Do you believe in ghosts?

[hawaiianorangetree]

Sure do!

I have had quite a few different experiences with them but the one that sticks in my mind was a particularly unpleasant one back in my late teens.

We had rented a house and the day that we picked the keys up we went over to the house with some stuff that we could fit in the car.
We were in the spare bedroom putting posters up, bf was by the wall and i was standing in the middle of the room instructing him where to put the posters. There was absolutely nothing in the room but us and as i was standing there i felt something 'woosh' and push past me, it made me loose my balance and i had to take a few steps to the side to stop myself from falling over. As it went past, the pressure in my ears changed with the 'woosh' it made. (it's very hard to explian what it was like).
My bf and i looked at each other and i asked if he just saw it, as he replied yes, it happened again but this time it came back from the other direction and pushed me over once more making me loose my balance. Well we both freaked out, grabbed the keys turned of the lights and drove the 2 hours back to my mums place because we were so scared!

We had to stay in the house for 6 months and we had all the usual doors closing on their own, footsteps in the hallway with no one there etc happen but the biggest thing to occur was when the ghost broke our bathroom mirror when we were asleep in bed in the middle of the night. We were woken up with the loud 'smash!'. The mirror in the bathroom was pretty big, about 1m x 1m with no frame, just the glass, it was pretty heavy and was not fixed to the wall but was propped up on the vanity behind the basin taps leaning on the wall.

If the mirror had happened to fall on its own or the wind blew it over, it would have broken face down over the sink and vanity area where it was propped up. We found the mirror face up right in front of the door about 2 meters away from the vanity. It still freaks me out to think about exactly how it got there!

We ended up seeking some advice and were told to talk to the ghost and light white candles in the house to protect us. I told the ghost that i knew he wasn't happy that we were there and that we would be gone as soon as our 6 month lease was up, i lit the candles every day and we never had any more problems with the ghost. Once the 6 months was over we got out of there as fast as we could!

 

[diamondbuggy]

For those of you who have not "seen" ghosts but "felt" ghosts, could you clarify how you distinguish their presence from your imagination?

I'm not sure how to explain it. It's just that feeling you get when you know someone's watching you, the feeling that there's somebody else in the house but you know you're alone. Also, there's all the unexplained sounds. I often walked into a room and was suddenly overcome with a certain emotion. It wasn't always the same emotion. I know I sound crazy but it's so difficult to explain.

I must admit at first I thought I was just being paranoid. But then one day my mom and I were talking and realised we were both experiencing the same things. That confirmed it for me. We çouldn't have been imagining the same things.

 

[Autumnovember]

Something must seriously be wrong with me because I just read through that other thread entirely. Great. It's 4 AM here and I am FREEEEEEEEEEEEEAKED out. Like I mentioned before, I have never *seen* anything (and if I ever do, I'll be put into a psych ward because I am sure I'll go mental----I'm THAT terrified) but I've had communications. What continues to scare me to this day is ouija boards. ....my sister used to play with those with her friends when she was younger and I'd always be in the room. Eventually we bought a real one and I remember all the awful things that started happening around our house after we purchased one. Finally, my mom came to the conclusion that the ouija board needed to be burned and told me to NEVER EVER go near one again. After we burned it you could feel the total shift in energy throughout the whole house. It was like this heavy unsettling feeling that just vanished. Even at 10 years old I felt it and still remember it so freshly in my mind. I did a lot of research before on ouija boards and its amazing how even people that don't believe in ghosts won't go near one. My mom is sleeping downstairs and I'm really tempted to go down there and sleep with her....I'm scared

 

[diamondbuggy]

Something must seriously be wrong with me because I just read through that other thread entirely. Great. It's 4 AM here and I am FREEEEEEEEEEEEEAKED out. Like I mentioned before, I have never *seen* anything (and if I ever do, I'll be put into a psych ward because I am sure I'll go mental----I'm THAT terrified) but I've had communications. What continues to scare me to this day is ouija boards. ....my sister used to play with those with her friends when she was younger and I'd always be in the room. Eventually we bought a real one and I remember all the awful things that started happening around our house after we purchased one. Finally, my mom came to the conclusion that the ouija board needed to be burned and told me to NEVER EVER go near one again. After we burned it you could feel the total shift in energy throughout the whole house. It was like this heavy unsettling feeling that just vanished. Even at 10 years old I felt it and still remember it so freshly in my mind. I did a lot of research before on ouija boards and its amazing how even people that don't believe in ghosts won't go near one. My mom is sleeping downstairs and I'm really tempted to go down there and sleep with her....I'm scared

I just started reading that other thread. I got through the first couple of posts and immediately closed the window because I suddenly felt so scared! Some of these stories are terrifying. I guess I should wait for FI to get home before I try read it again so I'm not alone.

 

[diamondbuggy]

OMG. I just read that other thread and am officially freaked out!!!
Why did I do this while alone at home? I'm so stupid. But now I'm tempted to read the thread mentioned in the other thread. It's like the bug being drawn to the light... I'm so going to regret this later!

 

[ericad]

For those of you who have not "seen" ghosts but "felt" ghosts, could you clarify how you distinguish their presence from your imagination?

For me, it's a feeling of the air becoming thick, sometimes difficult to breathe, and an overwhelming feeling of a particular emotion (sadness, insanity, despair, joy, greed).

My brother and I had lots of experiences as kids. I remember watching TV once, with those old channel changer boxes that have the switch you need to slide manually, before remote controls. I was sitting on the sofa and the channels started flipping, so I looked at the box and the switch was sliding across. No way for that to have happened for any logical reason (electrical, etc.), since it needed to be done manually.

When I was a kid we lived in a different house that my brother and I are sure had ghosts. Almost every night we'd both hear someone walking up and down the stairs and into our shared bathroom. Feet padding along on the carpet and footsteps on the vinyl bathroom floors. At first we'd call out to each other, "Hey, is that you in the bathroom?" and then we realized it wasn't

In this same house I also recall hearing distinct murmuring voices coming from downstairs. Our parents' bedroom was downstairs (ours were upstairs) and so I'd sneak down in the hopes of staying up late or getting into their bed for the night. But I'd get down and it would be dark, quiet, they would be sound asleep, everything still as can be. This happened several times.

Most significant of all, in this same house, one time during the night, there was a huge crash in my closet just next to my bed. I just hid under the covers until morning, then opened the door and EVERYTHING was on the floor. All the games that had been neatly stacked on the top shelf, all my clothes pulled down off the hangers, etc. Not just a few items - EVERYTHING in a heap on the floor. My mom didn't believe me and thought I was pranking her, so I just cleaned up the mess and we never talked about it again. No logical explanation for that one either - the shelf was completely secure and there wasn't one article left up, so it's not like something tipped over and fell. I cannot emphasize this enough, lol, but every item was down and on the closet floor, including my clothes!!!

 

[dragonfly411]

For me, feeling them is ... It's like when you know there is someone else in the room. You can feel that someone else is there, another presence. Gosh it's hard to explain! Like if I went into a room, and knew someone was hiding under the bed (my sister did this to me a lot as a child), and could feel someone in there listening and watching. The difference for me is that it is so completely overwhelming it makes me stiffen, and my hairs stand up, and I get goosebumps.

Sometimes I'll walk down a hallway and this will happen, and I simply turn and let them know I know they're there, and it softens some. I think some of them need to feel like someone knows they are there, almost like they need attention. Sometimes there are feelings involved, like anger, sadness, or ill will.

I actually had a friend pass away last year. The night after he passed, I felt an extreme presence from the corner of my grandparents game room. It was late. I could feel almost a happy smugness, like the presence was amused at what they had found, and satisfied with it. The next day was his memorial and in the daytime one of his friends told me that she was sitting atop a mountain (he was a rock climber) and a white dove landed next to her. That entire week, five deer slept outside of his parents' house in the middle of a crowded neighborhood. The night of his memorial (there was a nation wide candle lighting amongst the hundreds of people who knew him), I sat outside with my candle, and an owl landed as I lit the candle. He sat and hooted until I was blowing the candle out, and flew away. I still feel like this was somehow related to that presence and that he was checking on the people who cared about him.

 

[Matata]

In my family, people die but they never truly leave. Come back to visit all the time. Same for close friends who die. For us, it's normal.

I hope that those of you who found this discussion or your own experiences fearful can find a way to resolve the fear. Since we tend to fear what we don't understand, I tend to look for explanations of the paranormal that are in my comfort zone so I can keep open to the possibilities and not become overwhelmed by superstition. My comfort zone is the point where science and spirituality merge to open the potential for paranormal experiences. If energy is neither created or destroyed, but merely changes form (law of thermodynamics), that leaves the possibility that ghosts/spirits are a manifestation of a change in energy which can also be used to contemplate the continued existence of "life" after death. Same sort of thinking can be used when contemplating the possibility of reincarnation.

There's also a whole lot of mind-bending potential in physics -- string theory, multiverse theories. If there are different universes existing in the same space, perhaps these ghosts/spirits are felt/seen when multiverses merge or when temporary windows open that allow energies from one universe to extend into another.

 

[Autumnovember]

For me, feeling them is ... It's like when you know there is someone else in the room. You can feel that someone else is there, another presence. Gosh it's hard to explain! Like if I went into a room, and knew someone was hiding under the bed (my sister did this to me a lot as a child), and could feel someone in there listening and watching. The difference for me is that it is so completely overwhelming it makes me stiffen, and my hairs stand up, and I get goosebumps.

Sometimes I'll walk down a hallway and this will happen, and I simply turn and let them know I know they're there, and it softens some. I think some of them need to feel like someone knows they are there, almost like they need attention. Sometimes there are feelings involved, like anger, sadness, or ill will.

I actually had a friend pass away last year. The night after he passed, I felt an extreme presence from the corner of my grandparents game room. It was late. I could feel almost a happy smugness, like the presence was amused at what they had found, and satisfied with it. The next day was his memorial and in the daytime one of his friends told me that she was sitting atop a mountain (he was a rock climber) and a white dove landed next to her. That entire week, five deer slept outside of his parents' house in the middle of a crowded neighborhood. The night of his memorial (there was a nation wide candle lighting amongst the hundreds of people who knew him), I sat outside with my candle, and an owl landed as I lit the candle. He sat and hooted until I was blowing the candle out, and flew away. I still feel like this was somehow related to that presence and that he was checking on the people who cared about him.

I had something very very similar happen to me regarding the birds....I'll have to write out my experiences on here even though nobody is interested, haha.

 

[dragonfly411]

Autumn - I'm actually really interested to hear what others have experienced, to see if they are similar to me. It is comforting to know I am not the only one.


ETA - Matata, I only fear those that seem foreboding/angry/ill willed. Those are the ones that I am fearful of, simply b/c I don't know if that is towards me or just towards everything in general, and I don't like them doing things to try to upset me. I think if they truly wanted to be injurious they would if they could. I can't decide if they could or not. If I feel like a "presence" is not ill willed or angry, but more watchful, or just trying to communicate, or even amiable, then I am ok with them.