My house might be haunted... No promises...

[Rottingham]

So for the past few years there have been off stuff going on, but they'd be long and far apart. Sometimes even a year apart. Small stuff, where things would be moved in different places or people hearing their name called when no one says anything. Just things that peoples minds could be playing tricks on them is all. But over the past few months things started to come time after time.

First thing, I remember falling asleep with the tv off... When I woke up it was on Nickelodeon. Now I was home alone, and no one in our family watches Nickelodeon unless our neighbor or cousin comes over, and neither of them were over that day. Also there have been cases where I walk through the living room to get to the bathroom, and when I come out then pillows are on the opposite couches, or Dog toys will be moved or something. And most recently I've walked out of my bedroom and the hats from my hatrack (I have a knack for hats) are all over the place.

These things as well as the hearing of names and other small things would still jappen, but more often than before. Sometimes three times a week instead of once every few months or even years.

A family friend is a priest and we asked him on what he thought, he came over and said that everything seemed normal, but he did a prayer just to be sure. He isn't an excorsist, but things have slowed down since then. No one has seen an apparition or anything and no one has been scratched or harmed, but we are just confused as to this.

We seem to think all these things have natural causes, but is it a coincidence that it's all happening at once right now? And it lessened when the priest said a prayer and blessed our house with some holy water... It's all just confusing...

What do you guys think? We're to the point where we might actually set up cameras so we can see sonething in action, but that seems a little extreme...

[Royi]

If you're needing help:

www.garyspivey.com

Good luck

[cowmuflage]

Call Ghostbusters.

[Crotalus Horridus]

Tell whatever it is residing in your house to go back to it's own dimension.

Because, you know, with my atheistic mind I have to fill in the reason that ghost might exist, and that is they're some elemental force from another dimension that takes the form of deceased people to feed on our emotions and thoughts.

EDIT: I have a question, did your role over your remote control at all? Sometimes that happens with me and I get random channels.

[Azunara]

Pshhh forgot Ghostbusters, go with the Winchesters. You'll be fine.

In all seriousness, I'm more of the mind everything may have been conincidence. But likewise, if you're believing in ghosts, and nothing is harming you, what's the problem? As long as they aren't malicious, can't be that bad.

[Jadein92]

Pshhh forgot Ghostbusters, go with the Winchesters. You'll be fine.

In all seriousness, I'm more of the mind everything may have been conincidence. But likewise, if you're believing in ghosts, and nothing is harming you, what's the problem? As long as they aren't malicious, can't be that bad.

Even if the ghost is not harming you its still frightening. Good example of how I know ghosts are real, My grandmother died about 8 years ago and was cremated, her ashes sat in a box on a hutch with her belongings on it, one was a Winnie the Pooh doll that would wiggle its nose and talk when you pushed it. When my parents got a divorce, my dad took the ashes with him and left the stuff behind. Nothing happened for a month or so and then weird things started happening, tv turning on in the middle of the night, computers turning on, ect. And then one night my sister woke up and ran out of her room into mine talking about how she felt like someone was there in the room with her (shes 16 and not that easily frightened) so i got up and walked to her room, checked it out, sat in there with her talking so she would calm down and then all of a sudden the Winnie the Pooh bear doll, which she had on a desk leaning against the wall (aka very far from the edge) we saw it slide across the desk and fall over. We screamed and ran out of the room, to wake our mom, while we were talking to her about what happened, the thing, laying on its back and no way the thing could turn on itself started talking and wiggling its nose, my mom then screamed and told us to put it out into the living room and try to get some sleep. My sister ended up putting up a camera infront of the doll and covered it with straws so if it moved, we would know. Needless to say nothing happened again for a few months. Then out of the blue my sisters phone went missing, so me, her, and my mom were looking for it. Maybe for like 30 minutes or so. And i had searched through the drawers of every desk, nothing. So we all went outside to go look in the car, my phone vibrated and it was a text from my sisters phone. It had said "My bear, not yours." After that we all freaked out and was seriously considering if we should drive an hour to drop it off at my dads. So we went back into the house, and i had went to get something out of a desk drawer, and there i found her phone. With the message that was sent in her phone as well. We had left the bear to see if it would be happier where the hutch once stood but after the message, it literally started moving. It fell off the little stand we had it on and started talking. So my sister cut the battery out of it and set it back. It sat on the stand and was wiggling its nose and talking constantly. We freaked, my mom started to get ready to drive out to my dads house to give him the doll then it fell again, slid to the kitchen and was staring right at her, she screamed and then we picked it up. Put it in one of her bags, along with everything else we had of hers. And drove as fast as possible to his house. Threw it at him and told him to keep it with her ashes and don't move it. After that day we have not heard anything from her. She seems to be happy now that her bear and her belongings are now with her remains. So after all that, i strongly believe in ghosts.

[Jadein92]

So for the past few years there have been off stuff going on, but they'd be long and far apart. Sometimes even a year apart. Small stuff, where things would be moved in different places or people hearing their name called when no one says anything. Just things that peoples minds could be playing tricks on them is all. But over the past few months things started to come time after time.

First thing, I remember falling asleep with the tv off... When I woke up it was on Nickelodeon. Now I was home alone, and no one in our family watches Nickelodeon unless our neighbor or cousin comes over, and neither of them were over that day. Also there have been cases where I walk through the living room to get to the bathroom, and when I come out then pillows are on the opposite couches, or Dog toys will be moved or something. And most recently I've walked out of my bedroom and the hats from my hatrack (I have a knack for hats) are all over the place.

These things as well as the hearing of names and other small things would still jappen, but more often than before. Sometimes three times a week instead of once every few months or even years.

A family friend is a priest and we asked him on what he thought, he came over and said that everything seemed normal, but he did a prayer just to be sure. He isn't an excorsist, but things have slowed down since then. No one has seen an apparition or anything and no one has been scratched or harmed, but we are just confused as to this.

We seem to think all these things have natural causes, but is it a coincidence that it's all happening at once right now? And it lessened when the priest said a prayer and blessed our house with some holy water... It's all just confusing...

What do you guys think? We're to the point where we might actually set up cameras so we can see sonething in action, but that seems a little extreme...

Honestly, I would basically just leave it be, but whatever you do, DO NOT try to communicate with it. Via Ouiji board or what have you. Could lead to more dangerous ones coming in. But as long as it does not try to harm you, you should be ok. It seems like they mostly are just wanting to talk, and get your attention. Best you can do is acknowledge they are there, assure them that you are not there to harm them and just go about with your day.

[Rottingham]

Thanks everyone! Things haven't really happened since I last posted, but you never know. I read what everyone said, and it actually helps. So thank you all very much ^_^

[Makoes]

I use to live in an "haunted" house for 13yrs, we experienced many similar things to you Rottingham. I remember one funny thing was when the hammer in the garage toolbox ended up where the soap went in the upstairs bath tub, and the soap was in the toolbox. We'd had things get moved, hidden, replaced all the time, and usually we would, after some time, stop and just ask nicely for it to be returned, and poof, turn around and what we were looking for was right behind us.
There where the two ghost cats that would come from the attic, down to my sisters room, walk across her room through the wall, walk across my room through my wall and over to the neighbors (we were in a duplex) and do the same across their kids rooms.
We saw a Native brave in full headdress occasionally , off in the corner, my mom nodded at him once and he disappeared. Then there was the young girl in old fashioned dress, often at night she would be standing up by the drive way, waiting.

We did some research and found out that there had once been a house there, that burned down, killing everyone in it. And before that, there had been a (many many years before the burned house) a native settlement in the area.

Since they never did anything other then the random pranks, we didn't take any steps to do anything about them. We lived there for 13yrs before my mom got a job in Saudi Arabia and she sold the place. That was 6yrs ago now. Funny thing is, I've talked to the people who live there now, and they say that things go missing sometimes, and they cant figure it out.

[Nick]

Honestly, I would basically just leave it be, but whatever you do, DO NOT try to communicate with it. Via Ouiji board or what have you. Could lead to more dangerous ones coming in. But as long as it does not try to harm you, you should be ok. It seems like they mostly are just wanting to talk, and get your attention. Best you can do is acknowledge they are there, assure them that you are not there to harm them and just go about with your day.

Definitely stay away from any Ouija boards unless you want a real reason to call an exorcist.

Right now, it sounds like it may just be residual ghosts; things go on because they still think they're alive (or you can get the rare ones that know they're dead, but those tend to be more intelligent hauntings and said hauntings tend to disrupt households much more than what yours is doing). I think the best you'd be able to do is go about daily business and accept that you may have a few ghosts. As long as they aren't harming you, it should be fine.

If things start to escalate, however, then I would do something about it. Especially if people start getting hurt by nothing (like bruises show up out of nowhere, hand marks, scratching, etc.) or if things start getting thrown. Just thrown things could simply be a poltergeist but being harmed and having things thrown is for sure demonic.

BUT since nothing that severe has happened, leaving the ghosts to their own should suit both living and dead perfectly fine.

[Jangalian]

My house is haunted. The previous owner died here, and sometimes when I go to bed, I can hear stuff falling off the shelves downstairs. I apparently don't keep his house how he liked it. But he also doesn't like dogs, so I stay upstairs at night, and keep my dogs with me.

....my family is sensitive to this kind of crap.

[Rottingham]

Makoes, the fact that you've seen apparitions is pretty cool. I'm fortunate enough to not see any (because that would scare the crap out if me, I'd jump into my mothers arms like shaggy to scooby, and say "G-G-G-Ghost!") but then again my brother stoll says its all coincidence. Even though my parents even believe these things are here.

Harpier, I will NEVER do a quiji board! Ever! Even if there's a fire! (step brothers reference? Anyone?) those things are evil! My brother did one in his dorm room at college and there were things thrown and all that. Luckily no one was hurt but I guess it got do bad that they had to move out of the dorm. (also, this happened after the stuff in our house. That happened last year, these things have been going on for quite a few years, so I don't think a spirit followed him home)

Jangalian, that's sad that your dogs are not welcome there :/ hopefully you don't leave them alone in the house too much. But again, kind of a cool experience having a haunting that's kind of constant, but not harmful.

Last night, my friend came in from Colombus, and we were playing a bit of minecraft. We were the only ones on the basement, and have this fireplace down there we don't use because it smokes up the upstairs part of the house. But while we were playing, he turn to the fireplace and started to look through it. I asked what he was doing and he said "I thought I heard someone say my name." now no one apart from my fany, my neighbors, and my one grandma knows about our hauntings and/or coincidences, so I found it odd and grnuine. Like he wasn't making it up. Then a little later we were watching the Olymic Ceremonies and everyone in the room (myself, my friend, my dad, my mom, and one of my cousins) heard a voice say my friend's name again. I immediately said "Stop it". My parents lure why I really did that, my friend thought I had told whoever was "pranking" him to stop it, and my cousin was just confused.

It's odd to me, because that's the first time abything has ever happened with other people over (apart from our neighbors) As I drove him home, I told my friend about our house possibly being haunted. He said he wouldn't have believed me if that didn't happen to him last night.

[starkittens]

My house is haunted. It's been proven. We have three ghosts living with us. They do things like what you describe, and we've gotten used to it. well, actually, only two of them do it. the third is a poltergeist, and she drives me up the wall! she loves to mess with my family, and she's gone as to steal my games, and other items from the house....
I still haven't found where she's stashed my games yet...

[Nachtwulf]

I've got an ephemeral resident. Seen her (I just have a suspicion it's female) once as a 'heat blur' in the air, rapidly vacating my chair. She messes with my TV a lot... it used to be, when I had a tube, that I'd turn it on to find it set to the wrong channel (so my TV just got snow). Then I got a nice new flatscreen and there wasn't any sign of anything odd until one day it changed its own channel while I was watching the damn thing. It took me several minutes to figure out that the cable hadn't gone out on me.

She moves things, makes noises... when I first moved in, she pounded on the wall like an angry neighbor mad that you had the TV too loud (but I live alone, yo, and no I don't own a radiator.)

I agree, though, that if you're not having any problems, just let it go. 99% of residual spirits are either just echoes/recordings of past events that can't hurt anything, or else benign. If things get out of hand, you can try placating them... this is as simple as picking something you think they'd like, saying 'this is for you, I give it to you' and putting it someplace...not hidden, but it doesn't have to be super conspicuous, and leaving it there. Believe it or not, I got mine to calm down with an offering of chocolate. I still keep a single square of it on the mantle and haven't had any real unrest since.

If you absolutely end up unable to live with it, I can offer some simple 'go away' tips, but for me at least, I don't mind the company as long as she's stopped banging on the damn walls. Hurr.

[Snowy]

This thread scares the utter crap out of me because I don't really believe in ghosts. Well, I don't know, I don't *want* to believe in them. There's never been any 100% proof that they do exist as far as I know. And watching films like Paranormal Activity never helps. Well, it doesn't help, but at the same time the stuff that happens in those films is so... OTT? I'm scared of the idea of ghosts being real and I've never seen one or experienced any bizarre activity. I'm pretty sure the houses we've lived in have all been ghost-free. So, because of my lack of interaction with anything like that, I tell myself they aren't real. I don't think I could live with the idea of them being real.

Perhaps there is a way to explain them besides them being real. Insane tricks of the eye, I don't know. Tell me they aren't real. xD

[Silivren]

This thread scares the utter crap out of me because I don't really believe in ghosts. Well, I don't know, I don't *want* to believe in them. There's never been any 100% proof that they do exist as far as I know. And watching films like Paranormal Activity never helps. Well, it doesn't help, but at the same time the stuff that happens in those films is so... OTT? I'm scared of the idea of ghosts being real and I've never seen one or experienced any bizarre activity. I'm pretty sure the houses we've lived in have all been ghost-free. So, because of my lack of interaction with anything like that, I tell myself they aren't real. I don't think I could live with the idea of them being real.

Perhaps there is a way to explain them besides them being real. Insane tricks of the eye, I don't know. Tell me they aren't real. xD

Consider yourself lucky, but I for one cant lie to you and say I dont think they're real having had first hand encounters with them myself. Some people have the same mindset as you, my friend does and her house is EXTREMELY haunted. She found a man standing in her living room and convinced herself it was one of her Dad's friend who'd come to see him even though he was at work and she'd never seen this man before AND all the doors were locked.

[Nachtwulf]

I've seen them too. But like pretty much everything that gets put on TV, the reality is not as frightening as the media would like you to think. Movies like PA or the Amityville Horror, or tv-shows like School Spirits, are put on to be entertaining, and thus the goings-on are exaggerated or entirely fictionalized. No one would watch them if the only thing that happened in two hours is that someone found out a picture had been moved on the wall!

As I said in my previous post, 99% of all ghost activity is exceedingly minor. Footsteps, bangs, things being moved a little. Demons from the great beyond are not, contrary to the media, clawing at the wall between worlds trying to eat your soul. Honest. Even the rowdiest poltergeist can be booted summarily out of your house with the right precautions, and no, you don't really need a priest either. Demons are just the 'next big thing' now that the media has kind of expended the scare factor in ghosts. (This irritates me about shows like Paranormal State, where they're finding "demons" under every rock.) 'Demonic activity' (i.e. negative spirits that do not stem from a human source) are even rarer than violent human ghosts, meaning you're way more likely to loot Mimiron's Head than run into one. Most people that go on at length about 'demons' are either trying to inflate their own abilities, are scared to the point where they blame everything bad on the paranormal, or are trying to get money from you for an exorcism.

[Snowy]

I'm one of these people though that, to be stupidly honest, struggles to completely believe in things that can't really be explained. For example, I'd have so many questions to ask. What are ghosts? Where do they come from? How do they happen? If you die, do you always become a ghost? If that was so, the world would be full of them, and the evidence would probably be clear. So why then would only some people become ghosts? Because they haven't accomplished something? They weren't happy? There's way too many things that I can ask about them that no one can actually explain. Same goes for something like the universe. Is it really never-ending? How does it work? Or are we just assuming it's there because we can't explain it otherwise? So, so many things we don't really understand properly, and there probably always will be. And that's why I'm scared of ghosts, because I don't understand them. If I ever ran into one, I wouldn't know what it wanted, so I would probably be frightened of it.

It doesn't help that I haven't had any kind of contact with them personally, not that I want to. I know people that have though. My mother says when she was younger, she once woke up during the night and saw a man sitting on the chair in the room. But my mum's been having all kinds of hallucinations recently after just waking up, for example, the other night she thought she saw me standing at the end of the bed. She's seen spiders and rats crawling on her. She's seen our cat, Poppy, who disappeared a year ago. The one about Poppy got to me a little, though. If she's died, was that her spirit? My best friend as well claims her house might be haunted. She says she's seen a man at the top of the stairs before and she often hears footsteps when no one else is around.

[Miyon]

I would guess too strong personalities or souls, or that they had truly fought to stay alive. I don't know. But upon reading this thread, I got this very sudden urge to butt in saying how ghosts and such can only enter your homes if you invite them in. I've read too much Dresden Files..

Anyway, I've lived in three somewhat haunted places. There is something here too. Things disappear, the warmth on the bathroom gets turned off, it stomps over the floors, etc. In our last apartment, there was something with us, and something in the basement. In our basement they were just company. The thing in the basement was not so cozy. I always ran up the stairs after having been down there, and I was always scared to death of being down there. And the tiny, blue chair at the end of the hallway.. Almost as if something sat there, watching.

[Tahlian]

I definitely believe in ghosts...though most of my encounters have been with spirits of the animal kind. Each pet we've lost since we've been married has come back once to kind of "check on us," with three exceptions. Saxon and Purdue the cats haven't made an appearance, and as for my beloved cat Norman...apparently he comes to check on me quite often.

Gin the greyhound, a pretty fawn girl, we lost very suddenly on July the 5th of that year. The day after we'd had to put her to sleep, the hubby and I had called out for pizza, because we were still to devastated to cook. After dinner, I made bowls for Sly the grey and Chewie the mutt and fed them both in the living room, taking the leftover pizza back into the kitchen. As I was bent over, putting the pizza box into the fridge, I felt the unmistakable sensation of a greyhound nose poking me behind the left knee. I closed the fridge door and turned to see what Sly wanted...only to discover that he was still in the living room eating, and there was nobody but me in the kitchen. I guess Gin just wanted us to know she was okay.

When we lost Sly several years later, we were houndless for about three weeks. During that time, I was standing in the kitchen, washing a few dishes, and saw the tell-tale flash of white that usually signaled Sly walking around the bar to see what I was doing in the kitchen and did it involve food. I turned to greet him as he came into the kitchen...and when no dog appeared, only then did it hit me what I had seen as I remembered that Sly was gone.

Toby the greyhound passed away last January. It took him until November of 2011 to come and check in. I had had knee surgery right before Thanksgiving, and was confined to bed for a certain amount of time as I recovered. As I was lying there dozing one day, I sensed that someone was looking at me. I halfway rolled over and glanced over my shoulder and saw the outline of a red fawn greyhound with stand-up ears standing in the bedroom doorway looking at me. I blinked, and he was gone. I can only suppose he wanted to make sure I was all right after the surgery.

Norman the cat, my frequent visitor, was very close to me and I to him. He must have been nearly 20 when he finally passed from stomach cancer. Every few months, the hubby and I will be in bed at night, dozing off, and I'll feel a cat jump up on the bed down by my feet. I always lift my head to look to see if it might be Merlin, our current cat...but when it's Norman, there's no cat to be seen, and Merlin is elsewhere asleep. It's nice to know he still checks in every now and again.

Chewie, our border collie mutt, passed away in January from hemangiosarcoma at the hale old age of 15. Without a dog in the house, hubby and I were miserable, as was Merlin. So I went down to the local pound and adopted a scruffy little white mutt named Huckleberry. When I first brought him in the house, I let him kind of roam the living room while I sat down to check e-mail. As I'm typing, I hear Huckleberry crunching on something. It turned out to be a big dog biscuit, the kind we fed Chewie. Here's the thing, though. We had been out of those cookies for at least a week before we lost Chewie, and during her final illness, we'd been breaking up her cookies into smaller pieces so she could better handle them. To the best of our knowledge, there was no big unbroken cookie in our house. Chewie was always a terribly sweet girl, and it was awfully kind of her to leave Huck a "Welcome Home" present.

On the human side of things, my grandfather, Harold, seems to have stuck around the house he and my Granny lived in. Or most specifically, he's hanging around his workshop. He likes to turn the lights on in there when nobody's in there, or if we make him mad by using the building for holiday gatherings and the family doesn't put things back to his liking. When my mom has to go down there and turn off the lights when he's turned them on, she just asks him nicely to stop, and generally, he will.

So yeah...I believe. And if they're not causing you a problem, I wouldn't worry overmuch. If something is causing a problem, you could try asking nicely for them to stop.