Ghost stories
I woke up this morning, and in addition to catching up on the news of California burning to cinders, and retrofitting the B-2 for a MOAB bunker buster—more about that in a minute—I get a stat off FOX News that 34% of Americans believe in ghosts.
Well, welcome to the club.
I’m the ultimate skeptic. Try to run something past me with “psychic” or “UFO” in the premise, and I’ll advise you to not let the door hit you in the hinder on your way out.
Despite my hard-line disbelief, there are certain occurrences that I cannot explain, or totally discount as phenomenon of some sort.
One of the first pieces of real estate I ever occupied was a farmhouse estimated to be 150 years old in the 1970s. It was a lovely parcel of land, with orchards, a working barn, pastures for my horses, and two creeks. The farm showed up on Civil War-era maps as “the Turner Farm”, because it had a well, and such vital resources would be marked on said maps.
The first night I spent there was a kind of “scouting party” for the rest of my family. I moved in with a folding cot and sleeping bag. I set up my sparse outrider equipment in the living room, built a small fire in the fireplace, and crashed out.
At some point in the early morning hours, I snapped out of sleep to hear a car’s motor revving loudly. Just as I jumped out of bed and reached the front door, the sound stopped. It didn’t recede like a car racing into the distance; it just stopped.
I didn’t think anything more about it. My wife and infant older daughter moved in, and we proceeded to fix the place up to more modern standards.
I was into haircut mode in those days, so one Saturday found me in the local barber shop. The topic of discussion was a recent suicide. A young man had run a tailpipe hose into his car and gassed himself just beyond the old Turner place. The incident had occurred at approximately the time and day I heard that motor revving.
Wait, it gets deeper.
A suicide 100 yards from one’s rural home doesn’t rattle a skeptic. Oldest daughter Laura began to talk; then she began to say that the voice in her bedroom was keeping her awake.
About a year after we’d moved in, a family in a pickup truck showed up at the front door. The patriarch asked if they could pick some apples from the orchard. I readily agreed. He then asked me something strange: had we ever had “trouble” from Sally’s ghost?
Ever the calm realist, I asked him what the hell he was talking about.
He told me that the Turner farm was widely known, because a young girl named Sally had committed suicide with a shotgun in the back room. (This was now daughter Laura’s bedroom.) I sent him on his apple-picking expedition, and he and his family never returned.
The next time Laura said there was a voice in her bedroom, I checked it out. Like mice scratching in the wall, there was a whisper of inexplicable origin. I have confessed to drinking too much and using recreational drugs, but none of that was in play when I witnessed these eerie sounds. I heard it. Laura slept with us that night.
A while after that, a friend from work showed up with a date. They wanted to see the waterfall on one of my creeks under the full moon. I’m easy, so we set out down the dirt road that ran the length of the 150 acres.
At the appointed point, beside the apple orchard, we stepped off into the woods that led to the creek and the Confederate earthworks. As we arrived, we became mutually aware of some phenomenon.
I can’t describe how the others saw it. I wear glasses for long-distance vision, so the world is fuzzy when I take them off. I had glasses on that night, but what I saw was slightly out of focus. My friends saw it, too.
What we saw was a large number of troops passing between the trees. I think they were Confederates, based on my re-enacting experience. We were on the edge of Civil War earthworks.
We watched this for a moment, then my friends were beating feet out of there. I had no choice but to follow, although by that point I wanted to hail the spirits and try to make contact.
I have my own theory about ghosts these days. These are people who were violently ripped from life, and are searching for peace. Voices in the wall, troops marching in the night, motors revving on some sad suicide, they are all looking for some final peace. A friend took a photo of Burnside’s Bridge at the Sharpsburg battlefield. There is a blurred anomaly in that photo. Thousands died in that place on one ultra-violent day; who’s to say this isn’t a lost soul trying to find his way home?
And if ghosts aren’t enough, let’s get to UFOs. If we’re going crazy, let’s go all the way.
Between encounters with ghosts in the 1970s, I undertook a hitchhiking adventure with a work buddy. At some point, we found ourselves in Kannapolis, North Carolina in the middle of the night. Stranded along the interstate, with no hope of a ride at that hour, we hiked up the embankment, jumped the fence, and spread our sleeping bags in a cow pasture.
At some undetermined time of the morning, I woke for no good reason. Lying on my back, I had a perfectly unobstructed view of the stars.
Something vast, and totally black, was moving across those stars.
I thought it was a cow looming over me. I went back to sleep.
The next morning, Dave and I caught a ride early on. We’re sitting in the back seat of a car, thankful for the ride, when it comes on the radio:
“…reported UFO sightings over North Carolina, especially the Kannapolis area…”
I dropped the joint the kind person in the front seat had handed me.
In the 1990s, I was traveling the I-16 corridor between Atlanta and Savannah. Outside of Savannah, before you get to Macon, this is a barren stretch of road. I don’t know what those flashing, pacing lights were, but I’ll hope it was something out of Warner Robbins Air Force base, and leave it at that.
The Turner farm burned to the ground shortly after we moved out. It looked like arson, and places with so much history frequently suffer such fates.
FOX News says 34% of Americans believe in ghosts. You want to tell me a story; I have to swallow a huge grain of salt. However, I’ll listen. I can’t explain the things I’ve just described.
Well, welcome to the club.
I’m the ultimate skeptic. Try to run something past me with “psychic” or “UFO” in the premise, and I’ll advise you to not let the door hit you in the hinder on your way out.
Despite my hard-line disbelief, there are certain occurrences that I cannot explain, or totally discount as phenomenon of some sort.
One of the first pieces of real estate I ever occupied was a farmhouse estimated to be 150 years old in the 1970s. It was a lovely parcel of land, with orchards, a working barn, pastures for my horses, and two creeks. The farm showed up on Civil War-era maps as “the Turner Farm”, because it had a well, and such vital resources would be marked on said maps.
The first night I spent there was a kind of “scouting party” for the rest of my family. I moved in with a folding cot and sleeping bag. I set up my sparse outrider equipment in the living room, built a small fire in the fireplace, and crashed out.
At some point in the early morning hours, I snapped out of sleep to hear a car’s motor revving loudly. Just as I jumped out of bed and reached the front door, the sound stopped. It didn’t recede like a car racing into the distance; it just stopped.
I didn’t think anything more about it. My wife and infant older daughter moved in, and we proceeded to fix the place up to more modern standards.
I was into haircut mode in those days, so one Saturday found me in the local barber shop. The topic of discussion was a recent suicide. A young man had run a tailpipe hose into his car and gassed himself just beyond the old Turner place. The incident had occurred at approximately the time and day I heard that motor revving.
Wait, it gets deeper.
A suicide 100 yards from one’s rural home doesn’t rattle a skeptic. Oldest daughter Laura began to talk; then she began to say that the voice in her bedroom was keeping her awake.
About a year after we’d moved in, a family in a pickup truck showed up at the front door. The patriarch asked if they could pick some apples from the orchard. I readily agreed. He then asked me something strange: had we ever had “trouble” from Sally’s ghost?
Ever the calm realist, I asked him what the hell he was talking about.
He told me that the Turner farm was widely known, because a young girl named Sally had committed suicide with a shotgun in the back room. (This was now daughter Laura’s bedroom.) I sent him on his apple-picking expedition, and he and his family never returned.
The next time Laura said there was a voice in her bedroom, I checked it out. Like mice scratching in the wall, there was a whisper of inexplicable origin. I have confessed to drinking too much and using recreational drugs, but none of that was in play when I witnessed these eerie sounds. I heard it. Laura slept with us that night.
A while after that, a friend from work showed up with a date. They wanted to see the waterfall on one of my creeks under the full moon. I’m easy, so we set out down the dirt road that ran the length of the 150 acres.
At the appointed point, beside the apple orchard, we stepped off into the woods that led to the creek and the Confederate earthworks. As we arrived, we became mutually aware of some phenomenon.
I can’t describe how the others saw it. I wear glasses for long-distance vision, so the world is fuzzy when I take them off. I had glasses on that night, but what I saw was slightly out of focus. My friends saw it, too.
What we saw was a large number of troops passing between the trees. I think they were Confederates, based on my re-enacting experience. We were on the edge of Civil War earthworks.
We watched this for a moment, then my friends were beating feet out of there. I had no choice but to follow, although by that point I wanted to hail the spirits and try to make contact.
I have my own theory about ghosts these days. These are people who were violently ripped from life, and are searching for peace. Voices in the wall, troops marching in the night, motors revving on some sad suicide, they are all looking for some final peace. A friend took a photo of Burnside’s Bridge at the Sharpsburg battlefield. There is a blurred anomaly in that photo. Thousands died in that place on one ultra-violent day; who’s to say this isn’t a lost soul trying to find his way home?
And if ghosts aren’t enough, let’s get to UFOs. If we’re going crazy, let’s go all the way.
Between encounters with ghosts in the 1970s, I undertook a hitchhiking adventure with a work buddy. At some point, we found ourselves in Kannapolis, North Carolina in the middle of the night. Stranded along the interstate, with no hope of a ride at that hour, we hiked up the embankment, jumped the fence, and spread our sleeping bags in a cow pasture.
At some undetermined time of the morning, I woke for no good reason. Lying on my back, I had a perfectly unobstructed view of the stars.
Something vast, and totally black, was moving across those stars.
I thought it was a cow looming over me. I went back to sleep.
The next morning, Dave and I caught a ride early on. We’re sitting in the back seat of a car, thankful for the ride, when it comes on the radio:
“…reported UFO sightings over North Carolina, especially the Kannapolis area…”
I dropped the joint the kind person in the front seat had handed me.
In the 1990s, I was traveling the I-16 corridor between Atlanta and Savannah. Outside of Savannah, before you get to Macon, this is a barren stretch of road. I don’t know what those flashing, pacing lights were, but I’ll hope it was something out of Warner Robbins Air Force base, and leave it at that.
The Turner farm burned to the ground shortly after we moved out. It looked like arson, and places with so much history frequently suffer such fates.
FOX News says 34% of Americans believe in ghosts. You want to tell me a story; I have to swallow a huge grain of salt. However, I’ll listen. I can’t explain the things I’ve just described.
posted by Robert at 2:28 PM
3 Comments:
Those sound like some fascinating experiences...
I've never seen a ghost. So I'm not sure I believe in them. However, I've heard plenty of stories from people about phenomena that can't be explained... similar to yours.
I've heard plenty of weird sounds in the middle of the night though. Some of them I've written off to animals, like our cat (inside) and the wild variety (outside). Others can be explained as tree branches rubbing against the siding, expansion & contraction of the house, etc. And probably a few were dreams, or my imagination while in a semi-conscious state.
But there's always that 1% though, isn't there...?
Best regards
I never thought these spirits might be malign. That night by the waterfall, I wanted to call out to them, but my friends were panicked and beating feet.
I sometimes spoke to the spook in Laura's wall, urging her to reveal herself. Whatever happened in that room stayed there until the house burned. The young man's suicide was a straight-up incident I never pursued. People make strange and bad choices.
We never had shuffling furniture or anything like that, but I know what I saw and heard on these occasions. The wife heard the voice, too. I think children are especially sensitive to such presences, because they don't have our ingrained adult skepticism.
I'd like to think those flashing, tag-playing lights along the Savannah corridor were more than just a jet from Warner Robbins buzzing the interstate. Although they're sad entities, I want to believe that the fuzzy things I've encountered are real. I believe in Heavan and and afterlife, so if these sad souls are having to hike the extra mile to get there, I wish them well.
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