My ghost story started when I stayed for a couple weeks with my mom while I was waiting for my new apartment to be readied for me to move in. It was in 2004 and my mom and my step-dad lived in this two apartment house, they had lived there for about 5 years at this point. I had been there before visiting and I had met the landlord who lived in the upstairs apartment. His wife, Karen had been killed in a car accident years before and she had a daughter from a previous relationship that had gone to stay with her father when she died. Mom had told me stories of electrical appliances going on and off a lot. And if the door to the bedroom that her daughter had been in was closed you would hear someone walking in the hallway, pacing back and forth until you opened the door. Then the footsteps would stop.

Anyway, I am staying there for a couple weeks and I slept in the bedroom that had been the daughter of Karen’s. One night, I woke up and there was this woman in a white dress down past her ankles standing next to the bed, staring at me. At first, I was scared but then I just got a feeling that it was okay and I closed my eyes and fell back asleep. In the morning, I told my mom and she said “that happens sometimes”. I think, okay and thanks for the warning you know? 

Then a couple days after that, I was in the kitchen. I was cutting up an apple into sections and placing them in a bowl. I dropped a slice on the floor but when I looked for it it was nowhere to be found. I looked all over that kitchen and even into the living room but I could not find that apple slice anywhere. I finally gave up looking and finished cutting the rest of the apple up and turned to place the knife in the sink. As I turned back to pick up the bowl, I saw something moving on the floor and when I looked down, there was an apple slice rolling across the kitchen floor. Rolling end up over end up longways coming right to where I was standing and it stopped, resting against one of my feet. I was stunned and just stood there trying to come to terms with what I had just seen and the refrigerator motor started turning on and off really fast. I finally said “ok Karen I get it, you want to let me know you are here”. And went on with what I was doing. During that two weeks I stayed with my mom, the appliances kept coming on all by themselves, and even my mom said it was happening a lot more than usual.

So, a few days later my mom was not feeling well and she was in her bedroom and I was there with her watching movies and just hanging out. I got up to get her a soda from the fridge and as I was coming down the hall and around the corner to the kitchen a woman came around from the other way. It happened so fast and I was sure we were going to collide but instead, we passed right through each other. She was the same woman I had seen next to my bed watching me and she was wearing the same dress and was as solid as I am. At first I was so surprised I said “oh, excuse me!”  and then realized what had just happened to me. I ran back to my mom’s bedroom and told her and the look on her face was priceless. She told me that although she had heard her walking she had never seen her before. I do not know why she showed herself to me twice nor why she moved things around me like the apple slice. I do know that I have been able to see spirits since I was little but as I got older I stopped seeing them. It had been many years since I had seen a full solid apparition and it was amazing. I was a little sad at the news that my own apartment was ready to move into, I wanted to stay longer with my mom to see what else Karen would let me see. My mom however, was not as enthused as I was and was happy to see me leave as she was not comfortable with it. After I left things calmed down and went back to “normal” for the place, and even though I was there many times after until my mom moved out of the place I never saw her again.  I did get to experience more of the footsteps and appliances turning on and off though. This was a gentle spirit and she just wanted to make herself known. I have other stories of the house I lived in as a child but those are not good memories at all. I will not talk about those times as they are better left alone. Thanks for reading my real ghost story!

From Debbie L.

I went to basic training for the army in the summer of 2010 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Upon arrival at my barracks, I knew it was an old, old, building - but the fact that it was haunted never really set in until a few weeks of staying there. I knew of several people that had died during basic training, 1/3 of them being suicides - one of the suicides happened in the very basement of my own Barracks! A girl had hung herself from the piping. I had several experiences with this girl. At night all of us privates had to stand guard in the dark hallways taking turns at hour long increments and I had experiences with the stairwell door opening and closing for no apparent reason, the hall suddenly going cold or a cool breeze brushing by me, not to mention a sudden overwhelming feeling of heartache and homesickness. Things would go missing from our lockers and end up in other people’s lockers - our soaps and shampoos would somehow get spilled all over the insides of our lockers - you know, the likes of that. But these things were nothing compared to the creepiest thing that happened that summer.

The topmost female floor - the floor that I was staying on with my platoon mates - was separated into two sections for two different sets of platoons. There was the long hallway with all the doors to the rooms, and then a doorway in the middle of the hallway separating the two sections that we would close after lights out.

One night, all of the females on my side of the floor were awakened by a LOUD sound coming from the other side. It was a sound of screaming, fighting, arguing; and as my roommates and I were sitting up speculating what could have been going on over there the sounds grew louder and louder… and then suddenly stopped. The next morning, all the females from my side of the hallway were talking about that god awful noise going on last night from the other side - but when we actually asked the girls from the other side, they claimed that nothing had happened. They were all asleep and sound all night, and they never heard anything at all. The hall guards said they never heard anything either. It sent shivers down my spine to think about it. but why would only one side of the hallway hear it and not the other side? Perhaps it was on MY side of the hallway that the noises were coming from, but the voices were clearly muffled by a layer of brick wall.

After that night there were no more strange noises or activities that happened. And no one ever brought up the strange loud noises coming from the other side of the floor. I still ponder it though.

From Mattie

When my daughter was about 15 months old, I had to wake her from her nap in order to be somewhere on time. I went into her room and looked down into her crib. I thought to myself, “Wow, her pants look kind of funny. She must have REALLY been tossing and turning in her sleep.” (She was always a restless sleeper.) I rubbed her back to wake her up and then picked her up. Her pants fell to the floor. They were elastic waist knit pants and were the perfect size. There’s no way they should have fallen off. I then realized that her pants had never been on her - they had been laid across her like a blanket, with the waist band at her waist and each leg pulled down so they came down to her ankles. Considering the fact that she couldn’t undress herself, and the fact that she was such a restless sleeper there’s no way those pants would have stayed in place even if she HAD been able to put them on herself (she slept on her stomach at that point, which would have made it even harder for her to do this herself) I really began to wonder.

Over the next several months, more strange things happened. While napping in her crib, I heard a thud followed by her screaming. I ran into her room and she was on the floor, a good 5 feet away from her crib. She had never climbed out of the crib and even if she had, there’s no physical way she could have fallen that far away from the crib - she would have been on the floor right in front of the crib. Also, her toys would activate themselves in the middle of the night, even if they had been turned off. And they’d go off in the same order that they were lined up in her room. As she got older, she started talking to someone who wasn’t there, and staring at a certain corner of the kitchen when she was doing so. I asked her who she was talking to and she said “That man” and pointed to the corner. There was nobody there. More time went on and we’d have Christmas decorations bent/broken, I’d hear things rattling behind me when I was home alone, and I had something that was a good 18 inches away from the edge of a cabinet go crashing to the floor.  There was a bit of dust on the cabinet and there was no “trail” where it would have been pushed off.  It had to have been picked up and then dropped, or else it would have left a trail in the dust. When my daughter turned 4, she saw her dad out of the corner of her eye walking down the hallway, dressed in black and getting ready to go to a funeral. She didn’t even look up, but said “Oh. Hi Bill.” I asked her who Bill was and she said “The man that lives in the kitchen.” We don’t know anyone named Bill. 

I was a skeptic until I realized our apartment had another resident. I told “Bill” he was welcome to stay as long as he didn’t hurt anyone and he didn’t. That apartment eventually flooded and had to be torn down to the studs for repairs.  We ended up moving out. Work had already begun and as we would come after work to finish packing up, we’d hear 10x more than we ever heard before. Doors and drawers slamming, things being knocked over, lights turning on and off.  I couldn’t wait to get out of there! Even now, my daughter is about to turn 5 and she still asks when we’re going back to live with Bill at his house.

From Lisa

It was early February 1986: a cold, clear night in northern Nevada. I was going on 16 years old and had just celebrated closing night of a successful run of our latest high school play along with fellow classmates. My parents were in California visiting my ailing Grandmother and as I had been a stage manager for the play and needed for the production, I was allowed to stay the weekend with the play’s director, his wife and their family.

Around 11pm, on closing night, one of the girls in the cast invited everyone out to continue the cast party in her family’s guest house: a small, one-room cottage just to the side of their main house. I was one of the first to arrive with my friend Melody, who had also been staying with the director’s family. As we explored the guest house, I saw a Ouija board in its box sitting on the counter in the tiny kitchenette.

Now, my family has a long history of weirdness and paranormal activity through the generations and though I had never seen a Ouija board in person until that moment I had been taught to avoid them based on the negative personal experiences of family members. So I politely asked the party hostess if she wouldn’t mind not playing with that one since there were a stack of other games available and she agreed.  But 20 minutes later as more people arrived, filling the cottage to capacity, she “forgot” all about her promise and happily encouraged a group of classmates to gather around the board on the floor in front of where I was sitting and with a smug look daring me to protest. I said nothing, but refused to participate, choosing to sit at the end of the sofa and simply watch.

For the first half hour things were pretty quiet. A dozen teenagers crammed around the board asking inane questions until people eventually got bored and began to wander away, including the hostess. Soon, only seven people remained and while I couldn’t tell you what they asked if my life depended on it, I knew the exact moment when they made genuine contact with something very, very bad.

What had been a very hot room (easily 30 drunk people crammed in the living area of a 600 square foot house, with exposed radiator heating made it stifling) suddenly became extremely cold, and I found it incredibly hard to breathe. It was an almost instantaneous plunge in temperature and the atmosphere was heavy and malevolent. I was sitting next to the radiator and yet my whole body went rigid with cold. I couldn’t feel my legs, my arms wouldn’t move, and I felt a massive pressure suddenly crush down on my chest as if I were being sat on, pressing me deeper into the sofa, pinning me in place. I had never felt anything like it before or since, but I was disoriented, confused and completely terrified! The surrounding chatter dimmed to a muted buzz, and I felt / heard a very aggressive older male voice in my head commanding me over and over to GET OUT. “I don’t want you here…you’re not welcome…not you not you not you…GET OUT NOW or I’ll hurt them all!” over and over.  

I wanted nothing more than to comply and run, but I couldn’t move! The one remaining rational part of my brain at that moment tried to silently plea my case: “please - how can I leave if you don’t let me go? Please let me go!” 

At that moment one of my best friends sat down next to me on the couch and touched my hand, asking if I was okay. That simple act of physical contact seemed to break the hold and I could move a bit again, though I was still freezing cold and shaking all over. My friend told me I had gone sheet white, my face had lost definition and I was suddenly aware of hot tears on my cheeks. I didn’t want to anger the Bad Voice any further by staying so I simply said,  ”I have to get out of here right now or something bad is going to happen” and immediately got up to find Melody, as she was my ride home.

Melody didn’t want to leave and was understandably confused, but I was too terrified at that point to explain further. I could still hear his voice, warning me to do whatever it took just GET OUT. I bolted outside the house and the air lightened considerably but I could still feel that Presence, waiting to see what I would do. When Melody again voiced reluctance to leave, asking what would the others think? I told her in all sincerity that if she couldn’t drive me home then I would walk back, but I just had to get out right now. 

Bear in mind that the house was eight miles outside of town in the middle of the northern Nevada desert in February. No neighbors, no streetlights, near freezing temperatures at what was now 2am, and would be another 4 miles from the city limit to the director’s house, but at that point I didn’t care. I just had to get away from the angry man! Finally, Melody agreed to drive me back (with no small amount of annoyance) and the moment the engine started I felt like someone had cut my strings. All my energy drained out of me and I was physically incapable of speaking or doing anything more than shake until we got home. 

When the director’s wife answered the door she took one look at my face and knew something horrible had happened, but when she asked what was wrong I couldn’t speak. All of my fear and tension released and I broke down into hysterical tears that I couldn’t stop for over an hour. To my eternal gratitude, when I was finally able to talk she listened very patiently and sympathetically and believed me when I told her what I’d experienced. I then collapsed into bed and passed out until early the next afternoon.

A few days later I caught up with my best friend and asked her if she’d experienced anything and she said that around the time I left the ‘spirit’ the kids at the board were speaking to suddenly got very talkative. It claimed at first to have been a little boy that had died during the Holocaust. The hostess’s brother spoke fluent German and thought he’d be clever by asking how the ‘boy’ had died, and its reply scared them all: KILL KILL KILL KILL over and over in rapid succession. They finally decided their ‘game’ wasn’t fun anymore and put it away.

To this day I don’t know what or who it was they reached, nor do I know what would have happened if I’d stayed or why it felt I was such a threat to it, and honestly I don’t want to know. I have NO doubt what I experienced was from an outside source, attracted to our gathering by that board. I do believe in the paranormal, but I am also enough of a skeptic to look for a mundane explanation for things first, and I also know that the board itself is nothing more than a tool to focus the intent of the seeker - it carries no more power than the person using it. But to this day I will never think of it as just a game, nor will I allow them in my home. Some things deserve respect, and it’s never a bad thing to realize when you’re over your head. Learn from my experience and trust your instincts!

From Amy B.

Well me and my fiance were over next door at my friend’s house and we were sitting in his brother’s room. At the time, he had told us that his house was haunted but we really didn’t believe him because a lot of people we know have said that and it was not true. At first, we were in the kitchen and then went to his little brother’s room because he wanted to show us that it was haunted. So, we said okay and went in there with him. Well, we didn’t know he had a camera and a recorder that he was taking in there with us. We went in there and we were talking. We were on the bed and the bedroom door was open and it slammed shut. He turned the recorder on because we were the only ones in the house. So he asked my fiance to start taking pictures and he did. While I was sitting on the bed my back started burning really really badly so I got my fiance to look at it and I had 3 scratch marks going down my back. So I sat there waiting for my fiance to get done so we could leave because after that I was ready to go. So while I was on the bed waiting for him all of a sudden it felt like something was trying to pull me under the bed! I jumped up and when I jumped up my fiance snapped two pics of the closet and we went to the kitchen. Our friend took the camera and put the pictures on his computer and listening to the recorder and he turned the volume up on the computer and said you have to listen to this. When I did, I could hear something talking after I would say a word and all I could hear was , b#@&%, f#$% you, go away and the recorder was distorted while we were talking at one time and you could hear a little girl plainly say please help me, so I got up and was getting ready to leave from the house and my friend said you need to see one of the pics that Daniel, my fiance, took in the closet. We went over and looked and it was like a white mist that was half human and half demon sitting behind me. I got so freaked out I did not go back over for a long time!

From Mary S.

I’ve had several interesting encounters over the years from my first apartment being haunted to a friend who passed staying with me for a year before moving on, but the most recent though not particularly scary. The neighbors to the back of me are/were an old couple and before the husband had gotten ill he was always outside working on his lawn and I’m very DIY so if we’d see each other outside we’d chat and he’d talk to my son as well about his car, very friendly old guy.  He fell ill a year or more ago and was on oxygen with a visiting nurse.  A month ago or so I noticed the feeling of someone immediately behind me inside/outside my house and from the corner of my eye I could make out a shadow where no shadow should have been. I felt a little uncomfortable, working in my office, the same feeling of someone in it with me, the ceramic rabbit on the shelf by the sink I always have facing the door was turned straight out towards the center of the room and I turned it several times only to have it face back straight ahead. The light in my husband’s closet would turn off as soon as we’d turn it on and the puppy would bark at nothing just before the garage. I didn’t think much of it until a few days later many cars were parked outside the couple’s house and everyone was dressed quite nicely. The old man’s funeral. After the funeral the activity ceased, not scary knowing it was my kind neighbor man but certainly special. :)

From Jenn S.

I worked at a hotel during the overnight shift and one night me and another guy were sitting in the lobby around 3am, nobody else around. Suddenly, we heard the back door to the desk area open (it has a very distinctive sound) and I turned around and saw what I thought was a person walk by the door in the office area. There are two ways into that office, one was locked, the other was the door we heard earlier. Knowing nobody was supposed to be there we each went to one door, my coworker to the locked door and me to the other one. We came in to the office and nobody was there, yet we both clearly saw someone walk past that open door between the office and front desk area! We searched the whole area, and nobody was around, not a soul. I could not identify the person I saw, but it was clearly a human form, but more like a shadow, no distinct features but the shape was clear as a bell in my mind. I had no doubt it was somebody or something, not just a shadow play or my imagination, cause we both saw it at the same time. We looked at each other and said “who was that?”

Another time, I saw a ghost plain as day. Me and a couple friends were playing by an old abandoned sanitarium, it was very run down and dilapidated. We looked up at the windows and then we saw one of the curtains pull back and a face peer out at us and it was sorta fuzzy but had a sort of skeleton like appearance to it, no features but you could see it was a face, the two dark spots where eyes would be, a mouth, and maybe even some sort of hat or bonnet i’m not sure. Then it backed away into the darkness and the curtain fell back over the window. We both ran as fast as we could away from there!! Not many people believe me when I tell them these stories, but I remember them as clear as day in my mind and know what I saw. I have had many strange experiences, these are the two biggest ones and most unexplained.

From Halvie