown.
this part is from some building log which could be found in the archives (don't know if they are still there since that kind of stuff started disappearing in last few years).

anyway, since the new building was inhabited there were at least 5 murders, 3 suicides in there and few people ended up in the looney bin.

was it some kind of curse or some paranormal activity drove them insane, no one knows.

that's eerie was there a report on that finding?
Being nailed in the forehead kinda says that who ever did it thought the dead guy was a vampire?

But nasty story to say the least. Can't think of anything what so ever that is similar to that here in DK.

Could you dig up some info about those killed/commited suicide? Would be interesting to see if they were "normal" people or potentially crazy...

[edit on 20/3/07 by flice]

the problem is almost noone over here wants to talk about it. if you ask about anything paranormal soon the whole town thinks that you're insane.

people here still see suicide as great shame upon a family and the only way to find out more is to talk to them, so its a dead end.
and murders, well resons would be jelousy, murder under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

and no reports were made since the corpse was found while we were in Yugoslavia and i suppose you know what was communist opinion on these matters.

i think the subject kind of gets credibility if people avoid talking about it.

ellroy,

No, the flow to the place was actually pretty nice. It was a 3 story house with high ceilings and gorgeous wooden floors. Most of the rooms were open and and had several doors leading from one room to another in the house. Mostly large open french doors. The landscape around the property was nice and manicured. The house is designed well, and the architect knew what he was doing. The cold spots i can figure were just drafts. But the poltergiest activity was more than just faulty wireing in the house.

Everybody felt that the house was cursed/ hexed. Nobody had any luck when in the house. Everybody had career problems in the house. Everybody who lived there had their luck improve once they moved out.

The house was sunny but it's personality wasn't.

Originally posted by ellroy
starting this to avoid spoiling 'what got you into paranormal?' thread.

I don't mind if your thread has nearly the same topic as mine .
I'm just doing it to gather info, whether it's on my thread, yours, or anyones,
maybe we should run our threads in collaboration .

EDITED:Spelling

[edit on 13/03/07 by MAD Hatt3r]

Very interesting topic ellroy

There is a cemetary out in a rural part of Henry County, Missouri. The name of it is Bethleham Cemetary. I'm not sure exactly how old it is, but there are a lot of tombstones from mid 1800's. It is a pretty spooky place.

There is a legend of the "Bethleham Cemetary Witch". Apparently there is a witch (unable to remember her name) that was buried on the property a very long time ago. Locals have stated that if you lay on the grave, she will grab you and hold you down. I've tried it, and nothing happened. She's also supposed to blow you back on your butt if you pee on her grave. I tried that (after laying down on it), and nothing happened. I have no idea how long the legend has been around or how it got started, but I heard about it maybe 12 years ago.

Another interesting legend in regards to this cemetary, is that there is supposed to be a cave underneath it. I deer hunt in the area, and there are a lot of areas with thick brush. I've looked for an opening wherever there wasn't thick brush, but have never found it. Maybe 40 yards west of it is a pretty high cliff-type terrain that one can walk down if careful (w/ cemetary on top). There are some interesting rock formations on the way down. I always get a little spooked when I am around those rocks. My girlfriend and I should take some pics. Anyways, local legend states that some caskets are partially coming through the roof, and that the KKK, or satanic groups hang out and do there voodoo'ish activities in it. Some claim to have seen robed figures in the cemetary late at night. I never have.

I work with a girl who knows of several more places in Henry County, and other surrounding counties. I'll get with her and get some more info on these legends.

Once again, awesome topic!

I'll post a hometown legend. The following photo is of the place I'll be talking about.



The castle was built around the 12th century (though existing records first start showing it in 1329). It sits on top of a hill formed from volcanic rock (which you can't see from this angle, because I took this photo from a far hill located behind the ruin). There is a legend which accompanies it, and this is approximately how it goes;
Long ago a King tried to build this fortress, but as much as the men laboured during the day, at night the walls would fall and any progress the men made during the day was destroyed at night. After weeks of wasted efforts the King, out of desperation, finally consulted a witch. She told him that the spirits of the woods were angry and demanded a sacrifice. She told him that if he took a new-born child and enclosed it in the walls of the fortress, it would become one of the strongest castles around Europe. The King ordered two of his soldiers to ride down to the village and bring him a child. Making a long story short the soldiers brough him the baby, and the King had the crying child enclosed into the freshly built walls. The spirits were appeased, and the walls remained unharmed.

As you can see the place is a ruin now, but it lived a long, strong life until the Devil moved in. In 1694 it was destroyed, once the Emperor had had just about enough of it's then resident. Jan Balassa was devil in the flesh. He tormented, killed, raped, stole,...... did everything you can imagine. Villagers and townspeople feared him terribly. He did as he pleased, when he pleased. While having one of his usual drunken raping parties one night, his wife spent the night in her room praying for his soul. She was terrified, and so was the priest who stayed with her. Balassa stood up on the table and began shouting; "That wife of mine, all she does is pray!" He burst into her room, took her by the neck and threw her out of the window. He then took a hold of the priest and also threw him out of the same window. They both landed on the sharp rocks below, probably dying instantly on impact. There are many more stories about this man, but the way the castle ended up in ruin is that Balassa had been imprisoned several times for Anti-Habsburg conspiracies. He escaped prison every time, and ended up befriending and turning the castle over to the Turks. The Turks were in charge of it for about 18 years thanks to Balassa. When General Strasoldo was ordered to destroy the place, he had little luck. It was well-built and there was no way to destroy it from the front. Finally someone gave up it's weakness, and Strassoldo assulted the Castle from the rear. It burned up pretty good as you can see.

It's fun going up there and exploring the ruins. Some rooms remain intact(especially the jail). There is a small, old cemetery located right below the ruins. This is where most of my family is burried. It is a very creepy place at night. The town was full of bloodshed through the centuries, and there are plenty of ghost tales. I didn't know this as a kid growing up there, but I've seen some things that I can't explain to this day. There was definitely something going on in our house, even though it isn't old. Maybe (or rather most likely) the land on which it stands was home to many battles. We had many invasions by different peoples; Turks, Mongols/Tatars, Cossacks, Hungarians, etc. etc. There was always something going on.

One night I woke up and walked out of my room to see a bloodied man standing on the stairs. He had very dark hair, it was cut short (kind of a bad haircut).. maybe 3 inches long. He hid his body by standing inside an old fabric potato sack. Although I couldn't see, I knew that his body had been cut into pieces, and that is why he was holding the sac with both hands up to his chest. He didn't talk, he just looked at me and motioned with his eyes and head that I follow him up the stairs. I was afraid to do it at first because my parents always told me they'd beat me if I went up on the roof (it was a flat roof) without one of them present, but I decided to quietly follow him anyway. The stairs were wooden, so they made a bit of noise if you weren't careful. Since he couldn't walk because his legs had been cut off, he basically hopped up the steps one by one until we were on the roof. When he approached the edge he stopped, looked at me as if to say "you see? This is what they did to me" and threw himself off the roof. Strangely I was never afraid of him. At that age I wasn't allowed to watch scary movies and even the idea of someone getting stabbed would give me nightmares. I have no idea how to explain this one. :shrug: Looking back at it now I definitely get the sense just from the look of him that this man might have been a soldier/warrior at one point,.. killed by his enemy. But who knows. Maybe I was already crazy then. The next morning I didn't really think about it until we were sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast. All of a sudden we see/hear this thing fall and crash right under the kitchen window. We thought maybe one of the bricks fell from the roof and cracked the cemet walkway below. We rushed to the window. To our surprise there was no sign of anything. No heavy objects on the ground, no anything. I think at that point I shared what happened the night before, but I don't think my parents believed me. So... there you have it.

In Fredericksburg, VA there are many places supposedly haunted but I know one well and it is 208 Sophia St. also known as the Ferry Toll House across the river from George Washington's boyhood home Ferry Farm.

This house was pre-revoultionary war and my parents used to have unusual events happen. There were three such occasions. My parents bred collies and had a welping box downstairs near my crib. One day while watching me my mother witnessed an older lady and two children come through the wall and look at the puppies in the box and they point as if they wanted to get one. This of course freaked her out and within a short moment they were gone.

Another instance was the liquor bottles in the house kept breaking in the kitchen. Usually they were in the cabinets with the doors shut only to be found in the middle of the floor broken. They tested this by putting them behind other glasses and still they were broken out in the middle of the floor the next day. My father supposedly tried automatic writing and spoke with a soldier name Randy who did not drink. The house saw action in both the Revoultionary and Civil Wars per Randy defending the riverbank. After this discussion with Randy the liquor bottles ceased breaking so an understanding was met it appears.

Third encounter I remember is one where I slept on a small mat as a toddler in the bathroom off the bedroom (1 BR house) and there was a closet there. The lock for the closet was a block of wood that would turn and rest in a hanger outside the door (typical gate style latch). My parents would complain to each other about who kept leaving the door open and it was neither. Every morning when they came to get me it was unlocked. I remember the block vividly and not really understanding the fuss over it.

I'm sure there are more stories but I don't remember them. I'll add one odd occourance I experienced here in Georgia after moving from Virginia (circa 1997 home so not that old). It dealt with my cat waking me up one Saturday morning basically pouncing on my chest, pawing at my face, and meowing. My wife woke up to see this and I woke up too and not in a good mood. I was not snoring like normal but the cat would not leave me alone. Now this kind of freaked me out as he always slept besides me or on my chest or back. I was up for good as this was odd. After about an hour or two later my mother called to let me know that a close family friend had passed away in his sleep that morning. He was a good friend who was 70+ and an alum from my university who went to school with my step-father. This experience was very eerie and we now become a little more aware when he acts up meowing on the bed with us acting odd say before a storm that might have tornados or such. He does not sleep with me much now as our dogs now sleep next to me along with another cat on the other side.

Below is the supporting info of the house.

...Sophia on the banks of the Rappahannock held in the 18th century docks... Note the pre-Revolutionary house at 208, known in local lore as the Ferry Toll Keeper's House;

Source

Extra 2cts on GW where George allegedly threw the silver dollar across the river... over towards the Ferry Toll House. He took the ferry across to school.

Did George Washington really throw a silver dollar across the Potomac River?

No. This popular myth is often told to illustrate his strength. The Potomac River is over a mile wide and even George Washington was not that good an athlete! Moreover, there were no silver dollars when Washington was a young man...wrote that Washington threw a piece of slate across the Rappahannock River near his boyhood home in Fredericksburg, which is much more narrow. That may be the origin of this story.

Source Just spreading the word on this myth of GW...

My home town has a jewish cemetery in it thats suppose to be haunted.Legend has it that if you speak German there you will hear moans and screams.Never had the guts to try it.

I've moved around quite a bit so I'm not really sure which place to call my hometown, but I do have a couple of stories to share.We lived at one time in a town in central Ontario.There is an Inn that sits on the top of a hill overlooking a large rocky waterfall that the town is well known for.There is apparently a ghost called the "Lady in White" i know not very original but true non the less.The Inn was converted from an old house that was one of the originals in the first years the town was settled about 1850-1880,I believe.The lady was apparently the daughter of the owner of the house and in desperation over a lost love threw herself over the waterfalls and died.Many workers at the Inn have reported seeing her, hearing footsteps, objects being moved etc. My other story is a house we lived in another part of Ontario,an old farm house.WE were aware that before we lived there a family before us had lost there little boy. I don't know his age but one of the bedrooms was still decorated for him and had his name in wooden letters on the wall.quite often we would hear giggling and the sound of someone running on the patio in front of the house.we often even saw a blurry figure go past the two livingroom windows in sinc with the footsteps.It was the figure of a small boy in what appeared to be denim overalls.Really freaked us out at first. He never seemed to do anything else though, just run laughing in front of the window.We just came to accept it when it occured.

BTW I forgot to mention the story about the lady and the Inn was featured on the show "Creepy Canada".

bumping my thread.

ummm...bump?