Ghost Stories, Orbs, And The Like

[Winchester]

Several years ago, Rick and I went to Gettysburg with my brother and SIL. My SIL's brother and his family were camping there; we went down to do one of the Ghost Walks. I'm thinking it was probably around this time of the year because we wore light coats at night. And it was chilly.

This picture was taken from the grounds of a building that used to be some kind of a girls' dormitory. Rumor has it that there were balconies outside of the windows. There was a young man who used to go into the dorm and spend time with the women; it was all very innocent. I guess they would make fudge and sit around and talk. One winter's night, the headmistress started up the stairs and they knew she'd be in the room soon. They got the boy out of there and he went out the window (onto a balcony that was there at that time). Well, she was there for quite a long time and he froze to death. They say that it's his orb and he's angry at how he died.

The interesting thing is that people were taking tons of pictures, but not every picture had the orb; people were using expensive cameras, cheap cameras, digitals, whatever they had. For some reason, mine came out clearly. I think it's probably a dust speck or something (spot of moisture?), but I don't know. At the time I had a Sony Mavica.

This picture was taken way back in the back of the campground at Gettysburg and you can see orbs. There's one between my brother and Rick (third and fourth figures).

When Rick and I moved around a bit, the orb followed Rick.

This is somewhere on the battlefields....I don't remember exactly where. You're not allowed onto the fields after dark, but my SIL's brother and I went in anyway and walked around. I have other pictures, but this one is the clearest as far as orbs. Supposedly you're not allowed in cemeteries after dark either, but Bruce (my friend who became a Pentecostal preacher) and I have gone to quite a few and quietly walked around to take pictures.

Bruce got interested in orbs and he started taking pictures around his church and found quite a few orbs. Souls of the dead or dust specks, he has no clue. After his dad died, he took some pictures in the house and found a rather large orb that he had never seen before when he took pictures, reddish, but not overly so.

I sent some orb pictures from Gettysburg to one of my GFs who was able to really zoom in with software that she had; she said she could see "faces" in the orbs. She lives in CT and she, Rick and I went on a Ghost Walk there one year.....we took a ton of pictures, but no orbs were in any of them, not even in the cemeteries we walked through during the Walk. I've not taken any pictures in our house in the dark with my cameras....I don't want to know. The pictures that I've taken of the cats and things in the house show no orbs. I don't know if they don't show up on cell phone cameras or what but I've never seen an orb in any pictures I've taken with my cell. We also have an Olympic digital camera and we've gotten orbs in some of the pictures in various places. We have been to the Big E in MA and took some night pictures and saw quite a few orbs there. They can show up during the day, too.

 

[Winchester]

As for ghost stories, well, very early one morning, I had awakened and was lying in bed just thinking about the day and what we were going to do, nothing spectacular. An elderly woman appeared on Rick's side of the bed by the window. She sat down on the bed, put her arm around Rick and looked at me and smiled. Then she stood up, walked around to the foot of the bed and disappeared. I could see through her the whole time. We think it was Rick's paternal grandmother; at least that's who she looked like to me. I remember she had one of those old-fashioned full aprons on and Rick's grandmother always wore them. I wasn't afraid at all.

And then one night, in the middle of the night, my grandmother appeared to me. I have her mirror on the wall at the end of our hallway, along with an old desk that was also in her house. Anyway, she came over to me and started telling me how disappointed she was that the mirror was dusty. She told me that she taught me better than that and she was very upset with me and she wanted it cleaned. Now. I looked at her and said, "Yes, I'll clean it now." Got up from bed, got the Windex and paper towels. Rick woke up and asked what in the was I doing? And I said, "Grandma told me to clean the mirror, so I'm cleaning the mirror!" At the time, I didn't think a thing of it. I really think I was dreaming; maybe I had a guilty conscience because I hadn't cleaned the mirror. Who knows? Neither grandmother has ever been in this house; they both passed away long before we ever moved here.

The house that we lived in many years ago was the house that Grandma would visit us. On my day off work, I'd go up in the morning and bring her down with me for the day. I'd bake and she'd hang out with me. We'd have supper, then Rick and I would take her back home. After she died, I'd be in the house and I swear she'd call me. I could hear her saying my name and it sounded just like her. A couple of times, I even said, "What? What do you want?" but heard nothing else.

My sister lives in a very old house. After Mom died, she took our parents' touch light. You know, you touch it and it comes on. Touch it again and it gets brighter. Touch it again and it goes off. Anyway, after Mom died, they'd come home from being somewhere and the light would be on. I asked if they thought it might be the cats turning the light on, but the light is in their living room and the doors to that room are always closed; the cats are not allowed in that room at all. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen quite a bit. When I have to go over and take care of their cats, once it gets dark, Rick goes with me....I won't go over there by myself, if I don't have to.

What are your ghost stories? C'mon tell us!

 

[AbbysMom]

I get too freaked out by all of this!

 

[weebeasties]

Over my lifetime I have had a few strange occurrences. Most of them happened in or around the house I grew up in. I usually don't talk about them for fear of sounding like a bit of a nut, but there were a couple of times that others witnessed "the strangeness".
I had an issue with an alarm clock that kept going off when it wasn't supposed to. It would go off randomly and wake me up once a night for months. It was a digital clock with no battery back up and the times it would go off were never the same.
One night after once again checking that no alarm was set, I was awakened to the chirping alarm. I was so annoyed that I grabbed the cord and unplugged the clock and went back to sleep. Later that same night the alarm was going off again and as I was groggily trying to hit the off switch I remembered that it was UNPLUGGED. I jumped out of bed with a scream. My brother, who slept in the next room, came running in to see what the commotion was and flipped on the light. I pointed to the clock which I had knocked to the floor when I jumped out of bed. We stared at it while it continued to chirp for another 30 seconds or so until it stopped. As I said, it was a very old digital clock. No battery back up. No internal battery. Weird. The clock never worked after that. Possibly from falling on the floor.
The other strange thing happened when a friend had gone with me for a walk in the woods. We owned 20 acres of hillside and lived at the foot of it. I had grown up wandering those woods and knew every inch like the back of my hand. This particular winter day we were walking along and talking when I looked up and froze. My friend looked to see what I was looking at. Suddenly, without a word to each other we both turned around and ran just as fast as we could. We didn't stop until we reached the bottom of the hill and were in my yard. "What WAS that?" she cried. I held up my hand and said "wait" and went into the house and grabbed a notebook. I gave it to her and said "just write down what you saw". I ripped out a sheet for myself and we both described what we had seen. When we compared notes it was almost an exact match. I had seen what appeared to be the silhouette of a person. Partially standing behind a tree but leaning to one side as if they were peeking around the tree to look at us. I could clearly see head shoulder and torso. It was solid black. You could not see through it. The lines were not fuzzy near the edges. It was NOT a shadow. It looked just like the silhouette of a person except the head was shaped funny, with a single point at the top, almost like a tear or a raindrop. (Yes, I know that sounds stupid but it's what I saw). My friend saw the same thing minus the point on the head. We both felt like it was looking at us, even though we could see no eyes, no features at all. And we were both terrified. Not just the scariness of being startled by something unexpected. We were terrified.
I eventually walked those woods again. (Never by myself though!) I never saw anything like that again.

 

[Willowy]

It looked just like the silhouette of a person except the head was shaped funny, with a single point at the top, almost like a tear or a raindrop.

A Bigfoot. I'm serious---I believe in Bigfoots, or at least in the possibility of a North American great ape. Those who have seen them say they have a pointy head, and they like to peek around trees. What state were you in?

 

[weebeasties]

We lived in southern Ohio. I have never heard about the pointed head on a bigfoot. I know whatever it was that we saw didn't look hairy. It was very similar to those silhouette cut-outs that some people have for yard decorations. I'm confident that it wasn't a prank by someone because this was a very remote area and there were only 4 houses within a 20 mile radius.
This happened over 30 years ago, but that image is still in my head like I just saw it yesterday. It still creeps me out.