True ghost stories 👻

[Brummo123]

Omg that’s a scary story above no way would I stay in that house.

 

[Firecrotch69]

A creepy story from DS forum:

I once temped at an extremely old Royal Institution in Holborn in London, which pre-dated the Great Fire of London.

The Building itself was built & rebuilt a number of time on the same spot & housed absolutely fascinating paintings of old Fellows of the Institution, dressed in 'Dick Turpin' style attire.

It also housed a pathology museum & lecturing halls which contained deformed fetuses in jars & all form of medical macabre'ness dating back centuries. Anyone who knows Holborn in any level of details already knows exactly where I'm talking about - and a quick google search will enlighten the rest of you you.

However, what may surprise people is that in the basement, is a Mortuary. If you donate your body to science, this is where you may end up - serving as a learning tool for visiting lecturers - who have accommodation in the levels above the museum.

My role was a very last minute Security Guard. Though I had absolutely no experience in Security at all, I was at a loose end & the temp who was supposed to be there 'let them down very badly at the last minute' - so I agreed to go in for their Graveyard Shift - knowing nothing about the place other than it's address.

It was easy money. I locked up a few doors separating the museum & lecturing halls from the accommodation part - and buzzed in a few visitors, stumbling in from the pubs after the 11pm 'curfew'. Apart from that, I sat on the net and made myself coffees all night.

Nothing remarkable happened the first night, and in the absence of another placement I agreed to stay on for a few weeks.

Thereafter, things started getting odd.

I'd be sitting on the security desk and my bag (which I'd popped under the desk) would vanish. Id later find it exactly where I left it. My coffee would move to the opposite side of desk. Shadows would appear in well lit places or appear to move.

I was quite prepared to put all of this down to my imagination until one night, just after I'd finish locking up the doors between the museum & accommodation - I went back to the Security Office to return the keys when something on the CCTV monitor caught my eye.

In the corridor I'd just locked (which was adjacent to the office) was a man dressed in 1800's garb, walking very calmly towards to dividing glass paneled doors. He was in his mid-to-late twenties and had very pale skin, but was otherwise very solid. Outfit asides, there wasn't anything otherworldly about him. As he approached the door, light shone through it on to him as if he were solid.

'Sh*!' I thought. 'I've locked someone in!' I thought - having no reason to think otherwise.

I grabbed the keys again and jogged out of the office towards the doors, called ahead

'I'm so sorry! I didn't realise anyone was still....'

My apology was cut dead however as a floor to ceiling column of really dense shadow emerged through the glass doors (almost like watching a rain storm on the horizon) and passed silently across the foyer.

I looked through the doors and saw noone. I looked back at the shadow & it continued very deliberately through the foyer to the guest bar area.

The column threw me, but I was still thinking I'd locked someone in. Maybe they'd seen the column and freaked out. But where to? The corridor was locked. As were all the rooms off the side of it. I'd just locked them.

I unlocked the dividing door and went back to check. One of the rooms was unlocked but was completely empty. The street lights from outside lit the room up to almost daytime brightness. Definitely no one there. An intruder maybe?

Having no experience of this I rang up my emergency 'Out of Hours Contact' - who was the Building Manager.

'I've locked someone in the museum - but I can't find them.'

To say he was pissed off was an understatement. Half an hour later, he arrived and we both carried out an extensive / fruitless search of the museum.

'But he was on CCTV!'

We rewound the tapes to the time I saw him - and saw nothing but a dense column of shadow pass in front of the screen.

The building manager left, seething that I'd woken him & gotten him to come in for nothing a worst - a shadow at most - and left me to sit out the rest of my shift alone. But I knew what I saw. It was a person. I could make out the detail on his outfit. His hairstyle. Eveything.

When the Accommodation Receptionist arrived at 7am, I decided to very nonchalantly ask her in a round about kinda way (so she wouldn't think I was mad) about the place.

'So, this place is really old, huh...' I ventured lamely 'Bet these walls could tell a few stories?'

She immediately shot back with -
'What have you seen? What happened'
'What do you mean?' I asked.
'You've seen something. That's why the other guy before you left in the middle of the night. That's why they all leave You're asking me for a reason, not out of the blue.' she said, seeing straight through my lame atempts at subterfuge.
'Well yeah...?' I said 'But I didn't actually think I was right?! What... what did I see?'

She went on to tell me how the place is notoriously haunted. (The unlocked room especially.) The guy before me (who's shift I'd covered at the last minute) had legged it in the middle of the night when he looked out of the security office and saw a woman in a floor length gown running across the foyer. As all our guests need passes, he ran after her so he could sight her pass.

'Excuse me?!' he yelled a number of times as she lifted the hem of her skirt and ran up the stair case, which wound it's way around the rear of the foyer.

As he reached the landing in the middle of the stair case and she neared the top - she vanished into thin air, right in front of him. He scarpered mid-shift and when he refused point-blank to ever return - so I was drafted in to fill his shift.

Admittedly, this did freak me out a little - but as I said in my last post, I'd had other supernatural experiences in the past - and what set this apart from those, is that I felt no sense of malevolence from what I'd seen. If it were a 'bad' spirit - you get a real feeling of 'this thing wants to cause me harm' - and I had no such feeling. Yeah, it was unsettling - but I was intrigued more than terified.

So I did return - and it was the start of what was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life.

The next time I saw it, a week or two later I was locking up the guest bar on the far side of the foyer. As I was about to exit - again a floor to ceiling column of shadow emerged from the museum corridor opposite & rushed towards me, in the darkened bar. There was nowhere to run except further back into the dark - or straight into it - so I stood rooted to the spot.

As it passed through me, it was extremely suddenly cold and felt like static electricity passing over me. (Like when you take clothes out of the dryer & pass them over your hair.) It litrally crackled as it passed through me.

Again, I didn't feel it was out to hurt me - but it definitely wanted acknowledgement that it was there. So I eventually caught my breath & said out loud...

'Seems like you want a drink even worse than I do!'

At that, there was a massive thud behind me in the dark.

My heart was almost beating through my chest at this point, but I called out

'Well, make yourself at home. Have one for me!' - so I walked out, locked the bar & went back to my desk on the far side of the foyer.

I sat staring into the bar, which seemed extremely dark now. A short while later - the column of shadow emerged out of the bar and edged into the centre of the foyer - as if it were eying me.

We stared each other out for about half an hour or so until the shadow eventually faded away.

This is far from the end of this story - but I'll continue it another time.

That
Was
AWESOME

 

[calmyourritas]

I thought of another one that’s not ghostly but definitely a bit strange

One night I just couldn’t get to sleep, there wasn’t a reason for it - I just couldn’t shake off a really weird/bad feeling I had. The last time I remember looking at my phone it was about 4:10am.

The next morning, I found out my dad had passed away. He lived alone but when looking through his phone we found he’d been messaging some friends for several hours in the evening/late night that he was feeling seriously unwell. When I asked the police what time they thought he had passed... they said it probably sometime between 4 and 4.30 in the morning.

I am certain my brain knew something was wrong with him and that he was suffering, and wouldn’t let me sleep until he was gone.

 

[leon19]

Don't know what you would call this but it's very very strange. Few months ago I was sleeping and having a dream. In my dream an old man was watching me at my bedroom door it was very vivid and I woke instantly. When i woke there was nothing there and no one else in the house just me and my daughter. Eventually went back to sleep and forgot about it until morning. Now I had not said a word about it until my daughter who's 4 and was sleeping in my bed with me that night said who was that old man watching us at the door last night

 

[Rita Chevrolet]

My mother died in 2016, aged 57 from oesophageal cancer. My mother wasn't in my dreams much before this but since she passed, she seems to be in the majority of the dreams I have. Sometimes, we even have disagreements! I genuinely awake feeling as though I have spent time with her. The thing is, in my dreams, I know that she technically "died", but there she is anyway. In my dreams, I get the sense that she died but she didn't die. It doesn't make sense but I have little desire to question it further in my dreams and go along with it. I often awake with disappointment that my mother has realistically died in this world and life as we know it but also some mild comfort and a feeling that I've met her again.

My Mother came to me in a dream (well it must have been a dream!) the night after my father died. He'd been an utter bastard to her for over 60 years so when she died three months before him my thought was that at least she was away from him at long last, however the guilt must have been too much and off he went to try to follow her My over-riding thought was that he'd gone off to spite her and ruin her peace.

I did not sleep at all that first night maybe worrying about him rocking-up there to ruin everything for her then make her miserable like he always did, but the second night I seem to recall waking -up (whether I did or not is questionable) BUT there was Mother in her nurse's uniform wearing her white sensible shoes and everything standing beside my bed with a big smile on her face. "Don't worry about him ruining my peace" she said rather joyfully, adding "THEY wouldn't let him in!" I knew then that she would be enjoying the afterlife free of that man at last and back with her parents who hated him for very good reasons
I'm delighted that "They" wouldn't let him in

 

[PrincessCharming]

I woke up during the night and shifted position. My large black and white cat was on my feet. She jumped off the bed when I moved and plodded heavily out of the room (wooden floors).

Nothing unusual other than she’d died of old age a couple of years before.

 

[Blurp]

Years ago, after my parents had died and I'd moved into my current house which I was doing up, I went to see a medium recommended by a work colleague. One of the things that stuck in my mind was that she seemed very puzzled by one thing - she said "I've got an older man here and he keeps talking about door knobs, cupboard door knobs. He says 'just get the bloody knobs sorted'". What she didn't know was that I'd had the naff doors taken off the built-in wardrobes and replaced them with lovely reclaimed wooden ones but the guy doing the work hadn't fitted the knobs to them yet which was a bit of a pain. When I told him, he fitted them that day and said that he'd never been nagged by a ghost before! It was so like my dad to fixate on the bloody door knobs .

 

[sapphiccharm]

I absolutely love reading these encounters, spooky and yet very intriguing.

I have a few encounters of my own so here's one of them that will stay with me for a lifetime.

I was 15 or 16 at the time laying in bed in that half awake, half asleep state just nodding back off. I heard the landing creak as it often did when my mother walked down it to go to the bathroom. However the footsteps came to a halt right outside my bedroom door. I was laid facing the wall, away from the door. I laid there listening for what seemed like forever and started to hear the door being opened, pushing and scraping against the carpet. I thought nothing of it at first because I just assumed it was my mother sticking her head around to see if I'm awake as I often struggled with insomnia and had many sleepless nights. She didn't say anything and I again assumed she thought I was asleep and left, albeit with the door now wide open. I started to nod back off again and then was jolted awake by the sound of small, shuffling footsteps coming into my room. As if they were very small feet, wearing slippers, slowing making their way in the dark of the room as to not trip or fall over anything. I laid completely frozen. The footsteps stopped right beside the bed. All I could picture in my mind was a black-eyed demon child watching me as I 'slept'. Time seemed to stretch on forever and the silence was deafening at that point. I was just laid there, waiting for something to happen. And happen it did. The bed compressed behind me, as if someone small had leaned on it. I even rolled backwards slightly. And then a small hand tapped my back three times and a child's voice said "mommy?"

I have never leapt out of bed so fast in all my life. I made it from laying down in my bed over to the light switch in seconds. I flipped the light on and... nothing. Just me and an empty room.

I didn't sleep that night and stayed in the living room with the TV and the lights on.

I'm seldom scared and will often roll over and go back to sleep if I hear a weird, out of place, noise. I've had so many experiences and run-ins with the paranormal it doesn't bother me anymore. And I'm more than happy living in harmony and peace with whatever and whoever also wants to reside alongside me in the house. But I draw the line at being touched.

 

[Reetpateet]

When I was young I was be drifting off to sleep and I was woken by someone whispering wake up harshly in my ear. I thought I was half dreaming. It wasn't until years later when talking to a friend that I wondered if It had been more than that! as she told me when we were younger and she had slept at my house she had woken up in the middle of the night and saw an old man standing over me and watching me as I slept.

 

[FunkyMonkey]

I work in a charity shop on Saturdays, on a floor all on my own. Yesterday I was there with no customers and….there was a ghost with me.
it’s a bit hard to explain but if I wasn’t looking directly where he was I could see him. I got the sense he was just pottering around and didn’t know I was there. It was definitely a man, in dark clothing. I didn’t feel at all scared it was just really strange and creepy. I kept looking over, despite the fact I was scared I’d properly see him and be frightened.
it was the middle of the day, really well lit uncreepy room in an old but not incredibly so building, I was wide awake and having a cup of tea.
I think he was an old shop worker just doing what he does every Saturday.

 

[Ruby’s mum]

My husband used to work for a big high street bank, his job required him to visit various sub-branches during the course of his day/week. One of the sub-branches was in an old building dating back to Victorian times. For security reasons the staff would go to the main city centre branch first thing then be taken by taxi with at least one other colleague to the sub branch to open up. As my husband floated between branches he would make his own way there and time it to arrive after the others.
One morning he was slightly earlier than usual. He parked at the rear of the building and looking up could see through the frosted glass of a first floor window, someone moving around in the kitchen area and assumed they were making a drink as was the habit before starting work for the day. He knocked but no one came to let him in. Knocked again but still no reply. He could still see the person moving around in front of the upstairs window. A couple of minutes went by with him wondering what was happening when the taxi turned up with the two staff members in. They did a sweep of the building in case there had been a break in but it was empty. Husband then learned that many years earlier the manager at that branch had committed suicide. Creepy.

 

[WillowM]

I am working in a very old listed gothic style building in London, it is 100% haunted. Just by looking at it you can tell there are many lost souls living here..
It used to be home for orphans ( one of them died alive during fire at night, they say that her ghost is still wandering around this building) During 2nd World War it was London Reception Centre, they would treat injured soldiers here, I've heard that in the basement they would hang suspected spies and torture people.
Myself and my colleagues have heard lots of un-explained noises, my colleague once wanted to open the door and before she could even grab the handle the door opened itself (there was no draft, no open windows).
However there was one very creepy event not that long ago. We put up new wall art in the waiting room , it was attached quite firmly on to the wall and couldn't fall so easily. On Friday evening I locked everything up and came back to office on Monday morning.. the new wall art peace was taken down and placed on the other side of the room neatly on the table. When my boss came to work I asked him what happened, did it fall off? He was very surprised and said that no one was here over the weekend. He was very worried and thought that someone broke in over the weekend ( but nothing was missing ) so we checked our CCTV cameras of the waiting room - these cameras are top quality and have never turned themselves off. They record every single moment 24/7. However, during that weekend something happened and they stopped working for few hours so we didn't see the moment when the wall art was taken down. One moment it's on the wall, and when the cameras came back on after few hours the painting was down.
I then asked the care taker of the building to show me the CCTV footage from outside- if someone walked in the office we would find out by checking these cameras. Nothing.. not a single human being walked passed our door that weekend.
We still don't know what happened.. How can a painting remove itself from the wall and travel to the other side of the room.

 

[Shesaidwhat?]

I’m not 100% this is classed as a ghost story so my apologies if not.
About three/four years ago my husband and I and two friends had been to a birthday party at our local working men’s club, it had two floors so would often have a function on on one floor and things like bingo on the other, this particular night it had a psychic night.

At the end of the night we were waiting for a taxi in the carpark and a lady walked passed us and one of our friends commented “oh she’s the psychic” she turned and smiled and carried on walking to her car, when she stopped and turned back and walked back to us grabbing my husbands arm and said “I’m being told to tell it was him and he wants you to know he’s ok and he’s happy” she then wished us a good night and walked to her car.

We then started quizzing my husband over what that was about? And he shrugged us off saying he didn’t know and she must of mixed him up with someone.
We got in the taxi dropped our friends home and then went home ourselves when I quizzed him again as his face seemed to light up when she spoke to him so there was definitely something.

After promising I wouldn’t laugh he told me when he was seventeen he’d been at a friend from colleges house party and had gone out in the garden for a smoke and was heading back in when he seen his friend from across the street, Dave standing by the fence and had said something like “oh I didn’t know you were here you coming in?” and Dave replied “be seeing you pal” and my husband went back inside and continued with the party.

The next day his mum and dad were in the living room and his dad told him to come through as he had something to tell him, my husband sat down and his dad told him Dave had been killed in a car accident the night before.
My husband said something like “only seen him last night”
And his mum had asked what time and said the police might need to know and he replied about 11ish.
When his dad laughed and said “how many magic mushrooms did you take last night? You can’t of seen him then the poor lad was already dead”

He told me he was sure he’d seen him but said that they’d all been drinking and taking pills so as sure as he was he couldn’t be 100% and when he’d asked if anyone had seen Dave at the party and described him when he was next in college no one knew him.

I remember him saying she probably pulls this stunt with loads of people but did question how she would of known? As there’s no way the psychic woman would of known Dave and it had happened back in 1999 and other than telling his mum & dad he’d seen Dave at the party he never mentioned seeing him to anyone else as he’d just thought he must of got mixed up.

As much as he would never admit it deep down I think it brought him comfort that Dave was happy and that he had seen him that night.

 

[Twirliegirlies]

Our Chip passed in November after having dementia and other age associated illnesses, he slipped into a coma on the kitchen floor and he went over in the vets with me telling him that it was ok and to find his partner and best friend, he was 15 and a beautiful brindle staffy with a heart of pure gold, everyone loved Chip. Anyway on the day his ashes came home, I saw him in the kitchen, just as he was before he got ill, a big fat sausage, he winked at me and he disappeared, I think it was his way of telling me that it was the right thing to do. Sophie and Ziggy occasionally see him, but I am cheered by his presence and will always remember him.

 

[FunkyMonkey]

I absolutely love this thread! I love the way it....dies and comes back again.....as it were.
Keep ‘em coming!
My grandmother had a very sad descent into dementia for the last few years of her life. She still lived in her own home but depended heavily on my mum who was her sole carer. She became very difficult and argumentative (purely a side effect of her illness as she was a lovely lady). A few days after she died my mum and dad were at her house and the stereo system came on of its own accord and played a track from the middle of the CD that was in it. It was Frank Sinatra singing My Way. Which was very apt- she definitely did.

 

[calmyourritas]

Someone please tell me why I’ve started reading this thread just before I go to sleep. I’ve only read the first page and I’m scared as shit but I need to keep reading.

 

[karmacoma]

This isn’t really ‘ghosty’ But another very strange thing happened to me.

Couple of years ago, I had a psychic reading. You paid via bank transfer and set a call up with the psychic.

She was actually brilliant. I know there are a lot of charlatans out there, but I honestly was so impressed.

One of the things she said was “There’s a baby in spirit with you - when they tried to come through, it just wasn’t the right time - but they are with you, and will come at the right time.

I had a miscarriage about ten years ago, but I was very young, in uni etc, so whilst it was sad, it almost seemed like it worked out for the best - however bad that sounds.

Comforting to hear and all but the inner critic in me thought well, a lot of women have miscarriages unfortunately, so maybe it’s just something she says because she has a high chance of getting it right?

Later on that day I was mucking around on snapchat, taking selfies with the filter on etc. I took a few, it was the one with glasses. I flicked through the ones I’d saved, and one nearly made me drop my phone...

There was me, with the filter. Then underneath my chin, the glasses were there again, like they had picked up a little face I couldn’t see.. as if a baby was sat on my lap.

I didn’t see the filter come on when I was taking the picture - yet there it was.

I’ve tried to be rational, maybe the filter picked up creases in my top or something. But for that to happen right after my reading... very weird.

 

[freda19]

I went to a pub on a night out and a woman I've never met before started chatting to me and eventually told me my Grandmother was there.She told me several things which were very personal, secret and correct. My OH and I were going through a terrible time and she told me we would be okay, which we are. I never saw the woman again.

Somewhat similar. Years ago after very invasive surgery I fell into a deep depression. It was a daily struggle for me and after nearly two years of this I thought this was my life forever. Anyway around midnight one summer night I was sat alone diddling on my laptop. It was a seriously warm night so I had all my doors open and the living room was in darkness, just the light from the laptop. Then I got that "someone is watching me " vibe and I looked away from the laptop and there was an old lady stood in the middle off my living room smiling at me. I shit a brick of course! Anyway she was a lovely elderly woman, long white hair and wearing a long sleeved dress nearly to her ankles. She held out her hand with a large card in it. I tentatively took it and just kept staring at her waiting for her to attack me or something, but she just retained that serene smile and said quietly "Jesus loves you, he really does. You will be fine". I glanced at the card and in the light from the lappy could see it was an image of Jesus in a pastoral scene. I looked up again and the woman was gone. I jumped up, flipped the lights on and went to my front door and she was nowhere to be seen. Walked to the gate, checked the street, nothing. I had lived in that area most of my life and knew the few locals and the few neighbourhood oddballs and yet I'd never seen that woman before. I checked the card for details of printing or Church details, but there was nothing, just the image, really weird. Hubby reckoned it was too creepy and that I should throw the card away but I put it in a cupboard among other stuff and forgot about it. Oddly enough soon afterwards I began to see light at the end of the tunnel of my depression and began to recover. I like to think she was an angel reminding me to hang in there just when I badly needed reassurance.
Sorry, not very dramatic.

 

[LadyLockdown]

I’m only part way through this thread so not sure if anyone is even reading it anymore but none the less I’ve had a few experiences over the years. The one I want to start with is about 8 years ago when my dad died. A bit of background, my dad lived abroad for many years and my sister and I had a relatively estranged relationship with him. We did keep in touch but it was sporadic and my sister and I had quite different relationships with him. My sisters was more strained as she is quite a bit older than me and had witnessed the effect my dad’s philandering behavior had on our mum. My being so much younger made me somewhat oblivious to it and so mine and my dads relationship was stronger to some degree. My dad became very ill with a chronic illness and came back to the UK and because my sister had a larger house and was working part time he stayed there with her and she nursed him along with professional medical help until his condition deteriorated to a point that he had to be transferred to a local palliative care home. For those of you who have experienced looking after a relative or someone who is on palliative care, you will likely know that if a person wishes not to be resuscitated in the event of A heart attack or something similar then a note declaring this has to be kept on the premises of where they are. The day after my dad had been transferred to the care home, my sister realized the resuscitation order was still in her fridge in a plastic pill bottle which, as I understand, are often kept there as if a medical professional entered the house to find the patient in an unresponsive state they know where to look before they start trying to resuscitate. Anyway, my sister dropped of the note to my dad and visited him at the same time. Sadly, the next day he had a heart attack - if the resuscitation order had not been at the care home they may have tried to resuscitate - it seemed like a strange coincidence but we put it down to just that and were relieved that he was no longer in pain.

I never got to visit my dad in the care home as he was there for less than 72 hours but I visited most days at my sisters and would spend time with him just watching TV, chatting and sneaking him the occasional glass of red wine. During our discussions we got on to the after life. My dad was a very scientific, logically minded man and had no time for such chat of the after life, ghosts and such and would roar with laughter at things I told him had happened to me and tell me I was “just like my mother” inferring I was “witchy” and had always been the same as a child, professing to have experienced things that he would write off with his usual logic. Anyway, during one of the “after life” chats he promised he would come back and give me a sign once he’d died and that if nothing happened it was because there was no such thing. He followed that with “so don’t expect to be hearing from me” and practically laughed his head off.

So, following dad’s death, all the usual proceedings needed to happen, however he died close to Christmas and so many public offices were closing and it took around 3.5 weeks before we could finalize a funeral date.

I can’t remember exactly how long after but I think it was within a few days, strange things started to happen In my house. I would come downstairs in the morning and find all of the kitchen cupboard doors open. All of them. In that house I had around 16 cupboard doors and they would all be open. No one else lived with me. Nothing happened for a couple of days then one morning I woke up suddenly and could hear really loud shouting - I went downstairs and all the cupboard doors were open, the washing machine drawer was open fully and the TV in the lounge was on full blast. At this point I began to wonder and recalled the conversation we’d had but kind of dismissed it. The strange things continued to happen intermittently for around a week - lights being on in the morning that I knew I’d switched off, cupboard doors being open that I knew had been shut and so on. Strange as it may sound I didn’t tell anyone as I thought people would just put it down to grief and I wasn’t scared or concerned as I felt the only answer for it was my dad.

At the final stage right before it stopped, the TV in my room started to switch on itself in the night and it would always be really loud - that got annoying as obviously it would wake me up but I still put it down to it just being my dad but this went on for a week. Every night, middle of the night, TV came on full blast. Shortly before my dad’s funeral, I was on the phone to my sister who mentioned she was really tired as for the last week or so the TV in her bedroom had been switching itself on in the middle of the night at full volume! I then told her all the things that had been happening in the house. My sister is a bit of a skeptic but’s she believed me and said that no doors had been opened or anything else just the TV in her room. I’ve mused about whether this was because she has children who would often get up in the morning before her and it could be more easily explained away that someone else had left them open but a TV switching on itself in her room less so. After that conversation, nothing ever happened to either of us again. So, to this day, I am convinced it was my dad making good on his promise. And I bet he laughed his head off the whole time he was doing it!

 

[hellamegan]

lurker on this site here, but this thread caught my eye.

i lived in what seemed to be a haunted house aged 12-14 and i’m pretty sure i befriended a ghost. the entire family situation was a mess at the time, parents had split a couple months before and my mum had met someone else and rented this house, i didn’t get along with my mum’s partner and was mostly living with my abusive dad until they broke up and i turned 14. it was quite a dark time, i was depressed and on off suicidal and there was always a lot of arguments and upset in that house, which could explain the negative energies we all felt in that place to an extent but what we experienced went beyond that.

there was a bit of shuffling around the bedrooms initially but i ended up with the largest room in the house, on the top floor looking out over the train station our garden backed onto (not relevant to the story but i’ve always found train stations to be creepy places and a hub of paranormal activity, though in this case i used to just sit on the windowsill and watch the trains go by, nothing but peacefully). no one really wanted this room, because the trains were loudest here and woke whoever slept in the room up multiple times, and the room and the landing outside seemed to be where the strange things in the house were centered. me and my ability to sleep like a log through just about anything, deathwish and apparent lack of sense of self preservation didn’t care and eventually, i moved full time with this room being my bedroom.

i can’t really remember the order things happened in and there were too many to list here but basically almost everyone who lived or visited here experienced something.

multiple times my mum would sit in her armchair in the living room watching tv the floor below my room and hear footsteps behind her or the sound of some kind of cat-like meowing or hissing with no one there. at one point she was laying on her side alone in bed in her room after her new marriage ended and she felt a presence behind her in bed breathe on her neck but again there was no one there.

my little sister had tons of nightmares. everyone heard footsteps on the upstairs landing while we were in our rooms.

at one point we had the cat my dad had got me there and she would stand in the living room at the bottom of the stairs and hiss or stare intently up the stairs and literally nothing. at one point while we were away and the cat was still there, my auntie was coming over regularly to feed it. the food/water bowls were in my room opposite the door and as my auntie was refilling them with her back to the landing she heard a short burst of music play from behind her.

we also had my aunties dogs over a lot, and one i particularly bonded with would constantly be looking up the stairs and the landing, ‘guard’ me and refuse to let me be in my room alone, and if he slept over would always be in my room laying sprawled out next to me even though 2 other people lived in the house, as if he could pick up on the energy and was ‘protecting’ me and trying to put himself between me and something else. coincidentally (i sure hope), he died suddenly aged 2 years old at the nature place his owner worked.

my personal experiences were pretty vivid, looking back i feel like it could’ve been my imagination or mental health but that doesn’t explain how many other people experienced stuff.

firstly, my bedroom was always colder than the rest of the house and there was a kind of musty smell that emanated from a cupboard in my room next to the door. and there was always a feeling something or someone else was there. just that sense of awareness another person is in a room with you even if you’re both sat in silence or you didn’t actually notice them come in.

my mum was very christian and the time and was quite scared of the presence and at one point had a priest come in and bless the place with holy water, but i actually refused to let them do my room because i have some controversial beliefs about christianity and didn’t really want any rituals or whatever of a religion i didn’t trust or fully understand performed in my space. instead i just said to the prescence something along the lines of “hey, i don’t know you, you don’t know me, but i have no fear, malice or ill intentions towards you, and so long as you’re the same towards me, hopefully we can co exist”.

the presence didn’t feel ‘evil’. it didn’t feel particularly ‘good’ either, but it didn’t seem like it was ‘bad’ more so ‘troubled’. which was fine by me because i was too.

i “saw” it in some form twice, but almost always ‘felt’ it or heard footsteps like everyone else. the first time it was about 4am, and i couldn’t sleep so was sat in the middle of my bedroom floor drawing. with my head down in my sketchbook i heard the usual footsteps on the landing, but then saw the shadow of something travel diagonally across my room from my door to the curtain on the other side of my room. i didn’t see what casting the shadow directly because i was looking down but something passed through my room. i hid in the bathroom, composed myself and then came back to my room there was nothing, the energy felt fine and i went to sleep.

the second time, i was sat on my bed on my laptop in broad daylight and a small golden orb clear as day travelled from the direction of my window over my laptop screen out my field of vision and disappeared. this experience was entirely peaceful.

another strange thing was, i was sat on my bed, facing the direction of the window back to the rest of the room, and i was acutely suicidal, ready to take my own life. then all of a sudden i got this intense sensation of ‘don’t’. it was an internal sensation but entirely contradicted my own thoughts and feelings and felt as though it had come from behind me and wasn’t my own. personally, i believe it was the presence and fairplay to it, it was enough to stop me from doing anything stupid.

in a weird way, i felt a bit of bond with this thing. towards me, at least, it definitely became friendly.

eventually, we got evicted from the house and the night before we moved out i stayed up all night. it was the middle of summer so not that creepy, but in the lead up to that day my room had slowly been filling with moths (i didn’t mind i’m very much live and let live and if there’s anything in my room i either catch it and put it outside or leave it be). that morning, i sat on my windowsill, listening to music watching the sunrise and the trains go past, and a good 50+ moths were flying round my room. it was strangely beautiful, imo moths are just goth butterflies but i know some people would find this terrifying. a couple times a minute one would land on me or my hair for a second then fly away again. it felt like a strange goodbye to the house and was a really precious moment for me.

after we left, no strange things followed us, we moved around a bit then found our ‘forever home’ and we’ve never experienced anything paranormal since then. what was striking, was how empty new places felt even if it was just staying in a friends spare room. like that first night away, i slept in my aunt’s sons room while he was away and it was noticeably uncomfortably empty because i’d adjusted to always having a prescense with me, and it a weird way i missed it.

i never worked out what the presence was, we couldn’t find any info on the history of the house when we googled it. i have absolutely no evidence of this or explanation to why i think this, but i suspect someone hung themselves off the railing in the cupboard that always had the strange smell and maybe was haunted by the troubled soul and that’s why it seemed to speak so vividly when i was having thoughts of a similar thing. or maybe it was some kind of spirit related to the train station outside.

but at the same time, i take everything with a grain of salt. it was a very turbulent time for everyone and my mental health was a hot mess so i wouldn’t be surprised if the entire thing was in my head, although that doesn’t explain the fact everyone who visited had similar experiences and when we moved out it all went away where as if it was some kind of mental episode surely it would’ve followed me instead of just stopping overnight even though my mental health stayed the same/got worse.

i’m also not sure if it was a ‘ghost’ or if it could’ve been an external spiritual manifestation of our own pain, or maybe some kind of spiritual echo of previous events that occurred in the house. or just something beyond the limits of human comprehension.

to this day, i don’t know, but it was defo weird and i hope you guys find the story interesting.