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We have a ghost living with us for several years. The ghost even moved with us. In the last couple of months he became more active than before. He switches lamps on and off, throws things, doors open and he touches me and my mom, that’s why we know he is male. LOL

Oh Connie, I’ve never had a ghost experience but what a lovely story for Halloween!

I’m crying.  Dammit, Connie!

Although, I might also mention that I’m LAUGHING MY ASS OFF reading
HOT DISH!  I have to say, Connie, you write strangely wonderful characters.  Original.  But I’m not done yet so don’t say anything (and why won’t my house guests LEAVE?--hope my mother doesn’t come up here and read this).

That said: 

When my husband was a boy grwoing up over seas, his family moved into a house with a pool. 

One night he woke up to find a strange girl standing in his room, dripping wet.  He remembers not being able to scream he was so scared, so instead he crawled as fast as he could to his parents’ bedroom. 

Days later, they found out that the daughter of the original owner had drowned in the pool.

A few days after that, my husband was found--just in time--on the bottom of that same pool. 

It seems almost as if she’d been warning him or something.

I have one or two, my husband also has one, so I will tell his as well, because, well, it’s really humorous.

My story...we lived in Maryland for a while growing up and my parents had an apartment that was actually a slaves’ quarters at one time, so it was haunted by this really older man, he would move things and play with my toys, he was nice… and at night we would see his cheroot cherry lighting up as he took a drag outside the window.  We also had some family friends that lived up the road behind a cemetary, you had to drive through the cemetary to get to their house, and there was a lady and her small son that we would sometimes see walking through the cemetary at night...they were ghosts the neighbors finally informed us.

My husbands story though, is funny.  They had a ghost in their house growing up named Elmer, they knew his name because he died in that house right before they bought it and they would still get his mail.  Of course, the mail would disappear off the table every couple of days, because Elmer was coming by to get it.  He was sweet, because when I first starting dating my husband, I would go to leave and the door would open for me and Curt would say, oh, that is just Elmer, he’s very courteous.  One day, my husband was teasing his younger, sturdier brother about how strong he is and he and couple of friends talked him into letting them duct tape the brother down to the kitchen table, at night.  Once they had him duct taped, he couldn’t budge no matter what, just as they were about to release him, all the lights in the house go out and Elmer starts laughing....as they all ran outside, no one was more surprised that my husband to learn that the duct taped brother had actually BEAT them all outside!!! Guess he was strong after all.  Throughout the course of our 13 year marriage, Elmer visited less frequently, but I will never forget, courteous Elmer!!

Ooo, J Perry, you just gave me goosebumps. And, Connie, you made me cry, too. :::sniffsniff:::

I’ve mentioned before on the blog about my grandmother staying around in her house after we moved into it following her death. And I do believe she followed us to this house when we moved here. She’s not as active as she used to be, but she does still come around from time to time.

Happy Halloween!  I don’t choose to think of this as scary, rather, it’s a comfort.  I’ve learned the signs of the ‘presence’ of departed family members and I figure they’ve checked in on me for a reason. 
For example:

In the spring, my elderly parents came to visit from Florida and stayed with me.  I was lucky enough to know my grandmother until I was 40 and she’s still a vivid presence in my life.  While arguing contendedly from the kitchen to the living room where my mother sat nagging (as is the pattern), I was overcome by the strong (and I mean STRONG) scent of my grandmother’s apartment....her cooking, stale cigarette smoke etc.  I took it for a “visit” and announced to my mother that grandma is stopping by to say hello!

Mom is a very pragmatic sort of woman, but she was willing to go with the idea of that.  I thnk my grandmother was taking the opportunity to visit with both of us at the same time.  If her visit happened to stop another of our endless (and frequently pointless) arguments, well she achieved her goal!

And thinking of ghosts, I’m just back from Scotland and made the requisite trip to Culloden to see the battlefield.  The spirits are VERY strong there.  I tried to get my DH to buy a kilt, but between the terrible exchange rate and his lack of indulgence, I failed.  Shame too--he has great legs.  So we just tasted a LOT of whisky (and haggis!) and I dreamed I was Eloisa’s Annabelle!

In fairness, I thought I’d add that while I was staying at a lovely B&B The Mash Tun in Aberlour and marveling that roses were still blooming in October I was daydreaming about being visited by one of Connie’s Rose Hunters.  The only challenge was that I couldn’t decide WHICH ONE I wanted to rescue me!!!!

That’s the gramma that makes fried chicken, huh Liz?  That’s a good gramma.

My MIL passed away four years ago.  My FIL had told us that he had awoken in the middle of the night to see her standing at the foot of the bed.  We assumed he had been dreaming or was not fully awake and had imagined it out of his grief at the sudden loss.  He never mentioned it again, but a couple of weeks later, I was in her bathroom.  When I opened the door to exit the bathroom, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of her perfume, like someone had just sprayed it.  (She had a perfume that she adored and it had a particularly strong scent so if it was freshly sprayed, you knew it.) That smell was not there when I entered the bathroom.  I was not upset by the occurence so much as I was by the memories that came gushing back when it happened.

Listen to this line from Hot Dish (this is about one of the three dimwitted, inept criminals named Ned):

An idea jumped out of the backwater of Ned’s brain and floppped on the floor of his imagination like a landed northern on a dock.

That’s the best, Connie.  No wonder you wanted to write a contemp--you just can’t say something like that in a regency!

What great stories!

A cousin of mine died in a tragic car accicent 13 years ago.  He hasn’t “haunted” any houses but I think he’s been a sort of guardian angel to his parents and his brother.  My uncle miraculously survived a mining accident a year or two after David died.  David’s brother was in a bad car accident a couple of years ago and survived.  Both of them will attest to feeling his presence during their unfortunate events.

In the past month David’s mother fell through their garage ceiling and broke her back on the concrete floor.  She swears “an angel” dragged her to the opened garage door.  If she hadn’t made it there, she probably wouldn’t have gotten help as quickly as she did.  She was also VERY lucky she wasn’t paralyzed.

Whether it is real or imagined doesn’t matter to me.  I find it comforting.  Kind of like the end of the movie Ghost where Patrick Swayze’s character says something about the love...you get to take it with you. 

Happy Halloween!

P.S. HOT DISH sounds fantastic!  Connie, if your voice in the book is like your voice on the blog...I must read it!

Connie,

What an awesome experience, I’m glad you had her with you for so much longer. When we finally lost our sweetheart of a dog, I heard her nails clicking against the hardwood floors outside my office just like she did when she was alive. She’d poke her head in to see if Mom was in a good mood or bad. Depending on what she’d sense, she knew whether it was ok to come for a rub or whether to go on about her business.

Great story and I had tears in my eyes too.

My sister has a ghost cat, too!  It came with the house and jumps on her bed at night.  She saw it one night when she got up to go to the bathroom.  It darted in the door from the bedroom and back out the door to the hall.  She said it was a white, long hair.

After my grandma passed, I smelled her several times.  Her perfume plus the loose Coty face powder was her unique scent.  Very comforting.  Her husband, my wonderful grandpa, called to me when he was dying.  I was still in college, working a late shift at a restaurant and at 2am felt compelled to get in my clunker car and drive an hour to be with him.  I was with him only tweny minutes when he started to die.  So glad I listened to my sixth sense!

Our family has TONS of ghost stories.  When my mother and father first came to the country in the late 1960’s they lived in an apartment in New York that was haunted by a man.  My father lived with his freinds in the apartment before my mother got there and this man would press them down on the bed so they could not get up.  Well...my mother came along and they never told her ANY of this and it would happen to her.  On the day they were moving my mother told my father that this happened to her and him and all of his friends started laughing and told her it was true because it happened to them to.  Needless to say...my dad and his friends had to do all of the rest of the packing because she was NOT going back into that apartment!

Another weird but true thing is that we moved from Los Angeles to Miami in 1986 and the house house was haunted.  In fact, my sister and my room was where the lady actually hung out.  We would see her at night by our closet and we could describe her as a lady in white with long black hair and a look of hatred on her face...but the rest of her face was blurry.  Well, we would not tell friends who would come to visit about her but one morning my aunt came up to us and told us she saw a strange woman in our bedroom and described her EXACTLY as we did.  A few years later my dad’s friend from California came to visit and just before she left she told us she saw some lady in our room.  This woman is NOT superstitious but I know if freaked the heck out of her!  She described her EXACTLY as we knew her! Needless to say, as word got around to the rest of the family, no one would sleep in our room!

Oh, what a lovely story! I’m sure Nert will find you again when you need her.

The night before my husband’s grandfather died, we were asleep in bed and I suddenly woke up. I can’t explain it, but I knew his grandfather was there in the room with us, saying goodbye. He was very content, at peace, and just checking in. I went to wake up my husband, but his grandfather didn’t like that idea, just wanted to watch us and our kids sleeping. He was there only a few minutes, and I felt so comforted by how strongly he loved all of us.

The next morning, we learned he had slipped into a coma during the night (he was 87 and in the hospital with pneumonia). He died that evening. My husband had a very hard time with his grandfather’s death, and felt very comforted by knowing that his grandfather had a chance to say goodbye.

What a wonderful story, Halloween or not.

I once saw the Mother of a man I was living with at the time, while I was visiting my parents’ home.  It’s a long story, but to shorten it, I think she just came to take a look at me.  I woke up and she was standing at the side of the bed.  She was not the least bit frightening, and I knew immediately who she was, even thought I’d never seen a picture.  When I returned to Dallas, I asked him if he had any pictures (she had died when he was young) and there she was, exactly as I had seen her.

I see family ghost and signs all the time. It seems my son is now “blessed” with the same capability. He is only 7 years old.

I lost my cousin who was like my own brother 2 years ago on October 18 and every year I would call my aunt to see how she is doing. Unfortunately, this year I forgot to call her. :-( On Oct 20th my son comes home and says “Mom I saw Cyrus in the playground. He was there and suddenly he was gone!” I just couldn’t believe my son would remember my cousin let alone remember him well enough to identify him. It was amazing to me. I understood it as a sign that my cousin wants me to remember him and rightly so…

In my last year as an undergrad, my friends and I rented a house from a professor on sabbatical.  It was a gorgeous place, with 15ft ceilings, built-in bookshelves, and three wonderful cats.  For their traits, we called them Hen Cat, Hunt Cat, and Mood Cat.  One morning, while discussing our feline friends, one of my roomates idly remarked that Ghost Cat had slept on her bed.

The other to of us said, “You, too?”

We’d all been experiencing Ghost Cat for months, and enjoying her (we’re pretty sure it was a her), very much the way Connie did.  And she remained with us the entire time we lived in that particular house.  The other cats seemed comfortable with her presence (the raccoons the cat food attracted?  Not so much).

Oh, what fabulous stories! I am by nature a skeptic but over the last few years things have happened that are completely inexplicable. I accept Nert becasue I like thinking she’s around--- or if not her actual spirit (because i also like to think that spirits have better places to be than here) the echo of her affection.

More stories, more!

My sister told me this story long time ago and it stayed with me to this day.  She said one day this older man got up in church and he told them his wife had passed away.  They were high school sweetheart and been together for a long time. He was very depressed and sad after she died.  One night he had dream she was walking on this step toward heaven looking as beautiful as the day he met her.  Her back was turned toward him and he was calling after her crying to wait for him and not leave.  She then turned around and told him that it’s not his time yet and when his time comes she’ll come back for him.

I don’t know if this story is true bc i heard it through a third party but it’s certainly is spooky. There were these two sisters who were really close.  One of them was in a tragic car accident and died.  She had beautiful long hair and so her sister cut off her long hair to keep it as a memento.  She braids the hair and put it in a safe spot. I think one night the sister was sleeping and she can hear someone rummaging through her house as if they were looking for something. She went to investigate but there was nobody there.  This incident keep happening until one day she realized it must be her dead sister looking for her hair.  That night she put the hair out in the open and that night she did not hear anything.  The next morning the hair was gone and there were no more noises at night.

I’m not totally sure if I’ve felt a prescence before but I used to stay a lot at my grandmother’s house and since it was just the two of us more times than not I’d be alone. A couple of times I would get this strange feeling that just gave me the creeps and I’d run to my Meme. About 5 years later I learned that several people in my family had died in and around that house.

I have something else that didn’t happen to me but it happened to a friend of mine that was visiting with me on Meme’s property:
My friend Karla and I were walking around Meme’s front yard (and it’s a huge yard) when she started to look like something was wrong and I asked her if she would like to go back up to the house. On the way home later on she told me that she felt like something was following us the entire time we were outside. To this day I still think it was my dog Sadie Mae. She always considered me hers (the family thinks that since she couldn’t have puppies she thought I was one) and would follow me wherever I went as a baby. She was killed by a log truck in Alabama when I was 5 years old.

I love that story, Connie! I, too, have a spooky kitty story to tell. About three years ago, my husband and I were upstairs at home, when we realized that neither of us had locked the back door. We ran downstairs, and the door had swung itself open- and let out our indoor cats! We quicky rounded up everyone- except Scheherezade, my ten year old black girl-cat. It was pitch black outside, and, of course, NONE of our flashlights were working. After 30 minutes of searching the woods behind our yard, I sat down on the porch to cry. A silver light appeared in the woods and sped towards the house next door. It landed like a shooting star behind a rotted shed behind an abandoned house down the street. I followed it to where it had touched down, and there she was, under the shrubs behind the shed. Scheherzade had lost her darling brother Sultan nine years before. I have a feeling it was his nosy little spirit checking in to see if he could help.

-Em

Connie, what a beautiful story about Nert.  I was teary-eyed also! :::sniff:::

I’ve had alot of ‘feelings’ but I’ve never seen a ghost or what I thought was a ghost. I have caught something out of the corner of my eye and turned to find nothing there. 

I had a Siberian Husky, Bandit, who we had gotten at 6 weeks old in Maine.  He had moved with us from ME to FL then to Nebraska.  He slept under the crib when both of my sons were born and ran between me and the boys when they started to fuss. I woke up one night and couldn’t go back to sleep.  While laying in bed I heard Bandit get up, walk into each of the boys rooms and then back into our bedroom and he came over to check on me then checked on my husband, then laid back down.  Well, on our move from NE to NY via Alabama, Bandit got sick and we had to have him put to sleep.  I cried from Montgomery to Birmingham on our way to NY.  When we got to NY and moved into our house, for months after I heard what I thought were the tags on his collar.  I would turn around expecting to see Bandit, then would remember he was gone.  But I swear he was there checking on us.  I haven’t heard the tags in a while, so I guess he moved on to doggy heaven.

---dorothy

My story doesn’t exactly count as a “ghost” story, but it’s an example of some of the little things that happen to me from time to time.

Last year my grandparents were vacationing in Florida. About two days before the March Spring Break, I felt a very strong urge to take the almost 24 hour drive (from our home in Toronto) with my 2 year old son, and spend the Break with them.

I hadn’t been to Florida since I was graduating high school back about ten years ago. And my husband didn’t really want to go. He said that it was such a long drive there and back with such a young child, to only be able to stay about 3 days.

But I convinced him that it would be fun, and off we went.

It was indeed a very long drive, and a short visit. A week after we returned home, my grandparents also left Florida to go back home to Montreal. The very day that they got back, my grandfather had a massive heart attack, and didn’t survive.

I’ve thanked God every single day that he gave me that push to go and visit my grandparents in Florida, so that I could spend time with my grandfather before he died.

The women in my family also tend to have “dreams” that often come true. It’s not uncommon for my mother to call me up at 2 in the morning and tell me to take care of my husband that day, and then to find out later that there was a bomb threat at the school my husband works at, or the time when the police raided the building I worked at in downtown Toronto, and my mother had called to tell me to stay home that day.

On my first real visit to my grandmother’s house after my grandfather died I know I heard him walk down the hallway.  The hallway floor would creak whenever anyone walked down the hall, and each person had their own sound (because we are all quite different in build).  I was laying across the bed in the room that was always mine when I visited, when I heard Grandpa walk down the hall.  I even told myself at the time that it was him.  It took me a few seconds to realize that he was gone.  But no one else had walked through that hallway.  I just know it was him.  He and Grandma were always so deeply happy when we came to stay, that I knew he was just coming to say hi.  I felt much better after that.  (He died unexpectedly after a bad car crash.)

I grew up with a ghost. She made her presence known by calling my parents’ names from the master bedroom. My mom said that when they first moved in, they were constantly yelling at each other, “What?!?” only to discover that one had either left the house or wasn’t calling them.

My mom also remembered a woman who would park in front of the house and watch the house. Every time mom approached her, the woman would drive off. So mom asked the elderly neighbor who she was. She was the sister of the woman who had died in the house.

When I was three, my mom found me talking in someone in her closet. I told her how I met the nicest lady whose name was Mary and who had a daughter named, Mary Anne. By that time my mom knew the story of the previous owners and she just about had a heart attack.

Turns out the owners were Robert and Mary and they had two sons and a daughter named Mary Anne. One day Robert went to work and died of a massive heart attack. His widow was stricken with grief. The neighbors told my mom that she would scream his name in the middle of the night. One morning her son found her dead from an overdose in the master bedroom.

The only encounter I can clearly remember of my invisible friend is when my mom had to help our neighbor who had fallen. Mom locked me and my then baby brother in the master bedroom with the TV. A lady opened the door and told me that she could no longer visit with me. But she would always watch over us and protect us. When I was in high school, our ghost started acting up by slamming doors, turning lights on and off and even touching us. So I did some research and found out where she was buried. We took flowers and there was a photo of her and her husband on the gravestone. The woman who came to me in the bedroom was the same woman in the photo.

Mary C.

Your website face lift looks great, connie.

My brother’s daughter Emily died at the age of 8 with a horrible defect of her heart that she was born with.  Shortly before Emily’s death we told her I was pregnant with our second child, and she was so excited that, finally, she might have a girl cousin.  Emily died 3 months later, never knowing that, indeed, the baby was a girl.  We bought my brother’s house and lived in it till right before our third child was born.  My second child Rachel when she was only 4 years old would sit in the room at the back of the house, Emily’s old bedroom, and have tea parties constantly with an imaginary friend named Emily.  I couldn’t see her, but I’ve never been sure that Emily wasn’t really there.

I’m in tears right now!  I lost my second kitty this summer.  Several times I thought I felt her jump on the bed or thought I heard her walk down the hall.  I thought it was just my imagination becaus it was something I wished was so.  Now I’m not so sure!

Our 19-year-old cat, Tinkerbelle, had to be put down this spring.  She was given to me as a six-week-old kitten; saying goodbye was really tough.  For weeks afterward, my daughter and I both felt we’d seen her shadow in the hallway.

I’ll join the weirdness…

A friend’s ex-roommate woke up one right to find a man standing IN his bedroom looking out the window.  The man turned at looked at the guy and slowly dissappeared.

A man died in my parents’ house (before they bought it).  When I was little, I swear I would hear someone say something to me or hear someone come up the stairs when I was playing in my room.  And this was when it was just me and Mom at home.  I would come downstairs and she would tell me that she didn’t call for me or she didn’t come upstairs.  I still don’t know who the person was that died there - or if it wasn’t just my imagination.

And… A mentor of mine died earlier this year.  His death was sudden (car accident), and I still feel that I have unfinished business with him.  And I think he knew it.  Since his death, he has been haunting my dreams every few weeks… asking me how my writing is doing.  He even asked me to pass message on to another former students.

Oh, I never have, and I never want to!! LOL I’ve just had the usual experience of seeing something moving in the corner of my eyes type of thing, but nothing big. . . and I hope to keep it that way! LOL

Lois

MY LEFT EAR “HEARS THINGS!!!”

At night, my left ear hears things. I sleep on my right side, so my left ear points to the ceiling. My left ear is not nearly as sensible and grounded as my right. It hears scrapes, shuffles, pops, and cracks. Typical “house settling” sounds...or are they. For when I lift my head and get my right ear involved, the sounds just go away. Ear-ie! Ooooh!

Perhaps the sounds are the ghost of the man who died in my house?

I live in Overton, Texas, about five miles from the scene of the worst tragedy in US history - the New London school explosion. It seems that everyone around these parts is related to a lost soul, a poor child who died in the explosion. But there are few survivor stories. Perhaps because there were few survivors.

The explosion started in the high school, so there were no survivors in that building except those who missed school for one reason or another.

The man who died in my house was one of those lucky few. He and his high school sweetheart skipped school, along with another couple from New London, to get married in Arkansas. True love saved their lives!

I’m such a hopeless romantic that this story melts my heart. And to think they owned the house. The wife was the one who sold it to us, as the husband passed on years ago.

So is it his spirit that haunts my left ear? I like to think so.

Oh, goodness, the Nert story brought tears to my eyes.
As for experieces with ghosts, I’ve had a few. When I was 7 we moved into and old house in a historic district, the first night there I got up in the middle of th night for a drnk of water, walked into the kitchen and there was someone there! Who wasn’t my parents! I blinked and the person disappeared and I screamed for my Mom. I ne ver felt comfortable in that house at nght after that and was SO glad when we moved.

Oh, hell, I’m sobbing!! I’d love for some of my past/passed pets to come and visit me.

My father passed away when I was 19.  But, when he was alive, whenever he would get up during the night for any reason, he would always open the doors in the kid’s rooms just to check that everything was okay.  If we were awake, he would make some comment like “Lights out!” or “Just Checking.” We all were used to this and even kidded him about checking on his brood. 
A few years after he died, he “Checked” on me one night.  I know that I was probably dreaming, but I remember the episode with such clarity that I have a hard time with the fact that I was wide awake just seconds after my door closed.  No, no one else was up or even stirring. 
I’m from the hills of Eastern Kentucky where folks report such happenings without much fear of accusations of insanity.  “Oldtimers” know about these things along with other things such as “signs and omens.”
Today, I am comforted by the thoughts that he “checked” on me just one more time.

Leanna, where are you from? I grew up in eastern KY - Clay County, my parents still live there.

Well, I live right next door on HWY 11 in Knox County!!  Nice to meet you!

I have never experienced anything like that but my Dad told me once he thought he say an angel.  It made him stop and stare before getting into his car.  If he would have gotten into his car without noticing anything, he would have been in this terrible accident that happened only moments earlier. 
Here’s something else.  My retired pastor has done exorcisms in houses.  Other people have seen him do it and it has worked.  I would be too freaked out to even think about doing something like that.  I’m pretty sure it isn’t like the movie though. 

Yupp, I had an experience when I was young, probably around 9 or 10. I’ve felt uneasy in my old room at my parent’s house ever since! (well, it was my brother’s when it happened. Mine when he left for college, now it’s my brother’s again )

Sometimes I just get the feeling I’m being watched. Ugh, creepy.

Happy Halloween!

In 1999, I was without a voice for 10 months due to thyroidectomy. One day at work, I thought I saw something just outside the peripheral vision of my rt eye. I turned and there was an angel standing on the conveyors of our stockroom. She was wearing a white velvet dress similar to the dresses we wore for our First Communion in 1960. She had gorgeous brown “Shirley Temple” curls and huge soft looking feather wings. She nodded her head to me, then - POOF - she was gone. Many people say that episode would have scared the beans out of them. No. Not me.

My Mother died in our house. That was her wish. It’s rather comforting to know that she is still here. Whenever I can’t find something that I know has moved, I just say, OK Mom, Where did you put it? And it shows up again.

My niece told me about a spirit named Larry that talked to her in their new home.
She was afraid of thunderstorms, but Larry told her that he lived there too, and he would protect her. When she discusses Larry, she is very matter of fact. Like we ALL see him. They have lived in that house since she was one year old - she’s now fourteen - and she still talks to him.

Ann

These stories have been fascinating! It seems like most of the people I talk to about subjects like this are either strongly unbelieving or wishy-washy. It could be that they are just wary to share their experiences because they are part of such an unprovable and largely discredited belief, I’m not sure.

When I was little, I almost certainly would have said I don’t believe in such things as ghosts or spirits haunting places (or people), probably because of my parents’ beliefs. Now, however, I’ve heard too many first hand reports to discount them. My mind is still full of doubts, but I believe that is because it is so hard to comprehend something as extraordinary as the experiences you have all shared.

The closest I’ve come to any such thing is through my sister. When we were just kids, my sister came downstairs one evening somewhat frightened and anxious. She walked up to my parents and asked, “something happened to grandpa, didn’t it?” Our grandfather had just suffered a fatal heart attack. There is no possible way she could have known anything was the least bit wrong. She later told us that she could “smell” death, an undescribable smell, but she knew what it was. A few years ago, she was at home during a college break. She told us that she could smell it again. The next day she got word that her best friend’s close relative died. She told me that it had happened a couple other times, always with similar outcomes. I’ve always known that we as humans miss out on a lot around us, but I believe my sister has something special. She is much more sensitive to a great number of things than anyone I have ever met; it’s not just death. Another strange thing (and warning, this may gross you out) has happened numerous times, too. She asked a very close friend one day if they had their period. The friend just gave her a curious look and told her no. The next day she came back to my sister and said, “How did you know? I just got my period. I didn’t even know.” My sister could “smell” this too. I don’t know how it happens, but somehow she knows things there is no possible way of knowing; it is simply supernatural.

Your story about Nert brought tears to my eyes.  My dog Buddy passed away Christmas day.  He was 18 years old and he really fought hard not to go.  I told him the night before he died that it was okay for him to leave us.  And I guess he was just waiting for me to let him go. 

But that’s not really a ghost story is it? 

When I was a sophmore in college I was having a really tough time with classes and I was feeling really depressed.  One night I went to bed and I started dreaming.  The door to my room started glowing and a little girl about 12 years old and dressed all in white came through.  The little girl said her name was Ann and that she was my sister.  Part of my brain must have been awake still because I knew I had no sister named Ann.  I had a niece named Ann Nicole but she was 3 at the time and I had two sisters, one was in her 20’s and another in her 30’s so the awake part of me kept trying to figure out who the girl was.  I started asking her questions and I remember talking with her for quite a while however when I woke up the next morning I couldnt’ recall what we talked about.  I did feel a lot better though and I wasn’t depressed anymore. 

When I came home to visit I asked my mom if I had a sister named Ann and she said I had a sister Marie-Ann and she died four years before I was born.

I want you all to know that when my cat climbed on my bed in the middle of the night to curl between my knees, like he always does,

I ALMOST HAD A HEARTATTACK!!!  Scared the beejeebers outta me!!

~*~Do you know that bridal store in that richard gere movie “the runaway bride”? Well, for several years before the movie was made (she sold it after the movie was made (eastern shore maryland)), my mother owned it. It was a victorian charm store called ‘Her Midas Touch’, and the place i grew up in. As a young child i remember seeing an older man and a basset hound that no one else could. He wound come by and talk to me, he was really a rather nice man, always played with me, but always looking for something, always looking sad. All anyone else saw was a little girl pouring tea for another person who was never there and tossing cookies under the table for and imaginary puppy.
Years after mom had sold the shop, she helped me research the area and the past behind the shop. I discovered that an older man who went by ‘BJ’ had run a junk shop in that exact building some 60 years earlier. His shop was absolute chaos, a complete disaster to the untrained eye- and everyone else in town. Yet, if asked, this man could locate any item you requested with unfailing accuracy. BJ fell madly in love with the town sweetheart and married her. They had a long blissful life together until she was taken from him.  The people of the town assumed that BJ had her burried out of town and went about their lives. Years later, when the towns people realized that he hadn’t gone home from his business one night and didnt open up the next morning either, they took it upon themselves to investigate. What they found shocked and saddened them all. BJ had kept his wife with him, embalmed in the back of the shop he loved so much and died right next to her. This I am not sure of but i am told they were burried together in a plot in town. I suppose he couldn’t leave that store because he believed his sweetheart was still there with him.

~*~Meredith~*~MightyAphrodite~*~

Meredith:

That’s really sweet...in a creepy sort of way (the story about the old man...)

I love Runaway Bride, I will take a closer look at that bridal shop the next time I watch that movie!

Jeez Connie, you made me cry.