Ghost strories Any body got a local haunting???

[greg g]

We have a couple locally, I have had experience with one.

Landmark Theater. We have an old movie palace that was originally called Lowes State Theater. It was opened in 1928 in a grand style featuring ornate carvings, Indo Asian scenes and little alcoves and niches of gilded carved plaster and lighted with chendeliers of punched metal. It has been purchased by a not for profit restoration foundation, and has been brought back to life as the Landmark Theater.

The theater is reportedly the home of a spirit named Claire. Numerous people have seen a lady in white climbing or descending the grand staircases, or in the wings or in the hallway of the second floor dressing rooms. Many people have reported having seen her on their visits to the theater.

The 13 curves ghost. There is a section of road in the town of Onondaga which follows a stream through a narrow steep walled gorge. The story goes that a young couple was on their way to thier honey moon, was involved in a tragicaccident, crashing into the creek. Several versions of the story exist but but the most popular involves the woman's spirit. Her spirit wanders the gorge looking looking for peace. I have driven that stretch of road many times, and have several times seen a weak gauzy floating white light along the banks of the creek, which is there, then gone. click the link for other varients.

http://www.syracuse.com/halloween/index.ssf?/halloween/curves.html

Happy Holloween from Central NY.

[Don Coatney]

Jack Dolittle, in spite of his name, had done everything. He was in hand-to-hand combat in the jungles of Vietnam. He fought as a mercenary for whoever would hire him in several of the brush-fire wars that have plagued the last half of the twentieth century. Tiring of war, he started a thriving import/export company that made him a millionaire several times over when he sold it to a multinational. He climbed Everest, K2, and the peaks of Patagonia. He dove to the bottom of the Marianas Trench in a research submarine. He hunted rhinoceros and water buffalo in Africa and polar bear in the Arctic. He trekked across the Gobi desert and Antarctica to the pole and wrestled crocodile in the Amazon basin. He was many times scarred, but never scared, for unlike other men, Jack Dolittle did not know the sensation of fear. In fact, Jack Dolittle was jaded, tired and bored, and was seriously considering suicide when he chanced upon a man named Gaines at an airstrip, if you could call it that, on the edge of the Sahara.

Over a beer Gaines told him of a haunted house on the outskirts of his home town in northern Minnesota. No one had lived in the house for 80 years, and few would even walk by the house on the nearly deserted dirt road that led past it. Most of those who ventured into the house were never seen again. One had survived. He was found wandering in the woods a couple of miles from the house, babbling incoherently, his clothes torn and bloodied. He had died a few years later in a hospital for the insane without ever revealing what had happened to him. Jacks pulse quickened and he began to feel alive again. Perhaps here was a challenge that would restore him and make him feel that life was again worth living.

Jack headed straight for northern Minnesota, and, with his usual and characteristic thoroughness, set out to discover all he could about the house and its erstwhile inhabitants. He soon found that all that Gaines had told him at the edge of the Sahara was true. The house had been built by a ruthless, vicious and despicable man named Sweeney around the turn of the century. One of victims of Sweeney's many frauds turned on him and slaughtered Sweeney and his family with an ax. There had been no heirs and the house had been sold at auction. The new owners, Ed and Madeline Berg, proprietors of the drugstore in town, disappeared within a fortnight and were never seen again. After that the rumors grew and no one attempted to occupy the house again. Jack found a few newspaper stories concerning people who had dared to enter the house, either for curiosity or on a dare, and who had also disappeared. Finally Jack found an article concerning Rupert Myer, a hobo who passed through the town a couple of times a year. A neighbor who lived a mile from the house had seen Rupert on the grounds on a Sunday evening. The next Wednesday Myer had been found by a woodsman three miles from the Sweeney house, wandering in the woods, screaming obscenities, babbling and drooling. Jack found an obituary dated three years later, almost to the day, stating that Rupert Myer had died in the state hospital for the insane.

Few in the town would talk to Jack, and the few that would were reluctant to tell him anything about the house. But Jack was feeling alive for the first time in years. He set about exploring the grounds of the house and even walked through the house in the middle of the day. He saw little that would not be expected in an 80 year old, unoccupied house. Lots of dust and spider webs, broken windows, rotting drapes and dilapidated furniture. There was no sign of occupation, except for bats and mice. The house actually seemed rather peaceful to Jack, and it occurred to him that this would be a nice place to live. It would take a fair amount of work to make the house livable, but he could buy it for almost nothing.

But, while Jack did not feel fear, he was not foolish. There was the small matter of all the disappearances. He decided to spend a few nights in the house, appropriately armed, and see what might transpire. Jack drove to Chicago, made a few purchases, and set himself up in the corner of what had been the sitting room on the first floor of the Sweeney house. He set up a comfortable chair, rigged up battery operated floodlights, moved in his weapons and ammunition, and settled down to wait for ... he did not know what. He waited through a cloudless and moonless night and saw nothing but bats in the gloom, heard nothing but an owl and crickets, and an occasional creak as the old house settled in for the night. Feeling at peace for the first time in many years, Jack fell asleep in his chair and was awakened by the birds just before dawn.

Suddenly he heard a noise, a solid thump from somewhere near the top of the house that was accompanied by an almost imperceptible tremor in the house. Then again, and again. Something heavy was making its way slowly and laboriously down the stairs from the third floor to the second, around the landing and down the stairs to the sitting room. Jack noticed with curiosity that the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up again. He strained through the gloom to see what was coming down the stairs, but he could only hear it, thump followed by thump until finally it was down the stairs and in the sitting room.

He threw the switch on the floodlights and across the room he saw an ancient, rotting coffin standing upright at the foot of the stairs. The lid was open at the head end and in spite of the brilliance of the floodlights, he couldn't see clearly through the spider webs and gloom of the interior of the coffin. What he could see made his blood run cold, and for the first time in his life, Jack Dolittle felt fear and understood why strong men run from danger. The coffin began to move toward him, wobbling and thumping across the creaking floor. Jack opened up with the Uzi, emptied the magazine, loaded another and emptied that. The coffin continued its advance. Jack threw a grenade. The coffin continued, unaffected. Jack opened up with his flame thrower, setting smoldering fires in the rotting carpet and the remains of the drapes. The only effect on the coffin was to burn the spider webs out of the opening and in the gloomy interior of the coffin, Jack thought he saw gleaming the coldest eye he had ever seen. By comparison even a python's eyes seemed warm and comforting.

The one mistake Jack had made in his planning was to not leave himself an escape route, and now the coffin blocked his exit from the sitting room. He emptied his .45 into the coffin without effect. He threw his Bowie knife. With a satisfying thump the blade buried itself in the lid of the coffin, the handle shuddering in the bright light of the floodlamps. The coffin continued. In a state of desperation, he threw his chair and his beer bottles, without effect. The coffin now was less than 6 feet from the corner where he was trapped and it was still lurching towards him.

Panic-stricken, Jack searched through his pockets for some remaining weapon. He found nothing but two Vick's cough drops. Trapped, and nearly hysterical, he threw them at the coffin...

Amazingly, they stopped the coughin'!

[55 Fargo]

This famous old landmark in Winnipeg, located at the corner of Broadway and Main st and across from Union Station. This is a turn of the century Canadian National Railway Hotel, reputed to be full of ghosts, this is where many a guest or hotel employee have been frightened half to death. It's still in business and is a very old elegant hotel. Winnipeg has many haunted buildings, including the Walker Theatre, built in the 1880s, it was a Vaudville theatre for years, even Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford performed there. Winnipeg was a wild west town in the 1880s and 1890s, plenty of saloons gambling, and redlight districts...............Fred

[55 Fargo]

Here is a pic of downtown Winnipeg aorund 1920, dubbed the Chicago of the north at the time. Many illegal bottleg operations were set up here and illegal booze would be shipped across the US border to Chicago, Minneapolis and some others, they had direct ties supplying some of Al Capones illegal liquor needs.

[greg g]

Well how about haunted appliances??? We mived into our first house in 1974. It was a three story colonial in the University Section of Syracuse's east side. We got the house as part of an estate settlement. The Family or 8 kids mother and father had lived in the house since 1933. The house was built in 1920. The mother was the last to live in the house, she had died at home about 1 1/2 years earlier of natural causes. The house still had much of the family's furnature and furnishings in the house when we bought it. Some of the kids worked out an arrangement to get some of the stuff after we bought the place, but there was still a lot of stuff in the house.

We had some friends in one weekend and cleared most everything except the old refrigerator and the easher dryer in the cellar. About a month after moving in we were sitting inthe living room and heard a noise in the basement. I went down and found the washing machine full and running. Neither my wife nor I had started the machine. We were not using them as we didn't know their condition and the washing machine tub was rusty. So I set it to spin, emptied and un plugged it. Several weeks later my wife heard the tell tale soud of water running somewhere in the house, checked all the faucets and toilets and the outside spigot, nothing running. Checking in the basement, she found the washing machine half full. she shut off the water. Later I went down, plugged it in, spun the water out of it, unplugged it and disconnected the hose. Several weeks later, we found water once again inthe tub of the washer, It was unpluged and the hose was disconected. Plugged it in, emptied it uplugged it and moved it to the other side of the celler along with the dryer. We replaced the units with new machines we had purchesed. Time went by until some hands and a truck were securred to remove the old washer and dryer. Dryer went first without a hitch. Went to move the washer and it was full of water again...... Now I'm sure that the mother did lots and lots of laundry, probably several loads everyday, but with the family moved out and her 1 and 1/2 years dead, you would have thought she would have let it go. My wife who is very spirit sensitive to these things said she felt the presence of the women many times, but that they stopped after the washer and dryer were removed.

[Olddaddy]

Our house is over 100 years old, and that's really old for Florida. We traced the history back to the early 20s, beyond that it's a guess. We bought the house from the son of the woman who owned it from the 30s forward. He told us little and we really didn't ask much. A truly beautiful, unmolested Cracker house in original condition was what we wante and got. Shortly after moving in we noticed the lights in the front bedroom would come on and go off on their own. We figured a bad switch, but even after the house was completely rewired it continued. Doors between the master bedroom and the bathroom will open, and then close themselves as if someone was walking through them. One day someone, or something reached out and patted the back of my head. I turned around thinking it might be my wife playing around with me, and found I was alone in the room. Our daughter has two invisible friends, Aultz, and Angst who she refers to as "glow friends". She carries on an active and constant relationship with them. A few years after moving in we learned that the step father of the man we bought the house from had died in the house, in the hallway near one of the fireplaces. We've never felt threatened, and if it is him we are happy to share space with him. Happy Halloween!

[D25_Steve]

It is considered the most haunted city in British Columbia and the Northwest.

The most well known haunting is by Doris Gravelin. She was strangled in September 1936 by her husband Victor, and dragged across the seventh fairway of the seaside Victoria Golf Course, and hidden under a pile of logs on the beach. Her body was later found, and Victor's body washed up 3 weeks later with Doris' shoes still in his coat pocket. According to local legend, she is only seen by young couples, who afterwards will never marry. Others claim to see a gliding white figure on the 7th fairway near the beach, twinkling lights, or a pulsating globe of light. The 7th fairway is also right next to Dallas Rd, and motorists often claim to see the lights.

The city's old burying ground used from 1855 - 1873 and still containing 1,000 bodies is supposedly haunted by 2 ghosts.

Bastion Square in the heart of Victoria's Old Town is the most haunted part of town. Almost every building around the historic square has a ghost or two. The Maritime Museum of British Columbia is located in the old Supreme Court building is said to be the most haunted of them all due to the fact is was built on the site of the city's first gallows and many of the men who were publicly hanged still lie buried beneath its foundations.

[T.Tom Meshingear]

Since I live in the Ghost Town that has become New Orleans "The most haunted city in the US" and since we don't put the dead in the ground but above ground in "The Cities Of the Dead", I could write a book about all the ghosts. Oops, never mind, about 200 people beat me to it. That said, here are the top 5 for out of town visitors

* St. Louis Cathedral 615 Pere Antoine Aly, New Orleans, LA Legend has it that the spirit of Pere Dagobert can be heard singing "Kyrie" in front of the church on rainy mornings.

* Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre 616 St Peter St, New Orleans, LA Patrons have reported seeing the ghost of a young bride who jumped to her death on the courtyard.

* St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 400 block of Basin St, New Orleans, LA The gravestone of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau is said to have a crow looking over it. She supposedly inhabits the crow.

* Flanagan's Pub 625 St Philip St, New Orleans, LA Some say the ghost of the former owner's sister, Angela, who committed suicide, has been seen roaming the grounds.

* Oak Alley Plantation 3645 Hwy 18, Vacherie, LA Some claim to have seen the ghost of the plantation owner's wife riding a horse looking for her husband.

And a link to a ghost story

http://www.thewritegallery.com/writing/ghoul_of_metairie.html

[kevinanderson]

Haunted? We have a '35 Ford 5 window coupe that has been in the family since 1957. The car was purchased new in Oakland, Ne and has never left. The original purchaser of the car was a spinster school teacher. Ms Lydia Hill never drove the car out of town, except once in it's 27k mile life. When my father purchased the car, the tailpipe was so carboned up that you "could barely stick your finger in the end". The only trip out of town was to Lincoln. And rumor had it that her lawyer could drive the both of them in the coupe, but he was absolutely not to drive over 35 mph.

Aside from the carboned up engine, the tires were rotted, thread bare and the interior shot from Miss Hill sliding in and out. But Dad was "encouraged to buy it" by an older friend. And so he did for 125.00.

Until the times I can remember, family has said what a stubborn car it was. And as I grew up with the car, I remember well all of the times it would stall out, refuse to start or the carb catching on fire. And the faster my father drove or encourged the new dual exhaust to cackle, the greater the trouble. I clearly remember once the car started on fire under the hood. And I was about 7. We had just returned from a trip to the Dairy Queen and had enjoyed the rolled down rear window, as my 4 year old sister and I rode in the package shelf. Suddenly there were flames and smoke bellowing out the side louveres, my father stopped the car and started to try and put out the flames while we children sat in the car.

Little damage was done, and a cause was never found. After that the car was rarely driven. This was around '67. It was driven rarely-once every 2 or 3 years. And the last time it was driven, it lost all oil pressure. I had driven the car back from a local pararde and everything seemed fine. But......

So, we always have kidded that Miss Hill disdains anyone driving her Ford. Let alone a family. And one strange thing, that car has not been driven since the the oiling issue, 30 years ago, not one tire has gone flat on that car. It only sits, asleep under old bed spreads, with 39,000 miles, looking almost exactly as it did in '57.

[David Maxwell]

...is said to be haunted. The hotel was a favorite of celebrity guests on their way to Hearst Castle. Charlie Chaplin, Doris Day, John Wayne, Clark Gable and many others would stay there on their way from Hollywood to the Castle. You can still stay in the old rooms which are identified by their most frequent patron. This is the section of the hotel where ghosts are said to be seen and heard at night. Hmmm.... Can't say I've ever had a close encounter myself. The hotel has been around since the turn of the last century. The three attached postcard images are from the 1930s. The dining room in the image is where we will have our national meet meals.

[Jim Yergin]

We live in a house built in 1823. When we first moved in I worked locally and would often come home for lunch. One day at lunch time when I walked into the kitchen there was a muffin tin on the floor. I thought maybe it had been on the counter and one of our cats had knocked it off. I put it up on the counter and went back to work. That night when I got home my wife asked me why I had the muffin tin out of the oven draw. She had not taken it out. A couple of nights later my wife made some muffins. There were six in all and we each had one with dinner. Later that night I went back into the kitchen and there were two muffins missing with no signs of crumbs, etc. that would lead you to think one of cats ahd eaten them. Never did find out what happened to the muffins. We just chalk it up to our muffin ghost who let us know what he or she wanted and was satisfied once he or she got some.

Jim Yergin

[blueskies]

My only ghost stories...

About 8 or 9 years ago, my wife and I did a little road trip around the region, and spend a night in a historic hotel in Nevada City, Montana. Nevada City is an old ghost town, and functions on tourist dollars. The first room they put us in, smelled so badly of WD-40 from lubing the hinges on the door we asked for another room. The second room was in the back corner of the old hotel, and was a nice little room with a pair of old wicker rocking chairs and a lumpy swayback bed on a very crooked floor. The bed had blocks under one side to make it sort of level. I had a weird feeling about the place, and didn't go to sleep easily, which I normally do. I woke up a couple of hours later, by the sound of someone sitting down in one of the rocking chairs that creaked loudly. I thought maybe Kristin was having trouble sleeping, and was up and about. But then I realized she was sound asleep next to me in bed. I switched on the light, and there was no one there, but the chair was moving just a bit. I figured I must have been dreaming, and shut off the light and tried to go back to sleep. I didn't sleep a wink though, because the chair periodically creaked, all night long, as if someone were sitting there watching over us.

When I was 4, and my brother was 8, he had some friends that lived in an old house in Hailey, ID, near the elementary school. He used to go over to their house after school and play pool on a table that they had in an upstairs room. Once, the balls on the table started moving on their own, and he wondered what was going on. He asked his friend, who casually remarked, "oh, that's just my baby brother". My brother looked up, and there was a ghost of a baby hovering over the table. Scared the bejabers out of him, and he never went back to visit again. Apparently the baby was a victim of crib death several years earlier.

The house is still there, and is currently for sale. Wonder if it comes with a baby ghost or not...

My wife and I are looking into buying a house in the same town, built in 1895. It is one of the oldest surviving houses in our town, rich in mining era history. I've been wondering, if we wind up buying it, if we would be moving in with another "family"... We are going to go take a second look tomorrow.

Pete

[Brad Lustig]

No ghosts here in Charleston...

That is actually a huge selling point for houses if there are rumors of ghosts in the house. There's a really good restaurant downtown that has a couple of ghosts called Poogan's Porch. Instead of botching the story go here instead

Poogan's Porch

Here are the stories

http://www.poogansporch.com/legends.html

As for personal ghost stories, there for a while, we had some "interactions" with both of my grandfathers. My mom's dad gave my father an old Case pocketknife that my dad kept with him all the time. Well, one day he lost it and it was gone for about a month. One night both of my parents woke up because of a "swoosh" sound in the room. The next morning the knife was sitting on the corner of my dad's bureau! Barely on the corner. There have been many other times where the knife would go missing only to show up later in the strangest places, but that one time was definitely the weirdest.

As for my dad's dad, he was the gardener for a place called Tanglewood in NC just outside of Clemmons and Winston-Salem.

About Tanglewood

Anyway, years after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother moved out of the house that was built for them on the property and it was converted into offices for the park. Plants would get watered in the house that nobody in the house would claim that they watered (nothing irked my grandfather more than a dry plant, he would stick his finger in the dirt of plants as he walked by out of habit, even at other people's houses). Windows would open on their own. Lots of other things going on like water on the floor in the morning next to one window. Things got so weird that the park called my grandmother about things that were happening. My grandmother said that window hadn't opened in about 30 years and confirmed that things that were happening were typical for my grandfather to do as far has habits and practical jokes.

[blueskies]

Remembered another... Not really a ghost story but more of a tale of the unexplained...

Not long after my parents were married in '68, my great grandmother gave my mom a plant for a gift. I don't know the name of the type of plant, but it has rubbery green leaves that are about a couple of inches long and sort of oval shaped. The leaves grow on a sort of vine, that wraps the plant holder. My mom always loved this plant, in part because it was unusual, and mostly because it had been a gift from her grandmother. This plant was around our house all my life, and had never bloomed during that time. Fast forward about 10 years, and my great-grandmother dies of a surgical complication in her 80's. We left home for 4 or 5 days to attend the funeral and when we got back home, the plant was in full bloom. The blosums on this plant are an amazing sort of star shaped waxy flower like nothing I'd ever seen. My mom took this as a sign that gram had made it to a better place...

Fast forward another 10 years, and my great grandfather dies at a ripe old age of 94. Same routine, we leave for the funeral, and when we return, the plant has bloomed again. It had not bloomed since the last time, when gram died. About a month later, it bloomed again, and has not bloomed since. That was 8 years ago. My mom thinks maybe the third bloom was when the couple were re-united in heaven.

A sign from the other side? Who knows, but some in my family think so...

Pete