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Saturday, October 10, 2015

HALLOWE'EN'S A COMIN'!

 HAUNTED WORDS. By 'The English Rose'

I've been noticing lately that some of the PRP ladies write stories which have ghosts as one (or maybe more) of the characters, and as this is the month for ‘ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night’ I was just wondering if you really had any experience with such things? Or are the stories all written from the imagination? Or maybe you tell people it’s all from the imagination, when really you have actually experienced such goings on, but worry about what your friends will say if you tell them about your experiences? 

I have been lucky enough to have had various ‘other worldly experiences’ over the years, hearing, feeling and seeing things which could not be rationally explained. To date I have never written anything where I could include any of those experiences, maybe one day I will though.
When I was in my teens, the family moved to live in a 300 year old coaching inn, which was where most of my ‘experiences’ occurred. It was a big stone built place, with a large red brick ‘barn’ attached, which would have been where the coaches and horses were housed. Down the large garden was a small stone built shed, and the path past the shed led on down a slope to a wide river at the end of the garden, surrounded by big old trees.
In the winter, the river flowed fast and high, and I used to sit on a bent branch of one of the old trees and get as close as I could to the fast, brown water! I never gave a thought to the fact that I couldn’t swim, and should I fall in, I’d be lost. For some reason it never even crossed my mind.


We had a coin meter for the electricity, and it was situated in the basement, a cold place with steep stone stairs and an arched ceiling, it was where beer and provisions for the inn used to be stored. I was terrified of that basement, there was a sinister ‘feeling’ in there which always made me want to run out as fast as I could and lock the door tightly behind me! It was almost as if something was reaching out to take hold of me.

After everyone had retired to bed, I often heard the sound of a girl crying. I have two younger sisters, one of whom was only about five at the time. At first I thought it was her crying and got out of bed at 2 am to investigate. Both girls were sleeping soundly, but I could still hear it, when I reached the door to the attic room, the sound stopped. This happened regularly. In the end I stopped going to look, there was no way I was going up in that attic to investigate either.
Then one night, I woke up, knowing there was someone in my room. I was sleeping face to the wall, but I knew there was someone there. At first, I couldn’t move, then I had an overpowering feeling of peace surrounding me. I turned to see a monk standing in the centre of the room and I knew what he wanted. When we had been renovating one of the rooms we had found a thin silver ring, which fitted me perfectly, and which I left on my dressing table. The monk was there for the ring. He bent over the dressing table, turned and disappeared out of the wall. The next morning, the ring was gone.

No-one believed me when I told them, my sisters were blamed for taking the ring and of course they denied it, I was accused of frightening them and so I shut up. I didn’t say much when a few months later, the monk returned and replaced the ring in exactly the place it had been. He bowed his head to me in thanks, then vanished through the wall again. I still have that little ring.
The strange thing is that, after my family had moved out of the inn, and another family with two young sons had moved in, one son woke up one night thinking his brother was walking about dressed in a sheet trying to scare him. He was sleeping in what had been my room, we had never mentioned any of our experiences to the new family.


The barn too had its own resident. It was a lovely big place, we used it as a garage, but I didn’t like going in there at night, there was something cold and creepy about it then. One night, Mum came home and parked the car in the barn, she was about to leave by the small side door, when ‘something’ rushed up behind her and pushed her over. When she came in she was shaking and covered in cuts and bruises. She never went in there at night again. We found out much later that someone had hanged themselves in the barn, about a hundred years before.

Now I come to think of it, there were so many more ‘experiences’ in that house, maybe I really should write something about it?
So, come on ladies, recount your own ghost stories, and let us know if you’ve used your own experiences for any of your stories? And I’ll give some thought to using some of mine!


11 comments:

  1. Good morning Jill. Wow! Talk about ghostly experiences. I'd say you've had your share...My latest book release was based on something that really did happen. From out of nowhere this wolf like beast came and ran along side our car while we were on the interstate traveling 70 miles an hour. The result was my book Mile Marker 59. But that is not what I would like to address. Our home which we recently moved from after living there very happily for the past 27 years (sob) was most definitely haunted. Our first night there, our new neighbors came to visit, welcoming us to the neighborhood. (which was a country road with three houses on it.) We had not moved into the top floor and had set up the downstairs until all of our furniture arrived....all of the sudden it sounded like an army of people were running up stairs, banging noises etc. Now we knew no one was about upstairs. the neighbors that came to welcome us left quickly and never came back. Through the years everyone in our home experienced some type of experience from our ghosts. Our youngest daughter wrote a story about a lady in red when she was in fifth grade. It was such a scary piece I asked her what made her think of it. She replied, "Mom she waves to me every morning when I get on the school bus." I once saw the silhouette of two children dressed in 1800's clothing walking along the wall. At first I thought they were shadows of someone messing around outside...but when I went to investigate no one was there and they were on the inside of the wall. So many things happened over the years. I got so curious I researched our abstract and found the land was possibly haunted not the house it was built in 1978. The land we lived on was the first settlement in the area. My husband saw a little girl ghost about seven running down the hallway. But there was a more sinister ghost. A man, a very tall man. One who pulled my feet to the middle of the bed one evening while I was half way between being awake and asleep. My husband watched as I was pulled about. Terrifying incident. I wouldn't sleep on that side of the bed after that. Oh, but there were so many other incidents too many to write about here. But do I believe in ghosts. Most definitely.

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    1. Thanks for dropping by Barbara. Wow! Some terrifying experiences there allright! Heck, I would have run away screaming if I'd been pulled about like that by a ghost! I haven't read Mile Marker 59 yet, it's definitely on my TBR pile. I've been wondering if I could/should use any of my experiences? You seem to have used yours very successfully. Are you going to use any more of them? I'm still not sure how I would use these though, so I'll just keep thinking! Thanks for your great comments!

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  2. Jill, definitely use your experiences. The monk was really creeping me out. It would make a fantastic story with a bit of embellishment from you. I can't help but wonder....when you wore the ring did you feel any special powers or anything?

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  3. Hello again Barbara! I am thinking more on it lately. As you say, some embellishments might just make it a fair story. I wore the ring a lot in those days, and still have it, it's a bit small for me now! No I never did feel anything, it would have been great if it had given me the ability to see or experience more otherworldly things though, sadly it was not to be. Mmmm? Do I feel a story coming on? Thanks Barbara

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  4. Ah yes, those things which can't be explained logically. I've had one or two, but not much to write home about. But other family members and friends, oh the stories they tell.

    I think you should use your experiences in stories. I would love to read them. Now that you mention it, I may have to use some of mine. Hmmm? Thanks for sharing your story. You've also given me some great ideas. Doris

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  5. Hi Doris. Thanks for commenting. I'm glad I've given you some ideas, I look forward to reading the finished items!!

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  6. Jill,

    I loved your spooky encounters. I hope you write about them. I have a long response, so I've had to break it into two comments to get it published here.

    Part 1:

    I've had many otherworldly encounters ranging from the bittersweet to terrifying. I've lived in four "haunted" houses and one "unhappy" house.

    In Ft. Morgan, Colorado where I grew up on a ranch just a few miles from town, I lived near my widowed maternal grandfather with whom I was quite close. He was just over the hill and beyond the little pond from me (less than 1/2 mile). I spent my free time with him and many overnights, too. My grandpa slept on his couch in the living room, and I always slept on the recliner. This room was situated in the center of the house with a bathroom/utility room and kitchen on one end and two bedrooms on the other. You could walk straight along the south side of the house to each of the rooms (think long trailer house hallway, but it was a real "house'.) It was during several of these overnights when I would see my deceased grandmother walking from one end of the little house to the other. She died when I was a year old, so my only memories of her are pictures and the stories I've been told. I followed her one time and watched her disappear into the closet area of the back bedroom. Another time I walked back and forth with her just a few steps behind her and we made the trip through the house several times. I was comfortable with her, but she never spoke to me even though I talked to her. I told my grandpa, and he said he'd seen her a few times, too.

    Now, own house just a half mile from my grandpa's was a new house that was built when I was 11 on land that my family had owned since the 1950s. This house was a flat-level, square-shaped brick house. Along two sides of the interior was an L-shaped hallway. Many times my dad and I (at separate times) saw a Native American man dressed in ceremonial buckskins and beads and in full headdress standing right at the corner of the hallway "L". He would look at me (us) for what seemed to be minutes (probably seconds) then turn to his right and leave. He always left this way. With some research, we discovered the house had been built near a seasonal Cheyenne camping ground. It took some doing, but we eventually located some teepee rings and stones.

    Another peaceful haunted house I lived in was in Ravenna, Ohio. By this time, I was married with three young children. We rented a two-story big, rambling 200-year-old farm house that we shared with a little old man who had built the house and lived there to old age with his wife and they'd raised many children. During the year I lived in this house, the man showed up at least weekly, probably more often. It was usually in the evening when he came in the back door, passed the kitchen, went on through the dining room and living room, around the corner, up the stairs toward the bedrooms, and disappeared into the attic. I never encountered him coming down, just when he returned. It seemed, though, attic was off-limits to us. Every time anyone went into the attic there was a feeling of not being welcome. It was unpleasant enough that we stayed away and let him have his "space". We did discover he didn't like the music of our chosen radio station and he would dial the tuner.

    Part Two follows...

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  7. Part Two continued...

    Many years after Ohio, I moved back to my hometown, and rented a house that was definitely haunted by a malevolent spirit. It was an evil presence at the foot of my bed (only my bed and in my room -- never bothered my children). It was of an incubus type, although it never actually climbed fully onto my bed. It would depress the mattress, attempt to strangle me, sometimes press hands on my chest so I couldn't catch my breath, but mostly, it stood at the foot of my bed making growly/moaning noises. And there was no going to the basement alone. I didn't stick around that house long. Nobody wanted to talk about the haunting, but I finally found out the owners' son shot and killed himself in the house. He’d intended to take-out his wife and kids, too, but they got away safely.

    The "unhappy" house was a house that had been built in Kansas and after living a perfectly satisfying life for 50 or more years, it was moved 100 miles away into southeastern Colorado. When it was set down on its new foundation, it was not oriented to the same directions as when it was built. It was a quarter off. All the doors and windows felt oddly out-of-sync. It's hard to explain, sorry. Imagine intellectually knowing the bedroom door was to your left when you got out of bed, but you still stepped straight forward and into the wall because that "felt" like the right direction for the door. It was a sad house, not an evil one. I was sad in that house, too.

    My bittersweet encounter was the day before the first anniversary of my dad's death. He'd always wanted the song "Somewhere over the Rainbow" by Judy Garland played at his funeral. Well, my mom had a private family memorial service for him, and we didn’t play the song. On this particular day, I was listening to Sirius XM radio, Symphony Hall, and of all the songs to play on that particular channel was a classical rendition of 'Somewhere over the Rainbow'. I believe it was my dad reminding me that we still had a promise to fulfill for him.

    I've had other paranormal encounters, but those are my most Halloweeniest. *grin*

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    1. Hello Kaye. Thanks for coming by. WOW! You take the prize! I have had way more experiences than there was space for in the post, but even so, I think you beat me! I love that you were able to walk with your grandma, that's sweet. And I am interested in the house that was moved and didn't 'settle' on its new land, how strange, maybe it was sad because it had been moved. I too have had experience with an incubus, it growled at me and jumped on my bed, it felt so heavy, I couldn't move or even shout. It's a terrifying thing isn't it? I like that we share this world with the others, it makes things scary at times, but it can also be comforting. Have you used any of your experiences in any of your writing? I'm still considering howto, or even if, I will use mine. I loved reading your stories, thank you for sharing them.

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  8. Jill--I love your monk story. Kaye--I think you win for most fantastic ghost history. Wow. As for my own: I've had a few and have used some things in my stories, but mostly I search for more. I love watching ghost story documentaries. My husband doesn't like them so I have to watch when he's out of town.

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    1. Hello Kristy. thanks for visiting. Yep I think Kaye wins here! What great tales she has to tell. And its just about the right time for telling them. What are some of your tales Kristy? Don't be shy!! Thanks for coming.

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