strange experience

[Ginger Rogers]

I can't say I really honestly believe in ghosts however a friend of mine's parents claim their house is haunted. I stayed over there once with her whilst her parents were on holiday, and it freaked me right out.

The house is *supposedly haunted by a ghost that appears like a small boy, in that one time my friend's sister woke up in the night thinking her brother was sat on the bed, and felt his hair, but when she turned on the lamp there was nobody there.

I thought Yeah right as you would. However, when I stayed there there were some very odd noises.

The house is detached. we were in the living room and I distinctly heard loud bangs, like someone banging a door constantly, and what sounded distinctly like someone walking up the stairs and through the hallway up there.

There was nobody else in the house though, even the dog was down stairs, as I said to my friend, "what the hell was that' after the banging and she said 'oh just the ghost'

I've read about low-frequency resonance in buildings causing people to experience paranormal phenomena, like feeling cold, hearing noises and seeing things that aren't there.

But I can't believe that I simply imagined the noises I heard, anymore than I believe they were caused by a 'ghost'

[Mongrel]

How old was the house?

Even where I grew up, a late 30s - early 40s semi, it had it's own fair share of creaks, bumps and bangs. Hot and damp weather can make it worse. Factor in your unfamiliarity with the house and it's noise plus the hyping up that it was haunted and I (personally) have no trouble in believing your friend was in a light dream state* when she 'touched her brothers hair'.

*anecdotal*
As for the banging door I know from experience that sound can appear distorted and amplified when you're trying to get to sleep. I spent 20 minutes once tracking down a buzzing noise once that turned out to be the Power supply unit in my PC after I left it on standby and that was the other side of the house (doors open though)

*feel free to supply the correct term

[tkingdoll]

Re: the small boy dream. Perhaps the dog was the real culprit! Or even that she was still partly asleep and felt her own hair. Or maybe her brother was playing a trick on her?

The thing is, in order to have hair, or to make a noise on the stair, you would need a physical form - legs and a head, for one. Stair creaks would require some weight, too. So, let's say it is a ghost. This means that the 'ghost' is manifesting itself as an actual human body of flesh and blood, of matter. How? The options would be:

1) It materialises a new human body out of thin air (in which case, what is the mechanism for this? Where do the bones and blood come from and go to when the ghost is not there?)

2) It is the actual flesh body of the deceased person (in which case, it would have to be someone who was not buried or cremated - pretty much no-one fits that description.

When you examine what would actually need to occur for a 'ghost' to be sitting on your bed, or treading heavily on your stair, it starts to seem very ridiculous. A few cameras would soon verify if there are any strange bodies in the house!

I would also point out that something that hearing a sound like creaking stairs is not the same as hearing creaking stairs. You could conduct a simple experiment: get someone to walk up the stairs and across the hallway, and record it. Then, record the ghostly noise and compare the two. You could compare by ear, or use a computer.

Then, if the noises are the same, you know that the ghostly creaking probably did come from the stairs. In which case, you have an exact location to concentrate your investigation on. Like looking for cracks in wooden floorboards that could be damp and move, or looking for water pipes under the staircase - or what dog was actually up to at the time.

Another anecdote to add to Mongrel's: I once woke up petrified, I could hear something or someone shuffling across the room towards me. Shhhhhwp, shhhhwp! My heart froze and I held my breath, but the noise continued. I couldn't move a muscle because whatever IT was would see me! I shut my eyes tight and the noise stopped...

...it was my own eyelashes brushing the pillow. ;D

[John Jackson]

I'm always suspicious of ghosts that appear when people were asleep or who claim that they were in bed but not asleep.

That's because there's the hypnagogic (http://www.skepdic.com/hypnagogic.html) and hypnopompic (http://www.skepdic.com/hypnopompic.html) states which can explain these experiences. I heard Professor Chris French (http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/psychology/staff/french.html) on ITV's This Morning programme state that these states and experiences can be induced under laboratory conditions, so they do seem to be a valid explanation for this type of ghostly experience.

As for noises etc., the best way to check those out is for a proper investigation to be done. The skeptical investigator does not rule out the possibility of ghosts, but would concentrate on finding a normal explanation first.

Has this house been investigated at all? It sounds like a good candidate. O0

These experiences are real; it's the explanation that needs to be sought.

[Hazen]

The number of people who attribute ghosts or paranormal phenomena to boringly mundane circumstances, even in 2006, is still quite staggering.

Your average staircase is made up several different types of wood, which absorb moisture/thermal energy at different rates and thus expand/contract at markedly different rates. As the temperature decreases during the onset of night time, the relative humidity changes, and the wood starts to contract but at different rates. This quite easily explains creaking noises, not just in staircases but floors, doorframes, ceilings, roof joists etc. You can often get some more significant noises occuring where wood or metals/alloys are hard bolted to plaster/masonry where the co-efficient of expansion of the two materials is markedly different.

Many of the more significant sounding bangs/thumps can be easily traced to heating/boiler systems with the odd air bubble trapped in the pipework, settling down to thermal equilibrium, even the cold water pipework feeding the taps, toilet cisterns, etc can make a fair bit of racket if poorly designed or shoddily installed/maintained.

Consider that your average house is made up of many different materials, all of which absorb different types of energy at different rates and expand/contract at different rates for a given amount of energy. It would be far more surprising if the house did not make any noise as it did so.

As for the brothers' hair: spiders, mosquitos etc.

Typical example:
I'm sat up late at a friends place watching a film, bang, bang, thump.
"I really must get round to bleeding the heating system".
At a friends' girlfriends house doing the same: "Did you hear that? What was that? This place is haunted."
Riiiiight...

[Ginger Rogers]

Oh I don't believe her sister's story for a moment!

But, I know I wasn't under the influence of anything other than my friend lol, I was wide awake and had about 1 mouthful of my bacardi breezer.
I know what I heard, and absolutely I find it hard to believe anything untoward but I remember how loud those noises were, it was just weird.

The House was prob. built in the 40's/50's

The Isle of Wight is 'notorious' for its hauntings and I must say I have some of the Isle of wight ghost books, compiled by a lady called Gay Baldwin. Purely for the fascination, some of the stories are very convincing but then again, people convince themselves of these things and it's auto suggestion most of the time.

[ghosthunterbebunker]

I can't say I really honestly believe in ghosts however a friend of mine's parents claim their house is haunted. I stayed over there once with her whilst her parents were on holiday, and it freaked me right out.

The house is *supposedly haunted by a ghost that appears like a small boy, in that one time my friend's sister woke up in the night thinking her brother was sat on the bed, and felt his hair, but when she turned on the lamp there was nobody there.

I thought Yeah right as you would. However, when I stayed there there were some very odd noises.

The house is detached. we were in the living room and I distinctly heard loud bangs, like someone banging a door constantly, and what sounded distinctly like someone walking up the stairs and through the hallway up there.

There was nobody else in the house though, even the dog was down stairs, as I said to my friend, "what the hell was that' after the banging and she said 'oh just the ghost'

I've read about low-frequency resonance in buildings causing people to experience paranormal phenomena, like feeling cold, hearing noises and seeing things that aren't there.

But I can't believe that I simply imagined the noises I heard, anymore than I believe they were caused by a 'ghost'


You see the problem with this is house's make noises and so do neighbors. When the Wind blows thing's tend to hit houses and then it's my house is haunted.

[tolman]

I'm always suspicious of ghosts that appear when people were asleep or who claim that they were in bed but not asleep.

That's because there's the hypnagogic (http://www.skepdic.com/hypnagogic.html) and hypnopompic (http://www.skepdic.com/hypnopompic.html) states which can explain these experiences. I heard Professor Chris French (http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/psychology/staff/french.html) on ITV's This Morning programme state that these states and experiences can be induced under laboratory conditions, so they do seem to be a valid explanation for this type of ghostly experience.

I had a strange experience one time, staying on a lightly-wooded campsite by a river. Getting up in the middle of the night due to too much late-night beer, and going outside where the air was a little misty without my [weak] glasses on, I clearly saw a female figure ahead looking pretty much exactly like I'd imagined a nature-spirit or suchlike would look - all pre-Raphaelite wispy white clothing, etc
Next morning, I remembered the experience distinctly, which I wouldn't do with a regular dream, presumably because I was largely awake, but I found that where the figure had been, there was just a small tree.

I suspect the major factor in what happened was the fact that I hadn't really had more than brief snatches of sleep the night before, during the overnight drive across England/France. Possibly my not knowing the precise location of things like the nearby trees helped.

What did seem particularly strange to me was my reaction at the time. Standing there in nothing but my pants, starting to water the grass, I'd looked up and seen the figure, and I had been more than a little surprised, even somewhat in awe, since she was a fairly good-looking facsimile of a nature spirit with the appropriate appearance of majesty (there's not much point imagining a right minger).
However, that didn't stop me carrying on with my main task without embarrassment, or going back to my pit when I'd finished.
It was very much as if I was in two entirely different states of mind at the same time - one in control of my body, getting up for a leak and going back to bed as if hardly anything had happened, yet the other managing to sustain an imaginary presence without any of the normal reality-checks in operation.

Even though I logically knew that I had imagined it, and I'd only ever partly believed there was anything there, it took a while to lose the feeling I'd seen something. Though the figure was imaginary, the emotional content of the experience of imagining it was real.

[vbloke]

I was walking home from the cinema last night - it had just started to drizzle.

I was crossing the heath when, as I approached the road, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, but still distinct enough for me to tell the breed, a ghostly dog run past me.

It was a glowing, translucent and large golden retriever. I turned around to face the direction it went but it had vanished.

It honestly did scare me for a second until something similar happened a second or so later.

It was then that I realised that rain, falling onto my eyelashes was catching the light of the street lights and reflecting it into my eye and my brain "saw" a dog like shape and filled in the blanks instantaneously. The lights are typical sodium yellow street lights, hence the golden retriever.

My point is, I know people walk their dogs on the heath late at night and my brain, seeing a shape it couldn't instantly recognise, filled in the shape of a dog running. If you expect something to be there and suddenly experience something unusual, your brain can trick you into seeing or hearing things that aren't really there.

[tolman]

Gap-filling is one thing, especially when you expect to see something that exists, and especially in times of relative sensory deprivation.

I don't believe in the existence of supernatural entities, so on the night in question I wasn't really expecting to see anything, unless there was some hangover from an earlier dream. It was the disconnect between 'seeing' and not really reacting to what I 'saw' that was particularly intriguing.

Digressing a little, audio imagination/hallucinations can be fairly simple to achieve.
Speaking as a caver, if sitting in the absolute dark resting/waiting, (especially if alone), near gentle running/falling water, I find it easy to 'hear' snatches of voices in the distance, or maybe people splashing down a stream, or the familiar tinkle of metalwork.
If there are particular other people one is waiting for, it's often easy to hear their particular voices, maybe even conversing with each other.
If starting to daydream, or if the cave felt a bit spooky, it'd be easy to 'hear' some odder being lurking in the shadows, especially if not expecting other people to be nearby.
I'm not sure I know many cavers who don't experience 'the voices' given the right conditions. Even being aware of their unreality nature doesn't stop them happening, especially given the right mood.
Solo trips, where other people are likely several hours away at least can be particularly fruitful, even if one is occupied and moving around in the light.

[Zaira]

"It was then that I realised that rain, falling onto my eyelashes was catching the light of the street lights and reflecting it into my eye and my brain "saw" a dog like shape and filled in the blanks instantaneously. The lights are typical sodium yellow street lights, hence the golden retriever." - vbloke


I believe it's like DejaVu which they say is simply a split second misfiring of the brain - we see something but don't get time to process it, then when we do we think we saw or felt it twice. In the few seconds where we are trying to work out what just happened our subconscious mind chucks options at us and we choose one. This all takes place in a few seconds and we are inevitably mistaken. Learn how it really works and you won't even notice the next time it happens - unless you are looking for it, which can be fun once you know what is going on - your brain is playing tricks on you. Once again, “It’s you doing it!”

[EYESWIDESHUT]

Hmmm,...i was just wondering how you all account for cases when people/groups have actually seen ghosts during the middle of the day when they are fully awake and are not under the influence of any type of drug. Also many people have actually been physically harmed my ghosts and have talked with them also.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Which cases are those?

[SimonC]

Hmmm,...i was just wondering how you all account for cases when people/groups have actually seen ghosts during the middle of the day when they are fully awake and are not under the influence of any type of drug. Also many people have actually been physically harmed my ghosts and have talked with them also.

Welcome to the forum, Eyeswideshut. :smiley:

In order to properly respond to your statement, it would be most helpful if you could offer specific references, which we could then discuss.

[Julia]

Hmmm,...i was just wondering how you all account for cases when people/groups have actually seen ghosts during the middle of the day when they are fully awake and are not under the influence of any type of drug. Also many people have actually been physically harmed my ghosts and have talked with them also.

In December 1873 a Mr Volckman attempted to grab a materialized spirit during a seance held at the medium's London home. The ghost put up such a struggle it managed to scratch Volckman's nose and pull out some of his whiskers.

It's a good story but unfortunately the medium in this case was the fraudulent Florence Cook, who managed to fool many people into believing that she could materialize the ghost of Katie King (a pirate's daughter, apparently). This is the only example of ghost-inflicted injury I'm aware of (except for a medieval report of a Yorkshire ghost blinding a man in one eye) but I'm sure everyone on this forum would be intrigued to hear of more.

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

I maybe need to re-evaluate my understanding of the nature of ghosts (based as it is on sources such as Scooby Doo, the film Ghost etc), but would a ghost's 'hand' not go through a human being and therefore there would not be any possible way it could cause harm?

[tolman]

Well, the ghost in Randall and Hopkirk (deceased) can blow curtains and upset ornaments. That ghost also doesn't walk through walls, but that's probably more related to the different possibilities of cartoon and real-life action.

IIRC, I think you'll find that most of the 'ghosts' in Scooby Doo are people under sheets trying to scare people off the abandoned mine/funfair/whatever, and even in the story are no more genuine than the average fake medium.

[Mulder]

Hmmm,...i was just wondering how you all account for cases when people/groups have actually seen ghosts during the middle of the day when they are fully awake and are not under the influence of any type of drug. Also many people have actually been physically harmed my ghosts and have talked with them also.

People often quote 'known facts' about ghosts without having any specific case to support their proposition. I suspect most of these 'known facts' arise from authors who do no more than superficial research.

[Allo Allo]

I have a very boring day on at work with nothing to do – wonderful!

I thought I’d post this. We rented a house once that was haunted. At one end there was a guest room and a bathroom. The guest room became an embarrassment because people complained of tightness on their chests or of being short of breath when they slept there. We did not warn them of their possible future predicament – but they complained all the same. Next to this room was the only bathroom. And the bathroom was so “creepy” my husband and I used a chamber pot in the bedroom at night rather than go down the long passage to the bathroom! It sounds ridiculous in this modern day and age, but true. We are not ghost believers actually. The house used to be three tiny medieval houses that had been cleverly joined together in the 1950’s. The side that was haunted would have been a whole house in 1650.

When we left, I said nothing to the woman taking over the lease, but it wasn’t long before she phoned me and asked if I’d found the house somewhat creepy – specially the guest room and the bathroom. What could I say?!

This is hardly a dramatic anecdote – no one saw anything – we just got feelings. But I think it weird that we all got the same feelings without knowing about anyone else’s feelings.

The house I live in now was built in 1987 – and it is haunted by the central heating, the boiler and the creaking floors – oh – and the eerie wooo woooo of the north wind as it blows past the dog flap!

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

Well, the ghost in Randall and Hopkirk (deceased) can blow curtains and upset ornaments. That ghost also doesn't walk through walls, but that's probably more related to the different possibilities of cartoon and real-life action.

IIRC, I think you'll find that most of the 'ghosts' in Scooby Doo are people under sheets trying to scare people off the abandoned mine/funfair/whatever, and even in the story are no more genuine than the average fake medium.

I always found it strange though, how when they pulled the sheet of the villain at the end of the programme to show that it wasn't really a ghost, and then explained how he (or she) pretended to be a ghost - that the explanation didn't quite always seem that plausible compared to the evidence. If you compare the earlier footage of the ghost in the programme to that at the end, there is a marked difference.

Do you think the makers of Scooby Doo are hiding something? Is it a conspiracy perhaps? A not-so-clever piece of propaganda to make us think that there are rational explanations for ghosts?

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

I have a very boring day on at work with nothing to do – wonderful!

I thought I’d post this. We rented a house once that was haunted. At one end there was a guest room and a bathroom. The guest room became an embarrassment because people complained of tightness on their chests or of being short of breath when they slept there. We did not warn them of their possible future predicament – but they complained all the same. Next to this room was the only bathroom. And the bathroom was so “creepy” my husband and I used a chamber pot in the bedroom at night rather than go down the long passage to the bathroom! It sounds ridiculous in this modern day and age, but true. We are not ghost believers actually. The house used to be three tiny medieval houses that had been cleverly joined together in the 1950’s. The side that was haunted would have been a whole house in 1650.

When we left, I said nothing to the woman taking over the lease, but it wasn’t long before she phoned me and asked if I’d found the house somewhat creepy – specially the guest room and the bathroom. What could I say?!

This is hardly a dramatic anecdote – no one saw anything – we just got feelings. But I think it weird that we all got the same feelings without knowing about anyone else’s feelings.

The house I live in now was built in 1987 – and it is haunted by the central heating, the boiler and the creaking floors – oh – and the eerie wooo woooo of the north wind as it blows past the dog flap!

This is definately where it gets interesting and worthwhile (for someone I guess) to carry out further research. What are the physical and psychological forces at work that make us think there is something creepy going on. And why do people need to jump to conclusions that aliens/ghosts/demons are involved.

[Matt]

Scooby Doo used to be Sceptical when I watch as a kid but more recently with Fred, Daphne and Wilma being replaced by the excreable Scrappy the ghost's and monster always turn out to be real. Well, cartoons imagined by the creative folks of Hanna Barbara but within that context, real.

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

Even when I was a child, Scrappy was universally hated. I don't know why they ever kept him in it. Strange decision.

[Mulder]

We rented a house once that was haunted. At one end there was a guest room and a bathroom ... The house used to be three tiny medieval houses that had been cleverly joined together in the 1950’s. The side that was haunted would have been a whole house in 1650...

Buildings can gain a 'haunted' reputation simply by looking a feeling spooky. Any unusual experience will be attributed to a ghost when in another house it might just be ignored or investigated. Factors that contribute to a feeling of 'spookiness' include: high humidity, low temperature, poor lighting, old-looking, etc.

There was a rather spooky looking house near our school when I was a kid. We kids thought it was haunted on appearence alone! Looking at it as an adult it was completely unremarkable.

[Allo Allo]

[quote=Mulder;29960] Factors that contribute to a feeling of 'spookiness' include: high humidity, low temperature, poor lighting, old-looking, etc. [quote]

Yes - couldn't say this applied to the creepy wing of the house - well lighted, centrally heated and neatly maintained...mmmm...but I think you're on the right track maybe....I don't think it's visual only. I wondered if we, as animals were able to sense stuff - like happy or not happy places. I wondered if someone had been ill with some lung desease - or died in that room and had left an impression there - like a life footprint in time. What am I talking about! I really don't know actually.

We had no prior knowledge when we moved in there - so it had no reputation for us. I must say, that we were very happy there - creepy and all.