That's Unusual!

I just remembered one time in primary school, I must have been eight or nine, one of the girls in my year just started screaming and crying one time during morning playtime outside, and she hadn't fallen over or been hurt or anything, and even she didn't know why she was crying, but she just couldn't stop. The day after, we found out her identical twin, who went to a different school (they were split up so they'd actually make friends with other kids, they were that close) had broken her arm that morning.

 

So my great-papa was career military, some kind of covert op during Korea and Vietnam and a drill sergeant between and after. Several times he was the only one of his group to make it back. Even after he retired he had one of those Do Not Open Unless You Get The Call black suitcases right up until he died. I think this story happened when he was in Korea, before we were actually admitting we were there. He was hanging around this one small town/village and near every night he'd go to the local bar and hang out. He usually drank alone, especially since he stood out a bit being Obviously Foreign, but he spoke enough of the language to get by and the barkeep was friendly with him. So he's trying some of the local drink alone at his table when someone he doesn't recognize comes up and sits with him, Papa might be a bit drunk off his ass (apparently the local stuff he was trying was damn strong and he wasn't expecting it) so he doesn't freak out appropriately when the guy warns against going to this one place they were going to check out soon.

He doesn't really think about it, but a week or two later he ends up getting sick and has to stay in town while the others go to the place they were checking out. It ends up being full of hostiles and turns into a curbstomp. Once Papa's not throwing up his toenails he goes back to the bar. The guy's not there so he asks the bartender who he was drinking with because he owes him one, bartender doesn't remember so asks for a description. Papa tells him and the guy goes white. Says he can't have been drinking with Mr. [Name]. Papa says "why not?" Bartender is still flustered and very uneasy, but Papa presses anyway. Finally he says it's because the guy's been dead some ten years.

 

My dad told us a story once when we were little about how he saw a ghost, and it was only several years later that we realized that he'd literally just retold the Telltale Heart and had never seen a ghost.

 

A long time ago, I was maybe 4-5 and I have a fairly healthy sixth sense. I as far as I can remember have always had premonitions. Or prophetic dreams(for lack of a better term) . I would have a dream, always set in real life, always silent, with a scenario. No clues in the dreams as to when said scenario would happen. Then, a couple months would roll by and said scenario happens leaving me with feelings of dejavu. Every single time my skin crawls before the event happens and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. One of the more prominent ones was a vision of me going to highschool. In the dream it was my first day. I had never even seen this building before or any of the people in it. Not in passing, never had been there. I had no possible way of knowing what this place looked like. But the first day of school comes around and the dejavu hits. I can't shake the feeling that the scenery all looks familiar and then I remember. It even now makes me get goosebumps. So now I keep a journal of all my dreams, just in case.

 

I have had very few things happen to me that couldn't be explained by brain fuckery of one sort or another (I am very, very familiar with the weird things brains, especially mine, can do to perception of events), but there's one small thing I've experienced that I've never been able to find any explanation for, especially since I was with someone else who also saw it.

Back in 2004 I lived in Milpitas, California - it's on the east side of the SF Bay area, a ways away from the bay itself. It was evening - well into twilight but not quite dark without the actual time being late, and it was warm and clear, so it must have been in the early autumn sometime. My housemate and I had just bought groceries, and were sitting in his car in the grocery store's parking lot. Suddenly, we see this ball of blue light bobbing around in the air. It was well off the ground, maybe powerline height or a bit lower, with quite a lot of empty space around it and no lights from buildings or signs behind it. It didn't cast much light, itself, and didn't seem to be an object as such, just... a ball of light that was very clearly blue in color.

One of us asks, "Do you see that??" and we glance at each other in bewilderment. The light bobs and swoops around for a bit and vanishes. I exchange another look with my housemate, and we try to talk about it on the short drive home, but neither of us has the words for much other than to confirm that we both saw the same thing, it was fairly close to us, and it was not created or projected by anything in the area that we could tell.

Nothing ever came up in the news or on the internet about such a phenomenon in the area, and my housemate and I never spoke of it again. What was there to say? To this day I really don't know what it could have been - the atmospheric conditions were, afaik, all wrong for ball lightning.

 

speaking of ball lightning - or, well, not-ball-lightning - my friend lived in the mountains in Pennsylvania as a kid, and has been a little scared of thunderstorms ever since a ball of lightning appeared in their house and floated sedately across the ceiling.

 

Hayward Fault (a branch of the San Andreas) is under the city.

 

I had no idea that was a thing! Wikipedia says the Calaveras Fault passes either through or near to Milpitas, so that may well be my answer. :D

 

my dad and grandma are very very firm believers in reincarnation, and at first i was like "you guys are really really non-religious super-realistic sort of people, c'mon give me some proof" and then THEY DID so i'll start with my dad's story I guess?

when my dad was younger his dream was to be an air force bomber pilot (he later discovered that he wasn't going to make the cut and would have to fly cargo planes so he quit, lmao) however, at the time, he only had a helicopter license and had no clue how to fly a plane!! before he took his first plane flying class with his teacher, the teacher gave him a lil tour of the hanger. they had an old bomber (i forgot the model, but if i asked him he would remember, if i remember to ask him later i'll edit and update this post) that hadn't been in the air since world war II. my dad, the dude who had no idea how to fly any sort of plane, sat in the cockpit and suddenly realized that he knew exactly what each button, switch, and gauge did. he confirmed it with the teacher, too, who was low-key freaked out because what the fuck, you said you'd never flown a plane before? so yeah, my dad thinks that in his "past life" he was a pilot in that specific model of plane, which is pretty neat

and my grandma's isn't as neat, basically she and my grandpa were going to go on a tour of some old historical house and my grandma got this huge sense of deja-vu, she realized that she suddenly knew the whole floor plan of the house. one of the rooms had original furniture and all the stuff in the drawers still, and my grandma knew what was in all the drawers and the tour guide checked and she was right, so basically my grandma thinks that at some point in a past life she lived in that house

admittedly my dad is a lil less believable, he used to tell me when i was little that he could see auras (who knows if it's true) but he's definitely a little more fantastical and creative, but i've also never known him to lie so
but my grandma is probably one of the most straight-laced hardass people you'll ever meet, she would not lie about that sort of thing, so idk!! kinda neat

 

A couple of weeks ago my phone went missing. I went through my room moving things and could not find it. My grandmother did the same. We then searched through the entire rest of the house and even the car. Nothing was found. At all. Even through repeated searchings. Eventually we gave up. Upon rummaging up a replacement the original phone was found in a place I most definitely checked.

Why.

Why do you do this.

EDIT for reincarnation story: That's really, really neat actually. I get that way about the Irish language. I'll be listening to it like it's familiar to me on the level that English is. And then stop and realize I have no fucking idea what was said and go "Oh." I'm currently thinking that I spoke it in a recent past life. The memories will likely fade soon.

 

oh another thing too! i've spent my whole childhood sleeping in earshot of televisions- my first bedroom that i shared with my brother was right above the TV room, and my current bed room that i switched into about 10 years ago is right next to it. my bed, currently, is against the wall that our TV is on on the other side. my grandpa was the sort of dude who would fall asleep in the TV room in his chair, especially as he got older, so often i would spend the entire night hearing the dull hum of TV in the background and fall asleep listening to it as well. when i transferred into my current bedroom, the TV got even clearer; if i wanted to, i could put my ear against the wall to hear more specific words. i never minded it, i like a little noise to help me sleep; maybe since ive grown up with it i got used to it, idk, but i have a really hard time sleeping in total silence. my grandpa died. . . four years ago, i think? ish. around then i started keeping a fan or humidifier in my room so i could have some white noise while i slept.
i kept hearing the tv, even after he died. and honestly, i didn't even realize it was weird until a few weeks ago. i'm just so used to it, i guess it became more background noise and i never noticed?
so yeah: a few weeks ago, it was probably around midnight, everyone is asleep at that point, i'm reading or something and listening to the humidifier and the TV and then i went. wait. the TV? i turned off the humidifier, i could still hear it. i pressed my ear against the wall, i could even discern words and stuff- it was news, or something, i could pick out words here and there but i couldnt get the whole conversation, but it was definitely the TV being on. i opened my door- if the TV was on i'd definitely be able to hear it, from where my room is and where the TV room is- but it was completely silent. i even moved out in the hallway and looked into the TV room; completely dark, no TV on. went back to my room, could still hear the TV through the wall.
i've since opted to. . . pretend that i never noticed it and let it continue being background noise, but i always leave the humidifier or fan or AC on at night now so i dont focus on it
y e a h

also once i heard heavy footsteps above my room, figured that it was just someone in the room above me. the next time i was in the backyard i looked at my room and realized that the only thing above my room is a portion of the attic, which doesn't even have a floor, its literally just beams and insulation, so thats great

 

The college I graduated from moved my department into an old refurbished mill building in our last year. Journalism students were located on the top floor - we had a single long corridor with 3 rooms off the left side only, and toilets at the very end of the building.

A couple of us were studying (read: idling about and occasionally sub-editing stuff) in our computer lab one day near term end, so approaching summer. The lab door was open, and we had opened the building up ourselves by getting the only set of keys from reception (in another building.)

At some point our tutor popped in to say hi, and told us he was going to check all the rooms. We heard him walk along our very creaky corridor. Then silence for a good fifteen minutes. No-one passes our door and we are all in the same room. We're getting a little worried about our tutor, so me and a friend go to check out the rooms and the toilets, but all are locked up and our tutor seems to have disappeared.

Then we notice there's an old fashioned silver key lying in the middle of the floor, some way from the toilet door. We pick up the key and unlock the door, and our tutor is inside looking dazed to all hell, leaning on the wall. We cart him back to the lab and feed him coffee, and he explains that he had unlocked the toilet to check it and then it had all gone dark.

It's possible that he just had a bad turn - heat or high blood pressure - which caused a blackout. But who the hell locked him in the toilet and removed the key from the door when we were alone in the building and no one else entered or went past?

 

My best friend and I used to share dreams.

Like, I would start talking to her about a weird dream I had, and she would stop me and finish out every last little detail I was about to tell her. They were not about anything we ever experienced in reality, or similar to anything she and I had just had happen together. This happened at least once a year. I still have no explanation for this, but it stopped after we graduated high school (and stopped living across the street from each other).

I will also get some really strong senses of deja vu sometimes, to the point where I have doubted my own reality - like, I will have a sense that I dreamed every last detail of what just happened, but if I did, it's not a dream I can consciously recall having until the actual moment happened. Or I will tell someone about "oh yes the second time I did [thing]" and they'll be like, no that was the first time. And it absolutely shakes me because I can give every tiny detail of time X I did [thing] but it didn't happen, like, they can prove I was somewhere else.

 

@Lissiel Asked me to transfer my profile post college ghost stories over here, so I'm going to do that in three parts.


Part 1:

I still can't sleep, so it's random story time: I thought my fear of ghosts was irrational until I worked in a haunted library for a year.
No, disembodied voice, we will not, "Ssssstaaaaay." We already locked up for the night. Also, you don't need to lean RIGHT up to me to talk.
That's how the first of my co-workers quit the night shift. Poor guy prayed rapidly for protection until we were out.
Second co-worker quit for unrelated reasons. Third one stayed, but the ghost threw books at him in the lower stacks.
He was too scared to go down there after that. Thought she wasn't on the upper floors. I didn't have the heart to tell him nowhere was safe.

She didn't hurt people aside from throwing books at work-study kids who she thought didn't do their jobs right.
Tru fax: She first showed up in the 70s right when the library started its work-study program. She started haunting because work-study kids.
First victim was one of the first work-study students. She scattered books after closing during one girl's shift and tried to get her fired.
It seems like she only shows up to work-study kids. I interviewed some people about it after my first run-in so I could grasp the situation.
One grad had a look of terror when I brought her up. The woman said she'd seen the ghost and that's all I remember her being willing to say.

After gathering my info I decided to lay down some ground rules. Ghost seemed to like me. Okay, I had conditions.
I went to the lower stacks and had a very frank and polite one-way conversation where I explained my fear and requested no further contact.
She obliged and left me alone after that. I knew she was still there (the book throwing was a while after the talk), but she was respectful.
Tfw a picky library ghost who chucks books at people is more respectful of boundaries than a lot of living people.

 

Part 2:

Also, stories like that were pretty normal at my college. It was a very haunted campus. People who spent a lot of time there got used to it.
Rules like, "Don't go to this particular part of the graveyard behind the school. It's totally not because of the violent ghost there."
"It's just a coincidence that this ghost hunter wants to check that particular spot out. No, you can't come. It's dangerous."
My poor RA had to deal with a child ghost who liked to mess up her work each time she finished. And freak her out in the bathroom.
You know, normal college things.

And there were so many stories about the tunnels under the school. Yeah, there were actual underground tunnels under my campus.
All the entrances are boarded up or locked behind heavy gates. I've heard stories from the janitors about a screaming ghost down there.
I didn't believe them until the library ghost incidents. After the first time the ghost talked, that stuff became normal.
I've spammed enough, I think. This has been story time with Parsley, the college/ghosts edition.

 

Part 3:

Okay, one last ghost story because I'm a buttface. I think my favorite story is one I couldn't verify.
There was another library in the attic of the campus building I worked in, except nobody could go into that library because of asbestos.
Thing is, the elevator had a button for it. The whole building was off-limits after the library closed but college kids didn't always listen.
Someone once told me that someone they knew (see? hearsay) had stayed on the ground floor late with friends.
They were being loud in a building that was usually empty at that time. Then the elevator started coming down from the top floor.
The doors opened and there stood a man with dark holes for eyes. They stared in silence as he lifted a finger to his lips.
Then the doors closed and the elevator went back up.

All the ghosts on campus were dorks, I swear. I can't get over how the two in that building were such sticklers for rules.
Library ghost was all, "You're doing your job wrong and you should feel bad," and attic library ghost was all, "It's quiet time. Shush."
I joke, but I really think attic library ghost is the one I would never want to see. Closely followed by tunnel ghost.
Okay. Done for real this time. I'm sorry again for my spam.

@Lib Glad I could entertain! One good(?) thing about going to a very haunted college is that I have plenty of ghost stories.
Cutest one is about the boy ghost in the dorms who haunted every resident of his dorm room aside from this one guy he liked.
But I need to stop, gosh darn.

 

I love this story so much. :Dbbb three thumbs up

Though for serious fuk u ghost books are not for throwing ur gonna damage the spines wth >:(

Got more? /hopeful face