MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
My First Ghost
This event started it all for me. Ever since then I KNEW what we call "ghosts" are REAL. About 1966 I discovered that there were BOOKS on the subject and I have been studying "ghosts" and paranormal phenomena ever since.
About 1954, when I was about 6 years old, my family was stationed in the UK--(My father was in the Air Force.) We were living in a rented house on the outskirts of Huntinton (I think that's the way it is spelled)
This house was a two storied thatched roof farm house, It was said (then) to have been 360 years old. One feature of this house was a long, low ceiling living room with a large beam down its center.
The electric light consted of a light bulb and lampshade that hung downwards from the beam from about 2 feet of wire. The dining room opened up into the living room and a "dimmer switch" near the door controled the light.
As far as "ghosts" were concerned, I didn't really consider them, despite the envronment. At my age, I was "frightened" of "monsters"--and then only in my bedroom.
One night our neighbor lady from across the street, Miss Mary, came over to help my mother cook dinner in the kitchen. I was bored, so I began to play with the living room light switch. I turned the light rapidly on and off, on and off
-----Suddenly a greyish form appeared under the lamp---Actually its HEAD was IN the lampshade! (no kidding) What passed for arms and legs, "tubes" that seemed to terminate in points, could be seen failing about with rapid wave like motions. The lampshade was jumping up and down as the form thrashed about.
Quickly I turned the light back ON and the "ghost" dissapeared. I walked "rather rapidly" to the kitchen and stood behind a cabnet against the far wall. My mother looked kind of angrily at me and asked
"Whats the matter with YOU?"
"I think I saw a ghost", I replied
Miss Mary threw up her hands and shouted "Oh He DID!, He DID!" I led them both into the living room and told them how it dissapeared when I turned on the light. When I described it, my mother put her hand up to her mouth and said, in a low voice, "God ! he saw the SAME thing I saw"
Years later I learned that SHE had beenwatching my little sister play in the living room, when all of a sudden she saw the lamp shade on the light "flip up"
"what in the world?" she thought.
The lampshade fliped up once more and she then saw the grey thrashing form beneath it. She picked up my baby sister and left the room. She did not tell ANYONE about seeing it--Untill MY experience. She said that she was afraid to tell my father, because , before SHE had been TEASING HIM about his "feelings" that there were "ghosts" in the house.--(-My father had been a beleiver, but he did not see THIS ghost)
This event ALSO was the explaination for an odd question a former tennant asked my parents a few months before---
"Have you noticed anything 'funny' in the livingroom?"
When my parents said that they did not understand, She sort of "droped" the question and said "Oh , Nevermind"
It is from THIS event that I KNOW that ghosts exist
---At least 3 people saw the same thing.
I also know that Ghosts are an "ExternaL" rather than "mental" or "telepathic" phenominom as it MOVED the physical lampshide.-
--There was NO chance of trickery or illusion--It was in MY home. It was perfectly obvious what it was!--A Ghost!-- The real thing---or at least the phenomenom that iscalled a "ghost" .
This event prompted me to begin studying ghosts about 1966, when I began finding books on the subject.
Sure, I know what I saw was NOT TYPICAL of most ghost reports, but I saw what I saw as did OTHER people. I beleive that it was the BEST sighting that anyone could have as It could not have been a hoax and it affected physical matter (good clue to its substance nature)
----Other notes--- I have often wondered why the ghost was there--with its head in the lampshade--One clue was that there was an old large iron hook driven into the beam just above the light--"my mother always jokingly refered to it as "the meat hook". I think someone might have been hung (or hung themself) there many years ago.--That would explain the failing about and its proximity to the light which was a more recent addition to the house
. I have also (finally) found a picture of a ghost that closely resembles what I saw. It is the "Anderson Cemetery Ectoplasims" in the Ghost web (http//:ghostweb.com) Gallery--The image on the left. It appears to be made up of 2 or 3 vortexes--giving the impression of "arms and legs" Being that the ghost I saw might have been several vortexes, it would explain why the arms and legs terminated in "Points" any why they seemed to "whip about" in a kind of "flopy" motion.
A Computer "Ghost" Experience
In February 1990 I was living in my parent's house in Biloxi, MS. My mother had died some years before, and my father lived in the VA hospital home. Behind the house is a Garage with an apartment above it, where I used to live, but I had since turned the living room on the upper floor to an office. The garage area had been renovated into a larger living room.
A friend of mine, "Joe" Pruitt was having marital problems and needed a place to stay for a few weeks, so I let him live in the "living room /garage area of the garage apartment building.
One night we were talking and we began to hear noises like scurring rats on the floor above. This went on for days, but when we checked out the office upstairs, we say no signs of any vermin .
One day I discovered that a deck of cards on my office desk had been re-arranged and layed out in patterns. Each morning when me and "Joe" checked out the office we would find the cards in other positions and the rat sounds persisted.---Perhaps there was a Ghost? I set up an old "radio shack" computer that I had and turned it on. on the "basic" screen I wrote:
" Who are you are you a ghost or what we call a space allien?--Use keyboard to reply"
" Who knows?", I thought, if the entity could move cards it could punch a keyboard--It was worth a try.
For two days there was nothing on the screen. One day "Joe" came running over to my house, he was upset. He had peeked into the office and saw a chair stacked on TOP of my desk. We both returned and I put the chair back on the floor. We left the room and retruned a few minutes later--SOMETHING was on the computer screen!
We then heard the keys being pressed at "machine gun" like speed--no human could type that fast.
I heard "Joe" coming up the steps and commenting as he saw the screen and his running back to the house to call me.
Joe ---who was once an officer in USAF" military intellegence" (no kidding) read the message and told me that he knew a "friend" who had a "radio" that could talk to these beings---He made a phone call and read the "numbers"(co-ordinates) to this friend.
When we returned to the office we found
Joe could not have done the writing, because he was with me when we were not in the office---He had no friends and did not have the character or imagination to pull such a prank if that is what it was.
The tape sounds were VERY odd and most hoaxers could write much better. If this was not a hoax, then it appears that "space alliens" have a kind of "astral projection "ability. Also many "ghosts" and "poltergeists" MAY actually be "space alliens"--something to think about.
A Poltergeist Experience
Quite often we would hear a "Knocking" on the back door of the kitchen and think that someone was wanting to come in, But there was never any one there. Me and my father heard a series of knocks on the living room wall (opposite the kitchen) one day .
We stood there looking at the wall for a few minutes and then I went around to the other side, in the kitchen, but then the Knocking immediately stopped
. Later, the knocking started again in a wall between two bedroom closets. When my sister opened the door on the closet on the other side, the sounds stoped.
There was also a persistant "Scratching" sound on the wall over my parent's beds--But That MIGHT have been "squirrels"--at least THAT is what we said it was.
One day, my sister was walking through the living room, while I was sitting in a chair watching TV. Suddenly, a model ship "Flew" off the fireplace mantle and sailed past her head, as if it were thrown. "I didn't do it !" she shouted. I wanted to blame her for it (I put lots of work into the model), at least for the first few minutes, untill I cooled off and finally accepted what I saw.---She didnt Knock it down--it moved of its own accord.
A few years later, when I started studying "ghosts" and the like, I recognized that that house had a "Poltergeist"---German for "Noisy ghost". Poltergeists seem to be "energy manefestations" that are common around adolescent children. They are said to be either unconcious Psycokenitic events (not really a ghost as such at all) or "ghostlike" "Creatures" that "feed" on the "excess sexual energies" active in such children--especially girls.
I thought of "ghosts" when I first purchaced it., It DID look "spooky". But, to my suprize, everything remained quiet. For years I saw NO signs of any kind of "ghostly" activity--this was a "bit" of a dissapointment, but I really didnt need any problems with ghosts anyway. The situation changed last year , however.
I needed more storage space, so last summer, I cut a new hole in the ceiling of the back bedroom to allow better access to the attic. The access door in the ceiling of the kitchen pantry was too small and innaccesable for a proper attic access. "Funny" things started happening not long afterwards.
I had hung some shirts on the screened back porch, to air them out for a day or two. When I took them down, I noticed that the pockets were stuffed with small items---nails, matchboxes, an old razor blade and pieces of straw. My first thought was "mice" or a "packrat", so I ignored the events.
On another day I found a roll of toilet paper stuck on the end of a yardstick standing up on top of my bed (leaning against the headboard). My partner in a business endevour I have on the side, "Larry" had been by that day, to look at a computer program I was working on, so I assumed that HE was "fooling around" and put the stuff there. A couple of days later I found toilet paper tied around a pencil sharpener (in a bow) and the yardstick/ toilet paper roll stuck behind the headboard of my bed. As Larry had to come thru the bedroom to get to my computer room, he commented about the items when he came by that day. Larry denyied that he had anything to do with it. Larry needed to to stay in town for a few days, so I put him up in my guest room. One day when I returned from work I found the pantry door NAILED shut. Larry said "you've got something in here, Tom". He said that the pantry door kept opening by itself. He got frightened and finally nailed it shut. "Im a Catholic, Tom," he said, "I dont beleive in that ghost stuff". ----He really meant he didnt beleive in getting involved with "ghost stuff".
another day, I found a "stack" of various small items on top of my TV set in my bedroom. There were tin cans, small jars nails, and even a piece of stale bread arranged in a neat, tall vertical stack. There was also a smaller "stack" in the kitchen, with an apple incorporated into it. Another day I found an ottoman (footstool) under the covers of my made up bed, and screwdrivers arranged in a cross pattern on top of it. Another day I found scraps of broken wooden boards duct-taped to my bedroom wall and dresser mirror. This stuff seemed to happen between 3 to 5 pm in the afternoon.
The "scarriest" event was alleged to have happened one night when larry was sleeping in the guest room and I was on an overnight trip. Larry reported that the neighbors dogs started barking--and were about to "go crazy". "Something" then seemed to run through the house from back to front and out the front door. Upon examination, the back doors had not been unlocked or broken into, the front door was now unlatched from the inside and had swung open. The neighbors later confirmed the unusual behaviour of thier dogs.
TO BE CONTINUED LATER