My experiences with the paranormal started when I was very small. The women in my family have always had the ability to see and speak with things that others say aren't there. Here is my story:
My first experience was when I was maybe five or six. I was at my grandmother�s house (right down the street from the house I grew up in and where my parents still live), spending the night with a cousin. She and I used to wait until the adults (our grandmother and her mother) had both gone to sleep, and then we would sneak out to the living room and watch TV. This particular night, she and I had just gotten out of bed and we had opened the door just enough to see out when we got the strangest feeling that we were being watched. Scared, she slammed the door back, and the feeling stopped. We didn�t go out that night.
The next morning, we had gotten up and gone into the living room, and everything was normal�for a few hours. At one point during our cartoons, I looked over at her and saw out of the corner of my eye a man standing in the hall. He was very tall and thin, with blond, curly hair and a black and white plaid shirt. When I looked straight down the hall, he was gone. We tried to tell everyone what we had seen, but no one would believe us.
Over the next four or five years, others began to see the man � my brother, my mother, and several of my cousins (my mother has 11 brothers and sisters, so there are lots of us). He would always appear in the same place � in front of my grandmother�s bedroom door, and always out of the corner of someone�s eye.
I was eleven the first time I really got a good look at him. To explain, I have to explain the setup of the house: It is perfectly square. The living room is in the front left corner of the house. From there, the kitchen/dining room is straight back. The hall is L-shaped, going to the right and making a bend back to the left. My grandmother�s bedroom is on the right, next to the living room. The corner bedroom where the hall bends is my aunt�s. The bathroom is at the end of the hall, and the third bedroom is next to the bathroom, on the right. A closet sits across the hall from my grandmother�s room. The water heater used to be in a separate closet at the bend in the hall. Now, the closet is gone and the hall has a square space in it. From the back bedroom, you can see to the living room. As such, I was sitting on my cousin�s bed. When I looked up, I got that feeling again, and could see out of the corner of my eye the man again. This time, when I looked around, he let me look right at him. He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, watching us and smiling. There was something comforting about his presence, and when I waved, he waved back. Then, he faded from sight.
This time I told my mother, and she told me that the person I was seeing was my grandfather. He passed away when she was eleven years old, and the back bedroom had been the room where the girls (all nine of them) slept. He used to stand in the hall and watch them play.
About a month later, my grandmother decided that she was going to live with my oldest uncle. She was gone for six months, and every day she was gone, he paced the hall, looking for her. The day she came home, we saw him standing in the doorway, smiling at her. We didn�t see him again for eight years.
In the down time, my cousin and I were up in the attic, digging out pictures for my grandmother so she could make copies for the children. In the process we found a picture of him that was taken about a week before he passed away. He was wearing the same shirt, which we later found out was one of his favorites, and he had been wearing it the night he died.
The next time I saw him was the day my grandmother had heart surgery. I had gone to the house to feed the dogs and the hamster that night on my way to the hospital, and after I was done, I sat on the couch for a minute to rest. I was naturally worried about her, and apparently it showed even to him. The room went cold, and the radio across the room came on. The song was Frank Sinatra�s �High Hopes.� At the time I didn�t understand the reason for that particular song, but it makes sense now for many reasons. Then there were footsteps creaking across the room, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. It squeezed, and let go. When I looked up, he was standing in the doorway between the hall and living room, and he was looking at me. He smiled, and nodded, then turned and walked back down the hall. Even thinking about it now, I want to cry, knowing he was there when I really needed him.
A week later, my grandmother came home. He was there to greet her, and wasn�t seen again until about two months ago. My brother saw him, which worries me since my grandmother is now almost 84 years old (and for posterity, I�m 25), and is claiming she�s hearing music. One of the songs is, in fact, High Hopes. It was one of his favorites. We know he�s been there to protect her, and we�re afraid that he�s now waiting to take her home with him.
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My experiences don�t end with my grandfather. While seeing him, I also began getting strange feelings about the house my best friend lived in. Her parents started building the house they live in now when we were about eight years old. The house had always given me the creeps, but once the construction started, there was a very threatening feeling about the house. I always hated staying there.
Once the new house was built and the old one demolished, the feelings only grew worse. We would hear people walking around, talking, and banging on the doors. Her mother and brother would see faces in the upstairs windows, and the rooms would suddenly go cold for no reason. And if anyone has ever been to Charleston, SC, they know that anything going cold in the middle of July is a phenomenon in and of itself.
The problems reached their peak when she had a slumber party for her fifteenth birthday, and there were thirteen of us total, including her. The majority of the sightings were in her little brother�s bedroom, and this particular night he was staying with their grandparents.
So the bunch of us, silly teenagers that we were, went in there and decided to play �Light as a feather, stiff as a board.� It worked, and whatever was in the house became angry. About 12:30, we heard the china hutch downstairs come crashing to the floor, breaking everything in it. When my best friend and I went downstairs, nothing was out of place, however the piano in the other room began to play by itself. One of the upstairs windows shattered, but there was no one in the room. The lights on the stairs flickered on and off by themselves, there were voices and the sound of children running through the house, and one of the girls at the party swore she was being choked. Finally having enough, we went into her brother�s room and asked whatever it was to leave us alone because we meant no harm. Surprisingly, everything stopped.
That was the first and last time I stayed the night with her. After that night, things settled down except for the faces in the windows and the knocking on the doors. That house still to this day gives me the creeps.
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Around that same time, the same cousin from the first story and I had become involved with a group of her brother�s friends. They were �vampires�. In other words, they were some of the first Goth kids (though they were in their twenties) that used to play Masquerade, Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic (before it was so cool). One night, one of the guys brought out his Ouija board. It was one of those wooden, antique �talking boards�, and it had belonged to his grandfather.
The board was laid out, and the planchette was tossed into the middle of the board. One of the other guys went to reach for the planchette, and before he could touch it, it shot out from under his hand and hit the wall. I picked it up and put it back on the board, and when he reached again, it moved from under his hand. When he took his hand away, the thing started moving by itself. The cat started hissing, and ran from the room.
Naturally, a bunch of fearless (read: stupid) people together are going to start asking questions. So someone asked �is anyone there?� It moved to �YES� Then �Who is there?� �I. A.M.� �Who are you?� �H.I.M.� The room went very cold, and the cat reappeared in the doorway, hissing and spitting. She was staring at the space above the table. �What do you want?� someone asked. �A.L.I.F.E.� it spelled out. �Whose?� The planchette stopped moving, and began to spin, pointing at each one of us in turn as it moved. Before it could stop, someone knocked it off the table. The glass in it shattered. The cat stopped her antics, the temperature went back to normal.
About ten minutes later, one of the other guys showed up, wondering why everyone was so queasy looking� so we explained what happened, and it scared him a little. He was the expert on angels and demons and such, and oddly enough had an explanation for what was happening. I don�t remember the name, but he told us it sounded like a demon to him � one of the minions known as a �soul collector.�
The ouija was promptly snapped in half and taken out to the Cooper River, where it now sits at the bottom of the riverbed.
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Yet another story involving this same cousin happened when we were sixteen. We were with her boyfriend and his best friend at the time, and one of the guys decided that we were going to go chase the ghost lights. We had no idea where they were taking us, so we went along for the ride. They took us out to Ravenel, and we started out down Old Jacksonboro Road. I remembered the road clearly from being out there with my father, and it surprised me when they took off down such a dark road at 11:00 at night.
So I sat back and watched. One of them got excited, talking about a red reflector in the trees near the curve. We saw it, and we watched it, and when we got up on it we couldn�t find anything that even remotely resembled a reflector. The light just disappeared.
So we went around the corner, pulled off into the parking lot of a small church (which isn�t there anymore), and went through the ritual. Flicked the headlights, and said �I want to see the lights� three times.
And there they were. Three distinct bright white lights came whizzing toward the car and turned off down a dirt road. Naturally, the morons we were with decided �hey�let�s chase them!� so they did� 110 miles per hour down a dark, curvy country road chasing these lights. When they turned, they disappeared, and we were stuck.
Recently, she, my fianc�, and our ghost-hunter friend went looking for them again and discovered that the road is very built up, the church is gone, and we can�t find the dirt road that the lights turned down. And we drove the ENTIRE length of Old Jacksonboro Road�dirt stretches and all.
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The next story on the list happened when I was 19. I was attending the College of Charleston, and working at the Cathedral on Broad Street. To get to classes, I would have to walk down Archdale Street to get to the campus. On this particular street is a cemetery.
After class one afternoon, I diverted into the cemetery to take a few pictures for an Art History project. While in the cemetery, I got the distinct feeling that I was being watched. Naturally, I started asking if anyone was there. No answer.
As I was getting ready to leave, I heard a man with a very strong British accent ask �Are you still there?� Of course, I said �yes.� When I asked where he was, he told me he was standing next to me. I couldn�t see him, but I could clearly hear him, and I could feel him looking at me. Intrigued, we began to talk, and he told me that he was twenty-one years old. He said he was the son of a merchant, and they had come to Charleston to collect a shipment of rice. He said he couldn�t remember how he got into the cemetery.
He told me his name was John. Curious, I started looking around the cemetery. I asked him what year it was, and he told me it was 1887. I searched the gravestones from one end to the other, and there was not one in there with the name �John� anywhere on it. I had made my way to the back corner of the cemetery, and I was about to give up when I tripped over something and fell. When I looked up, I was face to face with a tombstone that read �John White. 1866-1887� I asked him then �is your name John White?� he said yes. So I told him. �You died.� He went quiet, and for a moment. I thought he had gone. Then, he asked �how did I die?�
I couldn�t answer that, so I told him I would find out and come back to him. He said he would wait for me. So, I went back to work, and since the day was slow, I went across the street to the archives office for the Diocese, and started digging through files. It took almost two weeks or daily rifling, but I found what I was looking for. He was twenty-one when he died � four days after his birthday. And he had died of pneumonia.
When I went back to the cemetery, I was greeted with him saying �I thought you had forgotten about me.� I apologized, and told him what I had found. �So I shouldn�t be here?� he asked. I said no, but I had no idea what else to say. He told me he liked it there and didn�t want to leave, and asked if I would come visit him from time to time. I said I would, and I did go talk to him three more times before he finally stopped talking altogether. I don�t know what happened to him, but I would like to find out.
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Another that happened in Downtown Charleston occurred about six months after I first met John. I was walking down Tradd Street (which is coincidentally known to be the most haunted street in Charleston) when I came up on a young man that I thought at first was an actor. There are several reenactment groups around the city, so I didn�t think anything of the way he was dressed � riding pants and boots, billowy, white shirt, and dirty blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. The thing I remember most about him were his eyes: they were the strangest color yellow I had ever seen.
He stopped me to ask where the �Slave Market� was, and when he did his voice had the thickest British accent I can remember. My first thought was that he meant Market Street (another famed Charleston spot), so I gave him directions. He thanked me and started to pass me. As he walked past, I thought that maybe by saying �Slave Market� he meant the old Exchange Building. So since he barely had time to pass me, I turned to stop him�and he was gone. There was nowhere for him to go that quickly because we were in the middle of a city block, no doors had opened or closed, there were no bushes, and next to the sidewalk was a brick wall, roughly 8 feet high. And to get to that, he would have had to go through me.
Creepy, yes. But then, a few weeks later I was out with a couple friends. It was late (probably 10:00 or so), and we were heading back to the car after dinner. We had taken a detour down Archdale Street because my car was in the church parking lot. When we turned onto Queen Street (where the back of the church is), a man with long black hair was coming towards us. With him was the man I had seen on Tradd Street. The two friends I was with only saw the man with the black hair, but noticed that he was looking at me funny � like I could see something that he could too.
It scared me so badly that I didn�t realize I had run until they had caught me a block up and asked what was wrong. They swore they never saw the second man.
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About five years ago, I had a friend that was working in Manteo, NC (The Outer Banks) at the Lost Colony Theatre � an outdoor theatre that sits on the Roanoke Sound, which is where experts believe the original Roanoke colony was located (Remember CROATOAN?). She had been telling me all summer about strange appearances; a man in a hooded cape on the ridge, a little girl in the bungalow parking lot, confederate soldiers, and white, shimmering animals. She wanted me to see for myself, so after the show that night, we went out to the path between the theatre and the employee parking area. The lighted path is very long, and there is an unlit dirt path that cuts through the woods. Most of the sightings were on this dirt path.
It diverted away from the sidewalk about 100 feet into the woods. We walked up to that point and I found that I couldn�t step off the path. It felt like there was a hand in the middle of my chest, holding me back. A voice in my head said very sternly �Do Not Come In Here.� Again, I had no idea I was trying to run until she grabbed my arm. She had hold of me so hard that her fingers left bruises. There was an overwhelming feeling of dread in that place, like something horrible was waiting for something in particular so it could attack. It was heavier even than the feeling of sadness I experienced all over the rest of the island.
In July of that year a group of friends and I (including the girl at the theatre) decided that we were going to drive from Charleston to Bristow, VA to attend a concert. One of our stops was in Manteo, and oddly enough, one of the people in the group (the only guy actually) is an avid ghost hunter. So while we were waiting for the show to finish so we could get dinner, he decided that he wanted to see for himself what was out there. I was against it, but outnumbered. So he, his wife, and I went out to the woods to find the path.
As soon as we got out of the car and got on the path, the air got very still, and very, very cold. His wife was between him and myself, and her hair was blowing wildly around even though there was no wind. We got the feeling we were not just being watched, but being FOLLOWED�The farther down the path we got, the worse the feeling got. When I finally announced that the person with the keys was leaving, I could feel this thing literally running toward us. He was so intent on finding whatever was in those woods that he didn�t want to leave. The only reason he came with us is because I did have the car keys and he didn�t want to walk the three miles back to the hotel.
He keeps wanting to go back, but I refuse. Something bad happened on that island, and I don�t want to hang around to find out what it is.
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About three years ago, I moved to Chester, SC from Charleston. The ghost-hunter friend and his wife live there (and I�m engaged the ghost-hunter�s best friend), and they are pretty well experts on what goes on ghost-wise in Chester.
Not long after I moved up here, my fianc� and I got involved with the theatre group (which they�re part of as well). The theatre is known to be haunted, and despite the never-ending ghost-hunts, we never really believed it until about a year ago. We were in charge of the Halloween play at the theatre, and the ghost hunter and wife were in the show. We had all been working in the theatre every night for the month, and during that time several strange things happened. The water turned on by itself, lights have gone on and off, one person saw what he called �tubes� shooting in front of his eyes in the dark, I saw green horizontal lights on the stage in the dark, there was knocking in the walls, footsteps upstairs, and the soundboard turning on and off by itself.
Also, in the back staircase, (then and since then) I have had these phantom images of something that happened. We know from history that a woman was killed on those stairs, but no one really knows how. The images I see put her at the top of the stairs (which used to be the slave entrance to the theatre). She is a short, black woman with a kind face and a fancy hat. Standing over her is a very tall, obviously wealthy white man. In one image, they are arguing. In a second, she is falling down the stairs.
The upstairs area was in the past a morgue in the back and the telephone company in the front. I have heard old-time telephones ringing, gurney wheels squeaking, and people running down the halls. According to the theatre �historians�, when the building caught fire, the mortician ran through the building to tell the operators to get out. He died in the fire.
Upstairs, there is a very malevolent spirit that I feel would hurt someone if given the chance. There is also something backstage at the makeup area that scares me, though it doesn�t seem as threatening.
There are hundreds of stories about experiences in the theatre, probably more interesting than mine. I�ve never actually seen anything or anyone, but I have heard and felt some very frightening things.
As I add experiences, I will update. Thanks for listening.