Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's my contribution to this thread...About 18 or so years ago, I babysat for a family who had one little boy at the time. When I first started watching the baby he was 4 months old and the family was renting a house. They stayed in that house for about 4 months until moving to another house just a few blocks away. In house #1, I would sometimes take the baby into the basement, as that's where the only television in the house was located and a bunch of the baby's toys were kept down there. The basement was only partly finished. I frequently got a strange feeling while in the basement. It's not that I felt scared, just uneasy as if there was something else down in the basement with us. One time in particular I thought I saw something, and that was the last time the baby and I went down to the basement. Fast forward to house #2 when baby was now about 3 years-old. We were sitting on the floor of his bedroom playing with trains when out of nowhere he looked up and said to me, "Do you remember when we saw the ghost?" OMG I'm thinking. I say to him, "What ghost?" He responds, "At my old house in the basement, remember?" I just chose not to continue this conversation with the little boy. The family ended up moving out of state a few months after this experience and I haven't seen them since. True story. How do you explain this?

This sounds like a scene from an M. Night Shyamalan movie. This would send shivers up the back of my neck.

Anonymous wrote:Here's my contribution to this thread...About 18 or so years ago, I babysat for a family who had one little boy at the time. When I first started watching the baby he was 4 months old and the family was renting a house. They stayed in that house for about 4 months until moving to another house just a few blocks away. In house #1, I would sometimes take the baby into the basement, as that's where the only television in the house was located and a bunch of the baby's toys were kept down there. The basement was only partly finished. I frequently got a strange feeling while in the basement. It's not that I felt scared, just uneasy as if there was something else down in the basement with us. One time in particular I thought I saw something, and that was the last time the baby and I went down to the basement. Fast forward to house #2 when baby was now about 3 years-old. We were sitting on the floor of his bedroom playing with trains when out of nowhere he looked up and said to me, "Do you remember when we saw the ghost?" OMG I'm thinking. I say to him, "What ghost?" He responds, "At my old house in the basement, remember?" I just chose not to continue this conversation with the little boy. The family ended up moving out of state a few months after this experience and I haven't seen them since. True story. How do you explain this?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had carved wood figurines from Kenya on our mantel, and they moved around all the time. Scared me to death.

Did anyone ever see that Karen Black movie, Trilogy of Terror? In one of the three stories, Karen Black brings home a funny little ugly figurine with wild hair, sharp teeth, and a little spear in his hand and she puts it on the coffee table. Then she goes into the shower to get ready for her date, and when she comes back, the little guy is gone. So she searches under the sofa for it, stretching her arm far under the sofa to find him (as if he could have just FALLEN 8 feet back) and while she is searching, you hear little fast pitter patters. So she keeps searching under the sofa with her arm (of course) until she gets pricked by the spear. And then of course she shoves her arm under the sofa again, only this time the little guy really stabs her and she realizes he is alive. Then he proceeds to chase her all over the house and terrorize her.

I would never buy a figurine with a spear.

Anonymous wrote:I lived in a haunted apartment when I was in college. If I didn't have 2 other roommates that were there for the problems, I might have thought I was going crazy. Our "house guest" actually would throw things across the room. Looking back on it we don't know why we stayed, and I've forever been worried when I move to a new place that there will be issues....point is I feel for you.

Do you own your house? Also, have you done any renovations to your house recently, or any big changes? Supposedly a presence will sometimes appear when there have been big changes. Mine in college showed up after a break when we were gone for a week or so, and finally left after another long break many months later.

I would start off by contacting a priest. Some colleges / universities also have paranormal departments. I would do a quick internet search to see if any local universities have such a department. They may want to come out to do readings on your house, etc, and can tell you if they find anything. I would be particularly concerned because of your child's acting out, so I would investigate further. Hopefully it's nothing. Good luck.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH has forbidden me from telling him any more of the stories from this site. The one that freaks him out the most is the one where the son asked why the old lady kept appearing in his room. Shudder.

I posted a question a few months ago about whether people who believed in God also believed in demonic spirits. I asked because I had heard a conservative radio talk-show guest say that her then-5 year old daughter was constantly saying she couldn't sleep because there was a black sheep with red eyes was in her room. The guest chalked it up to a 5 year old's imagination. One night the little girl came out of her room and said the black sheep was sitting on her dresser, talking to her. The mom asked her daughter what it was saying, and the little girl said it was telling her to kill her parents. I COULD NOT stop thinking about that story!! Sunlight, singing birds, NPR -- nothing could blunt my fear!

The talk-show guest also said that she had witnessed a demonic presence when she was a teenager, and that the signs to look for were lights bouncing around doorways and windows and animals acting weird. (In her case, the dog was also barking hysterically at the windows. Shudder....)

That's what you get for listening to conservative talk shows!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH has forbidden me from telling him any more of the stories from this site. The one that freaks him out the most is the one where the son asked why the old lady kept appearing in his room. Shudder.

I posted a question a few months ago about whether people who believed in God also believed in demonic spirits. I asked because I had heard a conservative radio talk-show guest say that her then-5 year old daughter was constantly saying she couldn't sleep because there was a black sheep with red eyes was in her room. The guest chalked it up to a 5 year old's imagination. One night the little girl came out of her room and said the black sheep was sitting on her dresser, talking to her. The mom asked her daughter what it was saying, and the little girl said it was telling her to kill her parents. I COULD NOT stop thinking about that story!! Sunlight, singing birds, NPR -- nothing could blunt my fear!

The talk-show guest also said that she had witnessed a demonic presence when she was a teenager, and that the signs to look for were lights bouncing around doorways and windows and animals acting weird. (In her case, the dog was also barking hysterically at the windows. Shudder....)

Anonymous wrote:Had to add my 2 cents to this thread, as I have also experienced the presence of spirits. Burning some sage and doing a smudging ceremony might really make you feel better. You could also try talking to the spirit, maybe while you're smudging. Talk about sharing the space, being kind to one another. I did this when I moved into my 60-year-old house in Arlington, where I definitely feel the presence of an "old man" spirit. So far so good.

You might also want to lay out some mouse traps, just for peace of mind. Once in an old house during a quiet evening my cat started pacing in a circle, meowing and looking at me, and of course it freaked me out (cats being able to sense things we can't always see or hear). Then I heard the scratching noises she was hearing from under the house. In that case it was a family of feral cats living in the crawl space. So there may indeed be an explaination that's easier to deal with!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've lived in 2 places in Washington, DC that were haunted. One was an apartment in Glover Park, and the other was a house on Jenifer Street NW. I would have thought myself crazy except that my roommates corroborated my sightings with sightings of their own. The ghosts never made noise, but they made their presences known.

In both cases, we had the luxury of moving out due to expiring leases. OP, I'm guessing you might not be in the position to move out immediately. I found this site for the Society for Paranormal Investigation (they've got a local branch, who knew?). Maybe it's worth a try?

Can you imagine being condemned to an apartment in Glover Park for all eternity?