Sunday, June 13, 2010

haunted

are there ghosts among us?
since moving to an old house (it was built in 1898), we find ourselves in conversations with people about haunted houses. despite actually hoping this house is haunted, it hasn't thus far shown any sign of it, unless that sense of irritation i sometimes feel overwhelmed by when i'm working in the kitchen isn't caused by missing my smeg stove and refrigerator from the old house but by a dissatisfied spirit instead. maybe one who, like me, has good taste in kitchen appliances.

there's a guy in the neighborhood who told me about one evening when he was watching t.v. and felt a weight on his shoulder. he thought the dog had come up behind him and laid his chin there, but when he turned, the dog wasn't there. the same dog raises its hackles and growls at thin air, so he's pretty sure that his house is haunted. he says occasionally all of the pictures on the wall are suddenly hanging crooked. i love such stories, they give me goosebumps in a very good way.

we had friends to dinner last evening and they live in an old farmhouse as well. they've traced the origins of their place to 1600-something and in one of the barns found evidence of a stone floor from that original building. their project is even bigger than ours and they actually think our kitchen is nice in comparison to the condition of theirs. (i haven't seen theirs yet, but find it hard to imagine how bad it must be if ours looks good in comparison).

the first night they slept in their house last summer, they had a strong feeling that they were unwelcome. it freaked them out so much they actually got up in the middle of the night and drove back to their old apartment to sleep. regularly, they wake up in the night and the humidity has shot up to 75%, from a normal 60%. they actually got a humidity detector (what's one of those called?) and documented it. they wake up from it and then within minutes it dissipates and goes back down to the normal 60%. they've tried to trace it to the furnace and such, but can't find any physical reason for the humidity swing (and they're both engineers, so they should be able to). one night, after it happened, they could hear their dog down at the bottom of the stairs, wagging his tail and greeting someone, as if it was one of them going down the stairs. they regularly hear footsteps overhead when they're watching t.v. and have combed the attic, looking for evidence of an animal, but there is none.

they also have both seen a blueish male figure passing through a wall and crossing the room. the lights flicker when he's there. they took a closer look at the wall where he passes through and realized that there had once been a door there but it is now covered up. they were both in the room and they turned to one another and one said, "did you see.." "...the blue man," finished the other. they had both individually seen him and not said anything.

i get the most delicious creepy sense when talking about such things. i get completely covered in goosebumps, but i feel it in a very thrilling way and i don't feel frightened by it. in all honesty, i totally have ghost envy. i want one too, but i 'm not sure you can wish your way to one.

husband and i laid awake talking about it last night (that's what you get for drinking coffee at 11 p.m.). husband, thinks it's flashes of access to another dimension. one that we don't normally see or feel. we recently saw the others, a 2001 film with nicole kidman (who i normally hate), where you realize at the end that she and her children and the servants are dead and still living in a big house that a family has moved into. it's a well-done film and raises that question of whether when we die we just move to another plane, but still hang out in the surroundings where we were. if so, think of the layers upon layers in an old house. i do wish i had access to the ones here.

12 comments:

Trina Y. said...

I love this story today! I went into a hotel in Jerome Arizona a couple years ago and the hotel is haunted. I walked up a stair well and felt a whoosh by my ear... like a draft and scrammed out of there so fast! Def got the willies! The employees say that after they pile all the chairs up for the night in the restaurant the chairs all get put down and they know ghosts do it. The hotel is very old and historical and the town itself is way creeeeeepy you would looooove it!

I believe ghosts are souls that are stuck some how and I just dont know how they got that way...

trina
www.mommeville.com

will said...

I've never had a ghostly experience nor do I know anyone who has related the tiniest of ghost stories of their own.

I chalk ghosts up to the human quality of malleable perceptions, instantly making assumptions despite a lack of facts and because many people are susceptible and willing to understand or to explain unknown things as spirits, ghosts, devils, elves and other folklore characters instead of using logic, science and other unemotional factors of the physical world.

In other words, ghosts are handy explanations when it come to not understanding out-of-the-ordinary events.

kristina said...

I don't need ghosts to get scared of the dark, so I'd prefer it if you keep your house ghostfree, at least when I visit ;-)
Your new blog layout and header look great!

Char said...

i wondered how that movie ended. :)

parallel dimensions always makes me think of michael crichton.

Sammi said...

I tend to see things, strange things sometimes that I can't explain. I don't know if I'd be comfortable sharing my house with a ghost.

I definitely believe things are captured in time, whether that means our spirits, or our soul continues to float on, or whether that means means occasionally we see things that have already happened... like sounds that have been trapped in stone like its been taped.

In one way I hope ghosts exist because its an awful thought that when we die, that's it.

Anonymous said...

Goosebumps here too. That's a great story!

rxBambi said...

do you read willow manor? check her out, her house is haunted.
I've had a couple "experiences" that I thought could be ghosts or souls or "something" that I couldn't name, and I kinda think the house I grew up in may have been haunted, but it might have just been scary.
I'm just as happy to NOT have a haunted house, but it's kinda fun to think about

Anonymous said...

ghosts in the house? how exciting!

Tara said...

I am a bit conflicted about ghosts. I believe that they are real, but I am a bit of a wimp. Your descriptions of strange unexplained happenings gave me goosebumps and the fear started to catch in my throat. I can't watch scary movies either, in case you were wondering. But one experience has made be think that the may not all be bad. When I was about 16, I was studying for exams in winter. I dozed off over my biology text books, as one does, and a cushion fell off my bed and blocked the air-intake on the fan heater I had on the floor. The heater over-heated and exploded, setting the cushion and my bed on fire. I was fast asleep until I felt someone grab the front of my pjamas and haul me bodily to my feet. I saw the flames and smoke and I screamed. I had thought it was my Dad who pulled me up, and it was only afterwards that I realised he ran into the room (getting burns on his feet in the process) after I was awake and standing on my bed. After someone had pulled me up. To this day, I believe it was my godfather, by Dad's brother, who passed away a few months before.
Ghost? Or benevolent guardian spirit? I'll never know, but I will always be thankful. Another 5 minutes asleep and the flames would have reached the cardboard of the ceiling and the whole house would have probably burnt down. As it was, my bed was burnt, some bedding, my side-table, but that's all. My hair wasn't even singed.

mrs mediocrity said...

I say be careful what you wish for...although I get what you mean, and I think there is energy that survives, I like the way it is presented in The Lovely Bones, if I could choose a hereafter it would be that one, although I certainly wouldn't choose her manner of death.

Gwen said...

i totally need to hook you up with my friend Sara. She's way into the spirit world and has some crazy stories. I can't explain her whole world view right now. It's too complicated. But one day, when we meet, I will.

Jill C. said...

A couple of years ago, my husband and I stayed in a hotel in Pennsylvania that had been a glass factory back in the mid 1800's for a week. Everywhere you wnet it felt like someone was walking right behind you when no one was there. It also felt like you were always being watched, and we had a two story suite, every day we heard footsteps above us when there was no one upstairs!
It really "spooked" my husband (he never wants to go back there)but I excited by it!