Ahoy hoy! 
I have started this thread for members to tell of their own encounters with our friends from the other side, their own ghost stories or UFO sightings or anything of that nature. I only have one of my own to contribute, and I’m not even certain that it was an encounter with a ghost, but I’ll tell it here, and perhaps this group of horror-lovers will feel a little bit of that chill we all love so much trickling down their spines…
First, a bit of scene setting. When I was a child, there was a field behind our house and a forest on the other side of the field. Standing on the edge of that forest, barely obscured by the trees, was an abandoned, tumble-down old cottage known to everyone in the area as “the haunted house”. As far as I know, there were no ghost stories connected with the haunted house; people just called it that because it was a spooky old place, standing alone with its roof collapsing and the windows smashed, the garden overgrown.
It had not been inhabited in the era of car ownership and there was no road to the house, just a muddy footpath through a dark and steep forest where the sun never seemed to penetrate. Even at the height of summer, you only had to go a few feet into the forest and the temperature would drop and you would be in a dark grey gloom, your only companions rabbits and foxes and owls. I used to take a shortcut through the forest sometimes going to and from the bus stop to work, and it always gave me a quiet and lovely thrill, as though I was briefly in the company of elves or fairies. A magical place…
The garden of this house was full of apple trees and straggling bramble bushes. In the summer, the scent of rotting apples and the gently soporific sound of bees would fill the air, and the overgrown thorny bushes would grab at your ankles as you picked your way along the path, snagging on your clothes and not letting you go…
Naturally, the local children all used to go into the haunted house to play - mostly just creeping around, daring each other to explore a little bit further and then suddenly losing their nerve and coming running out with lots of squeals and nervous laughter. Older kids used to go there too, to drink and smoke and spray the walls. You know the type of place, I’m sure. Most neighbourhoods have one.
Anyway, we are finally getting to the story of my one and only possible brush with the supernatural. When I was about 13 or so, me and my friends discovered the ouija board. We used to go to various places to hold seances - friends’ houses when their parents were out, and even on one occasion a local hotel where one of us had a part-time job. (The hotel itself is a whole other story - an ancient Scottish castle which boasted several ghosts, and was full of tiny little corridors and neglected rooms where curious children could creep in with their ouija boards… ) And - you’ve guessed it - one day, somebody suggested that we take our ouija board up to the haunted house and see what friendly spirits might be lurking, waiting to meet us.
We placed our fingers on the glass and the usual thing happened. The glass began flying around the board wildly, bashing at the letters in no apparent order. We were scared, we were giggling, all a little bit hyper with fear. Then, suddenly, the glass slowed down and a name was spelled out. I forget the name now, but one of the girls in the group was shocked and upset. “That’s someone in my family,” she said. Alive or dead?, we asked her. Dead. We asked this person a few questions, and they answered - I can’t remember what the questions were now, but I don’t think they were important. What was important was that this girl was growing sadder and sadder, and began to cry. She was getting seriously upset, and what had begun as a giggle was turning into quite a disturbing experience. Some members of the group (they were only young children) started getting scared and asked us to stop the seance, crying and saying that they wanted to go home. A few seconds later, the whole group of children were running out of the haunted house faster than we had ever run out of it before, and we didn’t stop running (or crying) until we got beyond that overgrown garden with its thorny bushes grabbing at your ankles and trying to hold you back…
In our rush to get out of there, we had left the ouija board and the glass behind. The girl who they belonged to was desperate to get them back (“My brother’ll kill me!”), but we were all too scared to set foot in that house to go and get them. The next day, myself and a couple of friends went back in to collect them, and we found... the ouija board had been burned. It was still there and still recognisable, but it was as black as charcoal all over… Good grief - I have never been so scared in all my life!
Obviously this is far from being a definite encounter with the paranormal. Some other kids might have been in there overnight and they might have burned it for a prank, or just because they were bored. But I still remember that charred and blackened board after that terrifying seance, and, if I’m lying in bed at night and it comes to mind, the darkness of the room starts to feel a whole lot more threatening and a lot more uncomfortable…
Does anybody here have any ghost stories of their own they would like to share? I love hearing a good real-life ghost story, the uncannier the better!
I have started this thread for members to tell of their own encounters with our friends from the other side, their own ghost stories or UFO sightings or anything of that nature. I only have one of my own to contribute, and I’m not even certain that it was an encounter with a ghost, but I’ll tell it here, and perhaps this group of horror-lovers will feel a little bit of that chill we all love so much trickling down their spines…
First, a bit of scene setting. When I was a child, there was a field behind our house and a forest on the other side of the field. Standing on the edge of that forest, barely obscured by the trees, was an abandoned, tumble-down old cottage known to everyone in the area as “the haunted house”. As far as I know, there were no ghost stories connected with the haunted house; people just called it that because it was a spooky old place, standing alone with its roof collapsing and the windows smashed, the garden overgrown.
It had not been inhabited in the era of car ownership and there was no road to the house, just a muddy footpath through a dark and steep forest where the sun never seemed to penetrate. Even at the height of summer, you only had to go a few feet into the forest and the temperature would drop and you would be in a dark grey gloom, your only companions rabbits and foxes and owls. I used to take a shortcut through the forest sometimes going to and from the bus stop to work, and it always gave me a quiet and lovely thrill, as though I was briefly in the company of elves or fairies. A magical place…
The garden of this house was full of apple trees and straggling bramble bushes. In the summer, the scent of rotting apples and the gently soporific sound of bees would fill the air, and the overgrown thorny bushes would grab at your ankles as you picked your way along the path, snagging on your clothes and not letting you go…
Naturally, the local children all used to go into the haunted house to play - mostly just creeping around, daring each other to explore a little bit further and then suddenly losing their nerve and coming running out with lots of squeals and nervous laughter. Older kids used to go there too, to drink and smoke and spray the walls. You know the type of place, I’m sure. Most neighbourhoods have one.
Anyway, we are finally getting to the story of my one and only possible brush with the supernatural. When I was about 13 or so, me and my friends discovered the ouija board. We used to go to various places to hold seances - friends’ houses when their parents were out, and even on one occasion a local hotel where one of us had a part-time job. (The hotel itself is a whole other story - an ancient Scottish castle which boasted several ghosts, and was full of tiny little corridors and neglected rooms where curious children could creep in with their ouija boards…
) And - you’ve guessed it - one day, somebody suggested that we take our ouija board up to the haunted house and see what friendly spirits might be lurking, waiting to meet us.We placed our fingers on the glass and the usual thing happened. The glass began flying around the board wildly, bashing at the letters in no apparent order. We were scared, we were giggling, all a little bit hyper with fear. Then, suddenly, the glass slowed down and a name was spelled out. I forget the name now, but one of the girls in the group was shocked and upset. “That’s someone in my family,” she said. Alive or dead?, we asked her. Dead. We asked this person a few questions, and they answered - I can’t remember what the questions were now, but I don’t think they were important. What was important was that this girl was growing sadder and sadder, and began to cry. She was getting seriously upset, and what had begun as a giggle was turning into quite a disturbing experience. Some members of the group (they were only young children) started getting scared and asked us to stop the seance, crying and saying that they wanted to go home. A few seconds later, the whole group of children were running out of the haunted house faster than we had ever run out of it before, and we didn’t stop running (or crying) until we got beyond that overgrown garden with its thorny bushes grabbing at your ankles and trying to hold you back…
In our rush to get out of there, we had left the ouija board and the glass behind. The girl who they belonged to was desperate to get them back (“My brother’ll kill me!”), but we were all too scared to set foot in that house to go and get them. The next day, myself and a couple of friends went back in to collect them, and we found... the ouija board had been burned. It was still there and still recognisable, but it was as black as charcoal all over… Good grief - I have never been so scared in all my life!
Obviously this is far from being a definite encounter with the paranormal. Some other kids might have been in there overnight and they might have burned it for a prank, or just because they were bored. But I still remember that charred and blackened board after that terrifying seance, and, if I’m lying in bed at night and it comes to mind, the darkness of the room starts to feel a whole lot more threatening and a lot more uncomfortable…
Does anybody here have any ghost stories of their own they would like to share? I love hearing a good real-life ghost story, the uncannier the better!
