What is the strangest unexplainable possibly paranormal event that you have experienced first hand?

I have a couple.

When I was 14 or so, I was awoken by a young boy who was crying and holding a teddy bear. He had a pale face and dark colored skin around his eyes and was sucking his thumb. I immediately hid under my blanket and somehow fell asleep. Typing this gives me the goosebumps.

Couple years ago when I still lived with Mommy we moved into a new place. A few months later, I see an old woman in a bathrobe with white curly hair walk right through my moms bedroom door. I thought it was her so I looked at her fast and the old lady disappeared. The next day when I asked my mom about it she got all freaked out and told me my younger sister told her the same exact thing but she was talking to her.

When I moved out, she got a cat and he gets freaked out by stuff that's not there, hissing at corners and whatnot.

The ghost turned the lights off on my mom in the basement all the time and hid her hairbrush that would just magically re-appear where she left it. I was jealous because I never had a ghost play with me, who wasn't a terrifying crying child. Old lades are sweet, mm, cookies.

Originally posted by gemineye
reply to post by matthewgraybeal

 

Thank you! I LOVE THESE THREADS!!!

I will be back to post my stories, but wanted to thank you for starting the thread beforehand.

My pleasure, i always loved a no sh!t really???

good for campfire tales too.

It was actually about a year ago when I was living in a different apartment then the one I am in now. I was renting a bachelor on the 3rd floor of this low rise 4 story 100 year old apartment building. It was just me and my cat which was approx 5 months old at the time. Normally I would never have taken an apartment in such as old building because while I can appreciate the character my style is more modern; that and I hate creaky wood floors in these old building. However this particular apt was huge for a 'bachelor'. In any newer building it would have been categorized as a 1 bedroom as it had a separate room for the kitchen, bathroom(of course), living room, and bedroom/den, and huge closet space,

So at this time last year I began to spend a lot more time indoors because it was now winter. I was also working a full time job which was on graveyard hours(11:30 pm - 7:30 am) which meant on my two days off I kept this schedule; I slept all day and was up all night. So when I was up everyone else was sleeping, and I spent most of my time in my apt trying to be quiet as I did some small remodeling/updating as I listened to Coast to Coast AM. It was during this I began to pick up weird vibes while at home in those solitaire hours. It seemed the more I poked around within the walls of that apartment the stranger things got...

One night I had a dream while napping around 4 am that I removed a piece of the wall in the kitchen and found a big rock of Quartz and gave it to a coworker for Christmas. When I woke up it was around 4:30 am, and for whatever reason I just had this feeling that I had to go into the kitchen and actually rip the baseboards because I knew there was going to be something behind it. So as crazy as that sounds I took some tools into the kitchen and quietly ripped off the baseboard at 5 am, and to my shock I found a large square piece of Quartz. I was like 'ummm what the hell just happened...'.

Another time I was sitting on my bed while surfing the web on my laptop. I had my cat sitting on my lap which had dozed off. All of a sudden I heard something running down the hallway towards me(the hallway in my apartment that went to its other end where the bathroom was), and because my cat had been asleep for a while on my lap I forgot she was there momentarily. I was just about say 'Tommy be quiet!'(as it was again about 4 or 5 am). I then realized she was still sitting on my lap, and actually had just quickly sat up and looked in the direction of the noise coming towards us because she heard it too. It all happened very quickly, and as this noise that sounded like my cat running from the bathroom down the hallway to my bedroom got louder as whatever it was came nearer I got a little frightened as did my cat. Then this takes the cake. I have never in my life had an ghost/spirit/entity experience before that very moment. Whatever was running down the hallway to where I was with my cat ran into my room where there was a large blow up mattress blown up on the floor(a friend had just given it to me and I had blown it up that night to see if it had any holes), and jumped onto the mattress with the force as if something actually was running and leaped onto it, and it skidded across the floor until it hit my bed. I then felt with no word of a lie as if something just leaped into either my or my cats body. It was the strangest feeling I ever had in my life. I quickly jumped up shook myself and ran my hands down my legs and arms as if I was trying to wipe water off after a shower. I don't even know why I did this, I just did,

After that experience I felt creeped out living there, and during my days off in those wee hours of the morning continued to rip parts of the wall off here and there trying to find something/anything like I was possessed. I ended up finding a sealed up room off the kitchen of a considerable size when I pulled out all of the drawers in the kitchen counter one night, and decided to crawl in. Whatever caused me to that I still have no idea. The opening into the room wasn't big enough for me to crawl through, but from what I could see the floor was lower in this room, and the ground was covered in rocks which still baffles my mind as to why they were there.

I ended up moving out of that building at the end of January and into a new apt in a new building for Feb. On my last day in my final check over of the apartment to see if I had forgotten anything after moving everything out I decided to do something that I wondered why I hadn't done it sooner. In the living room there was a large wooden fireplace mantel with shelves on either side. It was painted this awful washed out mint green, and actual fire place portion has been boarded up as they weren't in use anymore in that building. I decided to pry open the fireplace where the wood would go, just a little bit to look inside....

When I did there was a picture sitting there of a girl about my age(26) and it looked to be from the 80s or early 90s judging by her hair and clothes. She looked very innocent and had a big smile on her face. I don't know why but I immediately felt content with that apartment and the weird vibes suddenly disappeared. I thought 'oh, it was you that was making noise'. I cant explain why, but I just felt it was her spirit and she wasn't living anymore. When I told my friends about all this they said she probably died in that apartment, or worse was murdered and sealed up in the walls, or that some kind of evidence or clue to who she is was in the walls. The whole idea was so strange and freaky I never did look into the history of that building, but I did keep that picture of the girl and put it in a folder in my closet.

Funny thing was several months later when I went to go get it out of the closet I couldn't find it, and I still to this date have no idea what happened to that picture or folder.

This is all true, and if it hadn't have happened to me I would have probably just brushed it off as fluff. I still feel creeped out about when I think about that invisible thing jumping onto the blowup mattress and it sliding across the floor until it slammed into my bed. The things that happen between 3-5 AM...

Last night I tried to manifest spirits and got good pics of white orbs floating around me as I meditated. Currently waiting for my friend to deliver the pictures so I can post here for the professional to analyze and report.

My wife has always had "half-awake" dreams where she would sit up and see our room completely trashed and basically our room looked it had been ransacked. I know when she's having these dreams because she will sit up in bed suddenly and gasp louldy while staring around the room and I have to reassure her its just a dream and to go back to sleep.

We have been together almost 10 years and this has happened as long as I can remember. We call these dreams "the others" and often the next morning she'll say "the others came again last night and trashed the room". I've gotten used to it and it's never been a concern or anything like that, just a little quirk my wife has.

Anyway about 2 years ago I woke one morning and saw what I can best describe as an invisible floating octopus hovering just near our bed. Calling it an octopus is the best description I can give it because it was basically a liquid looking ball that had tentacles and it was just hovering there. I sat up and stared at it for what felt like a minute, but it was probably only a couple of seconds, and after blinking a lot it just disappeared.

My wife still has her "others" dreams from time to time but she's never seen the octopus that I had seen. Don't know what to make of it but it's probably the closest thing to paranormal that I have experienced.

I've already posted some of my paranormal experiences on ATS before, so I'll mention different stories this time.

When I was young, I lived in this older house with my parents. The place always creeped me out if I was alone there (or in the basement bedroom with no windows), experienced a few strange things there. One thing to note happened a few times. When I was really young, I would sleep in the same room as my dad in the basement. I would always go to bed earlier than my dad would (because of school in the morning) so I was usually alone in there while trying to go to sleep.

So on a few occasions, I would hear a really messed up scratching sound coming from within the wall from directly behind my head. It was always pretty loud and would move around from one wall to another. Weird thing was that it usually happened at a specific time every night, and it NEVER happened when my dad was in the room, and I would even run out to get my dad so he can hear, only to come back to silence. I always rationalized that it was probably mice in the walls since the house was beside a field and we would catch a lot of mice in another part of the house... but then I realized that the specific basement wall where the sound came from was pure cement. Also to note that on the other side of this wall was a little pathway outside between the house and the fence to the farmer's field, and in the ground were three weird cement circles that looked like graves of some kind, maybe for pets.

Another story is when I visited an older house that belong to friends of the family. I've seen a ghost there a few times when I was a kid, but at this point I was like 17, visiting for a wedding. I got a room to myself unlike any other time there (because I always refused to sleep downstairs because it was beyond creepy). I managed to get the TV working in that room so when I was bored I spent my time sitting in there by myself. A few times the door would just swing open, not like it was blown by the wind, but in a motion like somebody was pushing it. I have a habit of always making sure a door is closed (I listen for the click), so I knew somebody was opening it. I figured it was the owner of the house screwing with my head so I went across the house to where everybody was at to ask them about it. They didn't even leave the kitchen for awhile before that, and ironically enough the daughter of the owner said it was probably the ghost even though I never once told her about my own previous experiences there (so obviously she had her own).

Another notable experience happened to a friend of mine at this house in Surrey (BC) that he was living at. It had an extremely creepy attic bedroom, accessible only through a staircase that needs to be pulled up or down to move through. The only window was barred, and all the way across the room was this very sketchy looking door with a huge lock on it. Beside the door was some kid's stuff left there by the landlord; we went through a bunch of papers that some kid drew on, and it had some really disturbing stuff written/drawn on it (I can't remember specifically but it was about the door).

My buddy basically explained to me that one night he went up there with some chick he picked up and they decided to screw around with a seance. They lit up some candles and took some pictures and whatever. At some point my buddy got curious about the door at the end of the room and tried unscrewing the bolts on the hinges so he could rip the door off. According to him when he was almost finished, something slammed the other side and was pushing towards him, so he scrambled to screw the bolts back in. Before he finished the candles blew out and the staircase was apparently rising up all by itself, so he grabbed his woman and they jumped out of there before it closed up on them.

He also said that when they looked at the photos they took, there was a face of a kid in the window staring back at them. Of course he told me all of this the one night that I was staying there for a military exam in the morning... He brought me up into the attic, showed me the weird papers, the creepy door, looked for his screwdriver that he left up there on that crazy night and showed me my bed for the night. Thanks a lot, numbnuts! I sat up all night on the bed, staring across the room at the door. I thought he was joking just to scare me, but last time I saw him he told me the same story even though he moved out of there a long time ago, said he never went up into the attic again.

I have had a few growing up from ghosts to ufos, but my experiences I will share at another time. I will tell you of a story my father told me of my sister when she was young.

My father had bought a old farm house in upstate NY that was built in the 1800's and sat on about 100 acres of land in the middle of nowhere surrounded by forest. My sister at the time was probably about 5-6 years old. My father never believed in raising his children with the luxury of T.V so this story made it all the weirder when told.

One night my father and his wife had put my sisters to bed. The bedrooms to the house were upstairs and just across the hall to my fathers room. My sister never had nightmares at all. A few hours had passed, everyone was in bed and all of a sudden he hears my sister come running in the room screaming that there is someone outside her window. Keep in mind, the bedrooms are on the second floor. After she calms down a bit, he asks her what she had seen. She began to tell him this story.

After he put her to bed, at some point in the night she wakes up, due to a feeling she had...like someone was watching her. Her attention was drawn to the window facing the woods. In the window she sees a female kind of floating in front of her. This female had the skin similar to an emerald color. She had hair that was really messed up. Floating if you will...strands of hair kind of flowing in every direction Her face was drawn in, almost emaciated. Her eyes were like a ruby red, her lips the same. She also had blood like finger nails. My sister did one of those things where she pulled the covers over her face, but just enough so she could still see the figure floating in her window. This figure was staring right at her. It was around that time that the freaky part kind of happened. This woman, floating , peering into her window started to tilt her head a little side ways. Her neck started to elongate moving in a upward fashion and then started to turn upside down. Similar to an upside down U. As this woman is staring at her the window started to fog up from breath. It was at this time that she ran out of the room screaming. When my father told me that story, I remember the hairs on my neck standing up. I had my own odd feelings in that house, but nothing compared to that.

Was on vacation to washington dc, but ended up staying in Manassas. Anywho, checked out the battlegrounds in the day. Very cool there. One night, coming back in from DC, I remember old stories about seeing civil war ghosts. So we pull up to the grounds but it was closed. My uncle and I slipped under a gate type thing. We started walking down a small valley towards a hill. Out of no where, we heard this horrible(and i mean Horrible)sound. No creature, no man, no technology could even describe how it sounded. It felt like whatever it was, was spewing pure evil and hate directly at the both of us. My uncle is a big dude and he isnt easily frightened. Once we heard this we both just bolted back to the car as fast as we could and jumped in. We told my parents to go away as fast as possible.
When running back to the car, I heard heavy(like chainmail heavy) footsteps behind me, so I look back while running, nothing was there but the footsteps were getting closer. The whole time I was running it felt like I was floating and being protected. I was still scared out of my mind because i was only 14 at the time.
To this day I believe i was chased by a demon.
After that experience we left for NY for our next visit and i got really sick.

A couple of years ago I was living in an older trailer a few miles outside of my little Rocky Mountain town. For years I had (and still do) been experiencing episodes of sleep paralysis, but they had been becoming more and more frequent (often 2 or 3 times a day).

On one particular occasion while lying in bed around 10am (it was 10:09 when I last looked at the clock before deciding to go to sleep; I work nights.) The episode began as usual for me, I was lying on my back relaxing, when a noise like the sound of metal clanging against metal initiated the sleep paralysis.

I saw a rift open in air at the foot of my bed. Brilliant white light poured through the rift, and in the midst of the light was a shadowy silhouette of what appeared to be a man. This shadow man reached his hand out to me and said "Come on out" in a very flat, monotone sort of voice. I responded "I don't know how." He then withdrew his arm, the rift sealed itself like a zipper closing, and the episode ended at 10:23am (I know this because I had been actively documenting my sleep paralysis episodes for the past week due to their increasing frequency.)

I was 12 years old. It was early September, the night before the first day of school after summer vacation. I had stayed up late reading in bed as usual. Everyone else in the house, my parents, whose room was right next door to mine, and my younger sister, whose room was at the end of the hall, had been asleep for hours. A couple of years earlier, I had developed a major fear of vampires (if I ever meet Dracula, I expect him to look exactly like Christopher Lee in "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" ), so I had hung my large, gold plated confirmation cross on a nail on my bedroom door for protection. My door was always fully open at night.

I had just turned off the reading light on the bedside table, but the room was still dimly illumined by the small night light plugged into an outlet a couple of feet from the foot of my bed. I began to whisper a prayer before laying down to go to sleep. I was an awkward child with only a couple of friends and was woefully shy and unpopular. In my simple prayer, I began asking God to please let this year be different, to please let me have an easier time of making friends and be less shy, less likely to be laughed at by the other kids. Suddenly, in the middle of my prayer, a strange, otherworldly, echoing deep male voice that seemed to come from the gold-plated cross on my door, spoke my name, just once, very loudly. I was terrified. I slid down under the covers of my bed, pulling them over my head. I kept expecting something else to happen, to hear the voice again, but there was nothing further. I laid there for hours, wide awake, so scared I was unable to move.

Eventually, I fell asleep. The next morning when I awoke and got out of bed, my 12 year old mind started trying to reason out what had happened. I took the cross down from the door and examined it fully but there was nothing different about it. I went to my dad and asked him if I had woken him up the night before with my praying, thinking that maybe he had called out my name to get me to be quiet, but he said he had slept soundly all night and hadn't even heard me. Afterwards, it took weeks for my fear to subside enough for me to get a good night's sleep. I was raised a Lutheran in the church my family has attended for about the past 100 years, though I now consider myself to be "agnostic-ish". At the time it happened, I believed wholeheartedly in God and Jesus, but I remember thinking that the voice could not have been theirs because if it was, I would not have been so scared and would instead have felt the voice to be an answer to my prayer, making me feel loved and protected instead of terrified.

Originally posted by smithjustinb
reply to post by ldyserenity

 

That's crazy dude. sorry about your uncle. I have achieved telepathic communication on two occasions. Once with my girlfriend and then the next day with her dog. It wasn't words conveyed as most people would probably think although I do think communication in that form is possible telepathically. I was able to feel what I can describe as the Essence of who my girlfriend was and what she was feeling at the time. We were both sitting there staring at each other because I felt like I was in the state of mind that if we attempted it we would be successful and we were. Then the next day, I was able to connect with her dog strongly enough that it could feel what I felt. I knew it felt what I felt because I could feel my feelings pressing on the dog. It was like I became the dog, and I became my girlfriend in a weird metaphysical way. I know its hard to understand for most people but I experienced it nonetheless and am convinced of the validity of my experience.

Yes I know what you mean, I used to play a game with my stepdaughter to guess the card in each other's hand or the number in each others head and as long as we visualized the card and the number not like sayin it in our heads but actually visualizing it like an image, we had great success. Also the feeling others' feelings, I do this all the time, I am empathic, I sometimes don't know if it's coming fro me the feelings I get or if they originate from another, it's hard to explain. This is something that became strong after my twenties when I started practicing meditation and connection to the earth's energies, the premonition stuff, which I was attempting to re-connect with never happened.
But I understand what you're saying and totally beleive you.
Oh well, the premonition thing did happen once during those exercises, I guessed the exact game score as the next day's football game it was Eagles and someo other team (can't remember as it was so long ago) but the score dead on, wish I had've had the money to place a nice BET!
I told two people the score the day before, and one was my stepdaughter, the next day we watched the game and she was all it's not the score! This was 30 seconds to the end of the game and I said you just wait, they scored the last goal and feild goal at the last 15 or ten seconds. The score was 27 Eagles I can't remember what I told her the other team would get but I knew by deduction if they got another field goal and running goal they'd be 27 so I knew it was going to happen. That was the last premonition I had.
I think I said 27 to 16 but I don't recall if that is exact. This was the year 2004. I know because it was right before I moved out of Philly.

Here it is I found it online and yes I WAS CORRECT!!! It had been 27 to 16 I said. It was against the Minnesota Vikings 2004 and here is the final score page:
Monday September 20, 2004

OK I know it's not proof really since um well just about anybody can say they predicted something after the fact.
Except it really did... though all I have is my word, and the fact that one person I still keep in contact with(my stepdaughter) has verified it for already a couple people face to face including my hubby.
The other was a guy from my friend's party whom I only ever met once, I told him to bet on the Eagles when he asked me what I thought and told him the score would be 27-16. Never found out if he did bet it!

I have a few but I'll share the meatiest ones. I've posted these before but it's always fun to retell stories. =)

I grew up in a small house that was built in the 1880's. When my parents moved in around 1980, it didn't even have a bathroom - we had an outhouse at the top of the hill behind the house. The front door still had the old skeleton key lock. I have no idea what used to be on that property, who may have died there, etc. but I do know that my bedroom on the 1st floor (my bedroom) was an addition and had its own entrance for a boy that used to live there. I forget what condition they say he had but he apparently was in a wheelchair and had some terminal/debilitating disease. I always got a creepy vibe and had frequent recurring nightmares about that house while we lived there. I'll skip the nightmare descriptions since this thread is about paranormal experiences, but that should set the mood for you...

My parents' bedroom was almost entirely the entire 2nd floor. The stairway took you into that main room from the first floor's main room which was our living room. There was a much smaller room we used as an office and the house's only tiny bathroom connected to it.

I would occasionally fall asleep upstairs watching TV with my parents. They kept a crib mattress up there so they didn't have to carry me all the way back downstairs to my room. I woke up in the middle of the night once on this mattress on the floor and saw my mom sitting on the floor next to me between my mattress and her bed. I reached out to touch her and say "Hi mom" but my hand went right through her. Obviously, it wasn't my mom. I rolled over and did my best to stay calm & go to sleep until morning.

Another occasion, I was in my own bed downstairs and I woke up to go to the bathroom. I go through the living room, up the stairs, and when I get to the top where my parents' bedroom is, I see something standing in that same spot where my "mom" was sitting in the previous story. Right in front of my mom's night stand just staring at me. I don't know what it was, but my mind has always interpreted it as a "grey" alien thing. The room was nearly pitch black other than this being's form - it had a very faint luminescence. I think that might be the most scared I have ever been in my life. I walked across the room to the bathroom as calmly but quickly as I could (avoided staring at it and pretended it wasn't there, flipped the light on and shut the door. After I took a few minutes to recover from the shock I cracked the door enough to look out where it was standing and it was gone. It took months before I would go back up there at night.

Now for the big one. We moved across town when I was 14. It was a newer house built in the 50's and had a nice finished basement that I used for myself. 2 bedrooms, a nice living room area, its own bathroom/shower...Anyway, it was across the street from the school, so my best friend would always spend the night. One night when I was by myself I heard someone whispering my name in my dream. It didn't fit the dream so I started to wake up - I though my dad was trying to get me up for some reason. I was getting irritated and I finally woke up and let out a "WHAT?!" but there was nothing. I felt like someone was in the room with me but I didn't have the guts to take a good look around. I rolled over and told myself it was just part of my dream and did my best to go back to sleep.

I never told ANYONE about that until...

Some time later - maybe a couple of weeks, my best friend had spent the night. He passed out in my bed watching TV so I went upstairs and slept on the couch. The next morning he starts telling me about getting woke up by something whispering MY name in the middle of the night (whatever it was though it was ME in that bed.) He did take a look around my room and his description of what he saw resembles the "grey" from my previous story in the corner of my room.

Like others, it gives me chills just telling these stories and I'd swear on a stack of bibles, encyclopedias, whatever that they're 100% true to the best of my recollection.

Ok, I'll tell another one. It's really not mine, but my grandma's, but it's creepy and would have scared the holy buh-jeebies out of me, lol!

First of all, my grandmother is a very religious woman and wouldn't make up a story like this to save her life, so I believe her, 100%.

When she was young, she was very close to her great-grandmother. I'm not sure exactly how old she was when this happened, but I'm guessing around 9 or so, although I could be completely wrong about that.

Anyway, one night, she woke up to hear something sliding across her bedroom floor and then slammed into her bed. She looked over the edge of her bed to see what it was and looked straight down into a coffin with her great-grandmother in it. She said she wasn't scared (although I have no idea how she managed that!) but she knew her grandma was dead. She went back to sleep (again, I don't know HOW) and the next morning, she told her mother that her great-grandma was dead. Her mom basically told her that she was off her rocker. She said that just a few minutes later, she was outside and saw a family member coming up the hill and said, "I told you! Here comes so and so (can't remember the name) to tell us she's dead. And that's exactly what he told them. She had passed away during the night. She said her mom just stared at her in disbelief and didn't know what to say.

That story had me scared to go to sleep at night, when I was little. I think I mentioned before that strange things like that happen to a few members of my family... mostly me and one of my sisters. We always say we got it from our grandma.

reply to post by ldyserenity


I believe you. Two nights ago, I was playing Uno with some friends and I believe I actually created my reality on this one. The thought, "the one's have it" popped into my head and I drew a one which was what I needed. I managed to see what the guy beside me drew and he got a one as well. I knew it was an act of will and faith because my intent was to give myself the one. I did it again later on in the game where I knew I was going to draw a "wild draw four". I picked up a few cards first that I wasn't able to play, but the next playable card I layed down was the "wild draw four". The next day I was in the drive thru at McDonald's and had this real strong feeling that she was going to forget my straw. She handed me my bag, and there was no straw. I think it may have been my intent that she forget my straw. The thought that went through my head was, in these exact words, "Man, she's gonna forget my straw". I knew it was going to happen.

Okay, I have quite a few, so I will start off with one from my time in Seminary.

While being a minister is awesome, but not much in the money making-being a student to become a minister is right at the poverty level. I had a few jobs that I was running at the time before I was hired on by a local church. One of them, as working part time at the old hippodrome as a performer/stage hand for the place. Mainly, all of my stagehand duties were running spots, fixing the marquee, and cleaning the basement- as often most shows bring in their own crews.

One day while at work, we got a call from the office across the street from us, letting us know our top story windows were open, and as it was nighing closing for us that day (We had no show, nor a movie showing that night) they didn't want us to leave the windows up, as storms might be coming through. My manager thanked our neighbors, and then roused me from light room where I was sorting gels to help him come and shut the windows. I had asked if one of the other guys had been up there, to which my manager replied no. So both of us confused as to how they got open, went up there and proceeded to shut and lock all the windows. It was a tedious job , and it was hot up there, as it was the end of summer in Texas. So we finally got the last window shut, when we noticed it had gotten much cooler. I looked out the window and squinted.

"No storm coming in, I don't know where the hell the breeze is coming from."

My manager said the air never came in up here. And then quite distinctly I turned all to goosebumps, a feeling I had felt before- and I was keenly aware that something was not right. My manager had fallen silent beside me, and I slowly turned toward him.

"Woodhouse*."

"Yeah."

"Look."

I look to see what he is staring at, and I swear from out of nowhere this greyish looking homeless person is just standing at the door that leads to the stairs. We never heard him come up, and never noticed him till then. He just sort of frowned at us and he turned as as if to walk towards us, only to head back down the stairs. Quickly my manager went to the stairs, and was about to stop the guy, only to say

"You got to be f-ing kidding me."

I of course have now come over, and we look down only to see the stairwell is empty. At that point my line of reasoning had simply become:run. So we took the stairs two at a time, hurrying our ass down, and out. The next morning when the manager showed up for work, he called to let me know the windows upstairs were wide open again.

I have two more good ones.

*forum name replaces real obviously.

I had a pretty incredible UFO experience if that is considered paranormal.No abductions or anything like that at all.Saw Oval disc shaped object and a about 7 to 8 triangular objects and a blue circle object all for about 45 mins.Was in my newspaper article the next day and I saved the article as others saw them as well.

Some years back, when I was in college, I was looking for a place to live. Money was tight, so I was looking for a cheap place, and found this older apartment complex that was fairly run down. They told me they had some vacancies, and showed me one of the units. This particular building was brand new, and the price was strangely cheap, but I figured that I had just stumbled upon a really good deal and put down a deposit on the spot.

After I moved in, strange things started happening, like cabinets opening by themselves and plates falling off the counter and breaking. But the weirdest thing that was every night, sometime around 3 am, I would wake up thinking I was on fire, and jump out of bed slapping at myself like I was trying to put out the flames. My girlfriend at the time was absolutely freaked by this, to the point that she refused to stay with me after a while.

One day I ran into an old friend that I hadn't seen in a while, and he asked me where I was living and I told him about the place, said I was happy with it because it was really nice, all brand new, but still really cheap. I didn't tell him about any of the things that had been happening, of course, but he was kind of surprised because he had used to live in the same apartment complex. When he asked me which building I lived in and I told him, he got a really weird look on his face, and asked me if I knew about what had happened there. I had no idea about the history, so he told me that when he had lived in the complex, that building had burned down in the middle of the night, and a couple people had been burned to death in their sleep. I thought he was just messing with me, so later I asked the manager of the complex if it was true, and sure enough, there had been a fatal fire there, and they had rebuilt the building in the same spot, which explained why it was all brand new.

Gotta say I wasn't real comfortable staying there after that...

I'm a light sleeper, I can feel someone looking at me and wake up if I haven't taken anything to help me sleep. One night, I was sleeping on my back. I awoke suddenly, and there was a female apparition hovering above me. She was parallel to me, head to head, toe to toe, and only a few inches from my face. Her skin, hair, and clothing were as white as snow. She appeared to be wearing a long dress, but it was ripped and tattered, and blowing in a wind that was not there.

When I opened my eyes her eyes and mouth flew open wide, like I startled her. There was nothing in her eye sockets and mouth. They were completely black. She flew up and away from me, and disappeared. I've seen many things, so this did not frighten me. I just pulled the covers over my face and went back to sleep.

Ok, I am going to tell another story.

After my grandmother died and went to (hopefully) join my grandfather the family decided to stay at the old family house where she and my grandfather lived as opposed to staying in motels. We all came in on the day of the death and basically were hanging out in the house, eating, talking and laughing. Trying to ignore the whole of it. It was elected that the grandkids would stay in the living room (which was always creepy, but that's another story) while the adults were in the three bedrooms they had.

My eldest cousin was back in my grandfather's room and we were to come and get her once people were getting ready for bed, as she had driven the longest to get there. Well, it gets close to nine o'clock and she's been back there for an hour or so, asleep. All of a sudden we heard this screaming coming from the back-and the fact that my grandparents' house had been broken into before- we thought the worse.

My uncle got back there, followed by my dad and of course all the kids followed suit. Instead of finding a burglar or something worse we just heard this loud rattling and buzzing sound coming from my grandad's chest of dresser drawers. My dad asked his brother:

"What's that racket?"

Mind you, this was before cell phones- so my uncle went and opened the drawer only to find his old razor going off. He being an old Navy man used to just shave his head at home in order save money. Had the same flatop for years. However his razor was going on- and it had to be plugged in to be on. And for us to get it to stop we had to turn it off.

At that point, staying at motels suddenly sounded great- and everyone left.

During the week of the funeral and after-other things would happen. People's names being called from a room where the lights would magically turn on or the fans. The worst was when my brother and I were packing things up and the old dial TV turned on and clicked through all the channels.

The last instance there involved my brother, uncle and I making sandwiches on the last day we were there. It was silent and everyone was slightly on edge from the weird activities- to the funeral. A lot was written off as stress. My uncle finally laughed and said to no one:

"I wish we had some tunes on."

and then on the opposite side of the kitchen the radio turned on and opened the CD drawer.

We haven't talked about it since- well I haven't with my uncle. My brother and I hold to it, and count it as for when we started to believe in ghosts.

I've been lurking for about a year, but this thread motivated me to come out of the shadows and as such this is my first post! (apart from the obligatory introductory thread of course)

I'll share the two most notable experiences for me. The first was when I was about 5 or 6, and staying with some family friends as my parents were out of town. I woke up one night only to see at the foot of my bed a young girl (well older than me at the time, but still young - maybe 12 to 15) standing there. She wasn't looking at me, but rather was combing her long golden hair and looking down and to her right. She had pale white skin and was dressed in a long white dress. I don't think she was radiating light as such, but her whole appearance was of pure brightness. I sat up on my elbows dumbfounded! I was sharing a bed with one of the older children, a teenage girl, and I looked across to see if she had seen it but she was still asleep. Maybe it was because I was at that age when you are more accepting of mysterious things, but I didn't at all feel scared or threatened, more curious. The girl looked very peaceful and I considered getting up and walking over to her to see what was going on. For some reason I didn't, and don't remember anything after that so I must have fallen back asleep. To this day I regret not getting out of bed to investigate this girl!

The next time time 'visitor' was much less pleasant. It was many years later, when I was about 23, and one night I woke up to see playing cards flying at me. I propped up on me elbow and looked up, and squatting on my desk a couple of metres away was this woman. She had a disturbing, unnaturally large grin on her face and was holding a deck of cards and flicking them at me. I can't remember what she was wearing but it was nothing particularly memorable, just long pants and a shirt I think. She had medium length dark hair. I tried to catch one of the cards, and when I did it faded from view, as did the others and the woman itself. I was more confused than scared, and lay back down and went to sleep.

Later in the night however, I woke up again, and saw the same woman, this time on the floor crawling towards me on her hands and knees. She had the same unsettling toothy smile on her face. This did creep me out this time, and I blinked and shook my head and she was gone. I got up and had a little look around but of course there was nothing there. I was pretty freaked, but prayed a lot and got back to sleep!

I am into lucid dreaming, and so am well aware of what the mind is able to create, as well as how it can produce hallucinations when in that half-awake, half-asleep stage, and it's not uncommon for me to wake up in the night and see curious things before they fade away. But usually it's like a chair that isn't there, or little floaty things, but never a full, moving human figure. So I'm at a loss as to whether these were just projections of my brain, or real supernatural visitors. They are mysterious to me nonetheless! It is interesting how many of people's accounts here have happened whilst in bed during the night. There really must be something about this time of day. Anyways, great thread, S&F, it's been fascinating reading!