A hotel room in Minnesota

Who knows why some places make for ghost stories for some people, when other people will not have an experience in the same place. A few weeks back a few ladies from Iowa and Ohio joined me on a tour. One of them had visited a hotel in Minnesota in April. Around 11 o'clock at night she was in bed and woke up to someone softly stroking the top of her hand. She was too afraid to open her eyes because she was sure that someone was standing beside her bed. After a moment the person walked around the foot of the bed to the opposite side and lay down beside her. She was still too terrified to open her eyes. Then, just as strangely as it had begun, the person seemed to disappear and she was alone in bed.

Oklahoma

I'm not sure that I should call this a "ghost" story, but it is certainly one hell of a story. A group from Oklahoma, a man and two women, came on my tour this past month. The man said that years back he'd been hanging out with some friends, three teenage boys talking about going to Oklahoma City to party, they were going on an on till one said, "enough talking, let's go." As soon as they stood up the bedroom door slammed shut, the window closed, the ceiling fan turned on so fast that all the papers in the room were rising and falling, the volume on the old dial stereo was going up and down repeatedly, the AC unit in the ceiling fell out so hard that is bounced off the floor three times. The friend's father who the house belonged too was a paraplegic and he was trying to open the door from the outside while they were trying to push it from the inside, hopelessly. The bedroom had two twin beds and a Buddha statue behind the door. After a few moments of this a shadowy skeletal figure rose from the foot of the bed. Its head hit the eight foot ceiling. It walked across the room and into the closet. As soon as it was gone the door opened and everything else stopped.

I told my tour participant that it sounded like his friend needed a serious exorcism. He said the family had tried a few things but there wasn't much family left anymore. His friend had lost his paraplegic father and every other member of his family in the years since.

Phoenix to L.A.

Often people see orbs in photos, and every so often live and in person. A young man from LA shared just such a story with me. Roughly ten years ago, when he was around fifteen, he lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Once he and few guys were staying at a friend's house over night and around 2-3 o'clock in the morning he and one of the guys got up to play a prank on one of their sleeping friends. As they went through the living room he stopped. Orbs were floating in the hall. His friend disappeared, but he stood there frozen in place unable to look away. He watched as the orbs moved down the hall. The bathroom door was open and they floated into the room. Once they were inside, he could see the bathroom mirror-- an old man's face looked back at him.

When he asked his friend if he'd seen anything, his friend said no. But he had gotten a chill and felt, just, frightened and sprinted as far away as he could.