I had my first paranormal experience when I was about 4 years old. I was lying in my bed with my door wide open looking out directly into my parent’s room. I had positioned there television set to be facing the doorway so I could watch it while falling asleep. My hand was hanging off the side of the bed when I felt someone grab my hand and say “here take this.” Now many may say I was sleeping or dreaming but I know for a fact I was awake and after that incident I never slept in my bedroom again, so for the next 18 years I slept on the couch until the day I moved out at age 22. Lots of weird things happened in that house that couldn’t be explained and it did ignite my curiosity in the paranormal. So I am curious to what your first paranormal experiences are. Was is terrifying, not so bad or are you still waiting for it to happen? If you have never had a paranormal experience what sparked your interest in the topic?

Same age for me about 4 I saw myfirst shadow person and another type of creature I am not sure what catagory it fits in to, The rest is history so to say. I stay away from the house I grew up in because of all the activity that goes on there a lot or all of it is negitive for me. The last time I stayed a dark yellow ball of energy was in my room and stayed even when I turned the light on aftera few minutes in slowly sank in to the wooden closet door, I knew it was looking at me and wanted me to see it. I dont stay at that house anymore. Aanica...

i saw some aliens one time, they were in the woods and they were really drunk
no wait,
that was me

Two and a half years old. My father had just died, but I continued to see him and talk to him around the house. I would often tell my family that he is around and they would hear me hold conversations with him. This went on for several years.


-Akaebeel

How come it stopped, if you dont mind me asking

Not sure. Guess it was because he became a permanent aspect of life. That or like many other children, I just started to ignore it and hindered my ability to see. Since I was seeing a lot of things at that time, and my family was telling me it was my over active imagination (Like a majority of loving families do) you tend to have your ability to see degrade or lose touch with it.

-Akaebeel

First time was 4 or 5 years ago when I woke up at night. I saw a shadow or person, which I'm not sure off because it was quite dark, walking past my bed. It walked like a monk, with his head bowed and his hands in praying position. It walked past my bed towards the window untill it just faded away.

I'm not sure what it was, but it must have been something significant enough for me to remember it exactly in every detail.

About 10 years ago, my sister and her husband had just married, they moved in to his mothers house with her to save money and were beginning the phases of adoption of thier first baby. about 3 months after they moved into the home, my brother-in-law's mother passed away in the house due to liver failure. a week later, thier baby was born and the adoption was finalized. so i went to the house to help my sister. The way the house is set up, when you enter the house you are on a main floor with the living room, 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, then you go down some stairs and you the kitchen and laundry room are down there, and from the main floor if you go up the stairs, there is a large main bedroom with a bathroom. that was where his mom passed, and it was her room so they really stopped going up there all together, and left everything as it was.
The first night i was there, everyone went off to sleep, i slept in the living room facing the hall that my sister's room and the baby's room and bathroom were down.
i barely even got myself situated when i started to hear what sounded like furniture moving from directly above me, now mind you nobody else lives in the house, and i was directly below his mother's bedroom, i mean this really sounded like the whole dresser was going across the hardwood floors, i continued to hear footsteps and banging, i could see that my sister and brother in law never left thier room, then i started to hear the footsteps come down the stairs, and at the time i was so scared i literally sqeezed my eyes shut and put the blankets over my head, i heard the footsteps enter the living room, and i got freezing cold, my heart was racing! then the darn tickle me elmo doll started going off.... this is when they first came out and they were just little giggles, i finally gained enough courage to open my eyes, and there was absolutely nothing there.

when my sister woke up in the morning i told her what happened, she told me it had happened every night since her mother-in-law passed away. Needless to say i was a little upset she never warned, me. I went upstairs and examined the room, there were no signs of any furniture moving at all, They sold the house only about a month after, and nothing further ever happened to them, they believe it was her, checking on the baby. and i have been obsessed with figuring it all out ever since.

What started my interest in the paranormal was books and tv shows I liked growing up. Shows like Unsolved Mysteries, Sightings, and Strange Universe. They featured different paranormal stories, from ghosts, ufos and cryptids, to psychics and other related phenomena.

Books were basically stuff like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, as well as Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown, etc.

I still try to read and watch as much as I can, and I do investigate paranormal claims now. I've had a few minor experiences throughout my life, but nothing that I am completely certain was a ghost or anything necessarily paranormal.

But, I'll keep trying.

WOW that sounds like one hell of an experience

when I was very young...don't remember my exact age. I used to see many different 3d shapes of vibrant colors floating around my ceiling. They would zoom around, one at a time, as if taking turns..getting as close to me as possibly and then just sort of dissipating.

In this same house, every night I would hear whispers from outside my bedroom door...but I could never make out what they were saying. At the same time that I would hear these whispers it looked like lights were fading in and out, when the lights would start doing this I would occasionally see a dark figure standing in the middle of my room and I'd scream at the top of my lungs until my parents came upstairs to get me....if they didn't I would grit my teeth and run down stairs to their bedroom. Some nights I couldn't bare getting out of bed to go into the hallway which was equally scary to a little girl....so I'd stay and watch the figure all night, sometimes it paced.


I also remember driving home one night from getting a video with my dad and brother and I saw a glowing blue man walking down the street. I went to point him out to everyone and, of course, not there anymore. Many years later I was in a sculpture garden in the city i live in and I saw a glowing blue figure peek out from behind a sculpture.

anyone know anything about glowing blue figures?

i think my very first experience was when my family lived in singapore and my mom had fallen asleep with me in bed...I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a lady looking down at me and I thought it was my mom, but she was still lying next to me. This particular figure was glowing green.

what's up with glowing colors?

It's a bit foggy but when i was little, i was always afraid of my basement, i do remember one time when i was getting something out of the fridge from downstairs that i turned around and saw something move across the hallway quickly and i was freaked as i grabed my stuff and ran upstairs, i always hatted my basement for a longest time but about 8 years ago i didnt mind the basement anymore, i havnt really seen anything but white shadows out of corner of my eye sometimes.
There were times i would be doing laundry and i'd hear people saying my name, it was like a whisper but a loud whisper and directly in my ear. I've also always felt someone downstairs that would be following me around and watching me everywhere i had gone, but it wasnt like it was all the time it was only some of the times.

when i was about 5 i woke up during the middle of the night to find a women sitting in a chair next to me, And she was also talking to me.I also started to hear people at night when i go use the restroom.i always knew when something was gonna happen .everytime i was all alone i always carried a knife ,thats how bad it was.

I guess the first thing I can remember was my dog. Her name was Buffy. I was about 6. We were getting ready to go off and my mom asked if my sister and I were ready. Before either of us could say a word, Buffy looked at my mom and plain as day answered her"Yes Mam". Needless to say we were all dumbfounded. We all three heard her . We tried to get her to talk again for years .
She died when I was 14 with out ever uttering another word.
Not exactly "haunting" but it was for us !
Linda

i had a puppy at one time named buffy....till my parents made us give her away....*sighs*

oh i have to share one of my group member's first experience because it is so scary / funny.
she was a very little girl, and her mom and her would always sing "one eyed, one armed, flying purple people eater" every night, <-- not sure if those are the exact words, but anyway, she was singing it one night sitting on her bed, and a woman literally poked her head out of her closet (women dressed in all black) and clearly said to her "please stop singing that song"
she nearly peed her pants!
needless to say, she has not, and will not every sing that song again.

yes it was crazy, but i guess i am thankful for it, because it peaked my interest just enough to get me going!

I would be scared of closets if this happened to me

Well I was with this girl that I really liked. We started the relationship off slow but this night was special... err oh, first paranormal experience

Nope, haven't had any of those yet...

The Gift

Amazing stories everyone! I really enjoyed reading this thread. The moving furniture story* did scare me for some reason. It had to be an very frightening experience for you, myghostnetwork, especially being in the dark.
I also do not like looking down at halls b4 I sleep. All my life since a kid that I hated looking down halls, ever since the time that I heard my mother crying in the room down the hall. She had lost a sister to cancer. A few hours of listening to her wailing, my father walks into the hallway turning the light on and went to the bedroom door. He was uncertain to walk in. I had felt a lot sadness at this Time, and I never had heard my mother cry so much, so I turned around looking at the light on the wall. The light did seem to be peaceful. I hear then their door opening and slowly shutting. I turned back around and stared back down the hall. There was something in the hallway by their door. Feeling afraid, I turned back around to the light on the wall but light was different. Hard to explain. I had the impression that something was looking at me from down the hall. Before had gone to sleep, it was in the room with me. I had woken up with a fever n walked into the living room which where my Aunt was in a open casket. I was at a Wake at my grandparents house. I rem being embarrassed bec I puked in the kitchen..
* I hear that it is not the actual furniture is moving, only sounds of the past.

I was driving one night, it was raining and i saw an image of an elderly lady with a shaw over her head drift quickly from the sholar of the road to just across the yellow line. I started to hit the brake but she - it was out of my way and beyond the yellow line before I could. I could see nothing in the shaw covering her head. My wife asked me, "did you see something", I replied "what did you see?' she saw the same thing I did. The spectre had no feet, she drifted quickly. You always hear of these roadside apparitions, if I had not seen it I would not believe it. It was only about 75 yards from my house.

seax

The first time for me was... almost seven years ago. I was eight years old , and my parents were in Hawaii visiting my aunt. So I spent a week with my older sister at my grandparents house up in the blue ridge mountains. I was with my sister in the doll room around midnight. I heard whispers and asked if anyone was there, to have my sister ask me who I was talking to. I turned my head to her, and one of the dolls turned its head and stared at me. I ran out of the hallway screaming, completely terrified. It took my grandpa two hours to calm me down. I'm still afraid of dolls to this day, and since then i've been having countless encounters.

Me and a group of friends were trespassing (sort of) at the abandoned St. Mary's Women's College just before a private owner was going to start a historical renovation on the school. The new owner had bought guard dogs for the premises and just as we got close to the school I heard the dog's nails scraping on pavement as they were running at us from some direction. I couldnt see them, but could hear them coming.
As soon as I heard the dogs, I turned to run back down the path but my legs would not move. My legs locked, literally paralyzed with fear, until finally I lost my balance and fell/dove into some bushes while my friends sprinted back into the woods and down a long staircase. As I fell in the bushes I basically did a sommersault and lost my hat in the process. I finally got on my feet and began to run until I came to a small clearing at the top of the stairs and stopped. I guess I stopped to listen if the dogs were coming and I was maybe contemplating going back for my hat.
As I stood there for a moment, I looked to my right and about 15 yards away, I saw what basically looked like fog coming out of the ground.
It was only about 3 feet high and dissipating as it drifted vertically, like smoke. A smaller part of it seemed connected to the ground, like it was coming from a really small extinguished campfire but the middle seemed to get alittle bigger or rounder and rose upward as it faded. It never took on the shape of anything, never changed colors or got brighter, it just looked like white smoke. I saw it for about 45 seconds until it was gone. Then I hurried down the stairs to my friends at the bottom of the hill.

I can't say for sure if it was a ghost or what... a little cloud of smoke being there in the woods just seemed really out of place to me, and I couldnt think of an explanation for it. The only theory I have is that maybe someone had just peed there and it was steam rising from their pee but I dont think it was cold enough to see steam; and in the amount of time it would take for that steam to be visible, I would have had to have seen the person running away. Besides, I doubt anyone would stop and pee in the middle of being chased. Or maybe an exposed pipe with steam coming from it? I have no idea.

-Pol

For me it started when I was 6 or 7. I started having these feelings of being watched and feelings of something bad being near me. I don't know how to describe it. It was basically a feeling like something evil was there and I just knew I was scared and wanted to get away from it. I've had those episodes at different times throughout my life. It's not a panic attack feeling but more just a sense that something--or someone--is there. Sometimes it doesn't scare or bother me but other times I just get a clear sense that whatever it is is not friendly and that I need to get away from it. I've actually mentioned it to my parents before and they commented that they only had that happen to them one time. Apparantly they went into an abandoned house and they said there was a presence and atmosphere they can only describe as evil. They left quickly and never went back. When I was in my teens I became curious as to what explanations there are for such a feeling and I ended up venturing into the territory of the paranormal.

The only other "paranormal" activity I've experienced in my life is pretty much having nothing except nightmares for a lot of my life. I do believe in aliens but it's not because I've seen one. I just don't think it's make sense that we would be the only beings in all of space. I've never experienced outright poltergeist activity, seen a ghost, or anything like that. When I was 8 I swore up and down I saw a creature with a wooden face come out of my closet. That's one nightmare I remember in great, great detail.

We think that may have happened to our 4 year old after my husband's father died. He died in 2006 and for a long time--as in up until a year ago--she would suddenly stop what she was doing, look at clear air, and start talking to him. Many times when that would happen our dog would stare at the same place and start growling and barking. Every time we asked who she was talking to she would tell us "Papaw." Other times during the day and at night the dog would lay in the floor just staring. Then she would growl and bark. During the first year in this house, we noticed her bedroom getting ice cold at times and my husband swears up and down he saw the rocking chair in our youngest daughter's room rocking without anyone in it not too long after she was born. At the same time this was going on my husband's mother started telling us about weird stuff going on in her house that was very similiar. It stopped as suddenly as it started. Very strange.

I guess I've always had encounters/experiences that I couldn't explain while it never really intrigued me until an incident at my mother's death bed in Hospice. It was what my family and myself experienced that caught my attention & in a profound way. After that event, we were attacked. All of us, in different households. It was that that encouraged me to learn what I could about that other realm.

When I was six years old, I began seeing a strange man every night when I went to bed. He would growl at me like a dog that was about to attack. There were always st lest five small pigs swarming about his feet. These pigs had extremely long razor sharp teeth and no eyes. They seemed to be begging the man for something at all times. I did not tell anyone about this until I was ten years old. We did research and found that our home used to be the home of a pig farmer who was shot in the room which was my bedroom at that point. He still follows me where ever I go today, but I have no idea what he wants.

Interesting Nope!

I'm glad you asked. (But you may not be glad you asked after this.)




I think I'll kick off my first post the "right" way.
Hope it doesn't bore anyone because it's a little long.

I also don't know whether it qualifies as a "ghost story" or not. I'm just presenting the events as they actually occurred. (And, yes, I have a phenomenal memory. None of this is made up or fabricated in any way.)

What happened to me was not a single experience but a whole series of sporadic experiences that occurred to me when I moved, along with my parents, into a rented house just down the street from our original home. The time frame of these occurrences would have been between the years 1969 and 1973.

I had always been a skeptic and pretty much remain so. I'm a little quick to raise the BS flag on quite a few things: Roswell, the "mothman", overly dramatic ghost stories, etc. I think ghost stories in general are rather entertaining, but that's about all.

The first incident that I recall occurred a few weeks after we had just settled into our new home. The front two rooms of that smallish house were my bedroom and the living room, where the main entrance was. The main entrance had a screen door and a large, heavy wooden door with a rubber strip on the bottom for insulation. Whenever that door was opened, there was a characteristic and very distinctive scraping sound on the carpet. Naturally, you could hear it perfectly from my room, just on the other side of the wall. Even after so short a time, I had already grown accustomed to that sound.

One day in the early afternoon, just after I'd got home from school, I decided to get some homework out of the way. My dad was on day shift at his job at U.S. Steel on that occasion, which mean that he generally got home about 3:45. (Sometimes he would be late, but never earlier than that time.) I had just opened a book and began reading when I heard the screen open, a key go into the lock, and the distinctive whoosh of the door against the carpet. I don't remember the exact time, but this would have been quite a few minutes before my dad should have come home. Also strange to me was the fact that the door seemed to have been only partially opened. Puzzled, I got up from the bed in my room and walked the few steps into the living room.

The front door was closed.

Puzzled, I went to the door, which was still locked, and looked outside. My dad's car wasn't in its customary spot on the street across from the house. There was absolutely no way that my dad, who seldom got in a hurry, could have closed the door, relocked it, walked back to his car and driven away within the couple of seconds it took me to get to the living room.
I remember that I wasn't particularly scared, just somewhat perplexed. But being the skeptic I was, I didn't put a lot of stock in what I'd heard--or thought I'd heard. Still, it puzzled me because never before had my own mind so successfully played such an effective trick on me.

When my dad finally came home, I asked him if he'd previously come home and then left. He looked at me as if I were crazy and shook his head no. So I mentioned nothing further about the occurrence to him, or my mom, when she came home from work about an hour and a half later. After all, I didn't want them to have me committed for "hearing things!" So I concluded that it must have been imagination or expectation. Logic had prevailed that time.

But logic didn't fare so well when the same thing happened a couple of weeks later. The same thing. Identically. This time, I was in my room playing solitaire on the bed, as I recall. Again, the time would have been too early for my dad to be home, but I knew what I heard. Thinking that something must be wrong, I got up from the bed and went to the living room.

The door was closed. And locked. No car across the street. My father simply wasn't home, period.

I was fairly rattled this time. I went outside to see if anything out there could have accounted for that noise. The block was quiet. Nobody stirred. Our immediate neighbors, who ran a photography shop, were still gone, but they never got home before six o'clock anyway. I moved to the far side of the yard, which was bordered by a gravel alleyway, and looked around. No sign of anything moving down the alley, either. I could see nothing, inside or outside, to explain what I had just heard. How could there have been anthing outside, when the noise seemed to be coming from only a few feet away from me just on the other side of a wall?

I was more than a little puzzled, but not exactly scared or panicked. So I went back in the house and returned to my room. I didn't hear anything until a short while later. I heard the screen door give its light squeak as it opened, the key inserted in the lock, and the door gently grate open. No mistake. It was the same sound. But my dad was home for real this time.

Nevertheless, I didn't mention a word to anyone about what I had experienced. We all knew the relatively brief history of the house and I was sure that it couldn't have been haunted by some "spirit," because, to our knowledge, no one had ever died there. I was at a real loss to explain what I'd experienced, but it never seriously occurred to me that it was supernatural. However, I also refused to believe that I was losing my mind.

But, later, the incidents continued in exactly the same way and at pretty much the same intervals, but generally when I least expected them. I would go through the same routine virtually every time: Go to the living room, see nothing, and then look outside for an explanation (of which there was none.) Still, I didn't feel so much fear or dread as puzzlement. But I was beginning to question my sanity, although I knew I had all my faculties otherwise. The general feeling was that I was being messed with, but there was obviously no one to blame it on. Despite the trouble it was causing me, I just couldn't tell anyone else. I think I just wanted to believe it wasn't happening, even though I knew that it was.

[I'll stop for now, but maybe there will be more later, if anyone is interested.]

Thanks for sharing that SOL.

This wasn't my first account, but it was probably one of the most terrifying I've ever experienced growing up anyway.
When I was about 11 and my sister around 9, we went to spend the night with my granny in Columbus. So, the next day my aunt picked my sister up to take her with her for the day, but had plans to bring her back that night. I had stayed with me granny. So, that night when it got late, my sister hadn't returned home, and I went to bed. I remember laying there about to fall asleep. When I felt someone get in the bed with me, and pushed me toward the wall. I felt it again, thinking it was my sister (cause I hated sharing bed with her), I snapped and said "Nina, STOP IT!" I felt it again. I turned over mad at her & at that time, I seen a figure of a small person standing there by my bed. It wasn't my sister at all. and it said to me in a light voice "but, I'm not Nina!" I jumped so high out of that bed, ran out that door. I honestly don't remember opening the door to get out.. ran and told my granny...... She didn't really believe me, of course, even though she did seem concerned because I was scared to death, shaking all over.
& my aunt didn't bring my sister back until the following day..

something I will never forget.

My mindset during, and after, my first experiences was this: I didn't want to believe, but the stuff happened anyway!

Even so, there's probably dozens of unanswerable questions:

If you hear a door open, it's reasonable to expect that someone is going to come through, right?
But what about when they don't come through and the door is still closed?
Now, how about when this same thing happens several times?
How can you explain something like that rationally?
How can you not question your own sanity to some degree, even though you're confident that you have all your faculties intact?

But the front door opening wasn't the only thing I experienced in that house. In many ways, it was just the tip of the iceberg. Because, over time, the problem was not so much what we'd heard, or thought we'd heard, but what we were becoming. The three of us--mom, dad, and I--were beginning to have personality changes over a short period of time. We were sometimes behaving in ways that just weren't us, when we were in that house. How can you fight against something like that? What would you call it, anyway? And why was it happening? Just too many questions that you can't have an answer for.

Sorry I've turned this thread into some kind of confessional, but I suppose a person has to express himself somehow, even about events that occurred almost 40 years ago. And now another unanswerable question arises: Why does it still seem to matter?

You could have Synesthesia.
It's a syndrome where you see, hear, smell, taste, feel, etc... different things triggered by different things, such as something you see, hear, smell, taste, or feel.
Anyway, I hope that helped.

Confess away, SOG! What you are describing is similar to what we went through after my mother's death, actually.
The door, for example, the back door, would slam shut so hard it shook the house, and literally. But, when I would get up to go see the door was shut, still bolt locked, and the screw driver I used to put through that thing was still in there. (I had a double safety measure, I guess you can say, :})
There is nothing feasible that can explain it! Nothing. This didn't happen just once, but many times.

Very interesting experiences someoldguy and Shankpin!!
I don't know about the personality changes but, we've experienced the door thing, so many times that I can't even begin to count them.
We hear the front and back door opening and closing, sometimes slamming, and have even heard a family member call out, only to find that there is no one there or that the door is locked. Usually if we hear a voice, that family member will show up (for real) within an hour. It's odd.
I've read so many accounts of this same type of thing happening, but I can't remember what it's called. There is a word for it though........


I'd love to hear more!!

The personality changes were very ugly and actually the scariest part, though I didn't ascribe any of these to the unexplained events in the house until I did some research much later. According to some sources that I've read, personality changes do occur at times in such cases.

These changes are still a little hard for me to talk about still, since my parents are both dead, so I want to be fair to their memory. But in all honesty there was quite a bit of domestic violence between my parents. Before our move to that house there were the occasional squabbles, but I'm referring to out-and-out blows, and brutal physical fighting. Why weren't the police called? They were! But, at that time, police generally refused to get involved in domestic disputes, saying they were "family matters." If one or both parties wanted to pursue the matter, they were instructed to come the next day to get a warrant and press charges. However, the police were always quick to respond if there was ever a domestic homicide! And, practically every week, I was afraid this was going to happen. Because that was about how often the fights occurred.

And, as with many domestic violence cases, there was alcohol abuse, but much worse than previously. My dad had always been the happy drunk, the life of the party. My mom would sometimes get a little tipsy, but was otherwise fine. But at the new house, they drank practically every day. Instead of being the happy drunk, my dad had turned withdrawn and morose. And if my dad wasn't there, I would be the one to catch hell from my mother when she was "that way." But it wasn't physical abuse, it was verbal. I got to hear how "sorry" I was, how I was just like my "crazy daddy." And worse. Much worse. Please be aware that I'm not speaking ill, but I'm just stating some of the facts.

As for me, I wanted to leave. I was ready to borrow or steal some money and go somewhere, anywhere. To California maybe. Join some commune. (It was 1969, after all.) I felt anything would have been preferable to what was going on in that house. If I hadn't been able to get away periodically to go to my grandmother's house or my cousin's house, then I would have assuredly run away. But I could never bring myself to tell them what had been going on because I felt they wouldn't have believed me.

And through it all the unexplained noises continued. Where they appeared to come from depended on which part of the house I was in.

The den was the longest room in the house and was at the very back. There was a dining area just after the kitchen and the back door was directly across the room. The television was positioned right next to the back door. From the sofa on the back wall of the house, I watched TV frequently in the afternoon when school was out for the summer and I wasn't working. There were large windows in that den, which essentially made it a sunroom. The sofa sat between two of the large windows and there was another large window opposite the room from the back door, right next to the round dining table.

That particular window overlooked the alleyway beside the house and the neighbor's garage. Next to our house from the alley was a concrete area large enough to conveniently park a car in, and that is where my mom usually parked her car after coming home from work. To enter the house she used a the small door in the middle of the basement and went up the ten wooden steps on into the house. (I remember those ten steps very clearly. I think I counted them every time I went up them.) There were a couple of things very distinctive about that small door. Apparently it was a little big for the opening and you had to push hard on it. Aside from making a scraping sound against the concrete, there was also a loose windowpane in the door which rattled loudly. So if someone were coming through that door, you would be able to hear it throughout the entire house.

Directly underneath the dining area was a large garage door, but we never parked any of our vehicles in the basement. Generally, about the only time we would open the garage door was when we were either removing or returning the lawn mower.
Almost directly across the alley was the garage of our neighbor. We were never able to hear his garage door open, but the sound of our garage door was unmistakeable. Like the smaller door, the garage door was noisy, making a rumbling rattle every time it opened.

My mom usually got home from work about 5:45pm, almost like clockwork. She was almost never late, but generally never early.
I was watching the news on the TV in the den one day when I heard a car door slam and the rattling and scraping of the door to the basement, but I didn't hear it close. I glanced at the clock and noticed that it was something like 5:20. I don't recall being puzzled to any great extent, so I continued watching the news. I then noticed the sound of about two footsteps on the basement staircase, and that was all. Concerned that mom might have been having some trouble, I got up and went to the basement door to see what was wrong.

There was no one there, and the basement entrance was closed. I then descended to the basement to look out the window. No car outside at all anywhere in the vicinity.

Again, I was puzzled and perplexed, but somehow not scared. After this was repeated several times when I least expected it, I remember that I was beginning to get somewhat annoyed. I felt quite certain that someone, or something, was messing with me.


[More later]

Thank you for telling more.
You said "in such cases" I'm curious as to what cases you're referring to?
What do you think happened in that house that would cause personality changes in your parents?
Did your family eventually leave that house and if so, did your parent's personalities change back to what they were previously?
Sorry for all of the questions, but I am genuinely curious.
Growing up in a house with an alcoholic is a hard row to hoe, as we say in my neck of the woods, and growing up with two is twice as hard, I imagine. Not to mention the domestic violence you were exposed to.
Maybe there were other factors that played into your parents behavior, factors that you knew nothing about as a child, and you could only see the effects of the factors played out, without knowing the cause. I only say this from experience, having lived through a very similar childhood.

Later on, I considered these events were caused by so-called poltergeists, by the descriptions that I'd read in some books on the paranormal. There was simply and absolutely no rational way to explain any of what I'd experienced with the doors and the footsteps, so I suppose that I latched onto the poltergeist designation because it seemed to provide some sort of answer. It also frightened me to learn that such experiences often entail certain inexplicable mental and emotional problems, even psychoses. It frightened me because I suspected, and still suspect, that this was what had happened to myself and my family.

Certainly, my parents' alcoholism and domestic violence issues could have simply come to a head coincidentally with our occupying the house. Maybe it was the move from our original house that was a source of stress for them and it pushed them into a kind of depression. Depression was not understood very well at that time and was generally turned over to psychotherapy, which was usually not very effective, and really good antidepressants were virtually non-existent. Depression wasn't universally considered to be a chemical imbalance by the psychiatric community until several years later. But if it was clinical depression, then what would the chances of it affecting two people in the same household at about the same time?

And how likely would it be if it affected a third--such as myself? To my mind, the odds of that happening to all the members of a family would be very, very slim. But happen they did.

I met the young lady that I would later marry in early spring of 1972. (We are still married, by the way.) We fit like hand and glove and to say that we got along well was an understatement. Our relationship was almost legendary almost from the time we met. It was essentially love at first sight. The beginning of summer of that year was a wonderful time for the both of us. We dated frequently, even if it just amounted to riding around and getting to know one another. At college, I had made the dean's list and I felt on top of the world. Better yet, classes were over for me until late September. By the middle part of that summer, I realized that I wanted to marry her, and I was ecstatic.

But, once back home, my happiness was very quickly derailed. I began to consider a minor difference between my future wife that very suddenly and unexpectedly became a huge issue for me. (It's so embarrassing to me now that I can't mention it, but I assure you that it was a very minor thing.) After only a few days, this previously minor thing became huge, insurmountable. Nothing that I had ever accomplished seemed to matter to me, but this one thing that made us different. That dean's list that I'd made had become to my mind like a piece of toilet paper. I began to feel inferior. I began to feel that I wasn't good enough for her, as long as this thing remained between us. And, for the life of me, I couldn't get it out of my mind or get any relief from the negative feelings that had suddenly overwhelmed me. No relief. Period.

My appetite dropped off and I couldn't sleep well. I couldn't enjoy television. Reading was a chore, and I couldn't stand to listen to music. And the whole time was this one dreadful thought or feeling. It was like envy but was all-consuming. It seemed to sink my very soul and to sap some of the life from me. There seemed to be only a couple of courses of action for me: Either my future wife was going to give up something that she loved, but something I could inexplicably no longer stand, or else we were going to have to break up. I resolved that, somehow, I would have to talk to her about it--even though I couldn't even understand it myself.

Though it was the most difficult thing I'd ever done, I did talk to her. (She later told me that I had been uncharacteristically mean and completely unlike myself when I was talking to her about the matter.) I suppose it was a miracle that she didn't want to break up with me right then and there. I was relieved that she didn't, and I expected that everything would be okay with my mental state now that everything was pretty much out in the open.

But when I was home, that difference between us was all that mattered. It was worse than any obsession. It was a waking nightmare of self-hatred, envy, and the blackest kind of depression. Never in my life had I felt so totally overwhelmed and helpless. But I couldn't talk to anyone about it because I didn't understand it myself. (I still don't even know, after these 36 years!) All I could do was try to entertain myself as well as possible. Take drives. Walk around. Do chores. Even so, the feelings and thoughts weighed on me constantly so that I could enjoy virtually nothing. The only time I felt better, somewhat, was when I was with my future wife. And even that was coming into question because I was so embarrassed and ashamed at the way I'd acted and what I felt that I had to ask her to do.

It was fortunate for me that my future wife loved me so unconditionally and was so forgiving. Her eventual answer to me was fairly simple: She thought she understood how I felt, but we shouldn't talk about it. But she assured me that she'd work on that difference between us and asked me to try not to worry about it. Come that August, I began feeling some relief. So relieved, in fact, that I proposed to her. Happily, she accepted. Things were looking up.

Unless I was back home, and then sometimes the dark thoughts started pouring over me once again. "Why is this happening?" I would ask myself. "I should be happy. Why can't I be happy?" But answers wouldn't come.

But the noises of doors opening and footsteps on the stairs continued.

As I think about it now, it was like I was being taunted.


[To be continued]

Before I go on, I want to apologize to the OP for thread hijacking.

I've decided that I'll move all of my previous posts/responses to a new thread.
The title will be what I've always called that place: The Grey House.

My first experience occurred when I was just a little boy. At the time, I lived in a very small town in Oklahoma, and I was lured into a vacant house next door, but was rescued before any physical harm could happen to me. Although the experience will stay in my mind forever. I submitted the account in here under "Friends"...I believe is the name of the story.

It has been so long and there have been so many. The oldest one I can recall Would have to be shadow people. Read my thread:
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum...howtopic=130114