The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

I love ghost stories.  I still have my ghost story comics from when I was a kid.

I now have real ghost stories.  I'd love to hear about y'all's ghost stories, and not ones that you heard from your cousin's second uncle's daughter's husband.

I would love to hear your personal stories and I'll share some of my mine!

~Gnowann

 
I believe there are three types of "ghosts:"  1) videos or images of a strong occurrence that happened in a place--no being present, just shadows; 2) human spirits that still linger between the planes; and 3) spirits that have never been human, whether you call them demons or something else.

I have one of probably the last variety.

My husband is almost never away overnight without me, but last year he had a funeral to attend out of province (one or two nights) and later was away for several weeks to get the next level of his trade apprenticeship. It was during one of those, but I can't remember which.

Anyway, one day, throughout the day, I noticed (hearing and feeling) the house having slow rumbles or going thumpthumpthump. I'm in a basement suite in an older house ('60s, basement suite added 20 or 30 years later), so I just figured it was one of a) upstairs neighbours, b) house noises, or c) semi trucks driving by, although as it got later, it felt like it got louder and more frequent. I assumed it was just more trucks (maybe a busy shipping day?) and more noticeable because things got quieter at night.

I checked to make sure no earthquakes had been reported before I went to bed, but I still had trouble sleeping through it.

Eventually I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to repeated, loud noises and the house unmistakably shaking with each one. It had progressed to BANGBANGBANGBANG. BANGBANGBANGBANG. BANGBANGBANGBANG.

I jumped out of bed trying to process where it was coming from, and finally realized it was the front door. I'm thinking 'okay, either cops that I've accidentally ignored and are approaching breaking the door down [I was not doing anything illegal, but wrong doors happen and I've been wellness checked twice, plus sleepy] OR I have to call the cops because someone else is trying to break down the door.' Thankfully, although none of the house windows face to the doorstep, there is a tiny decorative window on the door, so I pushed the curtain away and looked, leaning on the pounding door.

No one there, but it continues. I'm 5'3, so while I can see through the window straight on and upward, I can't see downward through the window very far, and end up using shoes and stuff to boost myself as I grip the door and try to get different angles because clearly something is there.

I got the right angle, and look down to see a child-like figure (very visible for being on a dark step), using both fists for each BANG, and I was nauseous. I don't know if there's a good word for it, but it was just an overwhelming feeling of wrongness.

I used all the energy I had to just shove, and the pounding stopped. I did not check out the window again, but did somehow stumble back into bed and manage to fall asleep. Warded the shit out of the house in the morning.

[usually I don't post witchy feeling stories/resolutions in ghost threads, but you mentioned inhuman things and I didn't want to skip it]

 
Wow.  Your story raised the goosebumps on my arms.  I hate that shit.

I lived on an island where I literally had a house on an Indian burial ground.  When there were big storms and high tides, occasionally the sand would be washed away from the bones, but the Conservancy had enough skeletons that they said to just let them lay.

My philosophy was leave them alone and mostly, they'll leave you alone.

But I had some bad experiences, similar to what you experienced.  Some of these beings were not benign, but they seemed to mostly just feed on fear and seemed to laugh at the fear they caused.  I was never physically hurt, but looking back, they seem like they were spiritual bullies.  I have a few stories on what they did in my house, almost trying to goad me, like your little manifestation.  I just refuse to play their game, even though I shake like a leaf!

I love ghost stories.  I still have my ghost story comics from when I was a kid.

I now have real ghost stories.  I'd love to hear about y'all's ghost stories, and not ones that you heard from your cousin's second uncle's daughter's husband.

I would love to hear your personal stories and I'll share some of my mine!

~Gnowann

Thank you so much, I love ghost stories and I enjoy reading them! I have had many experiences, but one was really cool.

I was at my Aunt's house and had to share a tall bed with my granny, and my toy poodle. The bed faced the bedroom door. We were fast asleep.

I was dreaming of battling a "pig demon', kind of an anthropomorphic entity. I used to see them a lot. I did some sort of Isis spell on it and it effected it in the dream. I woke up. Then the dog, at my foot rose up, and *SLAM* the door slammed by itself. But the dog had actually rose up and barked at the door before the entity slammed it.

I was so scared. It woke my aunt, granny, and the dog, of course, up. I pretended I was asleep....

My aunt shouted asking if everything was okay, granny replied repeating "SOMEONE SLAMMED THE DOOR. SOMEONE SLAMMED THE DOOR."

My aunt is superstitious and watches a lot of ghost shows. So, she was unbelievably scared because there was no one in the hallway and everyone else was sound asleep. The house was safe. She put on some "white noise" and tried to get a restful sleep that night.

Later, I told my granny about it when we were alone, and she told me she was a witch, too.

I would love to hear your personal stories and I'll share some of my mine!

~Gnowann

 
My house is old and when you're downstairs you can hear everything going on upstairs. One night I was downstairs (with an empty house) and I heard footsteps above me, so I went to check on it and the only thing up there was my dog, so i brought her downstairs and I could still hear someone walking between the kitchen and living room upstairs.

I would love to hear your personal stories and I'll share some of my mine!

~Gnowann

 
There are a few that stick out the most in my mind, though one of them isn't so much a ghost story as a "Okay that's weird" story. So maybe a bit of High Strangeness.

The first occurred about 7 or so years ago. I lived in an area that was rapidly developed over the last 50 years but still tried to maintain some of the historical aspects of the civil war. One such vestige was the park across the street from my apartment. The park was tiny and held 2 tombstones enclosed in a short iron gate with a slab of stone beside it.

I went there just to chill out and sat on the stone slab and placed my arms and head on my folded knees. After roughly 5-10 minutes sitting there, I started to hear muted gun and canon fire. It was very strange. Like hearing it from far away and through a pillow. I think it faded pretty quick- maybe 3 minutes?

Anyway, I got up and walked back across the path through the clump of trees that led into the park and walked right into the smell of sulfur. It was hella off. Normally you smell pollen but this was obviously a sulfur smell and I tried to walk through the area again to see if I could smell it again. No dice.

There were actually quite a few experiences in that apartment that I tend to attribute to the area we lived in.

The second story involves when I was living with a cousin in the old family home in downtown DC. My cousin normally wasn't home very much but the moment you walked in that house it just felt heavy. You felt like there was just this pressure pushing down on you. I think she felt it too which is why she was probably rarely home.

My bedroom was the first door to the left up a flight of narrow stairs that no kid would ever have fun riding down. Believe me. I tried.

For some reason I NEVER wanted to leave that door open when I slept in that house. I normally don't care about that kind of stuff. I wasn't allowed to close my door as a kid so I wasn't used to doing it (and still don't) but something about that house made me Nope all of that.

I only stayed in that house for about 2 months and was glad to move out. While talking to the Aunt who still owned the place, she told me my grandmother would walk up and down the stairs before her death and most just attributed it to Alzheimer's.

The weird thing was I never told her about the whole "Not sleeping with the door open" thing and I don't even know HOW we got on the subject but it caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up.

Finally. In my former home, a condo I shared with my ex-husband, I also felt a similar heaviness. Generally nothing really strange would happen save a few items going missing that would pop back up once an offering was made on the altar in the living room (Sangria and honey usually did the trick).

The house was already naturally dark due to the amount of trees around it but it seemed no matter how many lights I turned on there was always a...darkness to the place. Not like an "OMG, so dark!" kind of darkness but a layer of...I don't know I can't really describe it. No amount of smudging or cleansing could remove that heavy feeling.

The weirdness occurred following a visit by one of my best friends. She told me she felt unwelcome there and slightly on edge. The way you feel when you have to visit a person who doesn't like you (and you know it). She then said when she left, she kept looking over her shoulder. She felt like she might have been followed and she never visited us again. I never told her anything about the feeling of that condo and still haven't.

Apartment I moved into after my divorce? Noped it from orbit.

Apartment I ended up staying in, temporary, with my current partner since my last place made me feel off? Light and breezy.

Current apartment? Light and breezy.

So if it feels off? It is off.

I love ghost stories.  I still have my ghost story comics from when I was a kid.

I now have real ghost stories.  I'd love to hear about y'all's ghost stories, and not ones that you heard from your cousin's second uncle's daughter's husband.

I would love to hear your personal stories and I'll share some of my mine!

~Gnowann

Read ALL the ghost stories!!! [Insert stupid meme here]

The first summer my fiancé and I were together, we used to go ghost hunting with a couple of our friends. I'm a full believer in the supernatural, but our two friends were both kinda skeptical.

We would always go to this one road that was in two separate towns and just sit in the car. They were both made into dead ends, but there was still an old dirt path that connected them, hence one road. To be honest I don't know how ANY of the numerous houses on either end were occupied, because the entire street was just creepy.

We went to one side more often than the other, because there was more activity. I've seen a little boy riding his bike at 1am then ride into the like 10 foot high cliff along the side of the road and disappear. My fiancé almost always got scratched up all to hell, and after our friend's name (who wasn't with us that time) appeared on his arm, we tried to leave, and the 6 month old car wouldn't start.

One time, we'd downloaded a ghost radar app on our phones (I know, they're just a gimmick) and it would say random words along with having an actual radar telling us where the "ghosts*" are. BUT. After it said "Ryan" on one phone and "army" on another almost simultaneously, we kinda freaked the f*** out. Our friend Ryan is in the army and was at the time on some training thing in Europe. And we hadn't talked about him at all, so it's not even like the mic picked it up and spat it back at us.

I'm also a firm believer that animals can leave behind at least residual energies. My dog that I'd had since I was a kid was crate trained as a puppy so he always liked those small spaces. It happened to be that there was only about 3 feet between my bed and the wall at my mom's house. So he always slept in that corner. And like all dogs he scratched whenever he damn well pleased. Which meant in the middle of the night up against my bed, quite often. He was big enough that when he did scratch himself, he shook my bed pretty decently. And even after he passed, I'd still feel the bed shake every so often. Even after my fiancé moved into my mom's house with me a few years later, he felt it too. But of course he attributed it to trucks or a train passing by or something.

Oh and speaking of my mom's house, it was a two family apartment with us upstairs and my uncle and his girlfriend downstairs. Most of the time they'd stay at her house in NYC, but they needed a place closer to home for his kids when he had them on the weekends. So during the week the downstairs apartment was always empty. Except you could always hear people moving around, to the point where my mom thought someone was having a dinner party once.

*I put it in quotes because I don't believe smartphones, as smart as they may be, can actually detect paranormal activity.

My friends joke I'm haunted by a bathroom ghost that tries to scare off guys that it knows aren't good for me. Luckily it hasn't bothered my fiance so I guess that means he's a keeper.

 
Or your fiance IS the ghost.

I love ghost stories.  I still have my ghost story comics from when I was a kid.

I grew up in an area of the mid-west [Americas] that according to legend even the aboriginals tried to avoid. Believe it or not the history was plagued with all sorts of things - for example, in a ten year period, over 400 people lost their lives due to what we'll call "accidents". Attracts a lot of not-so-human activity.

Probably why have never really given haunted properties [all the family properties / my own except the newest one are over 100 years, and the newest one is 60 years old] a second thought. You sort of get used to having "guests", though given as they were there first you're the guest.

And yes we give everything a thought before accepting the potential of ghosts. After all, like above with the 'ghostly fiancé' there's almost always a earthern reason. Like the old furnace making a ruckus [my friend had a "ghost" in her apartment for example].



My brother has a very good ghost story. For it didn't just involve him but the entire boys side of gym class.

As the boys [14 of them] were getting changed what comes walking through the door - no not the doorway, the door - but a humanoid vaguely male shape that was glowing a soft blue. This humanoid walked past them and disappeared into the shower room. Some of the braver boys [brother included] ran after it and turned on the lights only to find that they were completely & utterly alone. It had vanished into thin air.

According to what was said, mum did a bit of digging as this definitely wasn't news that made the papers, one of the workers had been killed as they were putting the gym in decades before we arrived there. Just, like the 400 above, an "accident" & he was crushed to death.

That was nearly twenty years ago. My brother doesn't like speaking of it often but the story hasn't change by a millimeter when he recounts it.



But as I said we've lived in a number of haunted houses. The last place the previous owner's husband had died there. He would come home, like clockwork, at 11pm and flip the front lights on. Factory / steel work is a hard grind job and if that didn't stop him for 32 years, death it seemed didn't fair any better.

I know this because I am an extremely light sleeper, like my father, and oftentimes just putting a foot past the threshold into my room [or walking by] is enough to bring me from sleep to complete awareness [I don't require those seconds / minutes to figure out what is going on] and even on my feet. My room was the one closest to the front doors. This went on for about two years until 'enough was enough'.

I remember waiting up, in the living room, until yet again like clockwork the lights turned on. I got up, walked over, put my hand over the switch and said very respectfully sir, you don't live here anymore - certainly there were places you have to go visit before turning the light off. He didn't play with that switch for the next three years I lived there.