OK, here goes... This is all rather embarassing, since I generally have a naturalistic (non-supernatural) worldview. I'm not sure what any of it means.
1. My family, on my dad's side, came over from Scotland in the 1920s. My grandfather was part of a spiritualist community. When I was a kid, he used to make me solemnly promise never to use a Ouija board, do table tapping, or make any attempts to contact the dead. He told me of having seen a man speak in tongues and be possessed by spirits. His group ended their experiments when a beautiful voice came out of the darkness during a seance and warned them not to continue.
It wasn't until I was grown up that my dad told me my grandfather had been the group's leader, and it was he who had spoken in tongues while conducting the seances.
2. Once, when I was about eight years old, I walked into my room one night and saw, framed in the window, the leering face of a hairy, apelike creature -- definitely not my reflection, because I was too far away and at an angle to the window, and definitely not a person, because this was on the second floor of my house. I saw it for a good five seconds. It had a lolling tongue and bulging eyes, and was looking at me. I ran out of the room, and for years afterward, would duck and avert my eyes whenever I passed a window at night, unless the shades were drawn.
I've thought about that event ever since, and no matter how hard I try, I can't explain it.
3. One late summer night about five years ago, I was having trouble sleeping, and moved out to the couch in the living room, hoping a change of venue would allow me to get some shuteye. I fell asleep, and dreamed that I awoke and walked to the window, which looks out upon the street. There, by the sidewalk, I saw a woman in white, with pale skin and long white hair. Her eyes were dancing points of white nothingness, like a flashlight beam held in a shaking hand. She opened her mouth and screamed at me, silently. When I woke up, I thought, remembering the Irish ghost stories my mom's family have kept in memory, I've seen the banshee -- someone's going to die.
I was finally able to shake off the dream and get myself to work. The day was September 11, 2001.
4. My great-grandfather was a sailor -- went up and down the length of the Americas on tramp freighters, and brought back all sorts of oddities, including a foul-mouthed parrot named Lolita that outlasted him by many years and lived to torment my great-grandmother. He also brought back this story, must have happened sometime in the 1920s. I should add that according to my mom, who heard the story first-hand, my GG was not a fanciful man, and would get very irate if anyone scoffed at this tale:
He was on a ship plying between several Central American ports. At sea, one of the officers took sick suddenly with a fever and died. The dead officer's son was one of the crew. The ship anchored off the coast of Panama, an uninhabited stretch of jungle. They brought the body ashore by boat, uprooted a palm tree some distance away from the beach, buried the corpse, and replaced the tree, as a way to guard it from scavenging animals. The landing party had returned to the boat and were preparing to row away, when the grieving son turned back, wanting to say goodbye to his father a final time. When he returned a few minutes later, he was pale, and shaking. He said to my great-granddad, "I've just seen my father standing by the grave. He told me my wife and son have been killed in a fire back home in Fall River." Sure enough, when the ship returned home to Massachusetts, the ghost's words were confirmed.
That's all for now. I have more if you're interested.
