I posted a story here a month or so ago about a shadow being my sister, a friend and I all saw at my grandmother's house.
Well, that house was mightily disturbed, I would say haunted, but in any case not quite right. It might partly have to do with the fact that a fair number of not-at-all-nice things happened in/to that family, but I also think it had to do specifically with that house, as according to my mom there were no hauntings in any of their previous homes, nor any now in the flat where my grandmother now lives.
Anyway, this is what happened:
My younger sister and I used to spend a few weeks at my grandmother's house every summer (she lived in Philadelphia, PA, USA). I don't know if any of you have been to Philly, but there are, at least in the area where my grandmother lived, a lot of "row-homes", which are basically two-story houses but all joined in a row like apartments. So her house was a decent size -- first floor was the living room, dining room, and kitchen; upstairs was the bathroom and three bedrooms. Plus there was a big basement.
She had two air conditioners in her house, one in the dining room and one in the largest upstairs bedroom, which was her room. That bedroom had two twin beds in it, and during the summers my grandmother slept on one of the beds, and we took the mattress of the box-spring of the other one -- my sister slept on one half, and I on the other (we alternated, so no one always got the box-spring, lol!).
I always wanted the air conditioner on, cause I really hate hot & humid summer weather. My sister loves summer, and my grandmom, being on a limited budget, wanted to save on the electricity, so sometimes we had it on while we slept and sometimes we didn't. The night of this experience was hot, but we didn't have the air conditioner on.
My grandmother was asleep in her bed, which was nearest the door. The door was open, and led out into the upstairs hall. To the left was the small staircase landing and staircase, to the right was the bathroom, further down the hall to the right was a large bedroom, and down the other end of the hall (directly opposite to the bedroom in which we were sleeping) was a smallish bedroom. Over the course of time my grandmother (and, at times, her husband, her sister, her daughter -- my mom -- etc.) had lived there, it had been used variously as a bedroom and as an office.
Whew, this is getting long. I hope no one minds.....
Anyway, this particular night my sister was also asleep, on the box-spring at the other end of the room, furthest from the door. I was on the top mattress, which we'd put on the floor down at the foot of my grandmother's bed, so basically if I was laying on my stomach and turned my head to the right, I was looking directly out of the door and down the hall.
At some point I did look out of the room, and in the back bedroom/office saw something that scared the absolute CRAP out of me. It's a bit hard to describe, but: it was glowing, a kind of yellowish-white color (more yellow than white). It was approximately human sized and shaped, maybe 6 ft tall or so and the usual width of a person, seeming to have a head and body, but no features at all that I could make out, as the whole thing was glowing. I didn't see any arms or legs, but they weren't exactly missing, either -- it was just that if they were there, they sort of blended into the glowing of the torso.
Let me tell you, I did NOT get a good feeling from this thing, and I am sensitive to this sort of thing, so despite the glow if it had been an angel (if they exist) or some sort of good spirit or whatever, I think I'd have sensed that.
So I stared at it, absolutely dumbfounded, for a couple of minutes, during which it didn't move at all (thank goodness!). Then I noticed that in the hallway, more or less halfway between the bedroom I was in and the bedroom/office the glowing being was in, was a small glowing type of thing, on the floor. The best way I can describe it is that it was about the size and shape of a horseshoe crab, minus the tail (link to pic of horseshoe crab). Not with the big tail spine, nor the little spiny things, but about the same size/shape as the main roundish body. This thing also didn't move, but by now I was terrified.
Despite it being hot and humid, and despite me hating that sort of weather (REALLY hating it, I can't even begin to tell you), I jumped up off the mattress and climbed onto the twin bed box-spring with my sister, waking her up in the process. She was very surprised, to say the least, since it was so hot and humid and she knew the last thing I would want would be to be snuggled up in a twin bed with her with no air conditioning, but I told her I was scared and I'd explain the next day (which I did).
I don't know why I saw these things, and furthermore I don't know why they didn't move or make any noise, though I'll be endlessly grateful for that. I'll comment a bit more on what they might have been, but first I want to end this post before I hit the wrong button and lose it, lol.
More in a bit.
Full Version: Glowing Being(s)
So...
My grandfather, who lived in that house with my grandmother until he died, used that back bedroom as an office for the last few years of his life. I have considered the possibility that what I saw was his ghost, but it just didn't "feel" like him. It is possible that he was also haunting / hanging around the house, though, as my cousin who sometimes stayed in the other large bedroom (which shared a wall with the office) often heard noises from that room, and smelled his pipe (my grandmother smoked as well, but only cigarettes, and the smell of pipe tobacco is distinctive).
I also thought at first that maybe what I saw was light coming in from the window in that room, which was directly behind the thing I saw. Outside of the window was a wide alleyway (nearly as wide as a regular street), and then on the other side of the alley was the back of the next street of row-homes, so although there were no streetlights back there, I thought maybe light was coming in from the house across the alley. However, the bottom of the window was about 3 or 4 feet up from the floor, and went to about 1 foot from the ceiling (sorry, I don't know the equivalent in meters). In other words, it was a small-to-medium sized window. Whereas whatever I saw was essentially standing on the floor, and stood about 6 feet tall from there. Also, I couldn't see the window through it, nor the wall, nor the back of the house across the alley. It was VERY bright, this thing. Someone would have had to have floated up to the window and shined a high-power spotlight right in, and even then I don't think it would've been this bright, or this particular yellowish color. Also, it seems to me that if it was light coming in through the window, that light would have fallen (?is that the right way to put it?) onto the floor, not stood up in mid-air.
As for the little one in the hallway, there's no way that could have been some sort of regular light or reflection. There was a hallway light on the ceiling more or less above where this smaller glowing thing was, but it was definitely OFF, and besides if it had been on it wouldn't have cast a duplicate of itself onto the carpeted floor. Also, since I was on a mattress on the floor (in the bedroom), and since this little glowing thing was also on the floor (in the hall), I could see that it was 3D, not 2D.
That is, it was rounded upwards, like a soccer (football) ball cut in half, though not quite as "tall" as that.
So my basic reaction to this was and is: What the *UCK?!??!?!!? Scariest thing I've ever experienced, I can tell you.
Other weird things happened in that place as well -- we all heard things, saw weirdnesses in the basement (I STILL have nightmares about that basement!), etc. But the events I've just described were the worst ones for me.
Just thought I'd share, lol.
I'd love to hear (see) any comments/opinions.
My grandfather, who lived in that house with my grandmother until he died, used that back bedroom as an office for the last few years of his life. I have considered the possibility that what I saw was his ghost, but it just didn't "feel" like him. It is possible that he was also haunting / hanging around the house, though, as my cousin who sometimes stayed in the other large bedroom (which shared a wall with the office) often heard noises from that room, and smelled his pipe (my grandmother smoked as well, but only cigarettes, and the smell of pipe tobacco is distinctive).
I also thought at first that maybe what I saw was light coming in from the window in that room, which was directly behind the thing I saw. Outside of the window was a wide alleyway (nearly as wide as a regular street), and then on the other side of the alley was the back of the next street of row-homes, so although there were no streetlights back there, I thought maybe light was coming in from the house across the alley. However, the bottom of the window was about 3 or 4 feet up from the floor, and went to about 1 foot from the ceiling (sorry, I don't know the equivalent in meters). In other words, it was a small-to-medium sized window. Whereas whatever I saw was essentially standing on the floor, and stood about 6 feet tall from there. Also, I couldn't see the window through it, nor the wall, nor the back of the house across the alley. It was VERY bright, this thing. Someone would have had to have floated up to the window and shined a high-power spotlight right in, and even then I don't think it would've been this bright, or this particular yellowish color. Also, it seems to me that if it was light coming in through the window, that light would have fallen (?is that the right way to put it?) onto the floor, not stood up in mid-air.
As for the little one in the hallway, there's no way that could have been some sort of regular light or reflection. There was a hallway light on the ceiling more or less above where this smaller glowing thing was, but it was definitely OFF, and besides if it had been on it wouldn't have cast a duplicate of itself onto the carpeted floor. Also, since I was on a mattress on the floor (in the bedroom), and since this little glowing thing was also on the floor (in the hall), I could see that it was 3D, not 2D.
That is, it was rounded upwards, like a soccer (football) ball cut in half, though not quite as "tall" as that.
So my basic reaction to this was and is: What the *UCK?!??!?!!? Scariest thing I've ever experienced, I can tell you.
Other weird things happened in that place as well -- we all heard things, saw weirdnesses in the basement (I STILL have nightmares about that basement!), etc. But the events I've just described were the worst ones for me.
Just thought I'd share, lol.
I'd love to hear (see) any comments/opinions.
mmmm, If it didn't feel like grandpa it probably wasn't. Tobacco smell lingers a long time, too. I have heard that sometimes if the door of the spirit world is opened to let someone through, another comes through after they have left. Do you have a spiritualist in you area? You might want to consult them about what you have seen. You can also so do a house cleansing by burning some sage and walking though the house with it, calling on what ever Deity you are comfortable with and asking for a blessing. If you can handle it the next time you see him talk to him. Ask if he is lost, tell him to go to the light that his family is waiting for him, this is important, be nice and pleasant. If you start to feel bad vibes back off and get a professional.
Good Luck,
cloudedmoon
Good Luck,
cloudedmoon
WOW! Some story. 
Wow! I would have freaked out! I would not have snuggled up with anyone. I would have run outside and gone somewhere else. Anywhere. I would have slept in the yard if I had to. I just would not have stayed in the hoouse.
Your story is absoulutely fascinating, however, and probably the scariest I have ever heard or read. You say something happened to you in the basement. What happened? Please do tell. In fact, i would love to hear more of this house and of the experiences you have had in it. If you have the time, please do tell us more. Thanks.
Your story is absoulutely fascinating, however, and probably the scariest I have ever heard or read. You say something happened to you in the basement. What happened? Please do tell. In fact, i would love to hear more of this house and of the experiences you have had in it. If you have the time, please do tell us more. Thanks.
cloudedmoon,
I don't think it was my grandfather either -- besides which, I doubt he would have acquired a glowing little friend, lol! As for the tobacco -- the smell does last a long time, true, and maybe that is what my cousin smelled, but this event occurred at least a few years after he died, and I would think it would've faded by then...still, I don't know, since it was my cousin who experienced that, not me.
As for getting a spiritualist in -- thank you for the suggestion, but my grandmother doesn't actually live there anymore, and hasn't for the past 8 or 10 years. Still, I do wonder sometimes whether whoever lives there now, if anyone, sees or hears anything odd. Incidentally, my grandmother never saw or heard ANY of the odd things in that house! My sister and I think that maybe it's because she doesn't believe ghosts and so forth exist, and somehow that kept her from seeing/hearing them.
Thanks for commenting!
I don't think it was my grandfather either -- besides which, I doubt he would have acquired a glowing little friend, lol! As for the tobacco -- the smell does last a long time, true, and maybe that is what my cousin smelled, but this event occurred at least a few years after he died, and I would think it would've faded by then...still, I don't know, since it was my cousin who experienced that, not me.
As for getting a spiritualist in -- thank you for the suggestion, but my grandmother doesn't actually live there anymore, and hasn't for the past 8 or 10 years. Still, I do wonder sometimes whether whoever lives there now, if anyone, sees or hears anything odd. Incidentally, my grandmother never saw or heard ANY of the odd things in that house! My sister and I think that maybe it's because she doesn't believe ghosts and so forth exist, and somehow that kept her from seeing/hearing them.
Thanks for commenting!
| QUOTE |
| Wow! I would have freaked out! I would not have snuggled up with anyone. I would have run outside and gone somewhere else. Anywhere. I would have slept in the yard if I had to. I just would not have stayed in the hoouse. Your story is absoulutely fascinating, however, and probably the scariest I have ever heard or read. |
knightone,
Thanks for commenting on my post(s) -- I noticed that you pulled up my old post about the shadowy guy on the stairs, too!
I couldn't have run outside and gone somewhere else when I saw these glowing things, because it was somewhere around 11:00 or midnight, so it was pitch dark outside (other than streetlights), plus I was around 14 or 15 (I think), and where would I go? I mean, we had friends in the neighborhood, but I wasn't going to go ringing their doorbells at that time of night. Besides, my grandmother and sister would have been worried crazy....
And there was no yard, given the set-up of row-homes. A tiny patch of grass out front with a huge hydrangea bush and a concrete patio, and nothing around back besides the alley I mentioned. So I did the only thing I felt I could do. I don't think I even shut the bedroom door, which probably would have been a smart move...
I'm glad you appreciated the story -- I swear it is 100% true, and it scared the crap out of me.
| QUOTE |
| You say something happened to you in the basement. What happened? Please do tell. In fact, i would love to hear more of this house and of the experiences you have had in it. If you have the time, please do tell us more. Thanks. |
A few things happened in the basement, mostly not to me. The setup is this: the door at the top of the stairs leading down into the basement was in the kitchen, next to the fridge. If you opened the door, directly in front of you (essentially on the underside of the staircase in the living room that led to the second story) was a large shelf holding canned goods, and smaller shelves on the walls to your left and right, all within fairly easy reach if you stood on one of the top couple of steps. A few times my grandmother would ask my sister or myself to get a can of something-or-other, and we would both be hesitant to open the door. Now this "bad feeling" certainly could be written off to some sort of mood, as opposed to an actual haunting, but within the context of all the other stuff that happened there, I don't think so.
The particular summer I'm talking about, I was very much into the soap opera "General Hospital"
(silly teen!). I had bought a fan magazine featuring that show and all the actors on it, and spent most of one afternoon taping all the pics up on the back wall (the wall you'd face when going down the stairs). There was a small window up near the ceiling on that wall (facing the front patio), and an old sofa pushed up against it. Across the room was an old (but working) fridge, and a small black & white tv, so we could hang out down there if we wanted to (there were a couple of lights), but we almost never did. Sometimes it felt fine down there, perfectly normal, but other times it felt horrendous. The day I put up the General Hospital stuff it actually felt fine and normal down there, but I pretty much only spent that same day down there, watching tv and drinking soda. After that, it felt weird/bad too often, and at the end of the summer I just took all the pics down.On the opposite side of the room from the staircase (I hope the layout is clear -- it's hard to explain without drawing a picture) was a one-piece hanging shower rod, a really long one that curved around, from which my grandmother had a couple of shower curtains hanging (it was that big, it took two or three), and behind which she stored stuff -- suitcases, holiday decorations, etc. It was packed full. I suppose that's an odd situation, though I never really thought about it before, why there'd be a shower rod and curtains in the basement...certainly no shower or tub....I suppose she just thought it'd be a good way to hide junk. In any case, my sister was down there once, watching the tv, and she saw something scuttle across the floor and into the area behind the shower curtain. She wasn't sure what it was, but she said she really didn't think it was a mouse or a rat. We lived in the NJ pine barrens, and when you live there field mice getting into your house in the cold weather is a fairly common occurrence, so she'd seen mice before. It could have been a rat, but my grandmother never had any rodent problems, and never saw any mouse or rat in her house ever. Besides that, anything bigger than a field mouse (and my sister said it WAS bigger, quite a bit) wouldn't have been able to squeeze in between boxes and bags of the junk stored back there -- yet my sister said that's where it went, and apparently stayed. She came running back upstairs, so we don't know for sure.
I never actually saw anything horrific down there, just got the bad feelings. Some of which could be attributed to the fact that my grandparents' marriage was not great, and my grandfather used to spend a lot of time in the long (and fairly wide) hallway that led from the basement out to the back door, where he'd set up a kind of workshop (he was handy with wood, carving, that sort of thing). I did sometimes feel him down there, and sadness from him. But there were also feelings that were REALLY awful, and separate from those I felt were connected to my grandfather.
Also, my cousin Rina (the one I mentioned in my earlier post, who smelled the pipe tobacco) lived with my grandmother for a while, and she swears that one evening when she was home alone (my grandmother had taken my sister and I out for dinner, and Rina didn't get home till after we'd gone out), she was in the kitchen getting something to eat and heard some scary voice call her name from down in the basement, but she said it sounded like it wasn't all the way down, that it seemed to be somewhere on the stairs. So she locked the lock on the door leading to the basement stairs (it was one of those flimsy little hook & eye types), ran upstairs into her bedroom, and stayed there until we got home.
Now that I'm writing about it, it doesn't seem like too many things actually happened in the basement, but it did somehow seem to be the locus of all the evil in the house. When I said that I still have dreams about it, I wasn't kidding -- I literally still have dreams where I'm frantically trying to lock the door because something bad is on the other side. Which is probably a fairly common dream (like going to school naked, or unprepared for an exam), but in my case it almost always involves that basement.
Sorry this was so long, I hope it didn't wear your eyes out to read it!
--Seahorse
I appreciate the stories about the basement. Very interesting. You mentioned your grandmother lives in an apartment now. What happened to the house? Does anyone live there now? Was the time period in your stories the last time you were there? It sound like some really scary stuff. If it were me, I'd never have stepped foot in the house afer any of those incidents. Or perhaps I would have stuck around just to see what would happen next. It depends on just how freaked out I got. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for sharing.
i must say i hate the voices that say youre name, especially if you don't know where they come from,your cousin probably wiouldn't have been as scared if it hadn't come from the basement. your grandfather probably left some residual energy in the basement, bad feelings that you feel.
| QUOTE |
| I appreciate the stories about the basement. Very interesting. You mentioned your grandmother lives in an apartment now. What happened to the house? Does anyone live there now? Was the time period in your stories the last time you were there? |
knightone,
Yeah, she moved out of that row-home a number of years ago. I don't know who lives there now, if anyone, but I wouldn't be surprised if they experienced some odd stuff as well; I really don't think all (or even most) of what went on had anything to do with my grandfather.
The last time I was in that house...I'm really not sure, because it was a long time ago, but I'd guess maybe 15? Whenever it was, THAT was the summer everything got really bad there, and the stuff I described all happened. Little things had happened for a long time (flashes of light and dark sparkly-cloud things in the ceiling corners, etc.), but that last summer they REALLY went out of control.
That's not why we stopped spending part of each summer up there, though -- we just sort of got too old for it to be much fun, and we wanted to hang out with our friends at home instead. I don't know why everything got so much worse that year...
| QUOTE |
| i must say i hate the voices that say youre name, especially if you don't know where they come from,your cousin probably wiouldn't have been as scared if it hadn't come from the basement. your grandfather probably left some residual energy in the basement, bad feelings that you feel. |
Wild_Woman,
I never heard that one myself, thank goodness, but my cousin swears she did, and she was scared and in her room when we got home. And she must've been around 21 or 22 at the time!
As for the bad feelings from the basement -- while I do think the sadness down there probably came from my grandfather, I doubt the evil feelings did. Understandably, my grandfather could be sensed most in his hallway workshop (both the sadness and just in the sense of using his tools, feeling close to him, etc.), and mostly the evil feelings didn't go down the hall, they generally stayed in the basement proper.
Thanks for responding, both of you!
knightone,
Sorry, but I just realized that I didn't really answer your question about the timeframe in which all this occured, I only told you that I was 15, lol.
I was 15 in 1983, so it was sometime around then (maybe a year earlier or later).
Why?
Sorry, but I just realized that I didn't really answer your question about the timeframe in which all this occured, I only told you that I was 15, lol.
I was 15 in 1983, so it was sometime around then (maybe a year earlier or later).
Why?
Thanks Seahorse. It would be interesting to know if anything has happened sionce your grandmother moved away. Whether it be new residents in the old house or a new house in the same spot. What part of Philly was the house in?
Wait a min! i missed a shadow person story! Damn gone for a few months and i loose track of everything, could somebody link me that? I have shadow people stories myself 
| QUOTE (swagger @ Jun 12 2004, 11:58 PM) |
| Wait a min! i missed a shadow person story! Damn gone for a few months and i loose track of everything, could somebody link me that? I have shadow people stories myself |
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