THE MAN WITH A HAT
(Mendy & Ed)
My boyfriend Ed and I recently built a home. The first night after we moved in we were sitting on our back patio. He saw what he thought was a man with a hat on, walking through our back yard. He watched the "man" vanish right before his eyes. He thought it would be best not to tell me what he had just witnessed because he was afraid that I would insist that we move. Not more than 10 minutes later I saw a ghostly figure of a man, it appeared to be a civil war soldier walking not more than 15 feet in front of me. I was so terrified I couldn't move or speak until it vanished right before my eyes. I was in a panic and I explained to him what I just saw, not thinking he would believe me for one minute. It was then that he confessed that just minutes before he witnessed the same thing.
HIDE ~N~ SEEK
(Mendy & Ed)
One evening we were hanging curtain brackets and I laid the nails down on the counter so I could climb over the sink to hang them. I reached down to grab a nail and they were gone. I called Ed in to see if he could find them on the floor, but he didn't see them either. Thinking it was odd that they could just disappear, we looked everywhere. I went to the kitchen table where we have cloth placemats, picked them up and shook them, (even though I knew I put them on the counter) and still didn't find them. A while later Ed came in the kitchen and picked up the same placemat, I had already shook and the nails went crashing to the floor. That isn't the only experience we've had with things disappearing and reappearing. I lost a ring that I knew I put in my jewelry box like I always do. We looked for it for days. Several days later Ed was digging for a pen in the wicker remote control holder that we keep by our couch and found my ring. There was no reason for it to be in there and neither of us would have put it in there. I also have trouble keeping track of my lighters. I had just bought 3 new lighters and put them in a drawer. We were getting ready to go somewhere and I went to the drawer to get a lighter out. They were gone. I took everything out of the drawer thinking they may be under or stuck in something....nothing. We looked everywhere in the house and Ed also checked the same drawer. After looking for them for a few days and not finding them, I got tired of using matches and bought 2 more lighters. The same evening the lighters that previously disappeared, turned up in the very drawer that we had both searched numerous times. We have come to the conclusion that next time something is missing we'll just wait it out, it will turn up eventually.
THE DOORS
(Mendy & Ed)
One Saturday afternoon we decided to take a nap. Our backdoor is always locked with both the lock and the deadbolt. We woke up a few hours later to find our door standing wide open. We have an inside cat that we are always really careful not to let outside, so we panicked when we found this door open. Ed went over to close the door and the cat came tearing through the house looking scared to death. We still have no explanation for why the door was open. On another occasion, I was in the backroom were the computer is checking out this site. Getting rather creeped out by some of the things I was reading. I decided to print the rest of the story so I could read it later when Ed was home from work and when I felt safer. Suddenly, I heard the doorbell ring. I looked out the window onto the front porch and nobody was there. I thought it was my imagination and the ghost stories had made me jumpy, but as soon as I sat down the bell rang again. I went to the door and opened it and again, nobody was there. I was scared to death, I closed the door and didn't even have my hand off the doorknob when the bell rang again! Needless to say I didn't answer it that time. I called Ed at work scared out of my mind. He laughed and said that if the ghost really wanted to come in he didn't need to use the door....very comforting! Next thing I know, while we were on the phone the electricity went off. This only added to my being scared. He called the power company from work and they said that they didn't show any power outages in our area and had no idea why our power would be off. About 20 minutes later it came back on. A man from the power company pulled into the drive and I told him that our power was back on. He asked if it had blinked a few times first or just went off, I told him it had just went off, he thought that that was odd, but said okay and went on his way.
THE FACELESS ENTITY
Click Rob's name to contact him
This experience happened a while ago. I'm thinking fall of 2001, but I'm not really sure. I live in a house on top of a Mountain deep in the woods in Southwest Virginia in the southern Appalachians and I also work part time in a drug Rehab Center. I mostly work evening and night shift. If you can imagine, working in a place like that, it really gets to you after a while. So I have sort of a ritual to unwind after a day at work. I'll go into my back yard and listen to my portable CD player, walk around and more or less chain smoke until I can unwind.
One night after a 3:00 to 11:00pm shift, I started my unwinding ritual. The leaves on the trees were turning and the ground was covered in frost with a quarter moon shining down. Overall, there was nothing different about that night. It was the same ole stuff, different day kinda thing. I had been walking around for about an hour or so, listening to my CD's when a rush of panic flooded over me. I say flood because I compare it to when you just first jump into a swimming pool on a hot July day. When you're hot and sweaty and you hit the cool water your body kinda goes into a temporary shock. My body on this night went into total fear shock! The only movement I could make was to use my thumb to pause my CD player. I stood there silently for at least 3 or 4 minutes darting my eyes around looking for anything that would show the root of my fear. I could not find anything. Nothing was out of place, nada. I actually started thinking I was having a medical problem. I had thought that the smokes had finally started doing me in, lol.
I had begun to break free of the shock and was making my way to my house when I looked up and seen my dogs. My dogs were two beagles, and if any of you have beagles, you know how they love to bark. They will bark at anything that crosses into eyesight. The weird thing was though, they weren't barking. They were afraid. They had their head and shoulders to the ground and were slinking their way to the front of my house as if they had been scolded. This scared me badly. I knew then it wasn't just me, therefore it wasn't medical. There was something wrong, that I could sense and obviously, the dogs could smell. I went back into my fear shock. I stood watching, waiting and listening. Minutes went by and still nothing. I really felt stupid, kinda like it was when I was real young and thought the sounds of the house settling was something walking on the roof. So I started making my way towards my house. As I was making my way towards the house the absolute most blackest, cruelest, and satanic scream came from my woods about a hundred or so yards away. The sound is indescribable. It was neither high pitched nor low toned but both at the same time. It sounded neither human nor animal either. It was an indescribable sound coming from a faceless entity. Imagine cracking open the roof of hell it's self and seeing one of the soul's burning and hearing the agony of the blistering heat of the flames. That gives you a general idea. My fear at the point was also indescribable. I have been in car wrecks and near car wrecks. I have been shot at and fell from high places. I was also afraid of those things, but this was a whole other kind of fear. It felt like my skin was ice and my blood was boiling. I could have given you an injection with one of the thin hairs on my arm. The scream stopped and after about 5 seconds I broke off running towards my house. As I made my way to my front door, it screamed one last time. Almost to say, " I see you"!
I went into the house laid on the living room floor in a near fetus like position. I laid perfectly still and stayed quite. My Dad was on the couch asleep just about 4 feet away. I didn't wake him though. The reason I didn't wake him wasn't because I was afraid he wouldn't believe me (Even though I knew he wouldn't) but because I was afraid the screaming thing would hear me or see me move. After that night I didn't go outside for a while. After a few days I got over the scream and started my nightly ritual again.
THE CHURCH & THE HANDPRINT
(Emily & Shawn)
I'll be the first to admit, when you look at the church out in Fauquier County, it looks like a quaint country church. Built back before the civil war, Grace Episcopal Church is a stone and stucco structure out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by forest and fields. It has two graveyards with it, one to the side and one around back butting up to the forest. The only way to it is down a dusty, windy dirt road. At night, it is dark. And when I say dark, I mean darker than a well digger's behind. Pitch black comes to mind.
During the Civil War, Grace Episcopal, since it stood (at the time) on a major thoroughfare, was used as a military hospital/surgical area. People died there naturally. It was gruesome, from what I understand.
My story actually concerns my fifth visit to the Church (and my next-to-last, I might add). My boyfriend, Shawn, (now husband) and I had decided to go out there after I had told him about it and how it was supposedly haunted. I had told him that some odd things had happened to me there before, but nothing really all that creepy. He was curious and so we went with his stepfather, Walt, joining us.
I drove up to the church and parked in the front between two large oak trees. We walked through the gate of the picket fence and proceeded to look around. I had never had a creepy feeling there before, but tonight just 'felt' different, for some reason.
We had been there about 10 minutes, looking through the windows of the church, exploring the side graveyard and generally just goofing off when I decided to go around to the back of the church. Shawn and Walt were around the front of the church looking at the bell tower while I was exploring the back area. I heard a sound and started to turn towards it, swinging around in a way that I was facing the forest as I did so. As I swung around, I froze. There, in the forest, was... I can only describe it as "something". Here's the weird part: I couldn't actually see it. I had what could only be explained as a "mental" picture of it.
I knew something was there, looking at me, where I SHOULD be able to see it, but there wasn't anything physically there! I wanted to leave, I wanted to run, but I was completely frozen. I couldn't even really breathe. It was like it held me in place.
Finally, when Shawn and Walt called my name, I was able to shake it off. I was so freaked out at that point, that I just continued turning and marched right on past them. They asked what was wrong and I just said, without looking at them, "We are LEAVING. Let's go!" Again, they asked me what was wrong, as I rounded the side of the building and I said again "Let's GO! I'm LEAVING!"
I walked on around to the car and was standing outside of the driver's side waiting for them. It had been a calm, cool night in November (night before Thanksgiving, actually) and no wind. Suddenly, I felt a breeze come up and as I looked up at the trees above me, it was like there was thousands of fireflies in the branches. They lit up like a
Christmas tree!
About that time, I heard Walt yell to Shawn, "RUN!" and I could hear them running, feet pounding, towards the car. I jumped in the driver side and started the car. As I did so, I looked and saw Shawn coming through the gate of the fence. As I sat there and looked, he appeared to trip or something had shoved him. He went flying through the dirt and gravel, landing on his hands and knees. He got up, continued on around the car and jumped in the front passenger seat. Walt then ran around and got in. (Note: keep in mind, Shawn was so far ahead of Walt, he was able to fall, get up and get in the car before Walt had even cleared the gate area.)
Once Walt was in the car, I took off. We went up about 5 miles to a 7-11, the whole time, Shawn complaining about his shoulder bothering him. We all thought it was from jarring it when he landed on his hands. We got to the 7-11 and he went inside. He came back out about a minute later with a weird look on his face. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me this "When you took off, Walt and I went and looked around to see what freaked you out. I didn't see anything, but Walt did. When he yelled "run", I did. But when I got to the gate area, it felt like something shoved me, that's why I fell. I figured I had just lost my balance and being so freaked, just imagined the feeling... Until I got into the bathroom and saw this", He pulled his shirt off and there, on his shoulder, was a perfect, red handprint. In a position that could only be put there if someone behind him had shoved him. And no one had appeared to be near him when he had fallen.
Needless to say, we went home after that!
THE HAUNTED ROSEWELL PLANTATION
(Tracey)
One night in October of 2003....my husband, myself, my two daughters and some of their friends decided to visit the Rosewell Plantation. It was foggy that night....the perfect setting for a ghost hunt! The plantation was built back in the 1700's and all that remained was a huge, four-story shell of what used to be a mansion. This is the location Thomas Jefferson supposedly wrote "The declaration of Independence". A family named Page once owned it. It burned down in 1916. To date, during the day you can pay to visit the location...but at night...it's off limits. Anyway, this particular night I was driving my van down the dirt road leading up the mansion. The first odd thing I noticed was as we were getting closer to the mansion, my gas peddle started to feel as if it were getting harder to push down...almost a resistance to get there.....like we were running out of gas or something. We finally made our way back and had to turn around to park. I decided to stay in the van with my youngest daughter and another girl. As soon as I turned the motor off, we began to hear music playing....old time music, no less. We all sat there, listening. My husband instructed everyone who wanted to go along to start getting out of the van to go. They all went and the few of us who decided to stay behind sat there patiently...waiting and listening. About ten minutes later, I saw what appeared to be the flash from a camera go off a few times...then all of a sudden we heard frantic screaming! I was beyond myself. The next thing I knew one of the boys came running towards the van, holding the back of his neck, screaming "Open the door...there's a ghost!!" He jumped in the van and soon after, the rest of the group started piling in one by one. My daughter was crying and holding one of her eyes. My husband remarked "You would not believe what just happened and what we saw!" He said he was taking pictures of the kids standing on the stops when all of a sudden something began slapping them. What ever it was then pushed them all down the steps. As they began running away, my husband saw a man standing by one of the trees. He shouted out to everyone to stop and look...they all witnessed this man standing there. When we got home we checked everyone out. My daughter had a black eye and one of the boys had a bruise in the shape of a handprint on the back of his neck. I can definitely say that Rosewell is without a doubt, haunted!!
A HOUSE LIKE NO OTHER
This took place about 15 years ago, but my mother and I still remember it very well. My mother used to clean houses for people, she had several clients but there was one house she cleaned that was unlike any of the others. An elderly couple lived there; it was a very nice home. It was very large with three bedrooms upstairs, kitchen, dining room, and a very large living room. Downstairs was a very large basement that had been fixed up with three more bedrooms, a bathroom, and a large sitting area with a fireplace. The activity started out small for my mother. I was still in high school, so I didn't get to help her out at first. She said she would just get creepy feelings that she was being watched, and for reasons she couldn't explain, when she was down in the basement, she would just get the feeling like she just had to hurry up and get finished and get out as quickly as possible. She said she always felt like, that at any given second, someone was going to walk through the door and come into the room she would be in. This would happen to her even when the couple was there with her, which they usually would be. But most of the time she said that after she cleaned the upstairs, and started to head downstairs, they would always go out for lunch. She said she just hated it when they left and she would have to be there alone, but yet she couldn't exactly explain why, nothing had ever happened yet that she could put her finger on, it was just a very bad feeling she would get. She had told me about it, and I told her it was probably just because it was such a big house and it was such a dark house, because all the windows were really small and didn't let in much light throughout the house, and there were practically no windows at all down stairs, except for those little tiny basement windows that most houses have, you know the ones that are like 2'x2' and almost at the ceiling. Well as time went on (she only cleaned for them about twice a month, so things progressed at a slow rate), other little things started happening. She would be sweeping the floor and would put the broom down to go do something else and when she would come back to get the broom it would be moved to somewhere else. It was just a small thing, and most of the time she would just say 'Now I could have sworn I put that broom right there, I must be having an off day', you know how you just try to justify things to yourself so you don't have to really think about it too deeply. That kind of thinking worked for her for awhile, but then things started happening that she just couldn't explain away. After the couple would go out to lunch, or they would often times go and volunteer at the local hospital, she would start to hear noises throughout the house. If she was upstairs she would hear things in the basement, like bangs on the walls. At first of course she told herself that it was the plumbing, (you know that old line people always give you), but then she would hear things like furniture being moved, like scraping on the floor and bangs and things. Sounds you associate with someone moving things around. She would open the basement door and the sounds would stop, and nothing was out of order. If she was downstairs, she would hear things upstairs, like footsteps right above her, and sometimes she would even hear murmuring voices, not loud enough to make out the words, but she could tell it was someone talking. This always came right after she would actually hear the front door open and the sounds of footsteps going down the hall. She said every time it would happen she would think that it was the couple, who had returned home, and she would go upstairs to see, but of course no one was there. She would tell herself she was not going up there, but she said she just couldn't stand not knowing for sure and she had to go check anyway, and she said it would just nag and nag at her if she didn't go check. During the meantime, the woman had purchased a weeping willow tree. Now my mother is a superstitious woman, she says that when someone plants a weeping willow that someone in their family is going to die! I'm not sure about all those superstitions but when she came home and told me she was so upset by it that she acted like someone had already died! Well just as Mom predicted it was about a year later that the woman was diagnosed with cancer. I'm not for certain exactly what type of cancer, but when they operated on her they said the cancer was all over her insides, her doctor described that it was like icing spread on a cake, that it was just all over her insides. When they had opened her up to operate, they said that somehow had caused the cancer to spread even faster, so her condition got worse in a hurry. Mom swears that every time she went there to clean and the woman got sicker and sicker, that the tree, which really hadn't grown much anyway in just a little over a year's time, began to look droopier and droopier, until one day when she went, the husband had had it cut down. Mom said that she knew then that the poor woman didn't have much longer to live. During one of the last times Mom had seen the woman, she said that she was lying on the chaise lounge in the living room and she was quietly dusting around trying not to disturb her, when a picture of the woman and her husband that was sitting solidly on top of the secretary just suddenly fell face down with a plop, like someone just walked over and flicked it over. According to Mom, a picture falling that has never fallen before is either a sign of sickness or death in the family. Well it was just a week later that Mom got the call that she had passed away. With his wife gone the man began volunteering longer and longer hours at the hospital, so that now when Mom went to clean he would not even be there at all. He gave her a key and left her paycheck on the table. She would be there all alone the whole time, which was usually 2 1\2 to 3 hours. I really don't think that the woman dying had anything to do with the increased activity; I think it was just the fact that Mom was now there alone, but things started getting stranger and stranger. The noises downstairs were getting louder and more frequent and now she said that every time she went downstairs there would be a little puddle of water in the floor in the hallway. She checked every time to see where it was coming from, she checked the baseboards and walls, even the ceiling for a source of the water but everything else was always dry. She said it was like someone just walked over and poured a small cup of water on the floor. She even told the man about it and he said he had never noticed it before but he would have someone come over and check it out. I don't guess he ever did though because Mom said it still continued every time. One time she got the mop and mopped it up and then she heard the noise she always heard of someone opening the front door upstairs and walking down the hall, only this time it was accompanied by the sound of dishes rattling in the kitchen, so she was certain that time that it really was the man who had returned. She went upstairs but no one was there as usual. She went back downstairs to put the mop away because she was finished cleaning anyway, and there in the same spot was the puddle of water again. She said that really scared her and she didn't even bother to mop it up again, she just stuck the mop in the utility room and out she went. The next time she went back I could tell she didn't want to go, I even asked if I could skip school and go with her, because to tell the truth it worried me that she would be there alone, and I could really tell it was preying on her mind because she had mentioned it several times since then, which she usually acted like she didn't want to talk about it. I had already missed several days of school and she said that she didn't want me missing anymore because they had already sent a note home about me being absent so often, so she went it alone. She picked me up from school that day and I could tell something had happened just by looking at her. My Mom and I have that type of bond that we can just tell when something's wrong. She said everything had been really quiet all day, and when she was finishing the upstairs, she had swept up a small pile of dirt on the kitchen floor. She had gone downstairs to get the dustpan and mop and when she came back to the kitchen there was now a large pile of dirt on the floor! She said it was like potting soil from a house plant but there where no house plants upstairs, and even if there where, how did it get there??? I don't know how she regained her composure or how she managed to finish the job but she did. She said the only other thing that happened that day was when she got downstairs and put some laundry in the dryer that the dryer would not work. The logical thought would be that it was an electrical problem but she said that by this point she just assumed it was something supernatural because that dryer was only a couple of years old and it had never done that before. Sure enough, she went upstairs to gather the supplies she had left up there and when she came downstairs to put the things away in the utility room, out of curiosity she pushed the button again and sure enough. It started right up. Coincidence...maybe, but given the events that had just taken place, I doubt it was a coincidence. After telling her story I said 'I don't care how many days of school I've missed I'm going with you next time.(Not just so my Mom wouldn't be scared, but because my curiosity was running wild). I had never really experienced anything supernatural at this point in my life, and it wasn't that I didn't believe the stories Mom was telling, but I guess it's one of those things you just have to experience first hand. Well I went with her the next time and I did get those creepy feelings that she was talking about. I wandered through every room in the house and to me I didn't feel anything creepy in the two back bedrooms, even though the woman had passed away in one of them. I felt the creepiest in the dining room, living room, master bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. It was just like Mom had described, I felt like someone was watching me, it was so strange, I wasn't nosing through drawers or anything but I had this panicked feeling especially in the master bedroom and bathroom, that I was like a burglar and I had to hurry up and get out of there because someone would be walking through the door any second and I would get caught. That's the most accurate way I could describe it. The feeling was so strong in the bathroom that even though I had to go really bad I held it because I just knew someone was standing there watching me. I went into the living room and sat down on the couch. There were tall lamps on either side of the couch, one was off and the other was on. When I sat down the light that was on went off. Mom laughed and said that was probably just a bad wire because the lamps were really old. I think she was trying not to get us both too creeped out so soon in the day. I sat there just a few minutes longer and the lamp that had originally been off, turned on. I looked at Mom and said 'O.K. I'm a believer'. (Not that I needed to be convinced very much anyway). Instead of just sitting there I decided that if I helped Mom out we would get finished sooner and could get out of there faster. I started dusting things off in the living room and when I got to the sliding glass doors that looked out into the side yard I asked Mom where exactly that willow tree had stood. She told me it was right next to the birdfeeders and while I was standing there looking, not actually touching the glass, but just standing back looking, this little sun catcher thing stuck to the sliding glass door by one of those little suction cup hangers, just starts rocking back and forth like someone had flicked it. It was on the inside of the glass so there was no wind or anything to send it into motion. I watched fascinated, it was really going fast, but all the while telling myself that it was probably vibration from a big truck going by on the road or something. It just rocked and rocked until it gradually slowed down. I didn't wait to see if it stopped, but when I came back to the room later it wasn't moving and it never moved again, and Mom said she had never saw it move before at all. Nothing else had happened while we were upstairs that is. We went downstairs, I hadn't explored down there earlier, I was just too chicken to go alone. It was very dark and dreary and the feeling I had upstairs was much worse down there. I asked her if we really had to clean down there because it all looked spotless anyway. She said we at least had to dust and vacuum because it always got dusty. I was in such a hurry to leave that I told her I would dust one room while she dusted the other so we could get done faster. Everything went fine, except for those horrible feeling of being followed and watched, so I grabbed the vacuum and went into a bedroom. Mom called it the yellow room because everything in there was yellow. She told me that she thought that most of the noises seemed to come from this room, and that one time when the woman was alive she had been looking for some paintings she had done, she had searched everywhere in the house and couldn't find them, and one day Mom was vacuuming and she found them in the closet in this bedroom. She said they had been just violently shoved up under some boxes and they had been crammed so hard that the edges pf the canvas had just been smashed. The woman was very upset about it but she didn't offer up any reasons for why this might have happened. Very strange we thought. Anyway I was vacuuming like a madwoman when suddenly the vacuum stopped. I turned and the door was almost closed except for a crack and the vacuum was unplugged. My mom was in the next room working so I figured she had unplugged it when my back was turned just to pull a joke on me. It made me very upset because she already knew how scared I was and so I yelled to her in the next room to 'stop it' I told her I wanted to get done so we could leave, she came in the room and said that she didn't do it. I could tell she wasn't joking. I turned the vacuum back on, she was standing by the bed watching me, and it suddenly felt like a cold draft blew over me. Even over the noise of the vacuum cleaner running I heard the door slam shut. I whirled around and Mom was still standing there by the bed, she hadn't touched the door. I looked at her and she had a scared look on her face and suddenly the can of furniture polish that was sitting in the dehumidifier was flying off. It didn't just tip over and fall like from a vibration or something, it literally flew off like someone just slapped it off real hard. I looked at Mom and said 'Let's go now'! We collected our things and put them in the utility room, but Mom insisted on using the bathroom down there before we left. I could have killed her but I guess it literally scared the pee out of her, me personally, I was still holding it from along time back! I couldn't stand out in the hall and wait for her, I just couldn't. There I was almost 17 years old and I had to stand beside my mom while she used the bathroom. I told Mom I would never go back there and she said that was o.k. It wasn't very long after that, that the man told her he was selling the house and moving back to his hometown where he had grew up. He never said and we always wanted to know, but we wondered if he ever heard the things that we did. He had to have; I don't see how he didn't. Well that's been many years ago and I always wonder who bought the house and if the same things still go on there. One day Mom and I plan on driving by there; my son who is 8 years old is dying to see the house.
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