Ghosts

One of the houses we lived in had a presents I felt a young girl was around me and my daughter described what she saw and it matched strange things happened once the door handle came down and the door came open I was on my own then so none of the family could have done it there were more things that happened seemed strange that my daughter could see what I saw so yes I believe there are things we know nothing about also when my first husband died we had made a pact that who went first would contact the other one week after he died when I got up I smelt the aftershave he used to wear when we met also he always covered me up when he got up in the morning one morning I felt the covers move and cover me up, no im not a crank just know what happened so I believe sure there are others and of course there are those that dont.

Oh, and I've just remembered another strange incident. I took a New Zealand relative to visit Max Gate, Thomas Hardy's house near Dorchester. A video about Hardy was showing in the kitchen, which we sat down to watch, with two other visitors. My relative said something derogatory about Hardy's character, whereupon two copies of his novels, which were with others well back on a shelf suddenly plummeted forward to the floor with a thump. It was very odd as the books were carefully positioned with inches of shelf at the front of them.

My ladt posting was in response to Katek's, it didn't seem to attach to it.

I heard this sighting discussed on Radio 4 some years ago. I think it was an electrician or plumber working who nearly fell off his ladder when a column of shabbily dressed Roman soldiers passed through the cellar. He described them as unshaven, and wearing what looked like tie-died clothing. An expert said he had described what would be Spanish mercenaries in the pay of the Romans, wearing clothing faded by the sun. It was an extremely convincing account by the person who experienced it.

We used to live in a former vicarage dating from 1750. One of my sons was ascending the stairs late one evening when to his surprise he saw a man dressed in dark clothes just about to enter one of the bedrooms. My son stopped, feeling rather shocked, whereupon the man turned, gave him a hard stare, then just vanished. I was in the garden of the same house pruning a bush when I heard footsteps approaching across the lawn. I thought it was an importunate, and rather garrulous next-door-neighbour. So as not to encourage him I waited until I heard the steps come right up to me before I turned to greet him: there was nobody there. I was on step ladders painting the kitchen, which had high oak doors with windows above which looked into the hall. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw standing at the bottom of the stairs a little girl. She was wearing a short crinoline dress and had ribbons in her hair. As I stared she just vanished. The atmosphere in the house was very benign, though, and I put that down to the generations of clergy and their families who had lived there before us.

Forty odd years ago my mother claimed she had seen a line of monks carrying a box, she said they passed through her living room wall and out the other side. We didn't know what to think as it was highly unlikely monks would have been in the area. I was wrong the monks travelled from Lindisfarne to Durham and could well have travelled right across the land where house stood. My mother also lived just a few miles from St Peter's, founded in 674, home of Benedict Biscop. Was the box St Cuthbert who was transported around Northumberland for seven years before being interred at Durham ?

My DD saw a man dressed in a 1940's suit, and wearing a hat, sitting opposite her on the tube as she was going back to her flat late one night after uni. She was reading a book and didn't hear him get on, she was alone in the carriage. He was muttering to himself, and when she looked at him she noticed that he had no feet. She got off at the next station as she was so unsettled.

The 'man' in our old house was only seen upstairs in one bedroom from the knees up. We know the first floor was built higher later than the downstairs, probably in about 1700. MIL and FIL slept in that room and frequently saw him long, long before we moved in.

I've always been fascinated by the story of the Roman legion which appears to walk through the basement of a building in York but are only seen from the knees up. Apparently, upon excavation, an original Roman road surface was discovered 2-3ft down which would match up to the legion walking at that level. Very strange.

It's the ghosts Harrigran

I've only just posted on the 'good books' thread and there were no 'hiccups' at all.

GN is playing silly beggars, as I type half the letters disappear. I thought it was just my computer but apparently not. It has taken me 10 minutes to type this because of corrections.

Riverwalk I love your story about the tramp. I hope that's not what we have wandering around upstairs when we are downstairs in the living room! I have guessed it to be creaking chipboard flooring, heating pipes something expanding and contracting in the heat/cold and it no longer really bothers me though I often say, 'Hello Ghostie' just in case! We also get things tipping over noisily in the kitchen and don't usually find anything on investigation. Cold blasts of air when sitting watching TV are quite annoying but I'm sure can be explained away if I knew about the air currents round the house.
The house is only about 40 years old and was built on fields so no great history.
My family and I have all experienced what might be called 'spooky' things but I'm still not convinced by ghosts.
On the other hand, while typing this, the computer froze so I could not write for at least half a minute, the page suddenly zoomed up to 200% and it has just scrolled itself to the bottom of the page! Hmm... Ghostie or crisps in the keyboard?

I always said that the house we left when we moved here, had a ghost. Our little 'estate' was newly built in and around the grounds of an old house, and I used to 'feel'the presence of someone or something when I was sitting quietly on my own. Never threatening, but to the extent that I would turn round ready to say to my other half "I did not hear you come in" and there would be no-one there. Several people on the estate said they sometimes felt a presence, and a little girl at one time went to her mother and told her there was a strange man in the toilet. The toilet was upstairs and all doors were locked and closed. It was just accepted that we had visitors occasionally.

Funnily enough when we moved to this house 19 years ago it seemed so 'bland', no atmosphere at all. I found it quite unsettling for a while until a feeling of relief, I suppose, kicked in.

Have to say I don't miss the nightly 'sounds', although we got so used to it.

That's really spooky! I think you were very brave to stick it out, don't think I could have done...

The 'poltergeist' activities stopped immediately but the footsteps, dog, sightings of the man and 'gremlin' were frequently seen afterwards.
The 'gremlin' was seen by a visiting vicar friend who described it as a dwarf about 3' 6" high, deformed left arm and a twisted spine. He saw it mid-afternoon when going along the landing to get some trunks out of the attic, which we were giving to the church for storage.

Oddly I didn't mind being in the house alone during the day, but at night it was different. We had a middle room that neither the dogs nor the cats would enter, that was where the poltergeist active mainly occurred. They still wouldn't enter after the exorcism.

Did the exorcism work, loopy? Did the sightings stop completely and straight away?

We had a number of inexplicable occupancies when we lived in a 400 year old farmhouse; unexplained footsteps on stairs (no central heating) climbing 23 steps yet there were only 15 stairs, a standard lamp thrown across the room in front of my disbelieving husband, a black dog in the barn seen in broad daylight but it dissolved in front on you, various items disappearing for years then turning up in the most unlikely places, a man at the end of the bed seen by our young children, me and a friend staying with us.
We had a teenager literally sick with fright after meeting a 'gremlin' as he put it, on one staircase.
Eventually we had the house exorcised because too many things happened.

Did I believe in ghosts beforehand-no but afterwards I knew there was something.
My in laws lived there before us, devout churchgoers and they too saw things that couldn't be explained.

We asked a well-known Wiltshire author of ghosts in the county to visit and she was certain that a number of entities were in the house.

When my DGD was aged 5 the family lived in a farmhouse beside the ruins of a castle unoccupied and ruined since the 1600's. Early one late winter morning she awoke, got up and looked out of the bedroom window. To her surprise, she saw a young boy sitting on the lawn. When all the family got up for breakfast she told her mum and dad. She described a boy with blonde bobbed hair knee breeches and a jerkin. After she had gone to school my SiL told my DD that he had also seen the same boy. On relating this to other mums at the school gates, my DD was told a legend about a kitchen boy from the castle who was sent out on an errand. They forgot he was out and shut the castle up for the night. It was very cold, and in the morning, when they opened the castle door, they found the little boy frozen to death on the doorstep. Ooh spooky.
That house always felt odd whenever I visited.

You are allowed to give the name of the hotel, annsixty!

Was it Maenan Abbey?

Very sensible, down to earth, friends of ours spent 2 New Year Eve's in a hotel in N Wales which was called M.... Abbey. It was a lovely hotel and the celebrations were excellent.However the second year they saw a monk in a habit, quite clearly in their room and they both saw it. It totally unnerved them and they would never go back.

My friend came to lunch recently and I was asking her about a trip she'd had to Newstead Abbey with her daughter. She told me that they were going up to look at Byron's bedroom and her daughter made a joke about being careful of his ghost in case he was just as amorous in the afterlife as he had been in life. She stopped on the staircase to look at a stained glass window and had the distinct impression that someone was trying to pass behind her on the stair - so distinct that she moved forward out if the way, then turned round to find there was no one on the stair but her. She went up the stairs and asked her daughter if anyone had come up before her and she said no. My friend is very level headed and doesn't believe in ghosts but found the experience unnerving to say the least.

Dd2 stays in an old manse with parts of it dating back to the 1600's. I cannot -for whatever reason - sleep in either of the third storey bedrooms, they just feel 'wrong'. I also get a mental picture/sensation/thought of 3 very stern/serious looking men in top hats going up the stairs to that floor when I'm in guest room on second floor.

The night before my mother's funeral my duvet was tugged three separate times.

Can't explain either of these events.

I have never seen a ghost, but my late husband always swore that he could see a ghost in our spare room !!! He was never afraid, it was a lady, who sat on the edge of the bed, but when he tried to talk to her, she walked through the wardrobe. !!! I never saw her. And no he never drank.