Tonight is the night. All Hallows Eve. A night for apple bobbing, door answering and candy stealing.
Most Halloweens I make a big pot of chili for dinner, and once the kids have thinned out, I turn the lights off, put on a scary movie and curl up in front of the fire with my dinner. It inevitably goes untouched because by 8:00 or so I’m actually bleeding chocolate from my ears but chili is tradition so I make it anyway.
In terms of the scary movie I lean towards things that are actually scary. Like The Exorcist or The Shining or anything with Rob Schneider. Eek ick.
O.K. I actually lied about The Exorcist. I watched it when I was really young and it scared me so much that I can barely even type the words The Exorcist. And I’m not the only one who feels like this. The Exorcist is often listed as the scariest movie ever made. Anything to do with the devil, being possessed or ghosts scares me WAY more than a guy in a mask with an inferiority complex.
Movies about rooms mysteriously filled with flies though???? Haunted houses will do it every time.
My house was built around 1840. I know if you’re reading this from anywhere in Europe you’re probably wondering how I manage to live in something so modern and soulless, but around these parts, the 1800′s is about as old as it gets. When you think of an old house you immediately think that it could be haunted but the truth is, if you’re the type to believe in ghosts or hauntings, then the fact that your house is old doesn’t have a ton to do with it.
According to people in the know, a house can be haunted by ghosts or entities regardless of how old the house is. They can come in on objects or other people. And of course they can arrive through death.
I have no idea how the ghost in my house arrived but I can tell you it lived here before I did. When I moved into my house I was kind of hoping for a ghost; in that, ghosts don’t really exist, kind of way. Then as the days wore on and the confusion of moving in settled down I noticed something. It wasn’t a big thing. It was just big enough to be noticed.
At the top of my staircase is a an old window. It has four panes of glass, a wood frame and a latch. The first couple of time I noticed the open window I figured it had just blown open, or I had forgotten to close it even though it was the middle of December. I soon started to pay attention to pushing the window closed and clicking the latch into place before descending down the stairs. Without fail when I came up those stairs, no matter how long or how soon later, the window was open.
It didn’t scare me, didn’t startle me, didn’t really frighten me at all. If I were to dream my house was doing things like this it would terrify me. If I watched a movie about it it would scare me even more. Not even a fun scare. A heart pounding, maybe I should turn all the lights on kind of scared.
Soon I started to notice shadows moving and little black smoke-like puffs darting into corners or behind doors.
On the advice of a friend who really does believe in these sorts of things (I was still on the fence, even though my house was not) - I told it to leave.
I closed the window one last time and said, enough. This bugs me, I don’t like it, you’re pissing me off now, so GO.
And it went. The window never mysteriously opened again and the whooshing black whatever-they-weres disappeared around a corner for the last time.
I understand it’s not the most remarkable ghost story in the world. Or the scariest. There were no bloody hands shaped as hooks or furniture swirling up to the ceiling or gauzy apparitions floating across the room.
They were more like black clouds of smoke.
What makes it unique, to me at least, is that it’s the truth. One that I experienced myself and have no doubt about its authenticity.
Happy Halloween my Art of Doing Stuff ghouls.
Have a ghost story?
Now is the time to tell it.
Boo - Thank you for sharing your ghost experience(s). I think it's a lovely notion. I do believe there are spirits. Why wouldn't there be?
Happy Halloween. I had over 25 trick or treaters. Most were over 10 yrs. My favorite is the kid - you say "you can take 2". They smile at you, a devious smile, take 3 and run away. Takes all kinds.
Cheers.
Sometimes as I sit watching tv a shadow will move across the floor to the bathroom like something between a cat and a rat. Fast but low to the ground. I’ve never figured out what it is. Even when I get up to follow. My cat backs away like she is being challenged but I never see a thing. She does. Many times I smell odors see things or sounds. Never been able to prove any of it but sure makes me hunt for it.
Okay, I have one and this actually happened to me, I swear to God!
Summer 1968: I'm eight years old, sleeping in my bedroom. It's a hot, humid night, so my curtains and windows are open to let some breeze in. The foot of my bed is against the wall, with shadows from the trees and streetlights outside casting playful patterns on the wall.
All of a sudden, the pattern gradually shapes into what looks like my seven-year-old friend Diana, and she looks like she's standing on my bed, hands on her hips, looking at me. She's in black-and-white, like the shadows on the wall. I look at her kind of peeved and say to her, "Diana, get off my bed". She cocks her head to no side and fades into the patterns on the wall. She reappears right beside me in bed, cocks her head again, and vanishes!
To this day, I don't know if I was actually awake or just dreamt it all, the next day, I woke up in a panic and just had to go see Diana. Being summer, I got up quickly and went out the door to Diana's house.
Her mother answered the door and told me some sad news:
Diana had died that previous night.
Ooooh! That's a good ghost story. I've been living in my house, the oldest parts of which were built around 1800, for a year and a half now, and curious to see if anything ~ghostly~ crops up. We had a ghost in one of my childhood homes; there would regularly be the outline of a man watching me from the doorway of my bedroom at night, and a few times glassware just exploded out of nowhere in the kitchen. Spooky!
Okay, I'm kinda weirded out reading all the ghost stories.
You should hire out as an exorcist! Just based on following your blog for a number of years, it makes sense to me that you could, in your direct, no-nonsense way tell a ghost to get lost! My soul-mate cat paid me a visit, via my bedside clock radio, the night I had to have him put down. Some very strange unembodied moans and such. I told him I was fine, since I knew he was as concerned about me as I was about him, and said he should go to God and he did.
I've also had something happen in most houses I've lived in. When we moved into our current house (built in the 70s), I would often hear someone walking in the hall outside the bedrooms when I was up in the night (I have insomnia and we have creaky floors). One time I was doing the dishes and the kitchen got very cold for no apparent reason. I eventually found out the name of the women who had lived here (her widow sold us the house), told her politely that she was making me really uncomfortable with the noise, etc. I said she was welcome to stay just please stop walking around at night. She stopped but I think she's still around based on other odd things that happen from time to time.
Liked your Ghost Story!
If you have never heard this reading of an old poem, you are in for a treat. This guy nailed it - you don't even watch it; just listen to the story...
The Cremation of Sam McGee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lBkuz1TlVc
HAPPY HALLOWEEN~~~ (There is a "ghost" at the end of the story)
My husband died very suddenly in an accident. I was pregnant, and in the weeks that followed, I worried that he or his ghost would appear in a frightening, unexpected way....like, when I opened a closet door or in the bathroom at night. I confided in a friend who said "He would never scare you like that!" And he didn't. But one night shortly after that, I was lying in bed almost asleep, and I felt him kiss me. A good solid kiss right on the lips. Didn't scare me. Fell asleep smiling. That was 40 years ago. Helping my granddaughter go trick-or-treating tonight.
I've never had a ghost story make me cry, but yours did. And it was lovely.
oh, thank you! It's my favourite ghost story. And it's my own!
Such a relief that your ghost just left and didn't escalate things.
I've lived in various houses in my life and had something happen in most of them (only one instance where I live now, built in 1890 I kind of expected more) and one house in particular kept me up many nights. The most notable experience was with my youngest, when she was about 2 she would smile and giggle and sometimes wave at the wall or ceiling and one evening she was in my bed while I folded laundry in the kitchen. I heard her yell out who said my name? So I went down the hall and asked her to repeat what she said because I must have heard it wrong. Nope, she repeated who said my name? Then said ohhhhhh it was the ghost. The one standing behind you.
I had some clothes in my hand so I just set them on the floor and got into the bed with her and had a little cry. After everything else that happened I fully believed that's what happened. She's 13 now and has no recollection of any of what happened in that house.
Angels like to play with babies too. :)
Love your story. Thanks for sharing! Enjoy the day...er night.
This isn't exactly a ghost story, but one about a newer house. My first husband and I bought a bungalow on a 2-acre lot. According to what the real estate agent told us, the house was custom-built by a couple with kids. A couple of years later, the couple was divorced and they sold it. It was bought by another couple w/o kids. A couple of years later, the husband was badly injured and they sold. We were the 3rd owners. After we moved in, one of our dogs got hit in front on the road and died. A couple of years later, we separated and I moved out. He sold the place after we divorced. Coincidence? I don't know! I checked the spot on Google Map recently and the whole area has changed. The house is no longer there.
Here’s a ghost story that happened in a brand-new house. My late husband and I built our dream house. We loved every aspect of it, inside and out. Only 3 years after moving in, my husband was diagnosed with cancer. He fought it for a year and a half, until the cancer eventually won. That house provided him, and both of us, much comfort. Soon after the funeral, my bed shook violently in the night. That never happened again. But then there was the knocking at the front door or the door to the garage - always 5 knocks. My sons who would come home from college, heard them as well, so I had some proof I wasn’t going crazy with sadness or loneliness. These events never frightened me. I didn’t always associate them with his visits, but I knew they were nothing to fear. The knocks ended when I started dating 4 years after his death. But I still think about them fondly from time to time. Thanks for the opportunity to tell this story.
OK - the wacked off head under the cloche is really creepy!!! Not a huge fan of halloween but the ghostly stories are something else. As long as they're friendly ones they can certainly be entertaining. Totally agree about just making a huge pot of chili and a big pan of cornbread - one of our favorite meals. Happy scary movie night to you and yours !?!
Our house is very old also year not exactly know maybe the in 40's. From what I had been told the fellow that built the house blew himself accidently at the burning barrel. His wife was scolding about his reloading hobby he had. She had been admonishing many times. But this time he got furious and box up his reloading supplies and went outside and threw it in the burning barrel. later on, he took out some trash to burn and they figure he must have forgot about the reloading material he had thrown away. Well, the rest is history. This poor house from what I gather has had a lot of owners and renters. A lot of neglect and abuse. We will probably be the last people here the old house is literally falling apart. We have lived here the longest. About 50 years, we have heard noises yes old houses do creak. Ours noises are walking in the attic wood floor. Knock at the door are the sound of the door open and close. The most distinctive is the smell of gunpowder after it been exploded. Sometimes a knock on the wall. It doesn't phase any more we have gotten used to it.
I believe in ghosts because I work in a hospital; and if any building, in any town, is going to be haunted, it will be a hospital. We have cardiac monitors that will, suddenly turn on and register a low pulse (40’s) in an empty bay. One Christmas Eve, in our Recovery Room, I had a sink that would turn itself on full blast. I would calmly walk over and say “That’s enough. Stop it”. And shut it off. This went on 4-5 times and it was freaking my patient out. I finally, just reached under the sink and shut the water off, and said in my best mom-voice, “ It’s time for you to leave!”
My patients response was “Believe me, I want too!”
I am so happy to find another human whose Halloween tradition is chili.
It became tradition when my two sons were toddlers, they’re a year apart and I was in my 40s when my weirdo biological clock kicked in. So it became tradition (by necessity) since it can be made a day or two before or even earlier on the day of trick or treat and costumes and besides, the neighbors needed to eat too. So for about 20 years I’ve made a big pot of delicious chili and I bake cornbread because it’s perfect plus, it’s glorious. My husband loves this tradition and my youngest lad who is living in Tasmania FaceTimes me to cry about missing out on Halloween chili. He’s a day ahead but he can whine perfectly fine in each time zone. He is missed so much that I wish I could hand deliver him and his significant other and their wonderful friends (who I’ve adopted during our FaceTime sessions) their own pot of mystical chili.
Mystical? Of course! Part of the fun of having children is engaging them with my imagination and that included how I was given the recipe from a hobbit like creature directly from Middle Earth. It contains magical things that I can’t possibly share. Now that they’re grown men, they know my stories require a whimsical thought process and for god’s sake, don’t ask too many questions.
So, by all means, chili for everyone. It’s so simple and yet, so special.
As for your ghosts and your old house. Yes. It happens and that is definitely not my imagination. I’ve been followed by an apparition since I was a wee child. It doesn’t particularly do anything harmful but he knocks on my cabinets and turns the water on and off right in front of me in the kitchen. Yes, I’m sure it’s a he. I never have felt threatened by it. My youngest son has seen “the man on the stairs” and described him at three. The same figure I’ve seen throughout my life. It will rush through the house leaving a cold icy breeze in its wake. He will on occasion open a door but his special superpower is removing objects totally and completely. I watched a hand painted clay bowl from Mexico suddenly fall from my bedside table and it literally just never hit the carpeting. I moved my bed after thinking I was going quite mad but that bowl is nowhere in this house. Food will also perform this trick. My skeptical older son who thinks it’s all “total bullshit” cannot explain how a pair of Krispy Kreme donuts vanished in exactly the same manner as my bowl. They fell and were gone. Like Monty Python’s dead parrot, it has left this world and is no more. Apparently spirits love Krispy Kreme as much as us mere mortals. So, yes. I’ve seen a lot and lived in 2 very scary haunted homes. Both on or next to Civil War battlefields. So I’m all in. They are just part of the natural world and stop arguing with me.
Ghost stories, chocolate and chili are all great things to enjoy. Hallelujah for Halloween! Pass the cornbread and let’s find a good scary movie to cuddle up under a down comforter to watch.
Thanks once again Karen.
Don't believe in ghosts either but had an unnerving night in an old house in Savannah, Georgia, US once. Definitely convinced us that "someone" was among us who hadn't been invited.
And take a look at the pic of your window that wouldn't stay shut.... a large face is peering in at you! Creepy.
Happy haunting!
Hope you enjoy a fun and uneventful Halloween with lots of sugar addled kiddies at your door....... who Philip doesn't opt to eat. I grew up in a Funeral Home, lived there into adulthood, and even raised a family for years therein. I would LOVE to tell you true ghost stories garnered over the decades and generations........ but I have nary a one as I guess if we don't believe they exist? They reciprocate the feeling and never make themselves known to me or my ancestors. Oh well.
WOW!