Well, let’s see. I’m going to be here a while I guess. Thankfully its my last night of vacation and I can sleep late.
I was a teenager working in a hotel that is renown for being haunted. It was a state park and had a hotel that used to operate for three seasons and let’s just say some big men, whom I had met, carrying guns had experiences that they wouldn’t talk about and eventually the State had building exorcised.
One morning I was tasked with helping the housekeeping department. I was sent to go get the towels and sheets out of the rooms that had checked out so they could wash them as they were running short due to theft. It was mid July. I went into one room that had a notorious history. It had “leaded glass“ kind of like stained glass Windows with pieces of glass soldered or glued into two large panes that would close and have a turn handle / latch to secure them. I closed the windows, turned on the room AC, and took the sheets off the bed. I turned around and the windows were wide open. I said, “this won’t work” and closed the windows. Went into the bathroom and got the towels. Came out and there was a black cloud of smoke billowing, not a puff I mean billowing, out of the air conditioner. I turned off the AC certain I was going to get shocked but didn’t. It had a weird oily smell and I opened the windows to get rid of it. The maint. Manager who ran an HVAC company could find a thing wrong with it.
Same place, I was vacuuming a dining room that was going to hold a small banquet. The room had a door to an area called the Tower which was the third story of a round stone tower attached to the building that the guy who built it had bought and had disassembled from a house in Germany and attached to his house. He lost his fortune in the Great Depression and allegedly hung himself there. A coworker / friend came in and wanted to go up there as it was also access to the attic to put some stuff away. He couldn’t get the door open. I tried the key and verified it was the right key, it would turn halfway clearing the pins but was if someone was holding the locking knob on the other side. I stopped, feeling foolish spoke to the door and said, “Mr. X ( who killed himself - I won’t invoke him) please let us in here because the president of the company is coming tomorrow and we are trying to clean some things up.“. I then made my mistake, I said, “If you do, while we are here John, my friend, will talk to you”. We stood there doing nothing and the door audibly went click. I put the key in and it opened. John made me go up there with him, hyperventilating, he threw the boxes and ran. I thought little of it and continued to vacuum the room until something ice cold touched me on my side. I jumped and it went away.
Same place, “Room 301” which was a suite of what was originally 301 and 302 but a plumbing break in 302 caused someone at some point to renovate and make a suite. In the back bed room there was a mirror I was always afraid to look into for fear I’d see someone there with me. Specifically, Mr. X who I envisioned as wearing 1800s clothes and a top hat. I’d be in there and eventually it would become oppressive and I would flee in fear, work done or not, feeling “something isn’t right” refusing to look at the mirror. A front desk clerk told me a mother and little girl came in and said they heard the hotel had several period decore based rooms and asked to see one. The clerk took them to that room and opened the door. The mother stopped, took in a breath and said, “something is not right with this room”. They went in and the little girl started pulling at her mom’s skirt and said frantically, “mommy, mommy. I don’t like it here mommy, and ran from the room.”.
We were on our honeymoon in Marietta, OH and stayed at the Lafeyette. They gave us the best penthouse suite. During the day it was OK but my new wife went to bed early and I was too afraid for some reason to stay in the TV room alone so I went to bed. I kept waking up thinking there was an angry man at the foot of the bed. In the morning I showered in the one bathroom while my wife used the other. The whole time, I felt like I was being watched, which according to a parapsychologist I talked to means you’re probably right. We were getting ready to leave, I was by the room door, stooped to pickup our luggage and the door slammed HARD. Even my wife heard it, but it left me with an odd feeling of did that really happen. I expected to hear someone outside like the maid just hit the door with their cart, but nothing. I opened the door and nothing. I tested the door and it latched solidly. Something hit the door HARD. I took the luggage to the car and saw a girl cleaning a room and asked if they get reports of ghosts. She said they’re not supposed to say a thing but they have a problem with doors slamming on people.
We were looking for our first house and met the realtor at one prospect. She came running out and was a ball of knots. We went in and she had every light on. The whole place felt, creepy, out of time, almost sleepy, except this one bedroom which was obviously a little girls bedroom. We went up to the second floor which needed renovation and had been subject to roof leaks by the look of the plaster. There was this crawl space attic and I stuck my head in there and in my mind’s eye I saw, and knew, there was a non human entity hiding at the far end that would appear to a child as another child but didn’t want us to know it was there. We left and I went into the family room which had a painted white brick fireplace. As I approached it I felt / saw this yellow cloud and it became difficult to breathe. I stopped and left. My wife says the fireplace felt awful like someone died there.
In our first house, I understand the local HS shop teacher owned it. It needed a lot of renovation, some of which at first was destructive. I often felt like there was a guy, short, with almost bald but short spikey white hair wearing round rim glasses following me, angry, at what we were doing. After a while, when things started to come together and improve, I still sensed him, but he was no longer angry and instead said “you’re OK, I trust you”.
When I was 16, I had a friend over for the night, Brian aka Chip he went by. I had a Ouija board and he had never used one. Stupidly, we got it out and started using it. It started slow and gave gibberish followed by words with misspellings and finally improved. If we took our fingers off the planchette it would revert a bit and then improve like a channel being opened. I forget what we asked it, but my parents were at a business dinner and weren’t due home for three hours. Suddenly it started going MO MO MO back and forth. Ask anything about my mom and it would fly to yes and go back to MO MO MO, ask about anything else, NO then MO MO MO, then said MOM, goodbye. (This is giving me the shivers). I put it back on the board and it said MOM, goodbye, and wouldn’t respond. 30 seconds later, three hours early my parents walked in the front door. Whatever it was, read my mind and knew I didn’t want my mother catching us using it, knew my parents were coming home, and warned me.
@tanstaafl72555 was that a hyper intelligent entity?
The next time I picked up the board I got a shooting pain on my shoulder as soon as I picked it up. I dropped it. Several weeks later, it went in the box and went in the garbage hopper where it presumably got buried at a land fill. A fitting end to let the Mother slowly reclaim it. A word of note on that Ouija board. It belonged to a great aunt / uncle who fostered kids removed from their home. My uncle claimed he caught a kid using it in one room, that always felt creepy in their house using it trying to curse people. I would use it with my aunt and as we did this dreamy trance like state would overcome her and she would talk about “liking”the Ouija board. God only knows what prompted me to ask her about that. Same thing happened with an older neighbor who would frequently “babysit“ me that I used to take it over to play with. Who knows what unholy thing was attached to it.
My mother in law died several years ago. I woke up and sensed her by the side of the bed, and “saw” her in my minds eye standing there repeatedly saying ‘tell her I’m sorry”, meaning my wife. Long story that I‘m not going to go into here but it makes sense. We had heard she died and I thought, correctly, “my god, she killed herself”. I ignored her and went to sleep. Jan 19, 2014, my grandfather died. I woke up and he was by the side of the bed. We had a nice conversation. Spirit conversation is different in that whole thoughts get communicated at once. You can parse it out into words but it’s different, non linear, simultaneous. We spoke and then he said, “It is time for me to go join Floy Lou (my grandmother‘s admittedly odd name). If you need me, you know how to get ahold of me”. He then disappeared into my bedroom closet with a visual effect that can best be described as the Enterprise from Star Trek going to warp.
One almost final story. When we bought the house I’m in now, which is a second home, I call the Goldston house given its location, my wife, parents, and I were moving a little stuff in. I was in the driveway with my father and my mother and wife were in a bedroom. The doorbell went “ding dong“ and scared us all. We also stopped and had that “out of time” or “did that just happen” feeling like I got at the Lafayette and other times at the haunted hotel, a feeling I’ve come to associate with a paranormal encounter. I do believe it was the previous (deceased) occupants saying “hello, and goodbye”. For a long time we could feel their energies here. At one point we had my parents over for dinner and were in the dining room where the husband’s presence was always strong. My mother started harping at my dad about something and I firmly told them to STOP because I wouldn’t have that negativity brought into my house. I was honestly afraid of them sparking paranormal activity.
Ok, almost final one. While I don’t frequently advertise this, I am one of our resident pagans. In my youth was was a much more active student and practitioner. There are ways and methods to expand your consciousness to open yourself to experiencing this invisible world. Chiefly meditation. I realize, that like
@tanstaafl72555 put it as an Xn these “occult” methods are out of bounds for him. I believe that we all have these gifts and it’s part of our collective heritage of being human and that the “church” outlawed these practices and made them ”evil” as a means of de-powering the people and making them dependent upon the church and its structure. If one can communicate with god(s) directly, what use does one have for priests, a church hierarchy, or even a bible? I have had dreams that I know were interactions with god(desses) that are just as real to me as any Xn communing with Jesus. Odd as it may sound, I wont discard or discredit ones claims as such as one pagan I know told ... on 9-11-2001 they woke up and said the Angel Michael was there and asked them to help cross over the sudden dead. She said, “wait, I don’t believe in you.“. She said, “Michael chuckled and said, just think of us as a different division of the same army”. She said she was exhausted afterwards but helped cross over a lot of people.
Ok, two more related ones and that’s it. I’ve been at this for over an hour and its 2:15 am.
I mentioned meditation as a means to open your awareness. One night, late, January in OH, I did such a meditation. At the end, I could hear music playing, and the chains of a swing set creaking back and forth and a couple of little girls giggling. It sounded like it was from a summer day coming from the neighbors yard. I lay there, listened and it went away finally. I was literally experiencing an out of time moment, but then all time and all space are now. It is our perception that is limited.
Edit to add one more meditation story that I meant to include. Living in NE Ohio I was near the beach on Lake Erie. My wife was working so I went to the beach. I sat down near the edge of the water, dug my feet in the sand, letting the waves flow over my feet, and meditated. When I stopped and opened my eyes, I was surround in a semicircle (except the water) by seagulls all equally spaced apart and equidistant from me facing outward. They stood there still as statues for several minutes. One by one they started nodding and pecking and then quickly flew or wandered off.
end of edit.
One day my father was injured at work. He was using a Piranha press and the die shattered and went through his arm. It was near the time when he was to come home. I was meditating and “sent” myself to him. I saw him lying on a hospital bed in an otherwise black environment. I knew he was asleep but was aware of me. Violating protocol of asking permission, I said, “I’m here to help” and around his wound area, I saw a red glow. I clamped my hands around the wound and pumped a bunch of energy into it. When I was done, I “woke” and went to stand up and nearly collapsed. He was released from the hospital the next day. The doctors were
amazed at the healing progress. They were planning on sending instructions on how to irrigate the wound, etc, but said it suddenly healed miraculously to where that wasn’t necessary.
With that, I bid you all good night. How’s that, for what you got that’s supernatural?
Edited to mostly fix typos. It was written at 2am.
