Have you ever met a ghost?

[Melooon]

Do you think you've ever met a ghost, or do you believe in them in general?

I tend to flipflop on the subject! When I was little we lived by the sea, and ships would sound their fog horns at night; one night when my aunt was staying, she was brought to tears because she though the fog horn was a ghost!

Maybe a more personal experience was when a family member died and their ashes were brought home; I remember a distinct change in the atmosphere and a feeling near that room. I felt I was being followed and watched at night. I was scared at first, but I realised that if there was a spirit, then it must be the spirit of this person I knew and could hold no malevolent intention towards me; if anything it must be the one that was scared and confused. So I loudly spoke to it in my mind; I told it who it was, I told it about its life, I told it where it was and who I was and I said everything was ok but it would have to go away because it had died and wasn't supposed to be there. After that the feeling of presence left slowly, and I never felt it again.

I suppose that begs the question; was there a ghost? Or was it a figment of my mind? And is there any difference? Is the memory of someone not a kind of ghost, and if so, are we not surrounded by ghosts every moment of our lives 

[starbreaker]

Do you think you've ever met a ghost, or do you believe in them in general?

My mother used to talk about ghosts she'd seen when she was young, but the only ghost I've ever seen in real life is the band from Sweden. If I thought I had seen a ghost at home, the first thing I'd do is make sure I'm not hallucinating. Then I'd get an electrician in to check my house's wiring.

[KatKing]

I don't believe in ghosts, I believe that when we pass on, we will not stay tethered to earth.

I do believe in the soul and such though, and i do somewhat believe in places having bad or good ''vibes'' so to speak

When I was a kid we moved into a big, old, sort of rundown house. I got my own bedroom, and i hated it. There was no natural light in the room, just a big, carpeted square, with a interior window looking down at the downstairs with a veiw of a big dusty chandelier. My bed was small and in the corner. there was also a closet big enough my me and my siblings to sit in with a slanted roof. Some previous owner had written something akin to ''boys only'' on the door.

There was no furnature, just me and my little bed in the corner. i was so scared to sleep in there at night, being in there at all just overwhelmed me with a strange sort of feeling that i cant explain. after a few days of me complaining i moved into my sisters room. I was telling my grandma mentioned that maybe someone died in there, or there was something else causing the bad atmosphere. I thought she was joking but she meant it. So after thinking about it some, I do believe in stuff like that i think. But in that particular scenario it couldve just been that i was alone in a new room that was set up in an uninviting way

I defiantly think that when death invades a space, it changes it. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it changes. The same way a place you used to visit when you were very young changes when your an adult. My sisters cat died last year of old age, we found her curled up very peacefully in one of our cabinets. Whenever I go over there now, i feel something that could be described as a prescence, a change in the air, etc. Not a bad one (though she was a very mean cat haha) just a change. Again, maybe its just because I knew, thats an acceptable answer, but id like to think it is something else.

Recently I stayed in a Civil War era inn called the Marshal House. We found out after we booked it that its apparently considered by some people and click bait websites as one of the most haunted hotels in America, specifically the floor we were staying on. Neither me or my mom who I was traveling with believe in ghosts, so we were fine with it. (my grandma was actually the one who told us, she had stayed there before, and didnt experience anything.) I always have trouble sleeping in hotels, so I sort of half slept that night, and I remember hearing sounds of a loud rattling cart passing by our door, shifting around, like it was stuck. I thought nothing of it and was just kind of annoyed, I thought someone had gotten a matience cart or suitcase stuck lol. but I told my grandma when she asked me if we had experienced anything, and apparently thats a very common phenomenon people claim to experience there. Weird! I still dont believe in ghosts, but its fun to think about. (also, love the Marshal house, 10/10 recommend if you like historic architecture. Its been kept very authentic, inside and out)

Sorry for such a long message, I just find this topic interesting. 

[Memory]

Do you think you've ever met a ghost, or do you believe in them in general?

I believe yes to both parts of this question!

When I was younger I often saw this little boy ghost walking around the end of my hallway. It might just be childhood imagination, but I still remember clear to this day that I saw this milk white boy walk from my hallway and right through the wall to my mothers room. I saw him so vividly that I even ran to my mothers room to see where he went, but he was gone! I told my mom right after that she had a ghost boy stuck in her walls, and I affectionately named him "White Boy" given how starkly white he was! He was not see through or sheer, but pure white.

My brother also apprently spoke to ghosts when they were younger too! They used to sit at the door of my grandparents house and babble away to what looked like nothing: just the door. My mom asked them one day who they were talking to, and they responded with "The old man!". But of course, no one else saw him.

I was brought up in a rather spiritual family though which I'm sure paints my experiences differently from others. These sort of instances were normalised and accepted as true.

[Cele]

I don't believe in ghosts. Unless I see one myself and it's completely unexplainable with science, then maybe I'd change my mind. I can't even say I "believe" in a soul. I simply hope that souls exist because if there is no afterlife... All this, living on Earth and suffering and worrying, it was all kind of dumb of us, wasn't it? Might as well just nuke the whole planet, who cares.

It is, however, very interesting that ghosts exist in about every culture on the planet, in one form or another. And in some cultures, it's not even something you'd question necessarily. I remember my Japanese teacher, to her, the existence of ghosts (yuurei) was just a fact. She even wondered if tengus existed too, said she'd seen something like them flying.

I think it's interesting to think that two people might see the same thing and come to very different conclusions. Once, I saw a very bright, big ball quickly and smoothly travel through the sky. Faster than any airplane, so smooth and quiet. Just a shining ball. So OBVIOUSLY my first reaction was that it's some kind of extraterrestrial, ufo, alien, you know, and I was scared shitless. The next day my mom told me multiple people had reported seeing a fireball. So it was just some meteorite thing. It is interesting that my first reaction wasn't, wow, a fireball, but aliens xD

[Absentmind]

I don't necessarily believe myself however I do have a story of spooky paranoia!

When I was a wee boy my grandma used to be an on-site warden at an elderly care facility. She had a flat (apartment for you American viewers) in the same building and would go door to door in this building complex to see how the elderly were doing. After school when my mum would work late, she would take me to my grandma's. One day my grandma made me dinner and went about her business doing her rounds around the building. a few hours later, as I was watching tv I heard the door to the flat  open and close and heard a few creeks and saw a quick shadow pass by out the corner of my eye, I said "nan?", No response. I got up and looked in the kitchen, nobody there, I looked down the long dark hallway out of the flat, empty! It was a small flat, not like she could be hidden or just not hear me. I remember the hairs on my body stood on end and I had Goosebumps. I tried to calm myself down in the kiddish way of "pretending not to care" even though I was rattled and carried on watching tv, as if the ghost would think "ah I didn't scare him, I'll leave" It's so funny thinking back to how my brain would process these kind of things, I was such a paranoid kid for some reason. About 15 minutes later I saw flashing blue lights outside the big window that overlooked the apartment complex's carpark, it was an ambulance and unfortunately one of the elderly residents had died! Needless to say I had the jeebies and I remember not sleeping that night. My grandma just strugged it off as me "being silly" and I remember thinking "yeah she's probably right" to calm myself down once again.

A spooky coincidence? what do you think? The rational adult I am now probably thinks the wind blew open and closed a door and the pressure made the floor boards creek and the shadow could just be a reaction to me hearing those noises, but who knows, it could be the forces from the other side!

I love ghost stories, they're my guilty pleasure on YouTube for sure. and like I said, although I don't necessarily believe, I do enjoy the "what if" sense about them. It's fun to think about! When I was a kid my friends used to tell soo many fake ghost stories for fun, I think that's where my paranoia came from, because I believed them!

[lonelyjuly]

I'm not sure if what I saw was a ghost, but it was definitely something otherworldly.

When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I lived in a suburb-like neighborhood. I had a friend who lived next door to me named Eric and another friend who lived down the street named Jaiden. All 3 of us hung out a lot and played games and rode our skateboards, bikes, etc around our neighborhood all the time.
One day, Jaiden went to the store with his parents and came back with a "cool new board game" to play. He called us and told us to come and check it out. Obviously, it was a Ouija board but we didn't know any better. We loved board games so we headed over to Jaiden's house.

When we got to his house, Jaiden was sitting on the floor of his garage with the board game while his parents were still unloading groceries and stuff from their shopping trip. Eric and I sat down with Jaiden and looked at the board. From what I remember, it was a regular looking Ouija board with the letters and numbers, sun and moon, "Yes" and "No," etc. But again, we didn't know any better.
Jaiden says "We went to Toys R Us and I never saw it before so I thought we could all play it. The box says we can ask it questions and the little arrow piece answers us with the letters."
Jaiden's dad looked over at us and said "Don't be messing with that stuff, man. It's some spooky shit."
Of course, we didn't listen to him because we thought "Ah whatever. He doesn't know board games like we do "

I can't really remember what we asked the board, but I do remember the planchette moving and we were all saying stuff like "Hey you're moving it" or "You made it move" or something. I can assure you that none of us were moving it. The instructions explicitly say to lightly touch the planchette with your 2 fingers, and we did.
I also remember that we played for a lot longer than we should have because the sun was setting.
If you don't know, you're supposed to say goodbye to the spirit or whatever on the Ouija board by saying "Goodbye" and then moving the planchette to the "Goodbye" word (or something like that, I can't remember). But Eric and I said that it was getting dark so we had to go back home and we took our fingers off the planchette without saying goodbye. This is when weird stuff started happening to me.

I don't recall if it was that same night or some time later, but when I was going to bed I remember thinking about what Jaiden's dad said with it being scary and that we shouldn't have messed with it. So I turned on my bedside lamp and pointed it towards the opposite corner of my room to illuminate the room more (I wasn't allowed to keep my room light on), then I went to sleep. Some time later, I was woken up by something pulling my leg towards the end of my bed. It scared me to death. It wasn't long after I fell asleep because my mother was still awake downstairs.
I ran to her and told her what happened and how scary it was. She said "Oh don't worry about that. It's just your nerves in your body trying to keep you awake because they're still awake."
I thought "Oh, okay. My mom is always right, so maybe it was just that." So I went back upstairs and went back to bed.

What I didn't notice until the next morning was that my bedside lamp was no longer facing the opposite corner of the room. It was facing the end of my bed where I was pulled.

Every night after that, I was having nightmares, I would see what some would call "Shadow People" in the peripheral view and they would disappear when I look at them, and I would have weird hallucinations like people's mouths disappearing while I was talking to them.

It got so bad that I was getting concerned and scared for my well-being. So I told my mom, who was (and still is) and huge "Bible Thumper."
You have no idea how much of a fright I gave her when I told her I played with a Ouija board. She told me to never touch it again and to never go to Jaiden's house again. For a few days, my parents would bring me to our local church and have our pastor pray to me to "get the demons" away and my mom hired an exorcist team to come and bless our house.
The team prayed and threw holy water on everything in the house, but when they got to my room they said they could feel a presence and that it was significantly colder than the rest of the house (if you know ghosts, you know that haunted places are cold asf). They started to pray on everything in my room and when they got to my bed, they said they could feel that something was in the wall next to my bed, and demanded that my dad and them would tear down the wall.

I distinctly remember my dad moving everything in my room to the guest bedroom we had across the hall, and although I was at school when they did all this, my parents explained years later that when they tore the wall open, they could "smell death," like something was rotting. There wasn't any dead animals or anything that got stuck in the wall either. It was just insulation and wiring.

After the team was done, I stopped having nightmares every day, I stopped seeing the Shadow People, and I stopped having weird hallucinations.

The weird thing about all this is that Eric and I never saw Jaiden again. I also don't know what Eric's experience was like since I never asked him and I moved states pretty soon afterwards. But we tried to knock on Jaiden's door, tried calling him, but nothing.


Anyways, sorry for the long post. To answer your question, yes I do believe in ghosts and the paranormal, specifically because of this event that took place in my life. I just thought I'd share my story when I saw this thread. If you have any questions, feel free to ask :)
Much love <3

[CaffeinatedElf]

I remember when I was young, I had an imaginary friend I guess, my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I recall sometimes when I was left alone, I would be pushed gently on the floor and slide around, and I found this to be fun as a toddler. Later I moved houses and I never got to play with the ghost again.

[Memory]

I remember this one time, i was probably like 7 or 8

There was (or is, haven't visited in years) this place near a park that i was taken to often, it was like a really tiny street network, once used by people who were learning how to drive, but it was taken over by kids riding their bike, like me

There was some kind of deposit in the back end of that place, there were posters, helmets, a lot of trash, and it was all bricked up, and the only window had a fence

That was up until one day i very very briefly saw a man there, other kids were looking at him, but he wasn't saying nothing, he was just looking at us; he wasn't doing any work in there, nothing

If i had to describe him, he looked a lot like Scrooge from the 2009 Christmas Carol movie, although i have no way of saying that for certain

That room was really weird in general, i remembered vividly that, when i spent time looking through the window, the back wall would move further away from me

Weird stuff