lyndatu

Hello.......this isn't really important and all, but I really wanna type it down....

It's 10:00 PM and it's time to sleep. I went closing some of the lights in the house.........I was alone because all the others are already in bed. I went to the living room to turn of the aquarium lights and turn on a dim light to provide some light for the fish. I decided to watch the fishes for a little while. But then our old piano suddenly emitted sound, as if someone was playing it. I was scared, and slowly turned back, only to see no one on the piano chair, and the piano keys were closed. I froze, and walked my way in the dark halls into my parents' bedroom, and told them what happened. That was the second time I encountered something ghostly.

The sound from the piano was very clear; it's impossible that I only imagined it. The sound was the same key, played/pressed 5 times straight, although the sound was from soft and going to very loud. It was just too frightening. I can only hear the sound of the air pumps then an odd piano sound. this made me sleep in my parents' room. Well, I always do....hehe....I'm a scaredy cat and seldom sleep in my own room....

Well, the piano incident might just be caused by a rat or a lizard, hiding in the piano cover, but still............scary........Our house is very big and very old, it looks like a haunted house from the outside, especially at night. Several people relatives also lived here in the past.

I don't know if I'm going to believe in ghosts. Do you also have some ghostly or unusual experiences?

COBettaCouple

I'd vote for a lizard. Hey, if you catch him, will the fish shop give you trade-in credit for some fish?

Lucy

Believe it or not, I have had a couple of encounters.
Once with my husband while we drove around the battlefields in Gettysburg at night and several in a house I used to live in.
The experiences in the house scared me at first, but after a while I would tell her to knock it off. (I knew is was a her after I did some research on the house)
She would move the blinds, without the windows open, knock things over, close doors and once she sat on my bed while I was going to sleep.
She even whispered my name, like this....Loooocy, Looocy, LUCY!. I yelled at her that night. Voices were one thing, hearing my name was a totally different story.
I sound crazy, so I will shut up now. lol

lalynya

So what maybe the house is haunted. If the spirits wanted to hurt you they would have done it allready but usually they are harmless.

lalynya

Nah not crazy..My mom said growing up one of her freinds had a completly harmless ghost that would rearange the furniture and change the kitchen drawrs around when noone was home. so After a while they just kept the furniture where they were being moved to and that solved the problem..The house came with its own interior decorator. Also one time when I was a kid I went to the graveyard that is across the street from the library just to look at the graves cuz they were all historic...I put my bike down and walked away from it....A couple of minutes later I heard a female say my voice in the direction of where I left my bike..I went to my Bike and noone was there.I took off pretty fast after that and it was in the middle of the day in broad daylight.

ghostshrimplover999

one time when i was laying down in my bed to go to sleep i hear this strang sound coming from the computer speakers like hissksksks i just ignored it and went to sleep. well later that night i wake up with my eyes still closed (i allways do this strange thing!) and feel this force pressing down on my chest i open my eyes the force is gone and no one is there. i know i sound cray alot of people say the mother ship should have already came to beam me up

SereneReyn

i lived in a really old house in CO, and some spooky things happened there... showering (in the ancient clawfoot tub) the hot water would turn up all the way by itself... you could literally see the handle turn. and we had some little knick-knack type things around the house, that would always get turned around. and there was always the sound of footsteps above us, but we rented the whole house and there were no rooms up there, just the roof.

my dad has some spooky stories from the navy too... once he was out on watch, using his binoculars, etc... and it wasn't unusual for the captain to come out on deck and observe the men at their duties, there was even a chair behind him for that purpose. so one night the captain came out and sat down, my dad acknowledged him, and went back to watching... but then he started thinking... that man didn't look much like the captain and that the uniform he had been wearing was the old style... with the rows of brass buttons, etc... and he turned around for a second look and there was no one there.

Red wag platy

You all are crazy! If something like that happened to me, I would be out asap. Why did you stay for awhile if your house was haunted?

Coryd55

Yea I agree with red. I would move to a diff state. We are the only people that have lived in our house so thats good I guess haha. That show on dicsovery channel always freaks me out about ghosts.

rileyrk190

My dog creeps me out in my house because she always looks past me while i am talking to her or petting her, focusing on something behind me. She also constantly looks at the stairs the same way she would look at a human, and barks focusing on something in the middle of the room, which always gives me a chill. Also there was a phase where my watch would be turned exactly an hour behind during the night a few times a week, but just as abruptly as it started it stopped doing it. My parents tried to say it was me doing it in my sleep ( i always sleep with it on), but it would be exactly an hour and the date woudnt be changed and the pin was always pushed in. I dont know about you, but i dont think i would be able to pull out the pin, change the time and not the date which is hard to do when i need to, while i'm sleeping. Thankfully, if this is something, its a friendly non-confrontational spirit..lol

Tavel

the thing about ghosts...they're only ghostly if you intend for them to be ghostly. I've been with people getting jazzed up about the dumbest things, and also with some things that needed greater explanation...but it's always something perfectly harmless and...ordinary.

IMO ghost stories are a result of two things. First is "expectancy"...you expect something, so your brain tries very hard to rationalize it. That's why people will say beverage "A" tastes better than beverage "B" in a blind testing, even if both are the same beverage.

Second is we human's intense compulsion to anthropomorphize EVERYTHING around us. We're social creatures, so we socially interact with our environment. Seriously, does this actually look anything at all like a face?? hahahaha

Then there's also the self-perpetuating or "discovery aversion" built into the myths. once you start looking for it, it's gone. Just like how voodoo priests will insist the latest spell didn't work because another priest was protecting the target or something. Self-perpetuation is a dead give-away to a logical flaw or imaginative creation.

I should point out that my family is very insistent that my house is haunted because "strange" things happen (and they can even give examples). Yet, I've never experienced any strange things and am all by my lonesome all the time in this big scary dark house. Maybe the ghosts just don't like me, but there's that self-perpetuation thing again.

edit: here is a computer guy writing a column on the matter. The fellow is long winded and distracted, to put it nicely, but he makes some nice points and can go off on some entertaining segways...I just happen to run across this about magic and ghosts

http://www.dansdata.com/magic.htm

sirdarksol

My hamster, Damien, used to get into the hammer/string area of the piano and would "play" from in there.
Not that I don't believe in the super-/para-natural, just offering support for the rat/lizard theory.

Lucy

Believe me, if you ever heard your name whispered in an empty house, you'd change your mind. The first name whisper...ok, my imagination, the second whisper....what was that? But the third whispery shout.....no doubts.

You should visit Gettysburg, Pa sometime. Now there's a spooky place.

Tavel

I've been in plenty of "spooky" places with truly freaked out people who had the clever idea to go ghost hunting (Chicago has a long, bloody history of mafia murders, complete with subsequent ghost stories). As a student of science and reason (I sound like a jerk, lol!), I truly appreciate how easily our senses and environmental awareness can be skewed and manipulated...especially by our own senses and consciousness.

"I heard it" and "I saw it" don't really fly, because you think in audio and visuals. You hear yourself talking when you think, you see whatever you're thinking about. You see and hear the movie you're thinking about, and so on...it doesn't take much to elicit some unintentional images and sounds.

Perfect example of this happening in a perfectly non-ghostly scenario would be when you think you hear someone say something, but they didn't say anything. You go "what's that?" and they say "i didn't say anything..." Your brain just tricked you, and you fell for it.

It's not scary when it happens at a party surrounded by 20 people...but it's scary when it happens in a lonely house? I bet it happens far more often around people than when alone for the simple fact that you're with people for most of your waking hours...but it's not scary when you're around people, so you only remember the times when you're alone.

As you said...it's scary because the house is empty

Lucy

ahhh, science and reason will trip you up everytime.
Looking for reasonable explanations when sometimes there are none.

sirdarksol

By this reasoning, relying upon science and reason will fail you, as science and reason need the brain to function, and if the brain can trick you, science and reason might all be lies.
Of course, if we fail to use science and reasoning because they can fail us, then there's no point to abide by my statement in the last paragraph, since we aren't abiding by reasoning.

Tavel

well science uses tools to to avoid subjective perception. Like using thermometers instead of skin contact, for instance. While reason uses systematic analysis, analyzing what happened, the circumstances, all possible causes (in our case, physical possibilities as well as mental possibilities), and finally comparing it to similar instances...has it happened before?

The reasonable would say "I've had good luck without my good luck charm, so perhaps good luck doesn't stem from my charm."

Whereas the superstitious would just say "the good luck charm is projecting it's protection from afar." Or any variation thereof because the superstition is self-perpetuating and will always avoid direct testing.

You're absolutely right, science and reason can still fail. But they're MUCH less likely to fail, and the reasons will be evident, testable, and correctable.

Superstitions are not consistent and testable, and I think that's why they're so alluring to people. I just think they're a waste of time.

Lucy: there is always a reasonable explanation, you just have to be willing to accept that the world doesn't work the way you think it should (most people have a really hard time with that). I'll admit that sometimes we don't know the explanation. But in those times just remember that time has defeated just about every superstition around. Remember when when lightning was the wrath of god and the sun orbited the earth? Ahh the good old days.

Lucy

Explain, love, it's there. but why? There's no scientific reason for that. Lust, maybe, but not love.

Tavel, we'll have to agree to disagree.