by Jim Harold
I heard about strange events from other people who I knew had worked at the rink. At that time when they had their experiences, the old rink it would’ve been the only one that was there. In a sort of similar sense, they would be cleaning dressers, they’d go back up and garbage pails would be knocked over. It was nothing super specific, that I can remember anyway, but definitely other people had had experiences like that. The rink actually was torn down about two years later…oddly enough, nothing has been rebuilt there.
-Tom, Canada
3. Sailing with the Spirits
My sister and I have always kind of had a little thing where she could see things and I’ve always been able to hear things. About three years ago, in April, my entire family, about 84 of us, went on a cruise. I had a room along with my girlfriend at the time. After we had gone to bed, probably around 1 am, I heard someone whisper my name. It was so jarring that it woke me up. At first, I thought it was my girlfriend. I looked over to ask her what was going on but she was fast asleep. I assumed I just heard something, so I went back to bed and fell asleep.
Then I must have awoken to someone whispering my name, again. I looked over and my girlfriend’s fast asleep, there’s nothing on in the room. At that moment, I just felt as if something else was in the room with me. It was really odd, and it actually spooked me out. So much so, that I had trouble getting back to sleep. For about 15 minutes, I didn’t move. But I went to bed, and I didn’t say anything to my girlfriend.
We went to have breakfast where she said to me, and this is the weirdest part, she said, “Jordan, it was really weird last night, but I woke up and the door to our room was open, so I went and closed it, and I locked the top lock that you can only lock from the inside.” Then she said, “The weirdest part was, I woke up again and the door was wide open again.” She asked me if I had gone out, and I said no, I hadn’t gotten up at all. I told her that I’d heard voices last night talking to me, but I’d never gotten up.
It kind of threw us off a little bit and definitely scared me a little. We couldn’t really come up with much of a conclusion. We were thinking it could’ve been a dead family member or something, because someone had called my name. I mean, I heard it.
-Jordan, Florida
4. Oooh, They Like You!
I was visiting some friends up near Fresno, California. We were talking about ghosts and stuff, and they knew that I was totally into the paranormal. So, they started telling me about a haunted restaurant in town. I said, “Oh, we have to go check this place out.” The next day we went, and it was a huge, imposing, dark-looking building. It was actually once the county jail, built in the 1880s or so. I believe they closed it in the late 1960’s. It was a prison turned into a very casual restaurant.
We get there and they haven’t quite opened yet. My friend started knocking on the door, and one of the waitresses came over to see what we wanted. They told her, “My friend’s visiting from southern California and she really loves ghosts.” Right away her face lit up, and she said, “Yes, this place is haunted. If you want to come in and look around real quick, feel free to do so.” Naturally, we were all excited, we went in. I asked her, “Are you pulling my leg?” She said, “No. Everyone who starts working here has an experience, and if they are non-believers when they start, within a week to a week and a half, they believe.”
I was quite excited. They gave us basically free rein. We walked around, went upstairs, walked all over the place. She told us where the women were held, where one prisoner committed suicide, and different things like that.
As we were coming down the stairs, she said, “Don’t forget to see solitary confinement and then you can just exit out the back door.” She pointed us down a hallway, and there were, I’d say, four very, very small cells. The restaurant had converted them into intimate little settings for two. There were, I believe, six of us. Being clowns, we decided to all cram into this one tiny cell. We’re laughing and joking. We’d had our fun so we thought, “Okay, come on, let’s go.” We’re filing out, and I was the last one. Before I left the cell, I paused and looked around, and in my mind I’m thinking, “Wow. I can’t imagine spending time in here by myself.” I turn to walk out, and I’m wearing a purse, a shoulder bag. Something grabbed the strap and gave it a good hard tug. I turned around thinking, “Oh darn, I caught it on the chair.” Well, no, the chair was nowhere near me. There was nothing that I could’ve gotten my purse caught on. I let out a scream and all my friends came running back and were asking, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” I said, “Something touched me.”
We were all very excited. I said, “We’ve got to eat here. We’ve got to eat here, I want to spend some more time here.” We killed a little bit of time, because they still needed about an hour before they were ready to open for guests. Of course, we went back in and we were seated in the main mess hall where all the prisoners used to eat. It was very, very informal; there were wooden tables with benches. So we all sat down, and we ordered. I believe we all ordered iced teas and we’re all talking about my little adventure. Well, the waitress comes and brings our drinks, and she sets them down in front of us. At this point, I’m sitting with my arms folded, I think I’m in shock, just in awe of what had happened. All of a sudden, the little slice of lemon that’s in my tea rises up in the air. Everyone notices it. It stays there, hovers – for a count of one, two, three – and then slams down on the table.
Literally, everyone’s jaws dropped. I looked at them and I said, “Did you guys see that?”
They said, “Yes we did, yes we did!” I asked, “Did I move?” They replied, “No, you didn’t, you didn’t!” I was dumbfounded, “Did I touch it?” They said, “No, you didn’t, you didn’t!”
I said, “Okay, good. I’m not going nuts. I have witnesses.” Yeah, that was really weird.
When the waitress walked by, of course, my friends were all excited and called her over. They said, “Guess what? Guess what? Something happened, something got her lemon in her iced tea!” The waitress looked at me and she said, in total seriousness, “Ooh, they like you!”
I hate to have seen what the ghosts would have done if they hadn’t liked me!
-Connie, California
5. Nan and the Ghost
This story revolves around my late grandmother. She was born in 1899. My father was the youngest of six, so she was 40 when she had him. She was already an old lady when I knew her and she was the product of two world wars. In the First World War, she made bullets not far from where we lived. During the Second World War, she stayed in an area called Walston where they made fighter planes, Spitfires. She lived with six kids there, and they were getting bombed regularly. She was quite a strong character.
You didn’t mess with Nan. She was a no nonsense person which makes this story all the more incredible. One day when I was quite young, about seven or eight, I was visiting her. It was an open house, a fantastic place, an old Victorian villa that had so many bedrooms. At the time, I was interested in ghost stories and UFOs. I had a book on it with me. I was doing a project or something like that. I was sort of chatting away with her about it, and she said, “I’ve seen a ghost.”
This is the same lady who didn’t take any guff from anybody and wasn’t given to those sort of declarations. She said, “Yeah, I saw a ghost here.” I asked, “What? What was it?”
She said, “Yeah, in the kitchen.” She proceeded to tell me the story.
When they first moved into this house, they rented. They liked it a lot. There was plenty of room there for the kids. The landlord was quite an imposing guy, and he used to come once a week and collect the rent. My nan said he was very distinguished, very tall, always wore a smart black coat and a matching top hat. So, the landlord was a very distinguished guy. You’ve got to bear in mind, this was probably just out of the Edwardian era, so men with a bit of money still walked around with top hats and things like this. Probably between the wars, that sort of era. Unfortunately, my father passed a few years ago, so I couldn’t really
find anybody who would tell me when this actually happened. I just remember Nan telling me this story.
She said she was going through the main corridor of the house to the pantry one day, she looked to her left, and thought she saw the landlord. Quite often he had a key, would let himself in at the back, into the kitchen — so under normal circumstances this wouldn’t be terribly unusual. When she saw him she stopped and ran back, but he wasn’t there.
The twist of the tale is that it turns out that this wasn’t just any day. It happened on the actual day of his funeral! He had passed. He had been very keen on the family. He knew they loved the house, and it was a nice place. Before his passing, he was very keen that they have it, not for his own financial gain, but because they loved it so. My grandmother was convinced that he was saying, from beyond the grave, “Please have it.” So they bought it. Unfortunately, it went out of my family a few years ago. I still see it, in fact. My daughter is about a two minute walk from it at the moment. It’s a wonderful, inviting, warm house. It was in the family for a good 60 years.
Nan was a woman not given to exaggeration. I remember once her actually swearing, and everyone was just gob-smacked. We couldn’t believe it. She was in church every Sunday, and she always wore hats. I can’t explain it, but she was a very proper lady, and as I said, she worked to make bullets in the First World War, survived the Second World War, had been a chamber maid, what we would call “below stairs.” She worked in a big Victorian house for a doctor when she was a young girl. She wasn’t given to flights of fancy. I just remember this story, and it stayed with me, because it was such a shock that she’d have claimed to have seen a ghost.
-Ashley, United Kingdom
6. Who Is Cooking in My Kitchen?
I own two restaurants, and I got a crazy idea to open a third. I opened the restaurant; it was a fairly large place, primarily a seafood restaurant. This all started on the second or third day that we were working before the place opened. We were just getting stuff ready; the kitchen crew was in preparation when one of them collapsed. Someone yelled for me, so I ran back and did CPR because the man had turned blue. Anyway, long story short, we went to the emergency room and my employee didn’t make it. The gentleman died. Soon after his death, we began to experience some very strange things going on at the restaurant.
First, I had a young man who mopped the floors during the day, and he had to come in early. We gave him a key because he came in around 6 am so he could get everything done in the dining room before people started coming in and tracking the floor up. He did this for about three weeks, and came to me one day and said, “I’m not going to do this anymore.” I asked, “What are you talking about?” He said, “I can’t be in here alone anymore.” I asked him what the problem was and he said, “Look, every time I bring my mop bucket out to the dining room and then I go back to get something, when I come back, it’s in a totally different place.” He also said that chairs that were put up on top of the table would all of a sudden be mysteriously set down on the floor. He said it happened to him several times, and that was it. He was done. He actually quit. This was a really good, honest kid! He had some fear on his face, he really did.
Well, my managers, when they closed late at night, they always swore that they would see a dark shape.
They always did their paperwork at the bar, and to your right, we had an open kitchen. They swore that there was a dark shadow that they would occasionally see moving around in there.
I think the scariest, strangest thing that ever happened was one day, when my manager called me at 8 am and said, “You’ve got to get down here right now.” I asked, “What’s the problem?” He said, “Just come.” So I went down there. Now, we had a huge bar; there were about 13 or 14 stools on each side of the bar and every night, we would put them up on the bar, turn them over, so we could mop under there.
Anyhow, I came in, and these bar stools were all on the bar except for the two end bar stools and the stool exactly in the middle. Those stools had been taken down, arranged and pointed at an angle that was perfect. They made a perfect diagram, at perfect angles. I said to the manager, “Come on, you did this.” I’m not kidding, this kid had tears welling up in his eyes. He was terrified. He had taken pictures. I said, “Well, then somebody came in during the night.” I called the alarm company, which tracks such things. Nobody had entered the building.
One more thing. There was a local lady who was apparently a psychic. I wasn’t sure I believed in such things, but she was a good customer. She came to me, unsolicited, and said, “You have an angry spirit in your kitchen. Did you know that?” Well, my jaw just hit the floor.
I didn’t really want to believe it. I mean, come on, I’ve got other stuff to do! She said, “The spirit is angry. He doesn’t understand why other people are cooking in his kitchen.”
He felt like it was his kitchen, even after his death. I ended up selling the restaurant. I had a series of things happened there that I had never encountered and I’ve been in business for 20 years. Very strange, negative things happened, that really just caused me to feel, “I’ve had enough.” I sold the restaurant and haven’t looked back since.
Somebody else owns the space now, and you never know. They might be experiencing the same things.
It was pretty strange just having somebody die like that. Everybody knew about these experiences, and some people kind of laughed about them, but the ones who had had the direct experiences were not laughing at all. Like I said, they were terrified. I’m just kind of glad I got out of there in one piece and was able to sell it and move on.
-James, United States
7. A Visit from Grandma
This happened around 1974 to my niece, Renee, when she was around three. Her great-grandmother on her mother’s side, who babysat her quite often during the daytime, had passed away. Renee was old enough to be talking but young enough that it was tough to explain a death in the family. My brother and his girlfriend decided not to tell her because I guess they didn’t know how to break it to her.
Anyway, this event happened a day or two after her great-grandmother had passed. Everyone had gone to bed and Renee’s door was always left halfway open so they could check on her and hear her if anything happened during the night. My brother said they were laying there and they heard Renee kind of talking, so they got up and went over by her door and were listening. They were hearing her say, “Yes…yes…no…”
The couple walked into Renee’s room and she was sitting up, propped up against the headboard of her bed. They asked, “What are you doing?” She said, “I’m talking to Grandma.” They looked at each other and thought, “Whoa, what’s going on?” Now at that time Renee had other grandmothers that were still living, and they said, “Oh, were you talking to Grandma so-and-so?” She said, “No.” It wasn’t that one. So, they said, “The other Grandma?” And she said “No, no…the old one.” Well, guess who the oldest one was…
My brother and girlfriend were freaked out! When I doubt life after death or things like that, I always think of Renee. There’s got to be something!
-Julie, Missouri
8. The Schoolgirl Ghost
This was probably about 15 years ago. I was working as a security guard at a boarding school. It was a bit creepy.
There was this one stairwell there where you’d walk up and it’d always feel quite chilly, really cold. I thought it was just my mind going on. Also, for some reason, in this one particular classroom at the top of the stairs, there would always be a light going on in the middle of the night…probably a couple of times each week.
I mentioned this to one of the other guys there, and he said, “Oh, that’s Amanda.” I thought, “Okay, who’s Amanda? Can I send her an email or something, and find out why she’s turning the light on?” He told me, “No, she was actually a student who died there.” Apparently she fell down the stairs. He asked, “Do you get that cold feeling whenever you’re going up the stairs?” Now, I hadn’t mentioned this to
anyone; I just thought it was me but sure enough…it wasn’t. I told him, “Yeah, I sorta do.”
He went on to mention something unusual at the bottom of the stairs, he asked, “Do you see that little hole that’s on the wall there?” I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s just a mark of some sort.” He said, “They used to actually hang a picture of her, a photo of her on the wall, and it never used to stay up. Always used to fall down.”
It seems they stopped hanging the picture there, but this mark is still on the wall, and apparently they’ve tried painting over it and putting a bit of putty and all that, but this mark just always appears. It’s just one of those weird things.
I don’t know the full story behind it, but it was just one of those odd things. I’ve never really been someone that’s a full-on believer as such, but it’s just one of those odd stories.
-Richard, New Zealand
9. An Imaginary Friend
This happened quite a few years ago. My daughter and I were living in New Mexico. She was four years old at the time and I’d just separated from my spouse. We ended up moving into our own place, a townhouse type unit. When we got there, I didn’t think anything out of the ordinary was going on with the place. So we moved in and started life again.
One day, I was downstairs and I noticed that my daughter, who was playing upstairs, was being kind of boisterous, like she was talking to somebody. I didn’t think anything of it, sometimes at that age kids have very good imaginations. You know, imaginary friends.
I really didn’t think anything of it. We were both going through some things and stress, but trying to live life.