Serious question. Is it something you choose to believe in or pass off as people are crazy? Personally, I feel there has to be "something" out there because I've had too many strange experiences in my life. When I was about 16 I bought a Ouija board and messed with it a little bit. Never had anything strange happen just messing around with it until me and a small group of friends took it to an abandoned, supposedly haunted house close to Halloween that year. We tried to summon the spirits and then it was like the board came alive. We all thought the others were moving the pointer so it was just a game. Until it started spelling out some disturbing stuff. It kept trying to go to the goodbye for several minutes after asking the usual questions and then it started doing the disturbing stuff the more questions we asked after it kept trying to do the goodbye. One of my friends after one of the last goodbye's said no mother f'r you play by our rules and you answer our questions. Well, the board shot across the room and slammed into the wall and I swear I heard a growl and a couple of loud bangs. We all got out of there really quick but I still thought in the back of my head one of the others was just playing a trick. I left the board there and never messed with one again. But the freaky thing that still really gets me to this day is this. We moved out of my old house when I was 18. We had a barn with a loft that we kept random crap up there. Me and a friend were cleaning out that loft area and under an old headboard to a bed and an old screen door was the Ouija board. It was the same one that I left in that house 2 years before that. He wasn't with my group at the time and he had no idea why that freaked me out so bad. I still, to this day, cannot explain how that same Ouija board made it back to my old house. I burned it in a trash pile after I discovered it. Now, could it have been a friend playing a weird trick on me? Possibly, but the payoff didn't come for a couple of years. And we had no idea we were moving until earlier the year that we did. It still makes me wonder what we were messing with back then honestly. I went years without having anything real strange happen. Then I moved into the first house I owned. I never liked the basement because it just was too dark down there but other than hearing creaks and noises we never had anything too strange happen. Until I started renovating the house that is. The place was built in 1960 and I have updated the entire house since I bought it in 2006. I was trying to sell it after a divorce so that's when I done the first big round of renovations to try to make it more attractive to sell. I had painted some and laid some flooring down in the kitchen. I started hearing bangs and noises a lot and just passed it off as me being crazy over the whole divorce thing. I had the house listed for sale so it was showing from time to time and I had moved out. I was in the basement painting about a month after I left - this was in the summer in the middle of the day. I heard the loudest banging I had ever heard over my head. Loud footsteps like someone was running through the hall in the house. It startled me but didn't really scare me as I thought someone was in the house and a realtor was showing it. I walked out of the basement and around to the front of the house and saw that no cars were out there. I went inside the house and walked all through it and no one was there. I passed it off as me being insane. I rented the house for 2 years and in the meantime got remarried and after that renter moved out I moved back in. I really went all out with renovations this second time around - every room painted, doors replaced, new roof, all kinds of stuff. My current wife didn't believe me at first when I told her the house was a bit strange and could get to you a little. We moved in with our daughter who is now 3 but was about a year old at the time. The noises and strange stuff picked up and it was hard to ignore some of the crap going on. A few highlights..... Wife swore she heard me singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to our daughter one night in the bedroom while she sat in the living room. I rarely ever sing, even to my daughter. I wasn't singing as both of us were asleep in the bed. She asked me the next morning and I swore that I wasn't singing and she got a little creeped out. She still didn't believe me 100% though. But as we were discussing it we both heard the tune to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star play loudly from the den area. None of our daughters toys played that tune. We looked everywhere to see if we could figure it out and never came to any conclusion. I kept the kitchen door to the basement locked so my daughter wouldn't accidentally somehow open it and fall. I was putting a coat of paint on the door one night when I kept hearing scratching and growling noises from the basement. Thought I was just hearing things. Then the basement door, locked, flew open and smacked me in the face. I was crouched over painting near the bottom of the door and it hit me hard enough to knock me over. I literally thought someone had kicked the door in from the basement and was breaking in. I shot up and flipped the light on to the basement and no one was there. Basement door was locked to the outside of the house and there was literally no one anywhere around. Another day my wife asked me why I opened the fridge door and left it open. She was in the living room and could see the door was open. I said uh, I'm in the bedroom and haven't been in the fridge. The door was heavy and it would be hard for it to open by itself. We saw some of my daughters toys go off and on for no reason - and I still could dismiss some of that as possibly low batteries causing some of that. One thing I can't dismiss is the balls that would just mysteriously roll down the hall from time to time. There wouldn't even be a ball in the hall but they could somehow move out of my daughters bedroom and come down the hall all by themselves. I saw that happen myself several times. We even tried to see if it could have something to do with a slope in the hall or the air kicking on or anything and we never figured it out. Especially considering to get out of my daughters bedroom the balls had to cross a thresh hold. It wasn't like they could just roll out of her room over that without a little effort. We'd hear lots of banging and random noises the entire time we lived at that house. I now live in another home and rent that one out again and the new renter has already complained to me about noises in the house and a few weird things happening. She said that the washer just randomly turned itself on twice in a week. Lights have went on without anyone to flip the switch. She's complained of banging noises too so that house wasn't just me. At the new house I have not had any strange things happen. I'm sure many of you now think I'm out of my mind but I swear I'm telling the truth. I'd like others opinions on what they think about ghosts/spirits. Is there things out there that really do go bump in the night? Figured it was the right season to discuss.
Those are demons brother... I don't believe in ghosts but I do believe in demons. But I guess you could say they are all ghosts...
As odd as it may seem to some, and in complete sincerity, I actually agree with this post. I await your onslaught.
I have never witnessed anything, but my wife has experienced something. I don't wish to discuss it, but it was something very comforting to her. I wouldn't immediately jump to the demon conclusion in DnD's case, but I fully accept that there are forces out there that we have no explanation for.
Some possible things to consider OP: 1. Barring you are a professional warlock, you like didn't use anything more than an off-the-shelf Ouija board, and which are mass-produced by the thousands. So, barring that it contained some uniquely identifying aspect, simply finding one that looks the same doesn't mean that it was the same board, but rather, just one like it. 2. I'm nearly certain that your atypical divorce proceeding won't induce auditory hallucinations. Unless your ex-wife was Adele. 3. What you believed were footsteps could have been easily explained as an animal, moving in the basement, walls, attic or even simply upstairs. From a basement, I would surmise that just about any semi-patterned noise could be easily mistaken for footsteps. The possibilities of what could have caused those noises is, quite frankly, innumerable. 4. The Twinkle Twinkle song - could it have been a toy that a child was using outside and you simply believed that it was coming from inside the home? I have kids, and I could not tell you exactly how many or which of their toys played any kind of song or audible sound, or even when or how they were activated to do so. I do know that one of my (alleged) kids left a very small toy in my car one time, that had the smallest little button on the back to activate it, and at the most random times, it would make a series of statements while I was driving down the road. Before I discovered the toy, the sounds were completely inexplicable to me, it would have been a mistake - albeit a completely honest one - that my car ('84 Trans Am with T-tops) was haunted. I'm not poking at you, in the least, just saying that when it comes to kids toys and the random sounds that they make, while nothing should surprise you, the paranormal should not be automatically assumed. 5. The basement door swinging open. By definition, it could not have unexpectedly swung open while in a locked state. Despite what was likely a hyper-vigilance to ensure that it remain closed and locked, the most likely cause is that someone unlocked it, accessed the basement, closed the door when exiting and simply forgot to lock it back. A swift breeze or gust from the heat/AC (which basements are notorious for amplifying, due to it being a wide-open space with few baffling agents) could have simply swung it open, especially when considering that it was an older house and that you body weight was in close proximity to the door jam (as you painted, "right in front of it") only further enhance the chances that a sudden gust might have been able to suddenly and unexpectedly open it. And while I am sure that it hurt, frankly, I would have expected your injuries to be more than what sounds like little more than a bump on the head, had someone (or, "something") really forced the door open. Again, not being a jerk, but go put the top of your head about 6" away from the nearest door, and have someone gently push on the door to hit you on the head (simulating the force of a gust of air). Now, think about (don't do this) doing the same experiment, but this time, imagine them really throwing the door open with some force - that's an altogether different and more serious type of hurt, than the first, right? While not a crushing blow, it certainly hurt, didn't it? Have you ever been hit on the top of the head that your first reaction wasn't to immediately step or lean backwards (away from the source of the blow)? Perhaps this is what you did, and in the unexpectedness of it all, mistook this instinctual reaction of moving backwards as being "knocked backwards"? 6. The fridge. You own a refrigerator, and it is accessible from the same house where both women and children reside. The chances that it will be either left wide open or not-quite-closed for the vast majority of your lifetime is nearly a statistical certainty. Someone got in it, left the door ajar, and it came open - whether as a result of a gust of wind, the slope of the floor or simply the hanging weight of the door itself. I'm not sure as to why anything from the paranormal realm should be your first thought. Why would a ghost want to access your fridge? That is, unless you had some boo-berries or spook-tacular left-overs. That sucked, even as I typed it, but I'll own my bad jokes, and refuse to withdraw it. 7. The balls. See the same response for Twinkle Twinkle. You've got a circular shape that is designed to roll and which is filled with air. Barring coming home to find them suspended in mid-air in the form of your spelled name, nothing that they do should really surprise you. I very much appreciate the post (and welcome, btw!), but I will gently add this for consideration, too - for those who believe in these sorts of things, it may be possible that you subconsciously look for them, when just a plain old ordinary reason may be best to explain it.
A guy in my old battalion swore he was being stalked by the Moth man, in Fallujah, a week or so before he was killed. Weird as it sounds, it is true.
I believe in ghosts. I lived in a house that was built around 1890 and had been remodeled. I stayed at the house one summer between freshman and sophomore year in college. The fridge would open and close, lights would come off and on, the tv would come on and the volume would go up and down and doorknobs would turn and open with no one on either side. The weirdest thing that happened was, one day in the basement, I heard a lot of noise, beating and banging around. I went down there and there was a box laying in the middle of the floor that was pulled apart and things scattered everywhere. I had a yellow lab that started whimpering and would not come down the steps. I got in my truck, took the dog with me and left.
I have decided to try and respect the individual experience of others, but there is just no inkling of doubt in my mind that there is nothing supernatural in this world. I think the brain is a powerful and fallible thing, and our minds function by trying to make a coherent experience out of all the stimuli we receive around us. To me, having a ghostly experience during a game of monopoly would be more plausible than one when the mind is already dwelling on spirits and ghosts. Being stalked by the mothman on one's milk route would be more startling than being stalked in Fallujah, Iraq. Fallujah is precisely the sort of place where I imagine one would be encountering boogiemen. Again, I don't think anyone in this thread is lying, I just think sometimes our perceptions lie to us.
If you believe in an afterlife I don't see why believing in ghosts should be considered strange or outlandish. Weird stories, though, DND.
I never thought much about that it until I lived in that old house for a few months. Had the dog not started whimpering and refused to come down the stairs, I would have not thought too much about it either.
Were you with the Marines? If so, were you with the group that got hit with friendly fire in/outside that city?
I surveyed the Bell farm a couple years back. Those people that live around there are nuts. That was an interesting week.
