Let's talk about ghosts.

After seeing this (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=111&topic_id=4911) thread in the meeting room it got me to thinking that I hadn't actually heard anything like what the author of the thread is talking about. But rather I have seen and heard a lot, meaning encounters with the spirit world in my life.

Anyway, so let us talk about ghosts. Anything you want to share with us, please do. And I may even share a few of my horror stories after I finish my morning coffee and can write properly. ;)

She was babysitting for my grandmother's sister one night when she was a teenager. The room she was sleeping in is located at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the basement. She rolled over only to see the outline of an old woman with her hair up in a bun, hanging from a beam in the large room of the basement. Startled, my mom rolled away from the sight, something or SOMEONE (he he) pinched her leg when she moved. Of course she didn't sleep the rest of the night.

The next morning my mom, told my grandmother what happened and that she would never babysit there again. My grandmother confronted my aunt with the news and to her astonishment, the house's former owner had hung herself in the basement.

Needless to say, I had to spend a night or two in that basement as a kid. I never saw anything, but I never did any sleeping either.

What a *fabulous* excuse to give up friggin' babysitting! "I'll never babysit here again--your house is haunted!"

Wish I'd thought of that.

I was watching some tv one time and I fell asleep in front of the tube while it was still daylight. I awoke later and it was dark and the only light in the room was coming from the tv. I was laying down on the couch and right beside me between me and the tv was this little boy standing there. I could only see his sillouette because of the darkness. I thought he was my little cousin who was four or five at the time and I said, "Hey, Matthew." The boy didn't say anything or move, but he started to fade and I could see the tv through him. I reached out and my arm encountered nothing but air. The boy slowly faded out as I became more awake.

The only thing I can think of besides ghost is that it was a remnant of my subconscious mind while I was waking up. I guess a waking dream.

...so I shall share one of my stories. It isn't the scariest, but it certainly is one of thr weirdest.

Back in 2001 my partner and I decided to do a cross country trip, because I was in the USA, and we were unsure of how long I had left in there before I would have to return to Australia, and took into consideration that I really hadn't seen all that much of such a wonderful country.

Anyway, we decided we would drive from San Francisco to NYC to visit my girlfriends sister, and from there head south and catch up with friends in Tenn and Alabama.

While we were on the first leg of our month long journey we stopped off in Wyoming at a fort (the name escapes me, and my partner isn't on for me to ask her. LOL) Anyway, we were walking around checking out the old buildings. Most of them were locked so we were just peering in through windows. We came to one building, which was someones old house. The doors were locked, so we were walking around the building checking it out. We got to one window and we both heard talking from with in the house. We realized that the doors were locked and no one was in there. Well with that realization we got out of there.

Still in Wyoming. After driving for serveral hours without much sleep, we were both pretty exhausted, so we ended up checking into little America for the rest of the day, and that night.

The day was cool. We basically slept for part of it, and then watched a bit of the tube that night. After a late dinner we decided to call it a night and get some sleep. At around 3am in the morning my partner woke me up because I was screaming out help in my sleep. I had had a really bad dream.

I asked her to turn the light on, because I was just so shaken. While she got up to put the light on, I was looking over to the corner of the room, and saw something standing there (which for that moment I put it down to being one of those floor lamps.)

She put light on and came back to bed to comfort me. We talked about my dream, and after talking we discovered that we had both experienced rather similar dreams. In short they were about being attacked by a ghost who really wanted to hurt us.

While we were sitting up in bed talking I looked back over to that corner so I could view the floor lamp, but there was nothing there. To this day I don't know what I saw, but something was defenately in that room with us.

After our NYC visit we headed south. After visiting our friends in Alabama we went on to Tenn, visited our friend there we decided we were going to check out the Bell Witch cave.

We had done a little reading up on it, but nothing much. Anyway we went to the caves. Didn't really see anything. But during part of the tour we were walking down this narrow walkway to enter the back cavern, but I heard what sounded like a male screaming (the tour guide was a 15 year old girl, and the only people there was myself and my partner.) At the moment I heard the voice my partner heard what she thought was gushing water, and pictured us being washed away by all this water.

Anyway other weird stuff happened on that trip, but I will leave it up to my partner to tell you the rest if she wants. ;)