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Infiltration Forums > Private Boards Index > Ghosts and Hauntings > Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board(Viewed 9148 times)
Oherian
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location:
West Virginia
 
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Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
< on 12/5/2005 12:43 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Because a large number of people don't care for threads about ghosts or hauntings on the main boards, I thought I'd create a board just for those threads.

This board concentrates on ghosts, ghost sightings, ghost hunting, and the like, not on urban legends -- for those the Urban Legends board would be more appropriate.

Anyone is welcome to post. Talk about experiences you've had, why you do (or don't) believe in ghosts, tools you use to attempt to prove the existence of ghosts, or anything else in the area of hauntings.



"If the door's open, you might as well stick your head in."
-- Lil-trouble
lil-trouble location:
Ohio
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 1 on 12/6/2005 2:12 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Well its about time. LOL. I am glad that we have something like this up. I just wish I would have thought of it sooner. As soon as I think of something good to put on here I will. LOL.



Anything you can do, I can do better!!
Oherian
Noble Donor
 
location:
West Virginia
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 2 on 12/6/2005 6:29 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
I just thought of it yesterday. I'm debating whether it might be okay to PM people who've posted in recent ghostly threads to let them know about the board. It probably would be...

And I meant to tell you last night I added you, but I forgot. Or got distracted, more accurately. ;)



"If the door's open, you might as well stick your head in."
-- Lil-trouble
Jennibel location:
It's getting warmer...my mind is anticipating being on the river
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 3 on 12/6/2005 11:40 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Ok..I'm game--I'll join. What weird initiation requirements do you have? There better not be any requests for money, because I don't have any.

If there is a forum already set up for ghosts, I haven't seen it...must be for the 'special' people. To which, I'm obviously not one of.

Don't know about you, but my friends think I'm strange because I do believe in ghosts & have had too many strange instances not to believe.

Anyway, that's it for now.

--Jenn

P.S. snow pictures will be sent when I can get new batteries for camera.



Life without knowledge is death in disguise.
Ronin House   |  | 
Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 4 on 12/7/2005 4:04 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Hi there, neighbors to the east. And thanks for putting up this board. I'm fairly certain of the general opinion of ghosts for the rest of the board; glad you've made a place to have some fun without ostracism.



Eternal Flamewar
lil-trouble location:
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 5 on 12/7/2005 2:42 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Posted by Jennibel
Ok..I'm game--I'll join. What weird initiation requirements do you have? There better not be any requests for money, because I don't have any.


Now you have me thinking. There might need to be something. LOL. What am I saying? This is Oherian's board. But I am sure he can come up with worse things then me. heheh.



Anything you can do, I can do better!!
seicer location:
New York
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 6 on 12/7/2005 3:01 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Posted by Jennibel
Ok..I'm game--I'll join. What weird initiation requirements do you have? There better not be any requests for money, because I don't have any.


I hope you aren't being serious...



Abandoned
Oherian
Noble Donor
 
location:
West Virginia
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 7 on 12/7/2005 7:59 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Posted by Jennibel
Ok..I'm game--I'll join. What weird initiation requirements do you have?


Other than eating brains? Oh wait ... that's the Urban Dead forum.

I'll have to think of some.There better not be any requests for money, because I don't have any.


I'm saving that for the "Send Money to Oherian" forum. That one will be fantastic... ;)

If there is a forum already set up for ghosts, I haven't seen it...must be for the 'special' people. To which, I'm obviously not one of.

Don't know about you, but my friends think I'm strange because I do believe in ghosts & have had too many strange instances not to believe.


My friends think I'm strange anyway -- believing in ghosts is simply par for the course.

Why don't you start another thread to share some of your experiences?

Anyway, that's it for now.

--Jenn

P.S. snow pictures will be sent when I can get new batteries for camera.


Sounds good. We're hoping to hit the slopes in early January -- December is too full and we are too poor...



"If the door's open, you might as well stick your head in."
-- Lil-trouble
Oherian
Noble Donor
 
location:
West Virginia
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 8 on 12/7/2005 7:59 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Posted by Ronin House
Hi there, neighbors to the east. And thanks for putting up this board. I'm fairly certain of the general opinion of ghosts for the rest of the board; glad you've made a place to have some fun without ostracism.


That's the whole idea. Feel free to share any experiences you're had!



"If the door's open, you might as well stick your head in."
-- Lil-trouble
Oherian
Noble Donor
 
location:
West Virginia
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 9 on 12/7/2005 8:01 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Posted by lil-trouble
Now you have me thinking. There might need to be something. LOL. What am I saying? This is Oherian's board. But I am sure he can come up with worse things then me. heheh.


You know you're welcome to make suggestions. Right now I'm caught flatfooted, not knowing what evil things I should make people do. Oh, the pressure!


[last edit 12/7/2005 8:01 PM by Oherian - edited 1 times]

"If the door's open, you might as well stick your head in."
-- Lil-trouble
Jennibel location:
It's getting warmer...my mind is anticipating being on the river
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 10 on 12/7/2005 11:16 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Why don't you start another thread to share some of your experiences?


Ok...here you go:

This summer I was up at my mom's house (why wouldn't I want to be there: right on river, my seadoo right there, nice dock) up on the back deck. It was mostly sunny & I was lazing around on the deck swing in the sun. My mom's 3 dogs were playing around in the yard. I was the only 'human' there, since my mom had run to the store. I was resting when right out of the blue, I heard my mom say 'Bruno, No!'. Bruno is my half Rottie/half Pyrenese--so he's a big boy. He gets yelled at this way when he jumps up at people. I thought this was odd because I hadn't heard her truck pull into the driveway, the door open/shut, nor the door to the house open. When I didnt see her come out onto the dedck, I got up & went to look off the deck & see if she needed help bringing her groceries into the house. The only car there was mine. There was no one else around the house.


Just a couple of weeks ago, I was up there for the weekend--again I was by myself. The dogs were outside & just the cats were inside. My one flame-point siamese used to live there before she passed away. She was always skittish, even as a kitten--afraid of loud noises & quick movement. Anyway, I was walking from the living room into the kitchen when I swear I saw her run from the kitchen into the hallway. She was the only flame point siamese that has ever lived there & she has been dead for about 2 years now. That was the only time I have ever seen her.


2 Christmasses ago, while up there I had a little plush doggie that would play music when it's paw was pressed. Since I wanted it out of everyone's way, I put it under the tree. One night when my mom, my one brother & I were all in the living room watching a movie, it started playing 'White Christmas' all my itself (no one was even near it) & then the light in the hallway went on. Again there was no one near the light switch, nor could one of the cats (or dogs) turn the light on. After the doggie stopped playing, I tried shaking it to see if maybe it would start playing if it was bumped or anything. Nope, nothing...the paw needed to be pressed.

This is just some quick experiences.
--Jenn





Life without knowledge is death in disguise.
Jennibel location:
It's getting warmer...my mind is anticipating being on the river
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 11 on 12/7/2005 11:20 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote

I hope you aren't being serious...


About what? Having no money, I'm dead serious about that now that I'm done buying presents for family/friends.

Strange initiation requirements, sure-why not? May be fun! You never know...



Life without knowledge is death in disguise.
seicer location:
New York
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 12 on 12/7/2005 11:24 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Posted by Jennibel
About what? Having no money, I'm dead serious about that now that I'm done buying presents for family/friends.

Strange initiation requirements, sure-why not? May be fun! You never know...


No, I meant about the initiation



Abandoned
Greg location:
Canada
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 13 on 1/21/2006 10:55 PM >
Posted on Forum: Quote
Thanks for starting the thread!



Oherian
Noble Donor
 
location:
West Virginia
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 14 on 1/22/2006 2:54 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
You're welcome. Come in, grab a coffee, and make yourself at home.



"If the door's open, you might as well stick your head in."
-- Lil-trouble
Mutt12 location:
Dallas, TX
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 15 on 1/23/2006 11:34 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Having been a Ghost Hunter since 1997, I'll share a few stories:

Back in college, one of the more frequent place me and my old group used to investigate was the old abandoned Western Hills Inn in Eueless, TX. Back somewheres around '91 or '92, there was a really bad kitchen fire and the place was shut down permanently. Not sure if anybody died in the fire, but the place was boarded up and left to rot. It was a good source of furniture for me and my friends for the longest time, as the owners of the place never bothered to take anything out of the abandoned place.

When I was in high school (between '94 and '96), it was a regular hangout for me and my friends Jacky, Samantha, and Eric on our lunch breaks. We'd hang out on the concrete bridge over the stagnant swimming pool and feed bread to the catfish and turtles that lived within.

Now, the pool patio was a stone's-throw from the entrance to the burned-out kitchen. None of my friends were ever brave enough to venture in there. I did convince them to come in with me once and it was really freaky. The entire place was laid to waste, like. And in the middle, hanging from the ceiling was a huge metal ventilation shaft with pieces of metal sticking out every which way, giving the image of a giant twisted spider.

Nobody was as freaked out as Jacky, though, as she claims to have seen people moving around in the shadows in the burned out hallway. She refused to go anywhere past that pool patio since that day.

Anyways, a few years later, I got into the whole ghost hunting thing, as well as Sam and Eric (Jacky had moved to Louisiana since then). We went various places, such as Snuffers, The Lizard Lounge, various graveyards. We finally decided to go back to the Western Hills one summer night in 1998.

This was summer... Summer in Texas.... Summer in Texas in 1998... So, yes, it was very hot and muggy, even with the sun down. We made our way through the abandoned hotel quite uneasily. Occasionally we'd hear footsteps, which normally should be a sign to leave... immediately, but we were stupid college students.

We finally reached the pool patio and we'd nealy jump out of our skins every time a frog squeaked and jumped into the pool. We almost didn't wanna go to the kitchen because we kept feeling abnormal cold spots (I remind you it was like 80 something degrees that night and very humid) around the patio area, but were determined to keep going on. We finally reached the doorway and we saw the most bizarre sight ever. The kitchen doorway was blocked with stacks upon stacks of bibles (most likely taken from the rooms, since the hotel was just abandoned with everything in it).

We went ahead and cleared the doorway of the bibles and headed in and found the place completely cleared of rubble. The only thing recognizable from before was the "spider" on the ceiling. On the floor, was some very intricate graffiti of a cross and the words "Get thee behind me, Satan". We took a couple pictures and went on our way.

Anyways, on the way out, we were having a good laugh about the whole thing when we were passing by the pool. Eric's EMF detector started beeping (His was the kind that beeped after the needle went after 2mg) and I look to the bridge above the pool and saw a group of man-shaped shadows standing on top, looking down at the water. Sam took a picture and I blinked cuz I didn't expect to see the camera flash. Next moment the shadows were gone.

We decided to leave right then, right there. Eric made fun of us extensively, especially since the photos didn't turn up anything at all, not even orbs. But I know what I saw and Sam claims she saw it too, so I know it wasn't a hallucination.

Too bad I can't go back there, though. They tore it down back in '99 and erected a courthouse where the hotel once stood.


My stepdad, Maurice, used to own the Santa Fe Country Club Apartments out in Santa Fe, NM and used to live there with my mom for several years while their house was being built. Every summer when I was a kid, I'd come visit and I'd run around with the kids that lived in the apartments.

This was back in the 80's when a majority of the land around the apartments was mostly undeveloped. Me and my buddies would go around wandering the sprawling fields that we dubbed "the backyard" or catching salamanders in the arroyos and ditches every time they'd fill up with rain.

But there was this one place that neither me nor my friends would dare go near. It was this dilapidated two-story house that looked like it would fall apart at any given moment sitting in the middle of this field. It had a grass lawn (A very uncommon thing in Santa Fe) and it looked like it was a nice house back in it's day.

We'd stay as far away from that place as we could since urban legends abound of that place and it's former (or possibly current) occupants. I'd hear stories ranging from a serial-killing hobo to satan worshippers and just about everything else in the book.

Anyways, in the summer of '97, I was visiting my mom in New Mexico between semesters at college. I stupidly spent the money which I was supposed to use on a zip drive (Which I needed for college), I instead bought an EMF detector. So, by myself, armed only with a a camera, flashlight, and my expensive new toy, I set out for the dilapidated old house.

The place was looking particularily worse for wear and inside, it looked even worse. It was a mess. There was rubble everywhere. Broken furniture, collapsed beams from the ceiling, and chunks of collapsed wall. And the stairs leading upstairs were completely demolished.

Wandering around and making my way through the obstacle course of rubble, I'd occasionally catch something outta the corner of my eye or, hear thumps from upstairs, catch the occasional blip on my EMF detector. I captured a few photos of orbs, but god only knows where they are nowadays.

In the kitchen, I found another stairway leading up to the second floor and took them up. Upstairs, it was blacker than night. The windows were all boarded up and the only illumination was either from my flashlight or the cracks between the boards.

I was really on edge when I started to hear the thumping again and then nearly jumped out of my skin when I felt something touch my shoulder. I tell ya, I ran as fast as I could towards the demolished staircase from the entryway and took a flying leap fifteen-foot towards toe door, managing to twist my ankle and severely cut up my leg in the process. Also dropped my EMF detector, which I never had to guts to go back and retrieve.

I hear the house was since demolished and there's a subdivision on the land where it stood.


I was about fifteen years old, visiting my grandmother's place in Abilene for spring break. Ever since I was a little kid, I'd see things out of the corner of my eye or hear things I couldn't explain. And my sister and her kids (Who lived on the property from around 1989 to last June) would see stuff all the time there too.

Well my grandparents were gone for work one day and, as usual I was vegging in front of the TV (I brought my sega with me coz there was absolutely nothing to do there) when I heard footsteps. It was an old flimsy double-wide trailer so you could pretty much hear/feel footsteps from anywhere any time someone was walking. I was thinking "Huh. Grandma sure came home early today" and thought nothing of it.

For the next hour or so I'd hear the footsteps and just ignored them, playing my video games. Though I thought it a little odd that if my grandma was home, she'd usually ask me if I wanted something to eat or if I wanted a soda or something, but she didn't. Then all the sudden all the power in the trailer went out and the footsteps came up to the door of the TV room. And I saw a reflection on the now-black TV screen of a human-shaped... thing. I spun around and nobody was there.

I ran around the house looking for my grandparents, then went outside, noticing that both their cars were gone, so obviously they weren't home yet. I walk back inside, rather chilled about what I saw and not to long afterwards, the power came back on. I was pretty freaked about the whole thing, even to this very day since I can remember what I saw with crystal clarity.


This happened about three years ago. Went to Abilene the weekend after Christmas to visit my grandparents as well as my sister and her kids. That Saturday night, me and my sister went out to Fort Phantom Hill to see if we can get some interesting photos.

Anyways, when we get there, my sister was all chickening out and refusing to leave the car, so I decide to just check out the magazine building before leaving. Anyways, I'm walking towards it, my EMF detector and camera in hand when an owl screeches as loud as it can.

Admittedly, it did startle me a little and caused me to jump, but my sister was really really really freaked, rolling down the window and yelling, "GET IN THE F-ING CAR NOW!!!"

So we came back the next day during the daylight and that is when I got this photo. And before you say it's something that's caught in the flash, this photo was taken by an Aiptek Pencam, which doesn't have a flash. And a friend that runs a camera shop swears that this thing is creating it's own light, as it seems to be illuminating the walls. I took several photos in this area and due to the lighting, they were nearly pitch black due to my lack of flash. This is the only one where you could see something.


Funny little side note. When my grandfather was infinitely amused when he found out my sister got spooked by an owl, he'd prank call my sister going "Hoooo hoooo!!" when she answered for nearly a month afterward.





[last edit 1/23/2006 11:35 PM by Mutt12 - edited 1 times]

-Mutt
Creator of Perki Goth/Candi Raver
And My Private Little Hell
Oherian
Noble Donor
 
location:
West Virginia
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 16 on 1/24/2006 5:52 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Nice. Thank you for sharing those!



"If the door's open, you might as well stick your head in."
-- Lil-trouble
Watcher location:
Louisiana
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 17 on 1/25/2006 3:43 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
This is the text of a story that I posted on another web site back in 2001. Some of the things are little dated, but as far as I know the ghost is still around. It hasn't done anything for a while now, but I still have the assistant janitor gig and I keep expecting it to show up again. Sadly, the church itself may become a ghost soon if it can't manage to pull in some new people. I've never yet found out who the ghost is, but from the couple of times that I have seen/heard it, it seems to be a lady and she seems to be very interested in both the nursery and the altar areas.




Churches are some of the most haunted sites in the world. In a way, I suppose that just makes sense. If you were a devoutly religious person and you died but the afterlife was not like you always believed that it would be, you might go to your church seeking answers. If answers were not forthcoming, you might wait for a long time, or even forget why you were waiting there.

Then again, if you were a devoutly religious person who loved your church and realized you could still watch over it and take care of it when you died, you might also want to stay around. Either or both of these scenarios could result in a haunting in any house of God. I have only rarely heard of people actually trying to drive such a spirit away. Usually they just accept it, if they acknowledge the possibility that such a thing exists at all. I’m rather curious to see if mosques and synagogues have the same rate of hauntings, but it is really hard to find statistics for that sort of thing.

I first saw the old Lutheran Church that I attend in the year 1997. On the surface there was nothing unusual about it, other than its exceptional acoustics. The church is of a rather modern design, and bears little to distinguish it from other buildings in the area other than the church steeple and other symbols of the faith. It certainly doesn’t look like the kind of place where one might encounter the paranormal.

I had just proposed to my wife, and since she was a member of this particular congregation, that is where she decided she wanted to have our wedding. She hadn’t attended there in a while because of some kind of big scandal that divided the congregation a few years before. Although she did not take part in the events herself, the fallout left her with a lot of awkward feelings. I had not really been attending church, and did not have one that I liked in the area, so I agreed that we should use this one if she wanted to. One Sunday we went to meet the pastor and make the arrangements.

It turned out that the former pastor had resigned, and that an interim pastor had taken over until they could find a new one. This man is a retired minister in his eighties who substituted for absent Lutheran pastors throughout the area. He agreed that he would perform the wedding if we would take pre-marriage counseling and demonstrated to him that we intended to make a serious go of it. Because I was considering joining the congregation, I also had to take instruction on the Lutheran church and its practices. I liked him immediately, and found over the course of the instruction that I had much in common with him. We started attending church there every week, while making preparations for the wedding and my joining the congregation.

One Sunday we went to the service and a very unusual event occurred. The service progressed normally until the interim pastor began his sermon. I don’t even remember what the sermon was about. What happened next is as difficult to describe as it was amazing, and I was distracted by it. As he began to speak, it looked to me as if a “hole” opened up in the air next to the altar, and some sort of spiritual beings came out of it. I could see the inside of the hole, and it appeared to be a very bright light. The beings were human shaped but indistinct and cloudy. There were about a dozen of them, and they did not leave the area of the altar. After the sermon was over, they all walked back into the “hole” that they came out of and it closed up behind them. My wife-to-be did not see them, nor, as far as I could tell, did anyone else, including the minister himself. After this event, every time we would have counseling with the pastor, I would notice one or two of these beings hovering near him. They never really did anything or seemed too terribly interested in us at all, just him. I don’t think the minister himself knew that they were there, or at least he never seemed to notice them. I did wonder why I could see them when he couldn’t, but I never found out the answer to that question.

I joined the church, we got married, and soon after, the church called another full-time pastor. When the interim pastor left, I never saw these beings or anything like them again. However, there were plenty of other things going on at the church to keep my attention.


Fast-forward to 1998. My wife and I had organized a regular gathering for junior high youth in the church on Friday nights. It was our intent to use this as an evangelism tool by having them bring their friends over. We feed them dinner, play games, have a scriptural reading, snacks, and a Bible-based movie for them to watch. For a while it was quite popular, though our attendance has been slipping lately. A couple of the kids were always nervous about being in the church at night, and one girl said that she believed the church was haunted. I have lived with ghosts for years, and thought I knew what to look for, but I had never noticed any signs of their presence in the old church. I chalked it up to youthful imagination and the suggestive power of a big, mostly empty old building.

One Friday my wife was ill, so I had to run the youth group meeting by myself. There was some kind of flu going around, I think, because there were only a couple of kids. We always met in the church’s fellowship hall, a big room with a kitchen and plenty of tables. It was summer, and the air conditioner was broken, so I left the fellowship hall door open and left a fan going in the outside doorway across the hall from it.

I did my best to make dinner, and keep the kids in line during the prayers and the Bible reading. It began to get dark, and they began to get a little nervous. I was so busy I didn’t think much about it, until I heard a rustling noise in the hallway. The kids were freaking, so I went out into the hall to take a look. There were papers blowing all over the hall in the breeze to the fan. There was a bulletin board next to the fellowship hall door, and somehow several of the pins had pulled away from the board and were lying on the floor nearby. The kids had not touched it. I had been watching them, and they are not that sneaky.

At first I thought the breeze from the fan had pulled them out somehow, so I repositioned it and replaced the papers where they had been pinned before. As I was walking away I heard all the pins and papers drop to the floor again at once, and felt a definite sense of amusement from whatever had done it. I couldn’t hear anything, but I knew it was giggling at me. It didn’t scare me, but I was a little annoyed. I told it to stop teasing the kids, and the pins did not drop for the rest of the night. I told my wife about it when I got home, but nothing more happened for a long time and the incident was mostly forgotten.

A year later, we were in need of money and the church custodian had just resigned. I already had a part-time job at that point, so my wife took over the custodian’s job. She would spend about 8-10 hours on a Saturday afternoon and evening, cleaning and dusting. Before long, she began to have experiences of her own.

One day she was cleaning in the church library. The library has wood-paneled walls, and she was washing them down with Murphy’s Oil soap. She heard a knock. Thinking someone was knocking on the church door, she hurried to answer it and found no one. Puzzled, she resumed her work, but she hadn’t gotten very far before she heard it again. This time, she could see through the window that there was no one at the door. She started work yet again, and this time heard the rap right next to her.

She continued with her work, and the rapping followed her around until she left the room. A memorial service had been held in the church the day before, and I said, “Maybe Sally came to visit you.” Who knows, I could have been right. But I don’t think so, because “Sally” was still among the living when the bulletin board incident happened

The next week, it started playing with the handle on her mop bucket. She watched the handle rise into the air and flip over to the other side of the bucket on its own. Then it flipped back again, still with no one touching it. Once she was vacuuming in the sanctuary and she heard a woman humming a hymn tune. She was the only living person in the building.

The ghost seemed to delight in finding new and innovative ways to announce its presence, especially since it was obvious that she wasn’t scared of it. After a while, though, the ghost seemed to get bored, and it rarely showed itself to her. I guess it was satisfied with how she was cleaning the church or found other amusements to occupy itself.

Two years later, I lost my part-time job so I got drafted into helping my wife clean the church. With two of us working, it only took about 5 hours to do the job. I took the part of the church where the ghost seems to hang around as my half of the job. For a long time, I did not see anything, but the ghost had evidently not forgotten how much fun it had teasing me on that one Friday night.

One day I was vacuuming in the sanctuary when I saw the door open and someone come in. Looking up, I saw no one. Shrugging, I went back to work, but I could feel someone watching me. I was sure that someone had come up the aisle and was standing by the baptismal font watching me work. There was only one problem; there was no body.

Remembering my wife’s stories, I continued my work and tried not to annoy the entity. After a little while, I could tell that it went away, apparently without opening the door this time. I heard movement in locked rooms, and electronic toys in the nursery would turn on by themselves. Often, footsteps would move up and down the hall. Many times I have thought I saw my wife standing by the altar, only to look up and see no one there. My wife and I were not really bothered by the ghost’s antics, it was just saying hello in its own unique way and it seemed playful and friendly.

I tried to get a picture of the ghost several times, but it proved elusive and camera shy. There don’t seem to be any temperature changes or electrical disturbances either, unless you count when it plays with the toys. The most dramatic evidence came one night during handbell choir practice. All of us heard the church’s main door open and somebody come in. The church is in kind of a bad area of town and since all of the choir members were there, the other members were afraid that someone from the neighborhood had gotten into the church.

One of the other choir members, “Mr. Smith” and I went out to look around but of course there was no one there. We went back to report that we had found nothing when the footsteps came again. We rushed out to see no one. We went through the whole building. I even took a look in the basement, which is under construction and virtual suicide to try moving around in without turning the lights on. The church was empty save for the bell choir members.

Mr. Smith finally decided that it “must have been the wind rattling the door.” I don’t think so, because I heard the footfalls distinctly, and so did he. Mr. Smith used to be on the property committee for the church. He has very likely seen many of the same kinds of things that we have. I don’t know what he might have thought of anything he might have seen. He never says much about it. I think he said it was the wind mainly to calm down his two young daughters, who are petrified by the very idea of a ghost in the area. I didn’t want to scare them either, so I didn’t mention any of the other things I have seen there either. Everyone in the bell choir heard the footsteps. Some of these things might be my imagination, but not the footsteps.

The church was built in 1954 and renovated in the 1960’s. It has weathered a famous tornado, and seen more history than is recorded in the church annals. There was a big schism that divided the congregation and resulted in a lot of younger members leaving in 1981. I don’t know much about the cause, but I know it generated a lot of very hard feelings. As a result of the schism, the church is struggling to stay open today as the older members are living on fixed incomes or dying off and few younger people are joining.

I really don’t know who the ghost is or was. There have been several parishioner deaths over the years that could account for the haunting. There could be more than one ghost there, but the most active one seems to be a female. She is very interested in how clean we keep the church, and she seems to like children.

My wife seems to think there are several ghosts in the building, and her intuition is often better than mine. I have no idea when the ghosts first started to haunt the church. They have been there since before I joined, and will likely be there for years to come. Nobody has died there that I know of, but like any church it has seen its share of funerals and memorial services. Most of the activity takes place in the “new” wing of the church that was added on in the ‘60s. I always enjoy cleaning at the church, mostly because I am interested in what the ghosts are going to do. They certainly make what could be a boring job a lot more exciting.




[last edit 1/25/2006 3:49 PM by Watcher - edited 1 times]

"Well, let me just jump into my time machine, go back to the Twelfth Century and ask the vampires to postpone their ancient prophecy for a few days while you take in dinner and a show."
ali_boom-boom location:
South Dakota
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 18 on 1/26/2006 10:22 AM >
Posted on Forum: Infiltration ForumsQuote
Posted by Ronin House
Hi there, neighbors to the east. And thanks for putting up this board. I'm fairly certain of the general opinion of ghosts for the rest of the board; glad you've made a place to have some fun without ostracism.


I agree. Thanks for setting up the board!




I'm the sucker.
Oherian
Noble Donor
 
location:
West Virginia
 
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Re: Welcome to the Ghosts and Hauntings board
<Reply # 19 on 1/26/2006 1:34 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER ForumQuote
Watcher: wow. I'd love to visit that church -- I'm not about to ask you to reveal where it is, though.

Ali_boom-boom: you're welcome. I enjoy hearing people's stories and experiences, so you could say I was just trying to help myself out.



"If the door's open, you might as well stick your head in."
-- Lil-trouble
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