Encounters with the Supernatural

Well, I've got another one, and it's a little long. This happened within the past month, when my great-grandmother passed away.

A Visit from my Great-Grandparents

I was laying in bed when I felt it. A presence infringing on the edge of my consciousness. At once, I knew what was happening. My great-grandmother had died.

She had been slipping towards death for the past few months, as her age crept up on her, so her passing was certain to happen soon. It would not come as a surprise when we would learn of her death. What was disconcerting, though, was the manner in which I learned of her death...

Cecelia Gatlin, Maw-Maw Ceelie. She died near 10:30 p.m. Less than a quarter of an hour later, I saw her. I could almost communicate with her. She did not speak in any way that we would recognize as speech; more, it was as though her thoughts were emenating from her, and whoever was listening would interpret those thoughts and apply their own words as they saw fit. It was the meaning that was important, not the specific words used.

She was looking for her daughter, my grandmother Maw-Maw Bonnie. Maw-maw Ceelie had come to our (my and my parents') house to find maw-maw. The house had been maw-maw's until a few years ago, when we had purchased it; Maw-maw Ceelie had thought that maw-maw was still there. This is an understandable incident, as her mind had been degrading along with her body in her final days. Thus, she was still confused after passing the bounds of life.

She was looking for maw-maw Bonnie because she wanted to say her final goodybes to her family. As she stood confused, only yards from me (in what had once been the living room of the house), her husband, my Paw-Paw Speck, came to her. Again, they did not communicate in words, so allow me to paraphrase their conversation:

Ceelie: "Speck [[she most likely used his real name; however, since I knew him only by this nickname, that is what I interpreted her words as]], where's Bonnie? She's not at home?"
Speck: "Bonnie doesn't live here anymore, Cecelia. Angie [[my mom]] bought the house. Bonnie lives elsewhere now."
Ceelie: "Then let me say goodbye to Angie. But if Bonnie's not here, where can I find her?"
Speck: "Don't worry Cecelia, I'll help you. I know this is new to you, that you're confused and disoriented. It will all be fine in the end. You will be in PERFECTION, a place beyond happiness, a state of pure peace, of absolute serenity. Come along, I'll take you to Bonnie."

And with that, they departed; then, the telephone rang, with the family reporting of her death.

This confirmed a thought I had entertained previously. Our house was, at one time, inhabited by what you could call a ghost. This was when my grandparents still owned the house, both when and before we lived there. After my grandparents moved out, the ghost no longer visited the house.

I am now convinced that this spirit was Paw-paw Speck, watching over his daughter, Maw-maw Bonnie. I am unaware if he "haunted" the houses of his other children, though I assume he did visit them.

Speck had died back in 1990 - 1993 (I honestly can't remember...) He stayed on Earth long enough to guide his wife into the afterlife.
*************************************

And that's another of my stories.

I have several stories. The most interesting (and least weird):

Bob: This is what I called the ghost that followed me around through several apartments.

First I noticed Bob was one day in July '97. I was going to go see Men in Black with a friend after work, but late enough that I could run home and shower and change. I go home, get undressed, and make sure the front door's locked. I throw the deadbolt, but I don't set the chain, because (and I distinctly remember thinking this RIGHT THEN), frankly, that chain isn't going to do anything, right? If somebody can go through the deadbolt, they won't care about the damn chain.

So, I'm fixing to get into the shower, and I hear a click from the front door. O-kay. Go and look. The chain's set. I didn't set the chain. No one else could possibly be in the apartment, since I live alone at this time. It couldn't set itself, so obviously something had to set it. I freak for a second, and then rationalize that it can't be bad, can it? So, I go and shower and go see the movie. No problem. Couple days later, I notice some stuff I'd left out on the floor had been moved such that I wouldn't trip over it in the night (like a ruler, a surge protector...which had been prongs-up but's now prongs-down...). That may've been the ghost, I dunno.

A little over a year later, I moved to a new apartment with a roommate. Now, I fidget. I've gotten into a habit of playing with these empty mechanical erasers, and I'd had this one out in the living room. Then, one day, it disappears, and my roommate (admittedly, a neat freak) doesn't remember doing anything with it. It sure isn't in my room. So, I go to bed. Wake up around 2, 2:30 to go to the bathroom, and by a strange coincidence, roommate's up, too. Talk for a second, go back into bed, and right where my foot had been before...was the eraser. The eraser hadn't been there before, either. So, I'm pretty sure that Bob moved with me.

A couple of months later, I was doing laundry. I'd been sitting watching TV, and got up to change loads. Come in, go back to my room...and I get the feeling that I really should turn around. I do so, and there's an outline of a person, sitting on the couch, which promptly disappears.

I haven't had any contact with Bob since, so I'm afraid he's run off, decided he wasn't needed, or discorporated naturally. Now, almost all of that is explained by either optical illusion or sheer forgetfulness...except for the door chain setting. I do prefer to believe that I had a ghost for a while, though. A friend of mine with MUCH more experience with the occult speculated it was a guardian spirit or ancestor of some sort (like a genius from GURPS Voodoo).

I was always convinced that we had a ghost in our house, for no good reason. I never saw anything, except once when a cat decided to track something over my shoulder one night. My mother, though, kept seeing a man at the foot of the bed. She didn't have any problems getting up to shoo it off, so she wasn't being hagged.

I've had a few other things happen...seeing shadows cling to a roommate's friend way longer into the light than they should have; having a voice laugh at me from the shadows of my bedroom; having what might be called psychic assaults in college, and having to ward my dorm room against same.

Brad

Well this thread was pretty far back, but after reading nine pages of this I can't help but to tell two tales of my own.

The first, I dunno if it counts. It was several years ago, when I was young (I'm 20 now ... I was maybe 10 or younger then)

I was sleeping normally when I started to have a nightmare. And realized I was having a nightmare. I went through the entire thing, even trying to wake up at mutliple parts. It was weird ... I'd try to open my eyes and all of a sudden it would be like I was laying in bed with my eyes closed (as I really was) but I was unable to actually open them. Eventually I'd stop trying and suddenly everything would be in focus again (and I'd be in the nightmare again)

If you're wondering the nightmare was about aliens invading, although I believe they came from the sea as well as the sky ... and I don't think they were any kind of stero-typical aliens I could have picked up from tv. There was also an earthquake and some other stuff happened ...

All in all, one of the worst nightmares I've ever had (I only remember two others after all these years)

The other one is a little less spooky, but perhaps a little more paranormal. This happened when I was 17, and had just started driving. I never wore a seatbelt, and in fact, HATED wearing them. I couldn't help but feel constrained and bought into the whole "its dangerous to wear a seatbelt" thing that I had heard somewhere.

So I'm turning down this street to pick up my friend and suddenly I put my seatbelt on for no reason. Less than a minute later my car is a crumpled piece of scrap after crashing directly into an Explorer. I don't know if the seatbelt saved my life ... but the wreck was pretty bad. I blacked out for a bit, and escaped unharmed. Without the seatbelt though ...

Sounds like someone(thing) kicked your subconscious solidly in the logic centers on that... yer lucky.

cignus_pfaccari said:

I never saw anything, except once when a cat decided to track something over my shoulder one night.

Click to expand...

Most of what you say sounds supernatural, but my cat does things like this all the time. I don't know if cats can see into the spirit world or what, but she's been known to chase invisible bugs down the bathtub drain, or sit and stare at a single point on the floor or wall as if expecting a mouse to appear - except there's no place for a mouse or anything to be hiding. The fact that your cat only did something spooky once makes me think your cat is broken.

MerakSpielman said:

Most of what you say sounds supernatural, but my cat does things like this all the time. I don't know if cats can see into the spirit world or what, but she's been known to chase invisible bugs down the bathtub drain, or sit and stare at a single point on the floor or wall as if expecting a mouse to appear - except there's no place for a mouse or anything to be hiding. The fact that your cat only did something spooky once makes me think your cat is broken.

Click to expand...

I do realize most cats will do that. Of course, we only ever had one cat come inside, this one, and she *tracked*...her gaze, which was obviously locked on something, went up and to the left.

Probably doesn't hurt that she was named Witchy, though.

On a slightly more serious note, in the second apartment, the one where I actually saw Bob the ghost, the cat who'd come in and whore himself out* didn't react in any way, shape, or form. Then again, when I was at a friend's, her roommate's cat wouldn't come into my friend's room, where my friend kept Seeing Things.

Brad

* - He'd meow to be let in. Go to the food bowl we'd gotten for him. He'd eat. We'd sit on the couch. When he was done eating, he'd come over, hop on one of our laps, and let us pet him. When he was done, he walked to the door to be let out. Man, he had the routine down pat. I never thought to try and see if the amount of petting varied directly to the food we gave him.

cignus_pfaccari said:

I do realize most cats will do that. Of course, we only ever had one cat come inside, this one, and she *tracked*...her gaze, which was obviously locked on something, went up and to the left.

Click to expand...

Just about all cats do that. All cats I've spent any time around. My cat does that a lot, and every time I turn to look, there's nothing there, and when I look back at the cat, she's either looking somewhere else, or looking at me slyly. I think any moving thing, even a mote of dust, can attract thier attention. I have a picture of me holding my cat, and there's these floating globules of white around us, like three or four, really small, but slightly wispy. I wish I had a scanner so I could post it, but most likely it's just an anomaly of the film, aand... no one needs to see my ugly mug surrounded by ghosts.


edit: tags!

I'm not sure whether it's supernatural in nature but for years now I've had a weird form of sleep paralysis that I can't explain. I don't even know if I should call it sleep paralysis because it doesn't really match the description of what I've read up about it. Now I would really like to get anyone's opinion about this, especially if someone has experienced something similar. I would really like to know that this is just some kind of sleep disorder and not something more diabolical in nature.

This usually happens to me in small grouped "incidents", as in 5 times in a row in one night for 2 or 3 days, and then nothing for weeks at a time and then all of a sudden it's back again. Maybe it'll only happen once that night but it'll be every night for a week or something. Anyway heres what happens.

I fall asleep normally and sleep an undetermined amount of time, although I try to check the clock whenever I wake up from these things and it's usually under 10 minutes from when I estimate I fell asleep. When this happens it can happen in what seems to be two different ways. First of all I seem to be fully lucid when this happens, I know that I'm asleep because I can almost feel like I'm in two places at once. I can sense and FEEL myself lying in bed but yet the scene that I'm dreaming about is what I can see. Sometimes there is nothing at all but darkness, so it's like I just have my eyes closed but I can't open them. The feeling I get is very uncomfortable, almost like I'm being smothered, and I know that the only way that I can wake up is to open my eyes. (This counts for both the darkness "dreams" AND the ones where I already have my eyes open!)

Because I know I'm dreaming I feel trapped but if I'm able to see whats around me in the dream I know I have this 2nd pair of eyes in my real body that I need to open. This is where it gets really terrifying for me. I try and try to open my eyes but they won't open. The sensation I get makes my heart race in my chest and I panic. The only way I could describe it is to try closing your eyes really tight. That squeezing sensation is what I feel trying to open them.

"Dark" dreams - I sometimes try to just lay there as if I have my eyes closed and go back to "sleep" since nothing is happening around me but I just feel too uncomfortable and have to try "waking up"

Visual dreams - When this happens and I can actually see things around me as in a dream it usually kicks in when something in my dreams attaches itself to me in one way or another and won't let go. (This also gives me that sense of pressure and smothering) About a week ago this happened by having a relative in my dream attach his entire mouth over my ear and not letting go. (Weird I know), and even weirder last night it seemed to be some tall lanky being made out of snow I believe grabbing me by my arms.

Waking up - I can do it but it simply takes a lot of willpower and "pushing" through the pressure of opening my eyes. When I wake up my heart is still racing like crazy and I'm slightly out of breath but I never see anything in my room at all. No shadows on the wall or anything.

Has anyone ever experienced something similar? I would love to hear about it if so, I always dread falling to sleep sometimes fearing that this will happen to me. Especially when it happens repeatedly like I mentioned earlier, 5 consecutive times a night. (Although these seem to be constituted by the "Dark" dreams and rarely visual repeats.

What you describe as a "visual dream" is very much identical to my experience (although much better described)

Its only happened to me once, though, and it was a long time ago. I never really thought about it, but the first memory I have of the entire incident was a pair of divers deep in the ocean stumbling upon the aliens who threw a net about the divers. A similarity to the attachment you notice?

Possibly. Were you one of the divers or just observing from some place? In my experiences it is always been me personally in that situation. Feel free to e-mail me personally. I'd like to know more about what you dreamt and what sensations you felt waking up and after you were fully awake. Anyone else with their own stories can e-mail me as well if you'd like to talk more about this. I know I would!