I have seen my dead Grandfather. True story. He had been gone for maybe 4 months or so. I had just moved into his house and I was sitting in the den watching t.v. Well I happened to look up and to my right and low and behold I see Granddaddy watching me. He had just "stepped" in from the kitchen and was looking at me. He was wearing his "normal" work clothes for the farm. I saw straight through him and could see the front of the kitchen door. But when I looked down, I didn't see the lower half of his torso, just his upper half, like he was leaning in on the door frame as if he were going to speak to me. I was half shocked, half calmed. I just said, "I'm o.k. Granddaddy, everything is fine. Go on back" and resumed to look at the t.v. When I looked back, about 5 seconds later, he was gone.
But this isn't something strange to me. Usually when my deceased relatives pass that I am close too, I have dreams about them.
But this isn't the first time he has come to "check up" on me. There were a few other times when I walked into the house after coming home from work and smelled his cologne or his shaving cream. I have also smelled my Grandmother as well. I have smelled liliac perfume coming from down the hallway. I live alone in the house and I don't wear liliac perfume and no one has used his cologne or shaving cream since I last put it on him the day that he died. He knew that I loved to put his aftershave on him because it smelled so good on him. I keep the bottle on the dresser and don't ever open it.
So while some people would be creeped out, it doesn't seem to bother me. There are times when I hear someone calling my nickname as well in the house and no one is in there with me except the dogs. My mom's at her home. It's happened about 6 times that I can recall, but I guess that I am used to it at this point.

The other week I had some friends and coworkers help me move out of the house I was renting and into an apartment on the other side of town. I decided to move into something a little smaller because the house was 1800 sq ft and it was just the cat and I living there, so all that extra space unnecessary. Cleaning the damn house could take all day and since the house was almost 90 years old ( somewhat old for El Paso ) it wasn't very energy efficient. When one of my coworkers showed up, he had never been over to my house before, the first thing he asked me was if the house was haunted. I assumed he asked me because it was just an older home, but apparently it was because his mom works in the building/house next to mine and claims it's haunted.

The house next door to mine was converted to a law office but originally it was a private residence and is supposedly quite haunted. The workers hear people walking back and forth in the attic, people will get locked in bathrooms, and books flying off the bookcases in the library. My coworker had gone ghost hunting there a couple of times in the past and had caught EVPs of what sounded like a child crying while there. He said that all of the people who work there are afraid of the house and NO ONE will ever stay late ( after dark ) or work alone there.

Now this is where it get's kind of weird for me. My patio was in between my house and this house and we've spent many a long nights on the patio eating dinner, drinking wine, having a fire, etc. Every now and then while we had been outside on the patio we noticed lights turning on and off in that house, as if someone was going from room to room. Most of the time it was between 8-10 PM but there was a time or two that a light would come on at 1 or 2 AM. I had always assumed it was cleaning crew or maybe a lawyer working late, so when my coworker, who's mom works there, said that NO ONE is ever there after dark it gave me goosebumps.

Here's a pic of the law office
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_ga...n/photostream/

ah, it's a Trost house...very familiar style around here. Henry C. Trost was an architect here in Tucson before moving on to El Paso. Some of our most beautiful old buildings (the Steinfeld mansion, the Owls club) were designed by him.

I'm relieved you bumped this thread. Good to know I'm not the only person who gets visits.

I miss this thread. Thanks for bumping it.

I can't believe this weirds you out after living in the Pike house and hearing some of those horror stories. Now that is some scary shit.

Oooh, this thread creeps me out! Ghost/paranormal stories are the one thing that really freaks me out (so why am I reading this??). Thought I'd share mine...

When I was younger my parents bought a small house in New England that was built in the 1600's. It was definitely ghost story worthy - low ceilings, small windows, even a hidden cellar room that could only be accessed by a disguised trap door in the floor. They built a big addition onto it and we pretty much always lived in the addition since it had everything we needed. The one thing we did go there for regularly was the piano, which was kept in the old parlor area. One morning I remember waking up in my bedroom, which was in the addition, and hearing someone playing the piano in the house. My sister is the only one in the family who plays but when I looked in her room next to mine she was sound asleep. I woke her up and she heard it too, so we very quietly went down the stairs to go investigate. The stairs we were going down were pretty far from the piano so there's no way anyone playing it could have heard us since we were being so quiet, but as soon as my foot touched the ground floor the music stopped. When we went to the piano room there was no one there. It was around 5 or 6 in the the morning, so no one else was up and all the doors to the house were locked. My sister also swears she left the lid over the keys closed after the last time she played, and it was lifted. It never happened again but it really gave me goosebumps.

I used to get creepy feelings in that house a lot, and I never liked to be there by myself, especially after dark. I just felt really uneasy, like there was a presence that didn't appreciate me being there! My friends once talked me into playing Ouija in there and it was terrifying. I'm not sure that I really believe in Ouija boards but we kept getting all these creepy answers, and it kept giving us antiquated names that would have been used 300 years ago but not today. *shudder*

Nothing good can come from a ouija board. Every legitimate paranormal expert advises against using them. I'm also convinced that a friend and I invited a ghost into his house by playing with one when we were about 14 years old. It was after our ouija sessions that "stuff" started happening at his place.

Yes, it is very dangerous playing with Ouija boards. People don't realize that they are unwittingly opening themselves up to evil forces when they do this and dabble in occultic practices. This was my experience as a young person. The real story behind the movie The Exorcist had its origins in a relative of boy who was a spiritualist medium bought one of these Ouija boards as a gift and the boy played with it. After this the manifestations of the demonic possession began to appear.

I've had a few bad experiences, all while in junior high and high school. A fellow student in 8th grade had gotten hit by a car and passed right when school started for the year. Towards the end of the year a bunch of us were together at another friend's house. One of the boys with us had been that student's best friend. We asked about the student and it said 666. No one in that room on the board was sick enough to mess with our heads on this. We then heard a pound on the floor, coming from the basement. We decided to put it away. One of my friends had said that usually she's really creeped out with the board, but this time she felt an unusual calm.

Another experience I had was at a friend's birthday party, same year, and in the same townhouse complex as the first time. We were all very into Nirvana and Kurt Cobain had committed suicide months before. My friend had a Nirvana poster on her wall, and we asked the board to give us a sign that Kurt was with us. We kept looking around the room, and saw nothing. I looked up at the poster, and normally Dave Grohl's head was tilted towards Kurt. When I looked up, his head was tilted away making a funny face. I swear on my letters. I never talked about it to anyone because I was SO terrified that I wanted to put the thought out of my mind. I still try to. But years later in high school I brought it up to one of the girls and she said she saw the same thing.

The last experience was in high school after a tennis tournament. We had a sleepover at a teammates house, who's room was in the basement but sectioned off. We didn't end up playing with it and some of us refused to sleep in the room with it. (one of the girls was involved in the Kurt Cobain incident)

bumping this because it's October and because my grown niece has scared us with a story about this little girl in an old-fashioned blue dress who keeps peeking around their bedroom door, then vanishing...

...and bumping it for October 2011!

So, my house has several ghosts in it. One of them is a woman in her mid-20's.

I was curled up in my bed, ready to go to sleep, when I felt something extremely cold.

I look up, and the ghost is rubbing my back. I have never screamed so loud in my entire life.

So you actually saw the ghost rubbing your back? Impressive. I'd love to live with a ghost that gave out back rubs.

I did hear a new story this year, come to think of it. Our exterminator grew up on the campus of the college I mentioned early in this thread and we were talking about the also forementioned church. He said that he and a couple of his buddies went out to the church and it was pitch black outside. As they approached the church, the piano inside began to play loudly. A couple of the guys ran off but he ran up to the church to look inside. The piano stopped playing and he couldn't see a thing in there other than the outline of the piano.

As he walked away, the piano began to play again.:eek:

Now you might be thinking--was it a player piano? Or was somebody playing it in the dark? Well, he said there was no way someone could have seen to play the piano but when I told my husband about this story last month and wondered if it could be a player piano, he said, "Um, no. Somebody donated that piano to the church and my granddad and I moved it up there years ago. No way is that a player piano." :eek:

oh my sophomore year i wound up living in one of the campus houses instead of one of the campus apartments. this house was said to be haunted but i never really thought anything of it. anyways, my room was on the third floor which was an attic but had been converted to rooms. i was all the way at the end of the hallway next to a room with double doors that was always locked. right across from the locked room was an old rotary phone that was attached to the wall but wasnt hooked up to a power source, it didnt have any wiring and didnt have a dial tone. i heard that phone ring several times in the evening and at night when my roommate would go home for the weekend and i was the only one on that side of the hall. i was so happy to get to move out of there at the end of the year!