apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

My mother is a paranormal investigator and I grew up around lots of weird stuff. I've seen enough to believe there is such a thing as spirits and ghosts, but I do not believe in a higher power or religion or God, or anything like that.

wow, that sounds thrilling, aladaywhoknows! i cant imagine having that as a part of my upbringing!

living in savannah you would think that i run into hem daily.. sadly i have not.. but there are a few people who seem to have been around these spirits.. i am not a believer yet.. come on ghosts!!! help me out here!

If you do not believe in ghosts, or at least the possibility of past lives "imprinting" a space, I suggest you go to Ellis Island.

My boyfriend and I visited Savannah last year. Savannah is supposed to be the most haunted city in America, so we went on one of the nightly "ghost walk" tours. Our guide told about haunted hotels and various apparitions that he'd experienced.

He encouraged us to take a lot of photos and said that, with digital cameras, ghosts appear as "orbs". I didn't manage to capture any that night though.

I used to live in an old victorian house that was built in 1892 and had been converted into apartments sometime in the 30s. All the tenants that lived there have had paranormal experiences.

I'm not sure... I think I'd like to believe in ghosts, I just need proof. I love watching those paranormal investigation shows hoping to see something that convinces me, but nothing so far.

I grew up in a house that was haunted. Once, we had a bunch of people over playing scrabble in the kitchen. Everyone (my parents included) said they saw someone (they thought it was me) come in the back door, then heard footsteps down the hall and the bathroom door close. They discovered it wasn't me when I came in through the front door a few minutes later. When they ran down to investigate- there was no one there. The other creepy thing was once my Mom was sitting alone in the living room with the lights off (she was getting ready to go to bed) when she heard breathing and something sit next to her on the sofa. When she flipped on the light no one was there. My Mom is the most normal person in the world so if she said it happened- it happened. We also heard talking when no one was there, the radio playing when it was off, and other strange things. I totally believe in ghosts now.

There was a ghost in the house I grew up in; it stayed in my bedroom (off of the laundry room and far away from the other bedrooms) and was very protective of me and very territorial. My siblings were terrified to be anywhere near that room and my parents experienced lots of very weird things whenever they went in. For years after I moved out no one would sleep in that room; too many freaky things would happen.

My sister and b-i-l's house has two ghosts in it, a man and a woman. They have been seen by everyone in the family and half of the neighborhood. The ghosts are fond of prank-like activity; nothing mean, but they scare the living daylights out everyone. They love to flip lights on and off, blast music in the middle of the night, turn all of the water on at full blast at the same moment, and hide all sorts of things in very bizarre places. One morning my b-i-l woke up to find his chest was plastered with dozens of cartoon stickers that belonged to my niece and nephew, and were kept at the opposite end of the house.

I've known a lot of people who claim to have had experiences with ghosts; most of them have been pretty mundane, nothing malicious happened. Still very scary!

My boyfriend and I think that his house might be haunted. It started one day when we were upstairs in his bedroom and we heard footsteps on the stairs. We thought someone might have broken in, but there wasn't anything there. It's not the only time that we've heard strange noises in the house. We've talked about whether it might just be the sounds of the house settling or something, or the sound of the heat, or.... I've been encouraging him to open the house up and let some light and fresh air in those rooms. I figure even if this doesn't encourage our visitor to move along, it will at least make the dark closed up rooms (where the sounds seem to emanate from) more friendly and welcoming to it's human inhabitants.

Ghost stories are great fun, but I don't believe in them. I think that the events people experience are real; I just think that there is a "natural" explanation for which we currently do not have the science/insight to understand.

Maybe energy does remain imprinted on a place, as someone suggested. I think that this is much more likely than a spirit or entity with will and intention and personality. I also think it could have something to do with our brains and how they react to certain locations and environmental factors -- like RF or other types of radiation.

But really, no one living knows and as long as it doesn't become an unhealthy obsession or situation, then I say bring it on, I love to be scared and I thoroughly enjoy ghost stories, cheesy paranormal TV shows (read: Paranormal State) and horror movies.

Syndey:

Question re: "One morning my b-i-l woke up to find his chest was plastered with dozens of cartoon stickers that belonged to my niece and nephew, and were kept at the opposite end of the house."

How old are the kids?

Also;

Sydney "There was a ghost in the house I grew up in; it stayed in my bedroom (off of the laundry room and far away from the other bedrooms) and was very protective of me and very territorial. My siblings were terrified to be anywhere near that room and my parents experienced lots of very weird things whenever they went in. For years after I moved out no one would sleep in that room; too many freaky things would happen."

Maybe it was you, some sort of psychic power you didn't even know you had. Maybe you were protecting yourself. I find this easier to fit in my world view. But hey, I could well be wrong.

Carder: At the time that the incident happened the twins were about 18 months old and still slept in cribs. No, the kids didn't do it.

The ghosts are very friendly and have been known to say things to people like "Hi, how are you?" Not just family members, but the neighbors (when they are over at the house) as well. They are so well known that friends and neighbors ask how the ghosts are doing as though they were family members. At this point it almost feels as though they are; my sister and her family have lived in the house for 16 years.

Carder:

Sorry, but the ghost did things like lock my bedroom door, which didn't have a lock on it, and fold my clothes and put them on my bed after I would drop them on the floor after taking them off. It would also knock on my bedroom window, rather sharply and consistently, if I wasn't in bed with the lights out at a certain time (knocking would begin at 1:10 a.m.; it got a lot harder and louder shortly thereafter).

Not trying to convince you if you don't want to believe, but having lived with this thing for most of my childhood/teenage years, my family and I are definitely believers.

Nope. Don't believe in 'em at all.

My friend remodeled a beautiful old bungalow in small town Mississippi. I went to visit and was getting ready for bed and there was the upper half of a woman on the ceiling looking at me. My reaction was....wow I am seeing a ghost and I'm not even scared. My husband was in bed - all the overhead lights were on - there was no bedside light. He did not see anything. She lingered. I said hello hello do you want anything. My husband joked she wanted us to turn off all the lights. He thought I was crazy. I finally went to get my friend and she said yes she had a ghost in the house. During the night she would wake up to sounds of her kitchen cabinets opening and closing. She would get up and nothing there. She would close the doors and just assumed that the house was not level, etc. Then the ghost starting taking out cups and putting them on the counter. She said that it was oddly comforting to have the lady there and she was not hurting anything. For me, it was a freaky experience and the main thing I took away was the complete lack of fright involved.

I live in new construction now on the site of an old house. We often hear a baby crying or a woman talking upstairs. My daughter has heard it, our housekeeper and myself. I have been laying in my bed and heard the door to the garage open and close. We have never seen anything. Even before my daughter was walking someone would open the attic door and leave it open. Who knows what kind of spirits linger!!

I used to live in Savannah GA. My first apartment had a ghost who would push your back along the hallway if you weren't walking fast enough; he was a jerk. The girls who lived across the hall had a (nice) family of ghosts who would watch over them during the night. Long story short they did some research and what they were seeing matched up with who originally owned the house.

At my x-boyfriends apt. (also in Savannah) there was a week I stayed there and kept waking up to find a woman hanging from a beam between his windows (in his room there was no beam). At the end of that week I noticed in his roommate's room directly below his, he in fact had a beam in between his windows, with a crack up the middle. I didn't see her after that day.

So many ghost stories, so little time :]

I love this stuff but have never experience it first hand. My friend and her roommate would come home with the windows wide open when they had locked them before leaving the house. The tv would go on and off without anyone touching it and the cat would run out of the room and be "spooked" when the ghost was present. More than once they would play the answering machine with messages from no one but it would sound like a radio trying to find a station and then a conversation from the ghost over that noise trying to talk to someone. The ghost would also call both my friend and her roommate's parents when they weren't home. Their parents reported this back knowing that they were at work and couldn't possibly call from the apartment. Because of the safety issue of the window situation, they calmly but firmly asked the ghost to leave and the ghost moved on to another apartment.

I do believe in ghosts and the apt I live in nowhas a gory past. Supposedly a guy murdered his girlfriend in this apt decades ago.

My husband sometimes runs into the bedroom from the living room while I'm sleeping b/c he could swear he hears screaming. I haven't had any truly scary experiences but I've heard heavy footsteps in my closet and once while I was in there something blew hard into my ear.

The strangest experience I've had was when the TV remote went missing and we looked everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE. After a few days of searching I decided to just buy a universal remote and when we came home the remote was on the floor in front of the couch...very strange.

posted by j-girl on 2008-04-07 15:25:59
they calmly but firmly asked the ghost to leave and the ghost moved on to another apartment.

This totally works - I had to do this when I moved home two years ago. The ghost that hung out in the upstairs of my mom's new house was a pest, after he knocked over a candle one night I said "hey I've had enough, you have to go" and he did.

I've lived in some of the most haunted places in Ohio, and (thankfully) never experienced anything odd. I feel sort of like I believe in ghosts, but NEVER EVER want to see one. So whenever I'm in a spooky situation, I superstitiously just say out loud, or concentrate on, "it's cool - we can cohabit this space - I won't bug you if you don't bug me."

Seems to have worked. Or it's hogwash and I'm a patsy.

I was never sure if I believed or not, then I lived in a huge 1889 house in Cleveland that was split up into four apartments. Almost immediately after moving in, my roommate and I both separately heard someone cleaning in the middle of the night ... Usually scrubbing the floor ... Sometimes opening and closing the kitchen cabinets. We always assumed it was the other one, then one night we both came out of our rooms at the same time to yell at the other for making too much noise with the scrub brush.

On several occasions, friends who stayed over said they saw a woman who looked like a maid who was holding up the corners of her apron as if it was filled with something. I thought maybe I saw that too, but figured I was just too worked up over the whole thing. Also, every night at 11pm our phone would ring kind of a quarter ring - like it just chirped. We always joked that it was another ghost calling our ghostly maid, which I'd incidentally nicknamed Alma (after a character in the movie "The Ghost & Mr. Chicken".)

My favorite part of the whole four years I lived there with that ghost was when I finally officially met the awesome guy that lived in the upstairs front apartment (I lived in the downstairs back one above the laundry room.) I had gone through a big heartbreaking breakup with my boyfriend (which also included the roommate that was now kicked out because of it), and the guy upstairs stopped by my apartment one night to finally introduce himself after a year in the building. He said that something - a womanly figure or something - had been kinda "telling" him for a while when he should go downstairs to do his laundry. He said every single time (at different times of day) he was down there doing it, then, he could hear me upstairs crying in my bedroom, which was right above the washing machines. He was going through a big breakup at the same time, and hearing me sad, made him realize he wasn't the only one hurting. We eventually ended up dating for a quite a while and stayed good friends since, and we always tell people that it was Alma's ghost that brought us together.

Oh, and incidentally, at one point in time we looked up the history of the house ... Turns out my apartment was the old servant's quarters.

I haven't really had any ghostly experiences since, and I've kinda regretted it. I liked Alma.

Ah! My friend just reminded me that I do have something weird happening in my current place. I have this old hutch that I'm in the middle of restoring ... The top two glass doors are perpetually stuck shut ... REALLY tight. And there are no knobs on it while I refinish it. To open those doors, you have to dig your fingertips into the edges and pull really hard. You absolutely can't open them without a) a lot of force and b) making a ton of noise... Especially from the glass that is loose and rattles badly when you touch the hutch at all.

On four different occasions (two of them within minutes of each other) I've been sitting at the dining table a foot away from it ... Gotten up to walk 5 steps into the adjoining kitchen ... And came back to the doors being all the way wide open.

I'm not saying it's a ghost, but it's stopped my heart every time. I can imagine with heat or cold or something that the wood could move and possibly open those doors, but in 2 seconds?? And with absolutely no noise???

This is all too funny!

Grew up in New Orleans. I think it may beat out Savannah for the title. Yes, I'm well educated, but I'd be lying if there are some places I've been where things were just ... off.

Let me rephrase... I'd be lying if I didn't say I'd never been to some places in the city that things were definitely...'off.'

My grandparents passed on withing 3 months of each other, and both have come back to 'visit'.

One time, when I was living in their house with my 1 year old son (just the 2 of us), I'd cleaned out the cupboard where the coffee mugs were and put the cups they'd habitually used in the back because people would reach over and around them to get other mugs. The next morning, their mugs were back in the front of the cupboard. I put them in the back again, and they, again, were in the front in the morning. "Ok, ok, I'll start using them!"

At other times, I've seen shadows, and have heard murmuring from the living room when I've been in bed. I've also smelled the scent of roses (my grandma's favorite perfume), sometimes in the dead of winter when the house was closed up tight.

When I was packing to move to another town, a friend that was helping me came into the kitchen from my bedroom and asked if I'd sprayed air freshener or spilled a bottle of perfume - the smell was as strong as if you were in the midst of a rose garden in full bloom, but could only be smelled in the bedroom - one step into the hallway and you couldn't smell it. My friend became quite unnerved when I told him that it was my grandma wishing me luck.

There were a few other instances - one - the linen closet door not staying shut - that probably saved my son's life. My grandma had cancer, and had some very narcotic drugs for the pain. It seems my mom had put them in a shoebox and put them on the floor of the closet. The bottles didn't have childproof caps, and my son was just starting to really get around on his own and was getting into everything. One day when I was doing laundry I got disgusted because the closet door wouldn't stay shut, and I had to close it every time I passed thru the hallway. I stopped what I was doing to clean it out, and discovered the drugs. I took them to the pharmacist to have him dispose of them, and he nearly had a heart attack that they'd been in the house with the baby.

My mom now lives in their house, and she says my grandma comes to visit frequently, usually preceded by the smell of the roses. Both she and I agreed that it was rather comforting. My step-father was totally wigged out.

haha my boss just came by my desk and was like "what are you doing, you've been so quite" and scared the living bajesus outta me..... ahh ghost stories :)

Sydney,

Thanks for the answers. It all sounds so credible, yet I just can't by it. I don't disbelive that these are your personal experiences. I guess I am a confirmed skeptic always looking for the down to earth explanation. But who knows, if I had had your experiences I am sure I would see it very differently.

I feel vibes and that's how I judge a place.
Alcatraz's solitary cells are the most powerful I've ever felt. But the Chicago ghost tour I went on was BS.

I've had similiar experiences (foot steps, room feels "wierd," feelings of being watched, objects morving). Before moving into our 150 year old Victorian, I thought the house felt "wierd" and had it blessed. The house really felt different after that, and I do not feel wierd in here at all. She said that the living room had a lot of resonant energy because they used to have body viewings in here (in the olden days, viewings were done in the home - there weren't funeral homes). Also, she said a 10 or so year old girl had died in the back bedroom and was still milling about. She sent the energy away, and the house feels great.

oh my god... "scaram0uche"i totally had an eerie feeling like I have never had before at Alcatraz. it the cell but also when I went down by the morgue with my little brother. we were standing there with another tourist, whom we didn't know and it felt as if there was no weather? does that make sense? just in front of the door it was like there was no sunlight or wind or noise and as soon as you took a step back from the door it was there, not really an experience per say but just a profoundly eerie sense of calm and silence

Okay, I am alone at home right now and officially freaked out.

I hope I NEVER see a ghost.

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence!

I have been in a house, when a girlfriend said "Hear that, (squeaking stairs) that is the Little girls ghost". "She goes up and down the stairs all night". "I have seen her"

Well i did a little (5 minutes) investigation, steam pipes ran underneath the staircase and when the heat went on at night (without the TV on) you could hear the stairs squeaked from the heat expansion.

The little girl also did not visit during the summer (when the heater was not turned on).

My girl friend wanted to believe a little girls ghosted Haunted her house. Even with my Proof to the contrary. We went as far as turning Off the heater in the spring, and low and behold she didn't Visit that night.

No Such things as ghosts!

I heard on NPR once how the gas from leaky 19th-century light fixtures could cause hallucinations, explains a lot of ghost stories!

I have never seen, but I believe.

My husband's grandparents bought a house from a Mr. J. Soon Grandma was seeing a little red headed boy standing at the foot of her bed at night.

Grandpa had to do some repairs to the ceiling and realized that the previous owners had had a fire. They went and asked Mr. J about it.

The previous owners hadn't wanted to stay in the house because their little boy had died in the fire. Mr. J. pulled out a picture of his son and it was the little red-headed boy. Spooky!

One more story: Husband's aunt moved into a rental house. Within a week, she had been mugged, her husband walked out, and a burglar broke in. She said she felt like someone was always watching her.

As she and the kids were moving out, the neighbor told her that the prior owner had comitted suicide in the house and it had been turned into a rental property by the family. No tenant stayed beyond a few weeks. They would have a really bad run of luck and then leave. And say that they had felt like someone was watching them. Double spooky!

I had a house that was "haunted" isolated footsteps that could NOT have been caused by humans. They did not leave the house, just crossed the floor.

Lots of noises.

I always heard my husbands car come home 15 minutes before he really did.

A "sensitive" saw two people.

The smoke detector went off just long enough to wake me up and alert me to ants trailing to half an apple I left out.
I had to stand in the ant trail to examine the smoke detector.

When I heard a crash and ALL of my cats were looking at me, I told the house/ghost : "That's not fair, you can't make noises when I am looking at all of the cats". After that when I did hear noises at least one of the cats were in another room.

The most frightening was seeing a black human shadow in the dark after locking up for the night and turning off the lights before bed. I had to pass it to go up stairs. I paused, then proceeded forward and brushed past it and said "pardon me" It vanished as I did so.

I did have a lot of experiences, One "person" was more of a memory, the other was an old man waiting for his wife. He died first. The place was too big for her so she moved down the street and was still alive. I think he was the one interacting with me. I just talk to them like normal and didn't worry about them too much. I am pretty sure he will go when she dies.

The only thing that happened that could have been maybe ghosts, maybe something real. That was the lights dimming. Since it was an old house It could have been mice chewing on the wires and maybe ghosts. I am pretty sure that it was mice, but I sure wished at the time that it was ghosts. Mice chewing on wires can burn the house down, ghosts don't.


I think that some people get scared and start jumping at everything. Then they get even more scared, and think that they are being attacked.

I can tell you that when I lived with family, there could have been ghosts parading through the house and I never would have noticed because the kids made so much noise and the grand parents turned the tv up so loud.

btw orbs are 99% of the time - just plain dust.

I had ghost hunters over and they just about wet themselves watching the orbs go up the stairs. That did explain why I smelled cooking foods upstairs long before it could be smelled elsewhere downstairs. It was just the way the air flowed.

I am still skeptical of some stories, but I know some things are really and not that scary.

I went to Flagler College in St Augustine, FL and lived in a dorm that was once the servant's quarters, where Henry Flagler's wife often went to practice voodoo (lady was out of her mind, literally - died in an insane asylum). Anyway, messed up things happened around there all the time, especially in our bathroom. I'd be washing my face at the sink, stand up and look in the mirror and see a flash of someone standing behind me and get that *feeling* like someone is there. Sometimes, my roommate and I would watch the bathroom doorknob turn as we both sat on our beds - no one in the bathroom.

One time I was sleeping and woke up to what I thought was my roommate coming back from a trip to her parents' - saw a girl with long curly hair and a long skirt walk into the bathroom. Thing was, my roommate wasn't home at all! I was alone.

I get definite weird/bad feelings about some places. I'm really picky about where I'll live as a result. It has to feel 'right'.

ahh Flagler College, I think anyone who's been has seen *something*

My sister in law saw a man who wasn't there, and if she saw it, it happened, no doubt there.

I've seen things, too much to dismiss it away by steam vents or gas leaks, things in broad daylight, things in the dead of night. I've met a little girl who I've never met before who knew my name...

Ghosts are real, I can attest to that.

Orbs in pictures however I think are just dust, nothing more

I have .ived in Savannah, fo five years, and I can say that while I have not seen any ghosts... Forsyth Park is one creepy place at night. I spent a couple of months living in France, and that was my first experience with Ghosts. I was standing in a little garden with stairs that went up the wall, and I heard a sound behind me so I turned around, then I felt hot moist air blowing on my neck, and it was only thirty degrees outside. It felt like someone breathing on my neck. Then I saw a shadow go up the stairs... all I can say is that I ran so fast. I can also say that there was no one else there and the way up the stairs and the way through the gate that I ran were the only ways in and out. There was absolutly no one else there. My girlfriend at the time, and future wife, was lying in bed and was just starting to fall asleep when she felt someone sit down right next to her on the bed. She tried to ignore it. I also had a teacher see a figure of a women on his wall when he woke up in the middle of the night and he called home to his mother because he was so scared. I had another freind come and find me because he thought that I was looking for him. He was taking a nap, and the door unlatched. The doors did not have door knobs, they had actual latches that you had to lift up. His door unlatched, and when he looked up there was noone there. He rolled over and did not think about it that much, but then the door closed and re latched.
The town was Lacoste France, about an hour and a half from Marseilles... and honest to god, it was the town that the Marquis de Sade rulled over and his castle still stands at the top of the town. The villagers were slaughterd one night by the nieghboring town because of a hundreds year old fued between the Catholics and Protestants. I had people say that they heard sounds from rooms next to them that sounded like a bar with lots of voices and tables and chairs moving, but the room would be empty and you could not hear the noise any where else.

I challenge anyone who does not believ in Ghost to go to Lacoste France and stay for a week, and tell me that they do not believe. I thought that I believed in ghosts before that, but now I truly believe in them now.

We have an orphaned green laneway running behind our property for a block where we walk the animals. The dogs often stop dead and refuse to go another step, completely out of routine. Both Mike and I have seen and felt a presence back there. We're convinced it's a ghost and if the ghost is out the dogs won't proceed.