Little Rock, Arkansas

A couple from Little Rock, Arkansas joined me a few months back. The husband had grown up in Alton, Illinois and once during his childhood had woken from a bad dream and went looking for his mother. The bedrooms were on the second floor in a type of loft with a balcony allowing a view into the living room. The walls on either side of the fireplace were bookshelves. When he stepped out of his room he saw his mother, her back to him, moving along the bookshelves. He called out to her and behind him her bedroom light flipped on. He turned toward it to hear his mother's voice and when he turned back to the bookshelf the figure was gone.


Many years later in Arkansas he and his then wife were driving down a misty country road late at night. It was very hilly and rural; there was a small church ahead of them. As they got closer to the church he saw a couple in the road. They were older, dancing close together, eyes locked completely on one another. The car went straight through them. He turned to his wife, sure that he had imagined the whole thing. "Did you see that?" She did.



His wife had an animal story, and while I certainly have heard them before, I don't hear all that many in general. They had just moved into a new house and her project was to get the back yard in order. She spent a lot of time raking and pulling up weds. When she raked in one area of the yard, she would always feel something brush up against her, like a cat. Only when she turned, there was never anything there. She figured it was her imagination, or some especially soft plant. This went on for sometime. Later she met one of her new neighbors and mentioned that she was fixing up the back yard. Her neighbor replied that she was liable to dig up bones. The previous owner had buried her cat in the backyard. The neighbor described the specific area and sure enough it was the same place.

Manteca, California

The parent child bond can often stay with us long after our bodies have been separated. In June I had a woman on my tour from Manteca, California. Unfortunately, she had to leave early since her little girl was exhausted. But before she left, she told me that when she was young her mother had died. Her father later remarried and they moved to another house; it was a little too awkward for his new wife to live in the house where her mother had died. Shortly after they had moved her father and stepmother were gone for the night and some friends came to keep her company. The family had moved a large ornate mirror from the old house into the new one and mounted it in the hallway. At one point during that night she walked down the hallway past the mirror and one of her friends saw the wispy figure of a woman float behind her.



She had also had the opportunity to speak with the people who lived in her old house. They said that sometimes they saw a woman with a turban going from room to room as if she were looking for something. Her mother had died of cancer and wore a turban in her final days.

Boulder 1960

Just as I finished hearing that dark story about Berlin, another woman on my tour shared an equally unusual story with me. She called it her "pre-ghost" story.


In 1960 when she was 6 years old she lived in Boulder Colorado. Her mother was 6 months pregnant. One night at dusk she looked out the screen door into the back yard. They lived in a neighborhood with and alley behind the house and other houses beyond. As she looked out the door, she saw a baby, about one year old, walking down the alley, limping and dragging its leg along. The baby stopped and turned to her, waved, and continued to limp down the alley. The baby was clear to her, but she could see right through it.


The next day her mother had a miscarriage and the fetus had no ankle on one leg and the other leg was twisted around. It lived for about 30 minutes after it was born.

From Connecticut to Berlin

Tonight I got to speak with a woman visiting from Connecticut. She'd done some traveling in Europe in 2004 and had some strange experiences in Berlin.


She and a companion were staying at a hotel there and plagued with nightmares, so they decided to check out of their hotel and stay at a youth hostel. They booked it online for two nights. When they arrived, she immediately felt uneasy; the building looked like a hospital. Inside wasn't much different, the waiting area, the rooms, not only did it feel like a hospital but no one had bothered to redecorate. The floor they were on was empty except for the two of them, but they were so uncomfortable that they escorted one another to the bathroom. They decided to stay out as late as they could to avoid sleeping there. Eventually when they did get back to the hostile, they got in bed and turned out the light. Immediately they heard beeping sounds, like monitors. The beeping was down the hall, then in the floor above them, then across the hall, on and on. They tried to ignore it and go to sleep. Finally her companion did fall asleep, and she was almost out when she heard a loud beep right beside her head. She jumped out of bed and woke him up. They decided to sleep with the lights on. By 6:30 in the morning they woke and everything was silent. Immediately they checked out. The young lady at the front desk asked them why and they told her flat out, "this place is haunted." The girl shrugged. "What was this place before?" they asked. The girl said it had been a hospital for invalid children, but the woman on my tour felt it must have been older than that, maybe from one or both world wars.


They left that place and for the next six months or so, could not speak of it to one another. Her companion fell ill and went from hospital to hospital, baffling all the doctors. No one could figure out what was wrong with him. After six months, things seemed to clear up. But even tonight, as she shared the story with me, she felt the chill of it.

Games

Just last night I was chatting with my tour participants about some strange experiences they had had with the paranormal. They were three generations, grandparents, dad, and daughter and the young lady was looking at colleges in New Orleans. The grandmother said that when her son was growing up there was a little spirit that played with him and sometimes kept them up at night roaming the hallways.


As it turns out her husband wrote a book about that experience and other paranormal experiences that he has had over his lifetime. So I have never had this opportunity before, but I want to post the link to his book. You can buy it on Amazon, The Elaborate Game by Robert Lawson. I have not read it but I look forward to checking it out.


Here is the link. http://www.amazon.com/The-Elaborate-Game-Robert-Lawson/dp/1452579172/ref=sr_1_94?ie=UTF8&qid=1405741146&sr=8-94&keywords=Robert+Lawson

From Harvey to Jackson

A woman from Jackson, Mississippi came on the tour back in the winter. She used to live in Harvey outside of New Orleans. In that home her kids would see a man come into their bedroom and keep an eye on them. He was an old black man who wore a red plaid flannel shirt and a newsboy hat. One day the woman was talking to a neighbor. The neighbor said that her uncle had died in the house during Katrina. She described him. The woman called her children over and had them repeat their description of the man they had seen in their bedroom-- it was the same.

Although the family had moved, the kids still saw him. He was a comfort to them. One day, not long after they had first moved, the woman was sitting on the bed facing the closet. Nothing had been placed in the closet yet, just a red flannel shirt belonging to her partner. As she sat in the bed looking at the otherwise empty closet, the arm of the shirt lifted, it turned 180- degrees to face her, then after a moment turned back at rest.

Long Island

Back in January, a man came on the tour with one of those stories that leaves me bawling. His daughter died at 3 and his son has serious birth defects; he cannot walk or talk. The man said that the daughter hangs out with her brother. She would be 26 today, and her brother is 21. One day the man and his son came home from lunch at McDonald's. He had to use the bathroom, so he wheeled his son into the house, locked the wheels, and ran to the bathroom. While he was in there, he heard the toy piano playing. It was in the closed toy box. Naturally he figured it was his deceased daughter, "Natalie, I know you want your brother out, but give me a minute" the playing continued. He said it again, and again the playing continued. This wasn't like her. He said, "Hit the key once for yes and twice for no--Are you Natalie?"  

Two hits.

 "Are you someone else?" 

One hit. 

"Are you with her" 

One hit. 

He said, "Okay, you can stay, so long as you are nice to my son and protect him." 

When the man came out of the bathroom, he fished the piano out of the toy box and turned it off.

Outside San Francisco

It is funny how different people can be important in our lives at the same time, yet never meet. A woman from outside San Francisco told me that one day her housekeeper, who was part of the family and had been for many years, took her aside and told her a man had been in the house while everyone was away. He had walked into the hallway from the bathroom, then went back in, then out again and into the family room. The housekeeper had seen him from the top of the stairs. When the woman asked her to describe the man, she described a tall man in a Pendleton shirt with suspenders, jeans, work boots and a hat. It was the exact description of the woman’s ex-father-in-law who had passed. Although the father-in-law and the housekeeper were both close to the family, they had never met.

Plattsburgh, New York

Some people have one ghost story to their name, while others have more than they can count. Recently I met a couple with a lot of stories to tell. They were from Plattsburgh, New York, close to Montreal. The first member of the woman’s family to come to the US from Poland was a great aunt. The family knew the graveyard where she was buried, but they could not find her grave. Three generations they had been looking for it until one night she was in bed, not really asleep, when a man in a turn of the century suit and a bowler hat appeared at the foot of her bed. He told her the grave was by a big tree, and pushed over and that was why no one had found it. Her husband went to the graveyard, following the instructions and sure enough, found the tomb stone.

Before the couple was married, he lived in an old house converted by a friend into apartments. He moved in, unpacked the TV and a few other things, but still had a room full of unopened boxes. One day he could not find the remote. He was sure that he had unpacked it, but it was nowhere to be found. Later he went into the room full of unopened boxes to look for something else. He found the remote at the bottom of an unopened box. Hey, he figured that he was mistaken and the remote had been there all the time. A few weeks later the remote was gone again. He found it at the bottom of a different box in that room.

On another occasion he had a vivid dream that there was a stairwell where his bedroom closet was and there where workmen building the house. One of them turned directly to him and called him by name. The workman said that if the guy ever needed help to call his name, Paul M…?? and he would help. The workmen were stuffing hay and mud into the walls. Much later the couple was vacationing with the friend who renovated the house. The man shared this dream over dinner. His friend was befuddled. When he renovated the house he closed up the stairway and removed the hay and mud, never mentioning any of those things to his friend.

Bubbles in Milwaukee

I have seen a lot of orbs in my time, most in photos, a few live and in person, but recently a woman shared something about orbs that was new to me. She was from outside Milwaukee and had a seven year old daughter. Her daughter would often talk about seeing "bubbles." Sometimes they showed up in her closet and she would talk to them; other times she would come into her parents’ bed, complaining she couldn't sleep because the bubbles were keeping her up. The mother never saw a thing. 

Until a recently, when she was in a room with her daughter and thought she saw a ball of light by a ceiling fan. She decided to go into her daughter's room to take a picture and see if anything showed up. The room was empty and there was nothing. Later she took a photo with her daughter in the room and the orb showed up.

The part of this story that I have never heard before is that her daughter plays with the "bubbles," moving them around in the air with her hands. Why not? I guess a childlike innocence goes a long way.