Hudson River Valley

Mansions or big houses, one of my tour guests grew up in one in the Hudson River Valley. She and her daughter took the tour recently and despite growing up with the ever present feeling that she would see something paranormal, she never saw a thing. But her daughter, years ago at six years old, did. The family was visiting her grandmother and she and her sister were sleeping in the sun room adjacent to her grandmother's bedroom. It was pasted their bedtime and her sister was asleep, but she was awake playing with toys on the floor when she looked up and saw a girl standing in the doorway, blond, about fifteen, in a white nightgown. The image was foggy, but the girl was clearly looking at her playing on the floor. At six she was petrified, but still managed to run through the door, through the foggy girl and into her grandmother's bed.

It was the only time she saw anything at the house. But years later her uncle mentioned seeing the same image in the same doorway.

Southern Missouri

A couple on my tour had an old family ghost story to tell. One of the old men in their family, an uncle or grandfather, in his eighties, had told the same story for decades. When he was a boy there was an old abandoned farm house that the children were always told never to go into. One day he and a friend managed to sneak up to the house and went inside. They were looking around the front room when they turned and saw a man hovering behind them. He had a beard, a white robe, and sandals; the bearded figure was staring at his friend. After what felt like a long time the figure turned to him and before their eyes met he and his friend rain out of the house, down the hill, and never returned to the farmhouse again.