In my old house on Moody avenue in South Knoxville, my dad had a desk and rolling chair upstairs in his bed room. You would be sitting downstairs with no one else in the house, and you could hear that chair rolling around in the room upstairs. This went on for months and was damn freaky. Then realized it was birds flying out of the chimney, and the fluttering of their wings sounded just like wheels rolling across the floor upstairs. But for a while, it was quite unnerving. But lesson learned that day.
I am 100 % sure there is always an explanation. And the "freakier" the occurrence, the more bizarre/random the natural explanation will end up being. I used to get told all sorts of BS by folks at church about demons, "spiritual warfare," etc. It didn't take long to realize how much of that was all in their head.
At least on the tv show side, Taps began as debunkers but ratings spiked with fabricated paranormal activity. As far as paranormal tv shows go, Fact or Faked on SyFy is by far the best. 99.9% of the time there is an explaination
And there hasn't been smoking gun evidence for paranormal anything 100 % of the time. Yet so many are so sure...
My uncle lived in an old mansion and swears it was haunted. Had any number of unexplained phenomena. Mostly stuff vanishing and reappearing other places along with "activity" noises. He's a devout atheist and research scientist but he's adamant that there is no rational explanation for what he experienced over a prolonged period living there. Here's a pic of the place
A little more research into the picture and it just looks like his front door was ****ed up. I bet it was just racoons. Greedy bastards moving his stuff around
alone and wife. He ran into some dude many years later who had also lived there. Without prompting that guy asked him if he ever noticed any weird stuff happening like stuff going missing then showing up later etc. All I can say is that my uncle isn't one to believe in this and like I said he's hardcore atheist but he believes something unexplained was going on there.
Anyone entering with a key would have had to walk within five or six feet of me both coming in and going out. Did not happen.
Woke up the other night and let out a bit of a scream at what I would have argued to be a witch beside the bed. As my eyes adjusted to the retraction of my eyelids and being robbed of precious rest , I became more keenly aware of the Dora the Explorer blanket with a "bigger than life" image of Dora being dimly illuminated by the light from my CPAP. I almost killed a small dog with my initial reaction. That being said, my paranoid self could have picked a better thread to peruse this night. Reminds me of creepy things I've seen around here.
I don't believe in ghosts / spirits, etc., namely, because they scare the living shit out of me. Seriously, like to an unhealthy degree. Example: Given a choice between floating on my back for an hour in what I knew to be shark-infested waters, or staying an hour in what was alleged to be a haunted house - even during the bright light of daytime....i'm putting on my swim trunks, and going splash down, and 100 times out of 100 choices. Wouldn't even hesitate in making the choice. I do believe that the mind is powerfully equipped to fool itself, and in any number of undetectable ways, and that it often does just that. I also believe that a great many - the overwhelmingly vast majority, even - of "hauntings" could likely be explained through entire reasonable causes, which could be both observed and repeated, but which are often ignored or left unconsidered in moments of surprise, panic and fear. I believe both of these things, honestly, and fully. But I also believe that it is these very same reasons which we use as a blanket refutation of any possibility that something else may also be happening, however infrequently or rare, and which we aren't aware or could fully understand. And perhaps rightfully so, but maybe not. Despite whatever reasonableness I can bring to bear on the subject, from an intellectualized and safe-distance standpoint, there I'd be, contentedly floating on my back. How to explain it? I have no idea. That's just my personal take on it.
Every year, my in-laws spend two weeks at Loretta Lynn's homestead in Hurricane Mills, TN. They camp out, ride horses, etc. One year, the wife and I took a long weekend and went down to join them. While walking the grounds in the light of day, we found some large steps and ornately designed gated archway, and which began the paved path directly to the main entrance of the property's Antebellum-style home, which had been erected by its original owners, sometime in the early 19th century (IIRC). So, with the large house serving as a naturally beautiful backdrop, I begrudgingly accepted my wife's request to snap some photos of her an the kids, while sitting on the front steps. I quickly snapped several pictures of my wife and kids, sitting on the steps, with a digital camera. Not trusting my photography skills, the wife wanted to assure the quality of my photos, before resuming our walk. Of the 8-10 shots I took, the foreground (where the wife and kids were sitting) was in perfect focus, and the house, being at a distance, was understandably slightly less clear, but still showed easily discernable features. And that's when we noticed the distinct figure and features of a woman, dressed in all white, standing on the far right-hand side (when facing the home) of the second-floor balcony, and which spanned the full length of the house. As the digital camera stores pictures in the order that they are taken, we noticed that the figure was only present in the single and final shot that I had taken. I was standing in the exact same spot, the entire time, and with subjects who never moved. All shots were taken one right after the other, with all being completed I n no more than a :30 timeframe, at most. Beyond the original framing of the first shot, and allowing the camera to focus itself (on the subjects, my wife and kids), I never adjusted anything. I stood there, said "Smile!" and just snapped 7-10 pictures. Standing there, looking at those pics and seeing that figure, I wasn't so much scared, as genuinely baffled. So, we started to look around at what could explain it. We checked for a dirty lens - it was clean. We looked to see it there was a branch, tree, shrub, flower that could have been blown into frame by a breeze, however gentle, and despite the calmness of the weather and strikingly clear skies. We didn't find anything. Now, bear in mind, I didn't WANT to find anything (because stuff like that scares the shit out of me), and actually WANTED to find a reasonabke explanation. Hell, any explanation would have sufficed. And such may have very well existed, but we neither found it nor any evidence of even what it might have been. In a last act of desperation to convince myself that it had to be something that only affected that one photo, I asked the wife and kids to re-position themselves in their original spots, and took the same I had originally held, as well. I snapped exactly five more photos, just as I had originally done, and handed the camera to the wife to preview them for us. The image on the balcony appeared on the first, third and fifth shots I took, with each shot being made some 2-3 seconds after the previous one. Later, we found out the the house was alleged to be haunted by several members of the original family, and this is what prompted Loretta Lynn to build another and newer home behind the original house. After showing the picture to several workers at her homestead, none were even remotely surprised. Apparently, the daughter of the original owner had delivered a still-born child, and was so destraught in the days following, that she died "of grief" (don't ask me, that's just what they said), and that both she and her baby were buried on the family plot, beside the house. The nursery was on the upper right-hand side of the home (when facing it) and an appirition had often been seen in that room, and outside on the balcony, in the same spot where the image LOOKS to have appeared on our pictures. Does this have some entirely reasonable explanation? Probably. Almost certainly, even. But I never figured out what it may have been. I don't know what that means, if anything, but just relaying a story from my own personal experiences.
Here are the steps. Bear in mind that as it was during the day, and the house was being toured, there was no closed gate on the archway. They were actually pushed back, folded over and latched open (we checked, thinking they may have been loose and swaying, or that something affixed to them had blown into the shot - both were impossible, insofar as I could tell).
And there was no ivy covering the gate, at least that I recall (can look again, later, when home). Trust me, I REALLY wanted to find an explanation.
