Herald de Paris

A Herald de Paris writer tells of personal ghost stories.

As a reminder, if any of you guys have any personal stories to share with us for our “Reader submitted section” send them, we’d be happy to post them up.

Full source: Herald de Paris

WASHINGTON, DC (Irreverent Homemaker @ Herald de Paris) – I have a little ghost problem. There is a disembodied female voice living in my foyer. I would accept this from some old home, but this house was brand new when I bought it a decade ago. She is not particularly fearsome, this voice, nor does she scare me. But she is trying to make contact. Just recently, she said a clear and resounding, “Hello!” to me when there was nobody else in the house.

My friend Tricia says her Mandarin grandmother insists that spirits come to you when your chi is upset, and I do no doubt that .. because my chi is like perpetually upset. Anyway, back to ghost woman. Once, with the entire family long asleep, I went down into the garage to get the kid’s lunch box from my car, so I could pack his school lunch for the next day. Let me remind you that everyone was asleep. No tv on. Nothing. It was after midnight, and honestly, the garage spooks me a little. I was coming back up the garage steps when I swear that someone leaned in close and whispered in my ear. It was the kind of whisper where you can’t totally make out what the person is saying, but you know they are whispering in your ear. I felt the closeness. I stopped. I looked around. nobody. I came back in the house, SET THE ALARM, and checked – everyone still asleep.

But, it was a female whisper. It was unmistakable. so I figured what-ever. I’ve had paranormal experiences before, and I’m likely to have them, again, because the aforementioned chi issue. Well, 3 days later, I was in the hallway near the door to the garage and I heard her whisper to me, again. It was more distant than last time, but again, it was unmistakable.
SPEAK UP, disembodied ghost voice woman!

I’ve had other paranormal experiences. Here they are, right from my journal. Apologies for the lack of capitalization, but I don’t bother when I write for myself .. and I wanted these passages to remain as authentic as possible:

11/24/02
i am pretty sure i saw a ghost again, today. i went out early to put trash in the can on the side of the house. it was cold and still outside. as i was halfway down the stairs from the deck (my property slopes towards the water) i felt someone at the top of the steps behind me, coming down, too. i could almost make out a dark-clothed figure in the corner of my peripheral vision. i turned, assuming it was my little boy, but nobody was there. it was about 45 degrees (farenheight) outside, but i felt the all-too familiar rush of cold go through me. if you’ve felt it once, you know it forever. i figured it was either a benevolent spirit, or one that didn’t even know i was there.

this has happened to me before. many years ago i was home from college for the summer. my re-married mother had moved out of manhattan, to a town on the north shore of long island where i had never lived, growing up. this was when i was spent my summers as a lifeguard. i came home from work, read a note about where and when to meet the family for dinner, and headed for the shower. dressed, i ducked into my mother’s bedroom to “preen” in front of the full-length mirror on the far wall. standing there looking at my vain self, i saw an elderly man in the mirror, sitting on my mother’s side of the bed. he was half-reclining, and turned towards me, and he looked at me and smiled. his face was kind, he was bald with age, and had a white/grey, early 20th century goatee. i turned to face him, and he was gone. then the wave of extreme cold passed through me, and it was over. i told nobody.

a couple of weeks later i was at my father’s apartment in manhattan. i told him of my experience. he smiled when i described what the elderly man looked like, and pulled a large, old, leather suitcase from under the bed and opened it. he rummaged around in there a while, and came up from the dusty case with a photograph .. OF THE ELDERLY MAN I HAD SEEN IN MY MOTHER’S ROOM! it was my father’s grandfather, whom i had never known. it turns out he lived out his last years and died in the same town my mother now lived in. oddly, he was an architect, too. at the time he came to me, i had no interest in architecture – i was completing a degree in english and american drama and literature.

since then, i have had the feeling of not being alone many times. each time it is followed by the rush of cold.
i have taken the stance that i can’t deny the possibility of something i can’t prove doesn’t exist. as such, i respect the possibility that what i’ve seen or felt is real.

8/23/03
::freaked out::
i had a ghostly experience in my house, last night. a major one.
around midnight, i was sitting in the breakfast room with some nail hardener and the usual array of “tools”, slathering coats on my brittle nails. the computer was on, and online on the built-in desk behind me. at 12:05 my little boy woke up and came downstairs. he had no idea why he woke up, but promptly curled up on the sofa in the family room, and fell back to sleep. i could see him from where i was sitting in the breakfast room. at 12:10 i heard a distinct voice in the dining room say either, “this saved me,” or, “who’s going to save me?” the tv wasn’t on, and it sounded like a female voice, but i figured s. was up all half-asleep and allerged and peepy .. so i went into the dining room. there was nobody there. i looked back in on the boy, thinking he popped back up, but he was sound asleep. so, i went upstairs to talk with s. i mean, who else could it have been? s. was fast asleep, too. so i went back downstairs to finish the nails.
at this point i still didn’t think too much about it – i must have just heard something else.

so, i was back in the breakfast room doing my thing – the black cat was sleeping quietly on a bar stool within arm’s reach from me. suddenly, she popped up all wide-eyed and spooked the way cats sometimes do, jumped 2 feet in the air, and dashed upstairs at break-neck speed. whatever. maybe a minute later the computer went haywire. it didn’t freeze or crash, but first i heard the familiar “goodbye” of MSN, then, my computer went through the motions of a typical shutdown, step-by-step, only i wasn’t pushing any buttons. at this point i was totally spooked. i decided NOT to check the garage to make sure the garage door was down, like i normally do at the end of the night, i locked the garage door, and set the house alarm. i left lights on downstairs, and went to bed, after carrying the kid to his room (NOT good on the sore knee, i tell ya!).

this morning, i was the first up. the house alarm was still on, the lights were still on, but the garage door was unlocked!
so, my hands are still shaking and i’m royally freaked.

2/15/04
i’ve been seeing spirits around my house, and it’s a new house – nobody else has lived in it. but my back yard is along a creek, and there are a lot of old and ornamental tree species in the back that lead me to believe there was a house here, once. anyway, i’ve seen things that shouldn’t be there, before. scroll back in my journal and you’ll find the tale of how my paternal great-grandfather visited me in my mother’s bedroom, years ago. and lately isn’t the first time i’ve “seen things” around here, either. a couple of years ago, i went out early one spring morning to throw out the trash. the air was very still, and i could “feel” someone walking behind me. when i turned .. there was nothing. i got the sense that whatever was there didn’t know i was there, either – it was like a dimensional convergence.
well, in the last 3 weeks, that sort of thing has been happening, again. first, i was sitting here typing away, one night .. the rest of the house was asleep, and there were few lights on, but the back yard is dark, even though there are a LOT of windows looking out there. well, one night i was looking up and not at my monitor, and i quite vividly saw a full human-sized spirit fly past the window horizontally (i have goose bumps telling this to you), about 4-5 feet up in the tall windows. the figure was translucent and white and i swear to god it was there. a few nights later i was turning off all the lights one night, and as i passed from the dining room into what is supposed to be the formal living room, i got the sense of someone, i think a woman in a civil war or elizabethian dress, either in the corner of the dining room, or just outside the window, looking in my direction. again, i didn’t get the sense that she was aware of me, but it spooked me plenty, and i went right upstairs. she was pretty vivid.

[ed. – i am now convinced that the flying spirit was an angel. i’m sure of it.]

7/30/06
i had a playful ghost in my office – in a 165 year old church building. this spirit kept taking my bag off a very deep shelf across the room, and depositing in just behind my office chair. this happened three times. each time i put the bag back, but it would re-appear behind me with a thud. the last time i said, “ok, enough already … i have to work.” and it stopped.

another day, i came to work early one morning. it was 6:30am and as i turned off the building alarm i heard a choir singing. being new, i thought, “how neat – they rehearse in the morning before they all go to work.” but then it dawned on me that they couldn’t be there since the alarm was set. so i followed the music down the long hallway. i thought that maybe someone left a CD playing. when i reached the chapel i could hear the choir on the other side of the door. i opened it. when i did, the choir stopped … but i could still hear the faint echo of the singing, as it rattled through the tall ceiling timbers. two of my co-workers have since both heard the ghost choir. both times before 7am, just like me.

So, I don’t know what’s going on, but I seem to be popular with the other worldly.
I did go on two paranormal investigations in that church building, last year (my only two such investigations). I’ll have to write those experiences up for you.