Saturday, December 6, 2008

Do you believe in ghosts?

Most of our close friends and family know that we think we have a ghost in our house. For a long time, it was easy for me to write things that happened off as coincidence, but after weird things happen a certain number of times, you have got to begin to wonder.

Now ... our house is only three years old. BUT ... it was built on land that was likely used during the Civil War. The First Battle of Bull Run was fought a couple miles from here and we believe that soldiers most likely walked across our land to get to Bull Run. Call me crazy but that is my theory.

So ... why do we think we have a ghost? Well ...

*Our dog has gotten out of her kennel several times ... each time in the middle of the night. We will wake up at 3 a.m. to Zoe sniffing our faces. No, nobody was sleep walking. No, the dog did not get out all by herself. The latches on her kennel are very hard to get closed and there is no way she could push it to the side with all 9 pounds of her. The weirdest thing is that her kennel has two doors ... one on the front and one of the side. We use the front door, but the ghost uses the side door. And ... we joke that our ghost must really like Zoe, because the nights that she is let out of her kennel are always nights that follow a day that she has spent a lot of time in her kennel because we were gone. Weird.

*Our television has turned on by itself ... a lot. I know this happens to a lot of people, but it is still WEIRD. Almost every time we come home from being away on vacation or something, the television is always on. Guess our ghost got lonely while we were gone.

*The channels on the television have turned when we have been 20 feet away from the remote. One night, Kyle and his friend, Shea, were standing in the kitchen and the channels started turning on the television. Nobody else was around and the remote was laying on the ottoman. Needless to say, Shea left our house. LOL.

*Our ghost likes toys ... toys that we have no played with for a long time. Toys that are in the bottom of the toy bin. Toys that we thought had dead batteries. The ghost gets those toys to sing when we can't. The ghost also only likes to play with the toys in the middle of the night.

*Our ghost liked Mason's old potty chair ... always during the night. The chair sang when you lifted the seat on it and when it wasn't in use, we always put the seat down. Well, the ghost would lift the seat and let the thing sing in the middle of the night.

*Mason goes to sleep with a desk lamp on every night and we shut it off when we go to bed. One night, Kyle and I were getting ready to go to bed, so Kyle went to shut the light off. No sooner did he walk back into our room and the light went back on. We looked at each other, albeit spooked, and he walked back over to check the light. The switch was up, so he shut it off again. No sooner did he walk back into our room and the light turned on AGAIN. Meanwhile, Mason was sound asleep in his bed. WEIRD. Kyle shut the light off again and I think the ghost finally left it alone.

*A couple months ago, I had been thawing a can of orange juice in the kitchen sink. I had left there a couple days too long, so it was really thawed. I was upstairs and heard the sound of metal dropping, so I went downstairs to investigate. The metal top of the orange juice can was laying clear across the kitchen, while the can of orange juice was still in the sink. The weirdest thing is ... you know how you have to pull the white ring off of the can in order to get the metal top off? Well, the white ring was still intact and had never been pulled.

*There have been several times that I have heard doors shut. One time, I was so spooked out from hearing so many consecutive noises that I called my sister-in-law and made her stay on the phone with me while I searched the house.

*We think our ghost bothers Mason at night. Like many kids, he is convinced that there is a ghost in his room ... only I believe him! Last night, Mason came in scared to death. He woke Kyle up and kept saying, "Ghost. Ghost." Kyle said he was literally shaking, so he went into his room to lay with him. Kyle said he laid there shaking like crazy with his eyes bulging out of his head. He was SO scared. Do you really act that way if you are a kid and you are making up your ghost stories? I don't think so.

Like I said, I could probably write all of these things off as coincidence, but when they happen over and over, it makes you wonder. The only thing I could never explain is Zoe getting out of her kennel ... SOMEONE let her out of that kennel and it was not us.

Lots of our family has stayed here and I think they concur that we have a ghost. In fact, I think Kyle's sister said she saw a little girl standing in the doorway of Mason's room one night. I guess the little girl part goes against my Civil War theory, but I do think the ghost has an obsession with Mason's room.

Do you believe in ghosts? What weird stuff happens at your house?

10 comments:

  1. Yikes Bethany! Hopefully your ghost is just of the playful variety!

    When I was about 10 we moved to upstate NY after my mother remarried to a military man - he was originally from a small town there and we stayed with his mom while we looked for a house. Her house was VERY old (early 1800s), used to be a funeral home and of course many Revolutionary skirmishes were in that area. Needless to say, the place was VERY haunted.

    We all thought my grandma was off her rocker until stuff started happening to my mom... my stepdad's uncle, who had owened the house, had passed away a few decades prior and he had been a bit off mentally. We would come home to find my grandma's dog let outside with her collar off and stuck in a snow bank (several times), we would hear running (not walking lol) up and down the creaky stairs at night and one night while my mom was taking a bath she pulled back the shower curtain to find an old man sitting on the toilet grinning at her crazily. She came running out of the bathroom naked and screaming LOL. A few days later she was looking through an old photo album and saw a picture of her peeping tom - Uncle Stanley.

    After that we all slept in the living room together. One night we went upstairs to get some fresh blankets and pillows and headed back down the stairs - my grandma first, me second, my mom last. As soon as I was off the staircase my mom screamed and started running down the stairs and at the bottom she flew onto the floor. She said she felt someone chasing her and then felt like someone ran through her.

    A few days later my cousins were over and we were playing upstairs in one of the bedrooms while my mom was downstairs on the phone with her sister. The phone had a little light-up button that said "In Use" that obviously lit up when someone was on the phone. Well she finished her call and hung up and the light was still on. She called upstairs to us to ask if we were playing on my grandma's phone in her bedroom (the only other phone in the house) and of course we weren't. She picked up the phone and it was just silence, no dial tone. She went upstairs to my grandma's bedroom and the door had been closed and locked from the inside. We freaked out and ran outside to sit in the car and my mom went to the neighbor's house to use their phone to call my stepdad's cousin, Uncle Stanley's son. He came over with a rifle and searched the house. When he went upstairs my grandma's bedroom was wide open. We were still sitting in the car in the driveway while they were in the house and my cousins and I looked up and saw a face in the attic window - a balding old guy. A few minutes later the adults came running out of the house, my stepdad's cousin shaking and pale - he said when he went into the attic he could feel his father's presence.

    We moved out after that LOL and the weird stuff continued to happen to my grandma and soon after she sold the house to a land developer and it was knocked down. A few weeks later Uncle Stanley turned up at his wife's house, where he would wake her up to the sound of a body falling off the couch - apparently he used to get drunk and fall asleep on the couch and then fall off during the night.

    So um yeah, we believe in ghosts.

    If you are wanting your guest to leave, you could try just gently speaking out, telling them it's okay to let go and to move on. It could work, or they might be stubborn like my uncle LOL!

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  2. LOL I actually have talked to him/her a couple times. The last time was after the OJ incident ... "I said I know you are here and as long as you don't cause trouble, it is okay. I just want to know if I know you. If I know you, do something to signal to me that I know you." LOL. Nothing happened. LOL.

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  3. I absolutley believe in ghosts!! My husband and I both really like watching the show Ghost Hunters on SciFi, it is pretty neat and there is stuff on there that you can not ignore, it is real.

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  4. You could play worship music all day and rebuke the enemy each day lol.

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  5. Oh, I TOTALLY believe! Our bedroom TV turns HALF ON! It turns to either a red or green screen, and you can KIND Of see the picture behind the color. No sound though. It ONLY happens at night when we're in the room, and ONLY when Dean is home, never when he's out of town. Lights that turn on/off by themselves. Dogs that JUMP up from being sound asleep, like someone kicked them. Angela talking about "The santa lady" in her room at night. I ask her about it, and she says there's a lady in a red santa suit. So..my thoughts? Dean's previous wife died here..in our bedroom..of breast cancer 2 years before we met. Yeah, she's still here. Oh, and she was a biker too, and her favorite outfit was a red leather riding suit! Lots of other things that happen here..too much for a blog comment. Do you remember the pictures I posted on downsyn of the house my son was renting? FREAKY!!!!

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  6. Okay, guys, you're totally freaking me out. I've never seen/heard anything myself, but I totally believe in it. Nightmares tonight... LOL

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  7. I believe in them. Thankfully nothing too spooky has happened to me. My dog did completely freak me out one night by stand on the foot of my bed and bark/growling at something for several minutes. I turned the light on and saw nothing but the dog did. That was when I was in HS. All my siblings believe my parents house is haunted as well.

    I love hearing stories about ghost. Do you watch Paranormal State? I love that show.

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  8. I hate hate hate sleeping at your house! It freaks me out. Just reading your post gives me goose bumps!

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  9. There's a few things you can do if you want to do some ghost hunting on your own. Look at pictures taken in your house, or take pictures in "ghostly" areas and see if there are any flash spots or light orbs in the pictures. Also, at night when you all go to bed or when you are not home, place a tape recorder in areas where you have had experiences (next to Zoe's kennel, the kitchen, Mason's room) and play back later to find out if any suspicious sounds can be heard. And like another blogger said, when things happen, calmly encourage the spirit to move on toward the light where friends and family are waiting for them. Sounds cheesy, but this is all the stuff you see on all the real ghost shows (I watch those too!). I'm a believer!!!
    -Meegs

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  10. total believer here. I watch the sci fi channel show "Ghost Hunters". you should call them. Company named TAPS out of Rhode Island, they always jump right to it when there are children being frightened. Would be cool to see your family on TV one day!!

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