I’m taking a cue from my friend Annie today, who says she likes to ask people “What’s your favorite paranormal story”? I would love to hear all of yours! Here are a couple of my faves from my Dad and my Uncle (and in honor of them) – both of whom died this past year.

Not Yo Mama

shadow personA long time ago my Dad told me a story about how he woke up one night to find my mother sitting on the end of the bed. Just sitting there. In the dark. “What are you doing?” he asked. She answered from the bed beside him where she had been soundly sleeping.

So who was the lady at the end of the bed? Was my mother astral projecting and my dad could actually see her? Or was it someone else all together? If it was someone else, who could it have been?

*Cue Twilight Zone music*

It was the memory of this story that made me realize something similar was going on when I stayed at my Uncle’s house one night. You can read about my ghost story here.

Messy Poltergeist

It seems like every Halloween I used to ask everyone I knew if they had any ghost stories to share. Oh wait, I still do that! My Mom clearly had a personal experience, but knowing it would scare me, she refused to share. Or maybe it was too frightening for her to re-live. I knew it was something that happened a house she lived in as a kid, but as to what happened. Nada. Unfortunately, she took that story to her grave.

ghostly figure in abandoned schoolYears after my Mom died, I was up late talking to my Uncle and I asked him to tell me what went on in that house. He got this look on his face like “get ready for something really strange”. He said that weird stuff went on there like things being moved from where you knew you left them.

Also, he said one day he came home and my Mom brought him to her room saying she wanted to show him something. When they went in, all of her drawers were open and stuff was thrown everywhere. My uncle told my mother that she had better clean it all up or she would get in trouble and asked why she had done that. She told him she didn’t do it! She had walked in and it was like that. Because of the bewildered and somewhat terrified look on my mother’s face, he believed her.

My Dad, who knew my mother even then, had mentioned something about an old lady spirit who was in that house. Wouldn’t you hate to see her standing in your hallway unexpectedly? Or hey, even expectedly! He also said that house was built in an area where the traumatized soldiers leaving Gettysburg may have had to march through. Not sure what that would have to do with an old lady, but maybe the soldiers were looking for bandages or something.

I seem to recall my uncle sending us an article recently (found it!) about that house and that someone had been killed there. Yikes! Scary house! 

Odds And Ends

Aside from my main ghost story in which I saw an apparition, I had a couple of other experiences with the paranormal I’ll share real quick.

Union soldiers entrenched along the west bank of the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, VirginiaOnce I was driving down the road to my friend’s house when I saw her husband cross from their front door to their car. I pulled in their driveway and was surprised to find him nowhere in sight. When I asked my friend where he had gone, she told me he wasn’t even at home. I hadn’t seen anyone leave, and hadn’t seen anyone else outside on the whole street. Adding to the strangeness of the sighting was that I hadn’t even been that far away from the house at the time. So. Weird. We live in an area of a massive civil war battle, so… wandering soldier maybe?

Another time I was standing in the doorway to our bathroom when I saw my husband walk into our bedroom. No big deal, except I then immediately heard him talking in the kitchen. Huh? I walked into the bedroom. No one. Umm… okay then.  

Shhhh! Don’t tell my kids about that last one. They’ll never sleep again.

Your Turn

Now it’s your turn! Share your paranormal story with me and everyone who visits this page forever more. Shadow people? Doppelgangers? UFO’s? We want to know!

Happy Halloween month!

Amanda

 

 

 

Shadow person photo by tertia van rensburg on Unsplash
Ghost in creepy room photo by Erik Müller on Unsplash
Civil War soldiers photo by A. J. Russell [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Paranormal stories from my dearly departed