Be Excellent To Each Other

My father's side of family were haunted by a poltergeist in their home in Mayasia for some weeks in the 1960. It usually took the form of moving ornaments around behind people's backs, thumpings, things falling off walls. However, it also once in full view of the family and a guest picked up a pot of glue and blobbed it in the air.

This has always troubled me, as my dad's side are completely straight-faced and non-mad. My grandad was an English professor who taught at Swansea, Huddersfield and Kula Lumpur universities. My dad's an accountant. My auntie a professor of Spanish in Pittsburgh and my grandma was a Tory mayor and chief councillor. (And one who was utterly ace, loved by all parties, called Douglas Bader a cunt to his face, had gay and gypsy friends and would certainly have disapproved of pretty much everything in politics now on both sides.)

So yes, perfectly sane side. Which is a problem as I don't believe in ghosts, and so find it terrifying to consider what they'd seen. Maybe there is personality after death. Brrr.

("Lucky them. I don't even have personality before death," - Russell Brand.)

Why would things like that be attributed specifically to human presence after death though?

I don't believe in ghosts either, by and large, though I can't deny there's something a touch odd about my parents house. But, hey, if ghosts are real and the place really is haunted, they don't seem to mind us being there.

Basically, when we moved in back in '93, the place had sat abandoned for about two years after the elderly couple that lived there had died. There was a really creepy vibe about the place since it was still furnished and still had tins of stuff in the cupboards. It didn't get many viewings and whenever we turned up to take a look, the estate agent would always wait outside, seemingly not wanting to go in until he had someone with him. But all this meant my Dad was able to put in a stupendously low offer and have it accepted by the couple's son, whose only offer (for a hell of a lot more) had been from a property developer who wanted to knock it down and build two smaller houses on the land. We just wanted to live there as a family, which he preferred.

As for weird stuff, my parents claim to have seen and heard lots of things, but I've no idea what. I once saw a figure run past the patio door one night, only to find there was no one there and pets we've had have always avoided the hallway for some reason. Myself and my ex-fiance had two photos of us taken in that hallway on our way out one night and both photos are covered in those 'orb' things, if you believe in that (personally, I believe dust would be a more appropriate name, but there you go). I've often thought I could see things in my peripheral vision on the landing and about two weeks ago my mum lost her glasses, only to find them jammed underneath an arm chair, positioned in such a way that they were looking directly at her. It's not exactly the Amityville Horror, I accept.

I've also seen 'ghosts' on two other seperate occasions, but am still inclined to believe it's a load of old shit.

Good question, there's the telekinesis school of thought or mass hysteria. But it does make me wonder sometimes.

EDIT: Or that wibbly electro-magnetic affect. Or CUS sneaking about with wires and mirrors and trying to freak us all out.

My major complaint of ghosts is that they only seem to appear at night, when it's dark, and when it's psychologically proven that your mind can play tricks on you despite there being no outside stimulus.

It's just a little tiring that people are willing to see something, then make a huge leap and settle on a cause. It's the same 'I saw something in the sky therefore aliens exist' type of thought.

I'd love for someone to gather some real, proper evidence for ghosts, though. It'd be fascinating.

I went to a supposedly haunted house a few years ago, on a ghost-night thingy. It was quite fun but, despite the mediums feeling loads of spirits and spouting bullshit all night, I didn't experience anything out of the ordinary. Sure, it was a bit creepy in the dark sections of the house alone, and I saw some dust on the cameras, but I felt the whole evening played out in the minds of the visitors, not in the house itself.

People are a bit too quick to anthropomorphise things, I feel, and make fantastic claims without fantastic evidence.

This. I always said I'd love to go to one of these things you always see on TV with "everyone who has ever stayed in this hotel room (which just happens to be in Hicksville, USA) has seen a ghost/UFO/three headed budgie..."

I know people who I trust a lot to be "sane" who say they've seen things, but to be honest I can't believe until I've seen it myself. Seeing it myself would be aces upon aces.

One of my 'ghost sightings' occured in the daytime, though again, I don't believe in ghosts I just found it all to be a little odd.

It was one summer at Uni whilst I was working in a warehouse as a temp. I'd had a slight barney with my supervisor that morning which ended with me having to make repeated journeys to a small storage building across the car park to store these large, heavy boxes and I was in a foul mood, so much so that I nearly put my boot through one of the boxes at one point. Feeling I should cool down for a bit, I left this building and stood outside the door for a bit and had a breather. When I went back in, there was someone standing at one of the shelves looking for something, which was strange as they would've had to have walked past me to get in. I could only see their back, so when I turned to get a better look at who it was, they vanished into thin air.

Now I'm quite happy to put this down to a mix of a trick of the light and me being in a pissed off state of mind. The only reason I still think about it is that a few weeks later, someone told me the story of about how the place was haunted and that some of the girls on the third floor and a number of the security guards had 'seen things'. Bearing in mind that I had not told anyone of my experience, out of fear of having the piss taken out of me, I asked two of the security guards what they had seen and they both described the figure that had vanished in front of me. Which, you have to face it, is at least a little bit odd. But I'm still going for the 'trick of the light' explanation.

Excellent tale there, Zio. And freaky.

I was once asked to calm down at a party after I started shouting at this really annoying hippy guest. He started blathering on about UFO's and how they existed, man, and like, woah, the government were trying to cover them up. But how we should greet them in, y'know like, the fields man, and make them welcome. Man.

I then started trying to explain to him whether he genuinely believed that, and how it made him feel. He repeated exactly the same sentiments. I then asked him to try and contemplate an alien race travelling hundreds or thousands of light years to visit us, and how staggering it was and if he understood the consequences and impact of what he was suggesting. And then he started going on about UFO conspiracy theories tying in with 9/11 and I started shouting at him. To be fair, I was drunk.


Very annoying man though. Christ, I hate hippies.

I used to see 'ghosts' when I was little. When I was two, three, four years old I used to ask my Nan why the old man was standing in the room, and that he used to stop me from sleeping because he was scraping a bit of wood with a knife, so would she ask him to leave. Also, I used to see and old man with a pipe all of the time. I didn't know what the pipe was as none of my family smoked, and I used to say it was that smokey stick that used to glow.

I didn't think they were ghosts and thought they were just people that were sometimes in the house, so I wasn't scared, but it used to freak my Nan out somewhat.

I don't remember any of these things and don't believe in ghosts, so I have no idea where this all came from. Probably just my overactive young imagination (thought I never had any invisible friends as such).

Are you sure that wasn't just your grandad?

Neat though, I know where you're coming from with an overactive imagination when you were young, I had the same.

I still have an overactive imagination now!

I actually had to be sent home from my shared house at University after going a little loopy during my second year and experiencing some odd things, including being lifted out of my bed and dropped on it when there was nobody in the room.

A non-skeptic might well have taken that and other fun things as evidence of ghosts or aliens. Personally, I figure I was just a bit mental for a while. I've largely calmed down since.

So do Microsoft.............

You wish you had long hair and a cheap Simpson's poster, Chinny.

I've never seen any ghosts, but I would like to. I've had premonitions in dreams, however.

Premonitions in Myps dreams: People are going to mock his haircut that day. Hardly worthy of Nostradamus.

Perhaps, but I do have a photo of me standing next to Dave Lee Travis which frankly tops everything ever.

Ditto, it's freaky when realisation sets in too. And it's never the lottery numbers.

Well they are pretty easy to run away from...........

I am ashamed that not only I got that, but also know exactly which episode it's from.

I get super deja vu....usually when it happens, I can 'remember' what's going to happen next and sometimes it's bad so I try really hard to think what leads up to me getting in trouble or whatever it is so I can change it. It's freaky weird, like I'm reliving several minutes of time that has passed.

Maybe it's my medication

I've got a bit of a spooky story concerning my Father's death, but I don't know whether to share it or not.

You aren't a true anorak unless you know the story code.

Flis - I agree, it's a very strange and overwhelming sensation. It always makes me think of The Matrix too!

Dimmers, I'm sure we'd love to hear it if you felt you could tell it.

Whilst I can completely understand why you wouldn't want to, I for one would be very interested to hear it.

I often suffer from really horrible deja vu, also.

Oohhh - I have had that too - I always assumed that my brain was getting out-of-synch or something because, as you say I knew what was going to happen a good minute or so down the line, it fades away, though.

Sometimes it overwhelms me so much I have to close my eyes and/or lie down. It's not nice when you feel like you're just reliving the same things over and over again.

Okay.. erm.

My Dad died of lung cancer back in October. He had 2 weeks from diagnosis to death, and about 6 weeks from "something's wrong" to death. He had a whole raft of tests done after they found the "mass" in his chest on an X-ray. The last thing he had done was a biopsy from outside his lung, which involved minor keyhole surgery through his back. This seemed to go well, but it was painful for him. He and my Mam went to the hospital canteen and had a cup of coffee before setting off back home. On the way back to the carpark his heart stopped and he had a stroke. Apparently a small clot had formed from the biopsy and had travelled to his brain. Luckily 2 doctors were passing at the time and they managed to resuscitate him.

A couple of days later he was discharged from the stroke ward and came back home. Obviously after having a near death experience we were interested in whether he'd seen anything, but apparently not. He just remembered falling then waking up in the A&E. 3 days later he had the news it was terminal cancer.

He changed a bit and became driven to see things were set up for my Ma to continue without him, so he wanted loads of things doing around the house and garden to keep the maintenance down for when he did leave us. Me and my brother-in-law were drafted in to do all the physical labour because he was no longer able. During this time he started talking about someone called Jacob. An asian man called Jacob, no less. Things like "Everyone has their time to go, and Jacob will tell me when it's my time", and lots of other little mentions. We just thought it was an after-effect from the stroke and he was talking metaphorically of Gabriel, but getting confused as he so very very was in the last week or so.

Anyway, things took a turn for the worse on Sunday 21st and my Ma called me over to the house because he was in a lot of pain. Agony, in fact. We called the ambulance, who administered morphine and we followed it to the hospital. I watched him die over the next 24 hours. There was a great staff nurse there who started his shift at 8pm and looked after him and us until he died at 11pm. He was an asian man called Jacob.

That made me all goosebumpy, Dims...

Ooh I had shivers then! I think your Dad must've got a lot of comfort from Jacob, I hope you did too.

I've no idea where I read this, but isn't deja vu just your brain's memory function getting itself in a tizz, so that it thinks that the present is the past? It's sort of recording the memory and playing it back at the same time, or a picosecond later, so that even as things are happening, you feel like you're conjuring up a memory.

I remeber hearing or reading something that may be lies or may be truth, saying that it's something about a lack of synchronisation between the eyes, so the one eye sees something and the brain quickly stores it as memory, and then the other eye sees it but the brain processes it a fraction of a second later, which causes the same neurological response as memory, since the brain is reactivating a pathway as opposed to making a new one.

It sounded terribly plausible at the time.

So you're saying my brain is like a rubbish VCR? Brill.

Dimrill. That made me feel very strange. I know that the sensible side of me knows - well, thinks, rather, that it is just a coincidence, but it made my heart feel all funny and tingly. Hmm. I don't know. I think it is quite comforting, somehow, though I feel kind of teary now.

I wanted to be a parapsychologist when I left school - trufax. But the only place that taught it was in Scotland. I was put off by the fact that I wouldn't earn much money by doing it anway, and had a baby instead (although not for the money I hasten to add!).

Dimmers, that is really creepy, but in a comforting way. I too had goosebumps and felt teary reading it. Thank you for sharing it with us.

We had some very mildly odd stuff in our house during my first year at Uni, which culminated in three of the five housemates (the other two not being present) realising that they'd all been "dreaming" of the same Zool-(of Chupa Chups fame)-like creature being in their rooms during the night, over the course of a few months. One of them had never played the game, so had to have the reference explained.

Ok. I used to live in a seriously unpleasant-feeling house. About 150 years ago, it was an orphanage, and there had been a massive fire, resulting in the deaths of a large number of children. I looked into it at the local library after some of the things that happened there happened.

It was sectioned in a rather bizarre fashion; there was a corridor upstairs leading to a locked door, behind which was another house-worth of rooms. Can you imagine how infuriating that was? Very infuriating. So, quite quickly, my sister and I forced the door open and had a look around. The first room was a massive front-room type arrangement, there was a fireplace. It was HUGE, really. There was a kitchen on the right, and a door straight ahead leading to a strange triangular room, with a very low, beamed ceiling. Something about it felt wrong straightaway. There was a short wooden staircase leading to an attic there. The attic was terrifying; I'm pretty good with spooky things but I couldn't stay there alone. It still had charred beams on the ceiling.

Downstairs was a corridor leading to the main staircase, this corridor was lined from waist-height to ceiling all the way along with mirrors. I'd stare fixedly at the floor when walking along it, I was terrified of what I might see.

I was living there with my sister and niece, Romany, who was about 2 years old at the time. She would constantly chat with things we couldn't see, how much of this was just childlike babbling I'll never know, but she often spoke of her Grandad, who had been dead for at least 10 years. That didn't scare me, as my Grandad was awesome, and I like to think it really was him.

Of course, being proper goffs, my girlfriend at the time and I adopted the locked-off bit as our own little 'flat'. Proper error, that. There were things in there, and they were not happy. I fel uncomfortable typing about it, to be honest. I changed personality completely while we were staying there, and became unpleasant and a little violent(never to a massive extent, but I did break a lot of things and shout. There was never any reason for it.). I was ill all the time there, and just felt unwelcome.

A friend of mine lives there now, the place has been refurbished, and he often reports of disturbed sleep and odd noises. I haven't told him what happened there, I might one day.

There's something in the house I'm in now, it walks up and down the corridor outside my room at night and pushes things around in the bathroom. There was a presence that would follow another ex to my house, which felt like it genuinely wished harm on me. Some friends and I messed about with EVP recordings at the skatepark we used as a rehearsal space(The Shack in Barrow-in-Furness, a Victorian textile factory, I think), and haven't spoken about what we heard since, and probably never will.

So, yeah, I reckon theres spoooky stuff out there, I just don't pretend to understand it.

Seriously.

You believe this?

The most plausible explanation is that the nurse that cared for your father whilst he was in the hospital the first time was the same nurse. Presumably that isn't the case?

I have a story, just a small one.

Back when I was a young'un, my brother and I had fairly decent walkie-talkies. My parents live in the wilderness of North Wales and behind their house is an enormous wood that sprawls for miles. As kids, running around the woods was good fun and never at all spookie or eerie.

Anyway, one day my bro and I were pissing around in the woods, and we split up so we could just our walkie-talkies. He went off to the right somewhere and I went left for a while until we were a good distance apart. Eventually I turned around and started walking back, and saw who I thought was my brother standing behind a tree about 100ft away, looking at me. Assuming it was him, I got on the walkie-talkie and starting saying 'I can seeeee you!', and he started talking back, and yet the person standing behind the tree didn't move. It was definitely a person, it didn't look like shadows or a trick of the light to me at the time.

But it wasn't my brother and becaue of the woods it was too hard to make out, so I started moving closer. I momentarily glanced away and glanced back, and 'it' was gone. It wasn't my brother, he was definitely on the other side of the wood nowhere near me.

Can't explain that, but typically I don't believe in ghosts. I require proof, please, and not just creaking floorboards, which settle and creak in any oldish house.

To make extraordinary claims, one needs extraordinary proof.

Go for it.

HINT: Anecdotes do not sets of data make.

Gah, I seem to have left my extraordinary proof in my other jacket. Ah well.

No. While he was in the stroke ward we knew all the staff because we had to keep apologising for his erratic mood swings. Gah, just talking about this has got me blarting again

Fair enough.

Have I told you about the big green dragon in my garage?

When my eldest was about 2 or 3 he would stare up at the corner of our living and room and just smile, the intensity of the smile would change, and sometimes he would frown, and then after that he would go into the middle of the room and just spin around on the spot mumbling as he did so.

Now, he didn't talk at all until he was almost 4 (but he could read and write and spell words from about 2 and 1/2) and it's probably just a byproduct of that, but all the same it was quite freaky at the time.

Malc

You were Carl Sagan, and I claimed my £5.

Look, there's likely more than the four dimensions we can perceive, and there's nothing to say everything exists in all dimensions. There may well be some overlap. Sentient something(s) inhabiting other folds in the fabric of the universe, other dimensions and so on, may well think we are ghosts.

Or Cybermans.

Also, prescience - why not? We predict the future quite accurately in many ways all the time, sometimes short term forecasts are wildly inaccurate and sometimes long term ones are more accurate then they have any right to be, as was perhaps the case with Asian Jacob. Giving a brain a stroke is certainly one way of modifying perception and relativity - observing an event affects the event and, oh, just read some Frank Herbert and have a think.

Poltergeist was scary because everyone has known a child who was, for a while at least, 'like that'.

So long as he doesn't go on about 'them' being 'here' you are probably fine. Unless you are already dead, and they think you and your child are ghosts. Which doesn't say much for the corporeal tangibility of the rest of us on here.