Ouija boards, nonwithstanding, has anyone ever had a paranormal experience? Encountered ghosts? Been abducted by aliens?

Come on, you're among friends.

-- Brad (brad@scriptbrads.tv), July 04, 2001

Answers

When I was little, we'd go to my grandmother's house for family holidays. It was the standard family home built in the twenties- most of the family rooms were downstairs. However, behind the kitchen was an incredibly narrow staircase that led to a two roomed attic, and for some reason, that's where the bathroom was, too. My brother and I would go upstairs and play in those rooms- it kept us from under anyone's feet and the space mostly being storage there were lots of fun things to poke through.

One Thanksgiving, I don't think we were more than seven or eight, we went upstairs to play. My brother decided to go through the connecting closet to get into the back room, and I went through the regular door. When we got into the back room, we saw an old, pale man sitting at the window in the sun. We both freaked at the same time when he just faded away to nothing. The both of us tore downstairs, and refused to go to the bathroom at grandma's house anymore.

Later, we found out that before my grandparents owned the house, an invalid lived there, and the upstairs back bedroom is where he died. Apparently he liked that room because it got the most direct sunlight. Aie, it still gives me the willies.

-- Saundra (headspace@anywherebeyond.com), July 05, 2001.

Years ago, my practice wife and I rented a house on a bluff for two weeks one summer overlooking the Atlantic on Cape Cod. We spent most of the time out and about and decided to sleep in the second floor den's fold-out bed -- not the most comfortable bed in the house, but the room had excellent cross-ventilation and a wonderful ocean view.

The place was a bit on the cheesy side, with cheap furnishings, shelf paper covering most major surfaces and knotty pine walls that occasionally provided housing for squirrels or other rodents who'd scratch and scramble about. One time we heard one frantically attempting to climb the wall's interior but each time it thumped back down. Th scramble/thumps went on for several days, each day lessening in intensity until at last it went silent. I told myself it must have been abducted by aliens. At least that's what I like to think happened.

But I had a really creepy feeling about the master bedroom just off the living room. It was exceptionally chilly and damp in there for no apparent reason and when I entered it, I had the sensation of an angry old woman's presence. Very creepy, I kept the door closed the whole time.

I never mentioned it to my spouse. After two weeks, when we'd packed up and headed home I mentioned how wierd that room felt. Then my wife told me she too had a vision of an old woman and had been pleased that I'd kept that bedroom door shut. Especially, she said, after one afternoon when she was putting away some groceries. Somehow (it wasn't me!) a knife had been perched on top of the refrigerator door and when she opened it, the thing plummeted toward her feet and imbedded in the linoleum between them. It was then that she took to hiding all the knives every night. Just took them out of the drawer and put them in other places in the house where she figured a ghost, habitually expecting them to be in the top drawer left of the sink, wouldn't think to look for them. Every morning she'd put them back and be sure to take a hard look at the top when was about to open the fridge.

Nonetheless, the place was cheap and so we continued to rent it for two more years, always hiding the knives a

-- Reginald Squirrel (rsquirrels@prodigy.net), July 05, 2001.

Damn! Looks like she got to my message and sliced off the last few words.

-- Reginald Squirrel (rsquirrels@prodigy.net), July 05, 2001.

The knives a... COME ON MAN, you can't leave the resolution just hanging like that!

-- Saundra (headspace@anywherebeyond.com), July 05, 2001.

Hmmm....Well, growing up in New England, it's hard NOT to have this sort of thing happen. Our house was built in 1851, and there's a very benign presence that mainly manifests itself in weird shimmers of light and inexplicable breezes in closed rooms, and the occasional creaky door. When I was much younger, it was much more visible. I used to think I'd imagined the whole thing except that people who've slept in my bedroom also report this.

I never felt at risk for any danger, or in the way of any harm, but it's pretty interesting that my childhood bedroom was completely haunted....

-- Sally (aiolia@worldnet.att.net), July 06, 2001.

In response to Saundra's request, here's how the ending should have read:

"Nonetheless, the place was cheap and so we continued to rent it for two more years, always hiding the knives and barring the door... until that fateful day three years later when it was low tide and we returned from the beach with a bucket of hand harvested clams... and THERE SHE WAS -- I mean THERE HE WAS: Norman Bates! Picking at a dead Park Ranger with a boning knife. He spied us, grabbed a cleaver and rushed at my wife. She backed away, then screamed as she tripped over a chair and fell to the floors. But he was on her and in a flash h

-- Reginald Squirrel (rsquirrels@prodigy.net), July 06, 2001.

Our first house had been built by a couple (one of the first in that very old neighborhood) who had lived there all their married lives -- had their kids there, etc., and finally died there. We bought it from the family and began to remodel it. Luke was an infant (actually, he was born after we moved in) and there were several events which were inexplicable. On several occasions, I went into his bedroom and could have sworn I had seen Carl's grandmother leaning over Luke's bed. Granny lived across the street and would come over often, but in these specific instances, I'd blink and she'd be gone. I'd look around the house and then call her and nope, she was definitely at home. I wasn't the only one to see this old woman, and it was usually at a moment when Luke was crying or needed something and he'd be suddenly quiet as I was heading toward his room. I even heard him switch from crying to giggling without a beat between. (He was collicky and cried for the first nine months. A sweet, bright loving child ever after, though.)

The family had also left furniture for us -- old, cast-off stuff and we were newly married and broke and were thrilled to have it. One of the pieces was an old rocking chair. Not pretty, acutally, but very comfortable for rocking a baby, so we kept it. I cannot tell you how many times I walked by that rocker and it was rocking. Or heard it rocking when I was in the other room and no one else was there. Only when I was stressed did the rocking bother me (the creaking would get on my nerves) and twice I looked at the chair and said, "Could you stop please? The noise is making me nuts." And it stopped. I swear. Freaked me out.

I didn't talk about it (people would think I was nuts) and we sold the house about six years later and I never mentioned it. The new family moved in and apparently (according to the neighbors) fought a lot -- and yelled at their kids all the time. They moved out in a hurry and my sister-in-law (who by then had inherited Granny's house and lived there) told me that they'd moved out because the house was haunted. She laughed at that. (I had never, ever told the family about the rocking or the old woman -- the people who had seen her weren't related to me.) Anyway, apparently every time there was a big yelling episode, things got very strange. Things fell, dishes broke, the parents were tripped and sometimes the parents' favorite items went missing or were damaged. (The kids were toddlers, not able to do these things.)

I always had felt the woman to be happy that I was there and really in love with my kids. Way later, I happened to meet up with the daughter again (very elderly) and she said her mother had always wanted grand-children, desperately, but she (the daughter) had been an only child and hadn't been able to have kids. That it was the one thing her mother had been so sad about when she died. When I described the woman I saw, she took out a photo and I felt like my skin would come off my body, it was such a strange experience, because it was the woman I had seen all those years ago.

(Oh, and when we moved, I took the rocker. It never rocked by itself again.)

I actually miss her. She was a welcome presence.

-- toni (toni@la-lagniappe.com), July 06, 2001.