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Her fingernails scratched across the hard unyielding surface of the patio...

Bridge over Troubled Waters....

Submitted by "Leona S"
Hailing from: County Clare Ireland 
Where it happened: Ireland
Posted on: 5/16/05

Hi my name is Leona and I had a frightening experience. I am now 25 yrs old but I was 16 yrs when this happened.

It was a warm summers day and I was off for the summer holidays, but my mother was working. So I was to mind my younger sister Lynda who was 14 at the time. My best friend Carol called me to go swimming with her to the “Iron bridge” (this is a railway track bridge that runs over a river) I had never been there swimming before and I really wanted to go. So I left Lynda home on her own (making a deal she wouldn’t tell Mam if I did a favor for her again).

When Carol and myself arrived instantly I didn’t feel comfortable, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I couldn’t take my eye off of the opposite side of the bridge even though there was nothing there. Carol jumped into the water but I couldn’t go in. After being persuaded I eventually did. The current was strong so we held onto the middle pole holding up the bridge. As the current pulled I felt dragged towards the opposite side and absolutely panicked. I called for Carol to pull me back and we got out of the water.

She asked me what was all that about, and I could only tell her that I wasn’t comfortable there and that I kept looking over, why I didn’t know. Then friends of ours arrived and it was soon forgotten about. Later I realized the time that Mama would be home shortly, so we all headed off separate directions home.

I took a shortcut home because I had to get home faster than the others so I headed off alone. While I was walking I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was behind me. I kept stopping to look behind. It was an open field and only 5pm in the day, really bright and sunny. The feeling was so strong that I was convinced that Carol and the other had followed me and playing a Joke. So I shouted that I knew they were there. When I got no reaction, I shouted Not funny come on out, still nothing. I was confused. Then looking at the time I knew I was going to be late and I had to be home before Mam came home. So I shouted again that I couldn’t wait I had to run. And that’s what I did exactly run.

While I was running I had a bad feeling in me that something wasn’t right. So I put it down to that Mam had gotten home to discover that I wasn’t there and now was extremely angry. But when I got home to my major relief she hadn’t arrived home at all.

That evening came so I rang Carol to sleep over at my house. (It was normal; if she wasn’t at my house I was at hers).

Things were great, we were cuddled up in bed and chatting about her boy friend when the most frightening thing that scared the **** of out us happened.

We were talking and the radio was blaring away when this presence (I just don’t know how to describe it came into the room) Carol and me simultaneously froze in the bed (no light pitch dark but the moon was bright so there was light in the room) the radio went static. It was so overwhelming that my head started to spin…and all the time my eyes were fixed to the far opposite corner of the room. I could see nothing through vision but I knew that it was a MAN and a not happy one…I got feelings of rage, extreme anger, confusion, murderous feelings….my heart was threatening through my chest and I couldn’t move….Carol beside me never uttered a word, never moved an inch…I was so terrified, but I couldn’t take my eyes away. (my stomach and inside are jumping from just writing this and I’m shaking)

It felt like it lasted an eternity, while lying frozen flat on my back I managed to grad Carols hand and she squeezed my hand so hard.

When it passed or left without realizing it my whole body relaxed…I didn’t even realize that every part of me was tensed up…and at the same time I felt Carols hand relax and then the radio came back on.

We both said “What the **** was that”, we were freaked out.. But what happened after that I don’t know whether it was shock or what but was even more weird….in a nice way

My headed started spinning….I felt like I was drunk (but I didn’t even know what the sensation of being drunk was at the time) I felt a real relieving presence beside me comforting me and another two at the bottom (but these presences I knew well I feel them all the time around me ( later I was told my a fortune teller that I have three guardian angles – one my Grand Uncle and two Saints St Michael and St Gabriel).

Then Carol and my started talking absolute nonsense….we still never moved from lying back down on the bed even though we were not experiencing the extreme opposite feeling….

I described seeing a ladder above up surrounded by clouds and continuing up to which I couldn’t see where it ended. Carol also could see it….It was so peaceful so tranquil sooo relaxing I felt like I was going to dose off…I said Carol I feel like I’ve been drugged or something and she just came out will silly little giggles like a little child would do…..

And then again it passed, and that’s when we sat up on the bed and looked at each other we were totally back to normal…

I think that that something followed me home, it was the same feeling I got down at the bridge but no where near intense…and the after effect was my Uncle Jimmy coming to our rescue and the peaceful dreamy feeling we experienced was him trying to counteract and calm us down…

Carol and me were never really able take about what happened after that…I have questioned myself like she has…did it really happen, but that I think is us in denial I know deep inside that it did and Carol has admitted that same, she knows but we try not to think about. Even to this day nearly 10 years after I go week inside and get shivers..

I felt so uneasy in my house for weeks after that and slept the remainder of the summer nights at Carols house….

I would like to that My angles that came to our rescue that night and that I know protected me throughout my entire childhood. I always felt them with me. I am eternally indebted to them, as I know that they prevented that night from worsening.

We later learn that there has been suicides committed on that bridge, the most recent being that a year prior a man had shot himself through the head with a shot gun and even a year later another guy hung himself off the bridge…
 

 Perhaps the bridge rests over a "portal" or "vortex" of negative (evil) energy. Maybe you two were meant to be it's next "suicide" victims. Snap a photo of the bridge & of the water below it, you might be eerily surprised at what it contains!

Sticks & Stones...

Submitted by "Sena M."
Hailing from: Sallisaw OK      
Where it happened: At Sallisaw Creek OK
Posted on: 5/16/05

My son had an encounter a few months ago that has caused us some excitement and anxiousness. It all started when he was on his way home from work one night (his hours are 4 to 10) and he thought he hit a woman who was standing in the middle of the road. He had slammed on his brakes as soon as he saw her, but he hit her anyway. He got out of the car and looked around, but there was nobody there.

He came home, but he was not alone. He brought it, whatever it was, with him. It was a violent presence, often throwing things off counters, slamming doors, and once, it took the lid off the trashcan and hurled it so hard onto the floor that it made the house shake.
 

Once, I was so tired of it, that I spoke out loud and demanded it leave and go back where it came from. I had just finished doing the dishes and it slammed the whole dish drainer and everything onto the floor!

Then, something really strange happened. Somehow it ended up back at the creek. But it hates my son for some reason, and chases the car whenever he is in it. It hurls sticks and debris at the car too.

We took pictures of it and caught it on film, but it just looks like a light, not like what we see when we look at her. She is very scary. I wish we knew how to make her leave my son alone. She grabbed his arm once and yanked it hard and made it pop. It hurt him for a whole day after that. We know when she is around because it gets really cold. Well, that is our story, and strange as it sounds, it is all true.
 

Sounds like some type of poltergeist perhaps. Please scan in a photo & send it in to us, we will be happy to examine it for you & also post it here in the Barrens...

Scary Harry....

Submitted by "Marci Johnston"
Hailing from: Bridgeport WV          
Where it happened: Clarksburg, WV
Posted on: 5/16/05

I was 13 years old in 1968 when we moved into a two story house in the northern part of Clarksburg, WV. We purchased it from a family that lived two houses up the street.. My father worked at a glass factory a few blocks away. We didn't notice anything particularly unusual for a long time - except for one thing - when the factory whistle blew at 11pm there would come a single loud bang on our back door. Just one time, but it would be loud enough to rattle windows. It only seemed to happen
on the nights my father worked the afternoon shift but not always.

We made a joke out of it. We decided the house was haunted and promptly named the ghost Harry. When that bang would echo through the house, we would say "Goodnight, Harry" and laugh. Later things weren't so funny.

There were three bedrooms. My parents had the big one at the top of the stairs, another large one at the far end of the hall I shared with my sister, and directly across from that was a small one where my brother slept. One night my brother dreamed that he sat up in bed and saw an
elderly woman sitting at an old fashioned treadle sewing machine with her back to his bed. He says she stopped sewing, turned and looked at him as if to say "What are you doing here?" and then faded away.

The three of us marched up to the previous owner's house the next day and told them what happened. It seems that the wife's mother had lived in the house until shortly before we bought it. She had died in the house and my brother's bedroom had in fact been her sewing room.

We thought this was charming, but curiously, no one thought to change the name of the ghost from Harry to Harriet. It still seemed male. No male they knew of had died there. Nothing ever happened like car keys coming up missing, except in the usual way. Or things flying across the room, but there were sounds.

Heavy boots walking on a hard wood floor for instance. The house had wall-to-wall carpet except for the kitchen. One night my brother and three of his friends decided to hold a séance downstairs. They lit a candle and started asking questions. Flicker once for no, twice for yes or some such nonsense. Naturally they weren't getting much in the way of answers until someone asked it if the entity was a demon. The candle flickered in the affirmative and they began to laugh. Suddenly the candle went out and the sound of those boots started stomping down the hall upstairs. Four sets of feet pounded out the front door leaving on lights and the front door standing open.. No one went back until our parents came home.

It may have been a year after dreaming of the woman sewing that my brother had an encounter with what we have always believed was the essence behind the ghost. He had gotten up in the night to go to the bathroom. Our bathroom was at the head of the stairs. At the bottom landing was the outside wall and set in it was a big diamond shaped window. So when you stepped into the bathroom you just naturally looked down the stairs, which is exactly what my brother did that night. Only this time he didn't just see the street light shining in - it was illuminating a frightening silhouette of a man.

There were no features visible in the face or body, but you could see the outline, as if the man was wearing a long coat with one of those Sherlock Holmes capes on it.  Well there was one other feature that showed - two red glowing spots where the eyes would be.
 

Thinking we had a prowler, my brother shut the bathroom door and leaned against it and listened. There was no sound of footsteps up the stairs. He stood there until his heart slowed back down to normal and then convinced himself that he'd been half asleep and imagined it. He finished his errand and opened the door. Nothing on the landing in front of the door. So far so good. Then he stepped out into the hall and looked back down those stairs. The figure was still there! He dashed down the hall and woke up my sister and me, but by the time we got up and went to look it was gone. And why would a prowler have red glowing eyes like that? Though we neither saw nor heard anything more, we now had an uncomfortable feeling of evil in the house.

I didn't have my brother's ability to see things, but I often sense them. One evening I was home alone. There was a comedy on TV and I was laying on the couch giggling at this movie when I got the feeling someone was standing behind me. The couch sat along the wall under the aforementioned staircase and I was laying with my back to the center of the house - where doors opened into the dining room and to the stairs going down into the basement. At first I was annoyed and thought one of the family had come home, sneaked in the backdoor and was going to scare me. When I looked and nothing was there I got up and checked the entire house - including closets. Nothing.

Then I grabbed a flashlight and went outside; all the way around the house and across the backyard.
Nothing. Confident that I had imagined it, I went back in and settled down to watch the movie. My mind certainly wasn't on ghosts. And it was a comedy after all. But the second time I felt that presence, just a few minutes later, it was much stronger. There just wasn't anything visible there, but the hair on my arms was standing straight up. This time I didn't search, I didn't even question it. I grabbed my car keys and left the house until I knew someone else was at home.

Years passed. The family went its way and I was left the only one still living in the house. One night, very late, I was watching The Shining, admittedly not very smart given these undertones. And again I was sitting with my back to the center of the house. I had a beautiful gray long-haired cat and he was curled up asleep on the hearth rug in front of the gas fireplace. Suddenly, he sat up and looked in my direction - not at me - but over my shoulder into the next room. He sat that way for several minutes while I worked up the courage to look around. Again, nothing was there. But the cat , rather offhandedly made a couple of turns on the rug, got comfortable and went back to sleep. I looked through the house again, but found nothing just as I expected.

Finally, I did see it. I was having a very difficult time at work with someone very abusive. And I was feeling pretty negative and hateful when I went to bed that night. My bed was angled so that the foot aimed toward the door. In the wee hours I went in seconds from a deep sleep to sitting straight up and looking toward the open door. At the same moment I heard myself yell "No!" Just outside the door was a human shaped shadow. There was no long coat or red eyes, it was more like the
shape of someone in a full body leotard - but like an absence of light where a person would be standing rather than a shadow projected on a wall. I still believe that yelling no kept it from coming into the room.

After all, evil can't come in and unless you somehow invite it, right?
 

The moment I saw it it turned and went down the hall out of sight. .I didn't pursue it. I felt safe right where I was thank you very much, but it was a while before I got to sleep. I wasn't afraid of being alone but some nights I would wake to lights playing on the side of the bedroom door. Just the moonlight through the trees, right? Why would I awaken on those particular nights and not every night and be unable to move, sensing something malevolent.
 

Some nights I would hear the footsteps in the hall. At those times I would fight the paralysis and then speak to it, "Walk the halls, I can't stop you. But do it quietly, I'm trying to sleep."
 

At some point in this 35 year curiosity I had a dream. In it I was standing across the street looking at our house and could see this column of grayness, like smoke, that started way above the house and went right down through the center of it. I've never had that explained.
 

Unless...A few years before I moved out, I asked a psychic friend to walk through and give me his impressions. I had told him about the dream and about naming the ghost Harry. The psychic stopped in the dining room in front of a china cabinet built into the wall. A spot in the center of the house. He said the energy emanated from there. He called it energy (not entity). It was male and was negative.
I decided to do something about it. I had a book by a lady called Dion Fortune called "Psychic Self-Defense" and in it she suggested setting out something that would absorb negative energy. Among the alternatives were garlic and onions. The next day I went to the grocery store and bought the biggest onion I could find. I cut it in half and placed it cut side up in a bowl directly over the spot the psychic had indicated. Within 24 hours I started noticing a difference in the atmosphere of the house. It wasn't so close and menacing anymore.

When the onion began to dry up I set out the other half, which I had kept wrapped and refrigerated. I don't recall ever having another thing happen in the house after that.. One thing though, this happened in the middle of August when it was very hot.. And you'd think that onion would have smelled to high heaven, but it didn't.

The interesting conclusion is this. I was telling my brother about the onion some time later and remarked that I thought Harry had left. I mean, this had always been more joke than fear in spite of the incidents I told you about earlier. But my brother got very quiet and then said, 'I think Harry came looking for me.'
 

I asked him what he meant and he told me this story.  He had a family by this time plus two cats and a dog. One night, up late watching TV with the pets sleeping around the living room, he fell asleep in the recliner. When he woke up, the pets had lined themselves up facing the front door, watching it intently. They sat there expectantly and my brother thought maybe someone had knocked on the door and that's what woke him up. But there was no other knock and before he could get up to go to the door, the pets suddenly fled to other parts of the house. Ten seconds later it came- a booming crash against the storm door as if it had been hit by a bettering ram.

My brother jumped to his feet and ran to the door. He looked outside, sure that a car had lost control and crashed into his house, though he had heard no car or any other sound. There was no mark on the door or on any other part of the house - no rocks or anything else that might have been thrown. Just nothing. It was 2 o'clock in the morning and nothing was stirring inside or out. Oddly, no one else in the house was awakened.
 

Until I'd seen the shadow outside my bedroom door I had just accepted we had a ghost. It made for some good story telling at Halloween.
 

But thinking back it seemed strong emotions fed the energy, whatever it was. My mother was an exceptionally emotional person and you could argue that the bang on the back door was a projection of her wish that dad would come home soon. And the figure I saw may have been a projection of my
negative feelings at the time. But a funny movie puts you in a frame of mind diametrically opposed to paranoia and a midnight trip to the bathroom usually makes you rather single-minded. But even assuming that emotion can feed it, you have to start out with an energy present in the first place that can be fed. So I don't know what Harry was.

We lived with it for 35 years and I told my brother he was welcome to Harry. I was tired of him.

 

It sounds like there was more than one entity in the home for whatever reason... I wouldn't take it for granted that the entities are gone, they may just be lying low for at time...

Body Double....

Submitted by "April Reno"
Hailing from: Norwalk CA
Where it happened: Norwalk CA
Posted on: 5/16/05

We moved into this house when in the summer of 89, of course we all heard noises but we thought it was or imagination, we would hear someone in my brother's room playing with his toys but no one was in there, the TV would go on and off, the door opening for no reason, my mom would say it was the wind but why would it also close on its own.

Eventually we started to see things, someone in the hallway watching us as we watched TV, it was weird but we were raised to believe in this type of stuff, but then it started to take on the appearance of my younger brother, we would see "him" running around in the back yard, and it wasn't just us, other people would see him too!  They would ask me "why is your brother always running back and forth?" But it wouldn't be him.

As my brother got older so did the appearance of it. we dealt with it and so did our friends, time went on I got married, my brother and his girlfriend had a baby and I guess in our new lives we didn't focus on our ghost brother, until one day when I talked to him face to face and it wasn't Mondo!

I was in the kitchen shredding cheese and he came up to the window and just looked at me, I looked at him and was like what, and he just looked at me, I said "Let me guess you need help getting the baby and his stuff out of the car", he just kept staring at me with a smile, I looked at him and he was wearing a white shirt, ok Mondo I went out the door and my brother wasn't there, the car wasn't there, nothing. I was kind of pissed but oh well, when he came home it turned out it wasn't him, they were out having pictures of the baby taken, and my brother was wearing a burgundy 49er shirt.

We don't live in that house anymore, I live down the street, he's still around the house the new kids told me about him, about a week after we moved we were outside and one of my little cousins was crying that they wanted to go and play football with Mondo, we told him Mondo was at work, now this kid is 3 yrs old, he tells us "no he's at home playing with his football in the front yard."!!!
 

This appears on the surface to be somewhat similar to a doppleganger. What other activity if any takes place on the property? Did the "Mondo" duplicate ever try to lure small children away from the safety of the home?

Lady of the Holler...

Submitted by "Bill Stephens"
Hailing from: Johnson Creek, KY            
Where it happened: Johnson Creek KY
Posted on: 5/16/05

When I was a little boy my dad would tell us ghost story. One time he told us a story that made the hair on my neck stand up it was about a hollow that was haunted .He told this story~ 

When he was younger he walk to school he had to leave his house before daylight. as he walked down the long dark hollow he heard something walking behind him although he knew that he was alone so he stopped and turned around and saw nothing the sound had stopped always. A little scared he turned and through a rock on the hill thinking it might had been an animal the rock would scare it off he started to walk again. He heard something walking behind again. So he started to run.

As fast as he ran it ran. But I didn’t believe him. Until I got older and saw for myself. I went to the hollow with my sisters to play a prank on some friends.  We would tell our friends that it was haunted and they would hear and see things that would scare them to death. To make sure that they got scare I would hide in the woods and make different sound just for laughs. We had done this many times but this time instead of my usual spot I went to hide by the barn (nobody lived in the hollow anymore) and waited for them to come walking by while waiting there in the dark.

I saw two white figures floating above the road. I was scared, I started to walk to my car. I turned around and saw the figure slowly descending into the ground so I got in the car where my sisters where waiting. I started to tell them what happened they stopped me and told me that they saw something, turns out,  we had seen the same white figure.

By the time our friends showed up we were to scared to scare them. On this trip we never figured out what the white figure was. I now believe my dad. (Bill)
 

That was a good one! Turns out you got spooked instead of doing the spooking!

Elevator Angel....

Submitted by "Gabriel D."
Hailing from: Lovely WV       
Where it happened: Huntington, WV
Posted on: 5/16/05

This isn't a typical ghost story... but it something that I can't explain. It was January of 2004 I can't remember the exact date, though I believe it was the 12th. My grandmother was in the hospital - she had undergone surgery on the blood vessels in her neck to remove a clog, and it failed, leaving her partially paralyzed and unable to talk or move. She had just passed away, and I had gone downstairs to find my family down there and tell them.

I let the rest of them on the elevator ahead of me, then waited for the next one so I could ride alone. On the 2nd floor a young woman not much older than me got on the elevator.  She immediately saw that something was wrong, and asked. I told her about my grandma, and she said she was sorry, and told me to trust that God would take care of her. being a Christian, I told her I knew, and was
just sad she was gone. -note: I never once told her my name-

When we reached the fourth floor, we both got off, she went one way, I went the
other. just down the hall from the elevators was a meeting room for families to make arrangements and so forth. I stood out in the hall, in sight of the elevators. I was surprised to see the same young woman walk back towards the elevators a few minutes after we had gotten off. But the really surprising part: she called to me by my name!

She then got on the elevator, and was gone. with the grief of losing my grandma, I thought little of it until that night, when I realized the peculiarity of her calling me by my first name, since she was not part of my family, I never met her before that time, and she hadn't come down that part of the hall to hear anyone else say my name.
 

Angels show up in the least likely of places...

Like a Candle in the wind....

Submitted by "Jason B."
Hailing from: Richland Center WI      
Where it happened: Jackson TN
Posted on: 5/16/05

Very Creepy!! We've had other stories which reported candles exploding in the presence of entities. Sounds as if the children are attracted to your niece & nephew.

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