CB sent me the story this morning because she knows I love ghosts (thanks CB!) Sting appeared on The Tonight Show to promote not only his new album, My Songs, but his Las Vegas residency. Somehow, I completely missed the Vegas announcement last week, but starting in May 2020, Sting will be at Caesar’s Palace for a four-month residency. I might in fact make a trip to Vegas for that. As Jimmy Fallon was introducing the album, he paused after If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free to clarify that it was inspired by a haunted house – that Sting lived in!
I love every one of these songs: Desert Rose, If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free, which I heard was written in a haunted house – is that true?
I lived in a haunted house in north London for a very long time. I never believed in ghosts, I was very skeptical about it, until I lived with them. You would wake up in the morning and everything had been reorganized in the kitchen. Furniture was different placed, bottles were smashed, plates were smashed on the floor. And one night, I woke up, and I saw Trudie standing in the corner with our child and I was wondering why she was staring at me. And then I reached over and there was Trudie. And then she went, “who’s that?!” We both saw this woman and a child in the corner of our room. Then we found out, it used to be a pub called The Three Ducks, in the 17th Century. And I don’t know what happened there, but it was a very, very weird atmosphere. And then when I sold the house, it kept being resold every few months. I liked the ghosts, I enjoyed their company.
I grew up with two prominent ghosts: the adult spirit in the house I was raised and the little girl specter in my aunt and uncle’s Tahoe cabin. The ghost that lived with us was very religious. It (I don’t know if it was male or female) would change our radio to a Baptist music station while we were listening to them (as in, it was the 70s and you could see the dial moving). It turned down any music we played that wasn’t classical. It also knocked over glasses, but only if they had alcohol in them. And that’s just the stuff it did consistently. Sting said he was too scared to talk to the ghosts, but I would talk to ours all the time. I shouted at it one time for turning down a Duran Duran record I was listening to and the next time I went to play it, there was a large scratch through three songs. I still have the record. By the end of my time in that house, I’d apologize to the Baptist Ghost every time I swore. These days, I work with a possessed doll from my youth on my desk. If I put her somewhere she doesn’t want to be without something to play with, my life becomes chaotic. If I bring her back out to where I am or give her her favorite teddy bear, things fall back into place. I love this stuff and am so glad Sting and I have something to chat about when I come to see him in Vegas.
Hand to God, just last night, the Professor and I were discussing The Police concert we attended at Dodger Stadium. I said the reason I loved it so much was because all the songs were performed differently than they’d been recorded. Talking with Fallon, Sting explained that the reason he’d recorded different versions of his familiar songs for My Songs is because he sees the first recording of a song as, “the starting point.” He goes on to say that after singing these songs so many times, he tries to find something new about them. Plus, he wants the song to evolve with his voice and new instrument and recording technologies. That is exactly why I loved the concert as much as I did. But the topic came up randomly last night while we were debating getting Elvis Costello tickets and this AM I am listing to Sting explain the very point I was trying to make last night. It’s – dare I say – spooky.
Photo credit: YouTube, WENN Photos and Getty Images
Totally and completely love Sting. As a songwriter, performer, and stone cold fox.
I love him so much! The Police were my first concert when I was 14, right before high school started! I still have their vinyl! AND, I feel old! I have no ghost stories though. I often feel their presence but I never see them. My best friend believes her home is haunted though; something has repeatedly jabbed her in the shoulder. Once when her daughter was very young, she said, “Mom, there is an Indian standing outside my window.”
Great read. Thanks.
Agree, fun read, thanks!
To this day I have never seen something strange but I’m terrified of them . I always think I have some good invisible protection around me that keeps away from me lol
Me too! I don’t want anything to do with ghosts, etc.
I’m with y’all 😂 Unfortunately we live in a very old house in coastal New England and one of my stepdaughters loves to take pictures of the weird orbs that appear in the wine cellar. At least my ghost is prob fun at parties?
I didn’t believe in them either until the spirit of a child called to me, “MAMA?”
It was clear as a bell and you know how several thoughts go through your mind in a split second?
My son never called me Mama. It wasn’t his voice. The heavy wood door hadn’t made a sound. There had been no sound on the old wood stairs and even my cat made noise on those and there was a fog around the light bulb.
I was doing laundry in the basement early one morning in a house built in the 1960s but it was base housing, so, about a million people had lived there.
I tried everything to find an explanation but there wasn’t one.
I even sent a report to the state paranormal society.
They sent a guy out and he said something was going on.
I wasn’t scared but kind of sad. It was a child.
He thought the new popular playground built next to my house might have attracted the spirit of a child.
I don’t know.
Albert Einstein believed in ghosts. He said we are all a bunch of energy and energy never ends so, maybe.
I always hear my dad’s voice or some people calling me or saying short words to me. I think the neurologist Oliver Sacks explains that in one of his books but I can’t remember where. It’s a bit like the déjà vu feeling of having been somewhere that is a glitch in the brain “computing” system.
Could that be it? Or did you distinctively hear it several times?
I hope my questions don’t upset you I am just a sceptic at heart regarding these things: namely, if there were ghosts we’d have had far more certainties than just a voice or a light, or doors shutting… But that’s me and I respect your experience. Also, I love reading people’s ghosts stories here so keep’em coming.
This can be a form of petit mal epilepsy apparently.
Snowslow, I know what you mean, it used to happen to me quite a bit when I was in my 20s, and to my roommate, too, and we would talk about it. I can’t remember the last time it happened, though, not sure why.
I’m willing to believe this was a ghost, I feel like I’ve heard enough stories like this and like Sting’s and Hecate’s to believe. I love reading the ghost stories, too!
My most definitive encounter, I think, was the week after my grandmother passed away. I was reading to my young son in his room and the light next to his bed kept flickering. It had never happened prior to that and never happened after. I checked the bulb and it wasn’t loose or anything, either. It wasn’t scary.
@Esmon Funny, it’s true that it happens less and less now.
I try to believe in ghosts but you have to accept so many things: that there is a soul (or a spirit); that said soul is detachable from the body and lives on; that it can interact with stuff (when clearly it can’t while we’re alive); that it has feelings and a cognitive capacity of some kind independent of the brain, the nervous system and the body; etc etc etc. Seems way too far fetched to me.
However I do love ghost stories as they defy logic and reveal our deepest emotions!
It is often said that spirits communicate through electricity and electrical things, so it is not surprising your light flickered. She was saying goodbye.
The “clear as a bell” thing is true. Spirits and souls communicate with us and you hear it, even though nothing was said, you can hear it. Language is relative, ears are relative, but being told something and understanding it is not- and they communicate to us outside the limitations of speech. Yet, you “hear” it – at the same time. Yeah Ive had that…
Great post! I can’t wait to read people’s experiences with ghost on here!
I have fortunately not come across a ghost yet, I think I would be very scared, but the paranormal world fascinates me.
I haven’t experienced it either, but I can believe it.
If you like ghost stories, I highly recommend Aaron Mahnke’s podcast Lore. Not every episode is about ghosts, but many are. Very spooky and fun.
I have never have experienced a ghost, but I have been hearing for decades someone calling my name. When I was a teenager doing homework in my bedroom, I showed up in the kitchen because I heard someone calling me. It was only me and my mum: Did you call me? No.
It has happened countless times. Same when I used to live with ex boyfriend: you called me? No. The last time it happened on Easter Friday at my parent’s house. It seemed my grandmother voice this time, but all the other times (when grandma was alive) it was like a voice of someone I know, a familiar voice; but I can’t tell who is this.
Hi! See my post above. Oliver Sacks explains this quite well I think but I can’t remember where. I have the same experience. It could be explained by intense concentration of your brain. The brain assesses small noises as loud intrusions and then gives them a familiar interpretations, that is, someone uttering your name. The same thing happens in dreams, outside noises or lights are incorporated in your dreams but slightly distorted and within a storyline so they become something else (like the moonlight can become a women dressed in white for instance).
Funny thing is that not necessary I was concentrated on something, the last time I was exiting from the car. Nothing special.
Over the years we started joking on it.
The negative side is that when my mother called my for real I stopped answering LOL
Eleonor, my husband is the same. Every home we have lived in (5 now), he hears his name and comes to me and says “you called?” And I’m always scared by it! It doesn’t scare him, he brushes it off. But man it freaks me out when he hears his name called in a quiet house at night!
He is of the belief that it’s probably an auditory hallucination, since his name is one syllable and easy for his brain to construct out of other noises around him. Still freaky though!
Ha! LOL to you not answering!
@CharliePenn, yes it is freaky even if 99% of me thinks it’s totally explicable.
I have experienced that a couple of times. It’s never the voice of anyone I know.
The house next door is haunted. The little boy that lives there would tell his parents about the “people in the attic” and how they want to be left alone. They stopped going in the attic and the noises and weirdness around the house stopped.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but if I saw one, then I would. Like, I’m skeptical, but not resistant to evidence. I’m not really into seeking them out, though. It is comforting to think that there is more, but the fact that so many ghosts are depicted as sad or angry also makes it scary to think there is more, IMO
Shocker: Sting is still totally hot!
My dad’s spirit is in my house – I live in the one I grew up in. He passed away from cancer in the house and I believe he stays to soothe me as his death was hard on me. Every once in a while I will smell his cigarette smoke (a brand that no longer is sold where I live and I don’t smoke) – usually when I’m having a really hard day. He also moves things and used to ring the door bell in the middle of the night just to mess with me. It’s really soothing knowing he has my back.
That is sweet and I’m glad you find it comforting. You’re not the first person I know who had a ghostly scent in her life. A co-worker of mine used to smell her grandmother’s perfume in one of her apartments when she was young and single. She thought her grandmother was there to let her know she was protecting her.
My dad’s sister passed away when I was a teen. When we were at her Rosary (Catholic), I was sitting next to my dad, who was devastated, and I could smell my aunt’s perfume, as though she was sitting right next to us.
Slightly ot, but I saw Elvis Costello in ’04 and it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. He played for 3+ hours and included a lot songs from his time with the Attractions. Y’all should definitely go!
I rented a haunted house in Oregon years ago and when I told it I wasn’t afraid (I was), a door closed on it’s own and I never felt it again.
Second Elvis Costello, I saw him a few times, I was not a huge fan before, but after… my god I love him.
And Sting was my first true celebrity crush (and first concert!) and I’m pleased to say I’m not even slightly embarrassed about it. Still hot.
Hi, Bengalcat! (I have a bengal rescue kitty! She’s nuts!)
+1 Elvis Costello fan here. I would love to see Elvis live some day. Also Sting. Both are musical geniuses.
I love how… *my mind blanks* …wait I don’t love that. Heh.
I will say that I have had experiences of “beyond the grave” contact from loved ones.
Also… there seems to be a DJ ghost who follows me around, cueing up and playing relevant music. I am not kidding about this. It has quite the sense of humor!
I’ve experienced it many times over many years, so it is clearly following me from place to place. It’s beyond synchronicity – it has impeccable timing. Fortunately for me, it is kind hearted!
I love all of the ghost story posts and comments. Moar, pleez!
I have a few haunted experiences, and I am interested in the paranormal. But I do not want to live with a ghost!
One if the most haunted experiences I’ve had is something any skeptic would discount: it was all about feelings, and me and my cousins and siblings were children when it happened.
My aunt lived in a beautiful, absolutely giant old farm house. Spirits abounded. Sometimes we heard furniture moving when no one was upstairs, that was scary. But the incident that scared me the most was the attic feeling. There was a room at the top of the attic stairs, and none of us kids could stay in there for any more than a few seconds. The feeling was absolutely oppressive. The room was tiny but if you walked to the window opposite the door, you felt like you were 100 miles away from the door and would never make it out of the room again. It was like moving through mud. Set one foot in the room and you would begin to FEEL IT.
Strangely enough us kids weren’t scared of the other, larger attic rooms and we would play up there a lot. But once in a while the FEELING would get out of that small room and find us in the other rooms. It would happen in a second – we would all (6-8 of us cousins depending on the day), look up with wide eyes and hearts racing, feeling like we were suddenly trapped. Unspoken agreement would be made and we would scramble down the attic stairs as fast as we could. It’s as if whatever was in the room would come visit us in other rooms, and we could feel that it was there. It felt so threatening, so heavy, no way of ignoring it.
Yet we kept going up there! We wouldn’t even dwell on or talk about that room too much. It’s all so strange, looking back. Plus, kid’s reactions are strange to look back on.
My aunt had a huge fat cat that could barely move. A few times, she saw that cat come ripping down the attic steps, fur flying, fast as it could possibly go. She told me this when I told her years later about the oppressive room and she said she also never went in that room. She knew the house was haunted but she didn’t know that all of us kids had this experience. She had some crazy experiences of her own with a child ghost in particular, on the second floor. What we felt was NOT a child.
I’m hoping to come back in a bit and see some more ghost stories inspired by Sting! I love sharing this stuff. I’m quite skeptical in general but I’ve had experiences I can’t explain and so have sooooo many others so I’m highly interested in all this.
Whoa, that is freaky. I was an anxious kid so I think I would have developed a serious fear of going to that house.
It’s so strange… we all adored that house yet were terrified of certain places like that attic room, one of the second floor bathrooms, and of course the basement. Other parts of the house felt haunted with playful, loving energy, which we never felt in other homes. We loved that feeling. It was (in retrospect) a little bit of a high, when we would encounter that good energy. Kids can compartmentalise quite well I guess.
I wish I could enter that house now, with a medium. It was sold many years ago… I always wonder how the new family fared with the different energies.
CharliePenn, you have some great stories! Wasn’t it you that had the cat ghost also?
I’ve never had an explicit ghost experience, but your story reminded me that when I used to babysit for a couple, I could never go into their bedroom for more than a few seconds due to an oppressive presence I couldn’t explain. The way you worded it – that you were 100 miles from the door – so so well put! The couple didn’t seem to notice it, or they never said. Neither did the kids but the two oldest boys would regularly mention “the black man at the window” in their bedroom which gave me the super heebs.
Yes it was me with the ghost cat, wow you have a good memory for names!
It’s funny, even after having many paranormal and unexplainable experiences in my life I still feel rather sceptical. But I can’t deny my own experiences… it’s such a weird subject that way. I guess that’s why it’s so fascinating.
Love Sting! ….Anyone else watch “Ghost Adventures” on the Travel Channel and heard Zak Bagan’s voice as they read this headline? “I never believed in ghosts until I came face to face with one”
ZAK! He’s so ridiculously dramatic, but I love him. He makes me laugh and laugh.
I didn’t give much thought to ghosts but likely wouldn’t have believed in them either. Then I bought a house in an urban area that was over 100 yo. Me and my 2 roommates noticed a lot of activity ( TV and lights turning off and on doors shutting by themselves and so on) then about 2 years in the ghost got really active. She ( I thought it was a She because twice she laid down next too me and the mattress barely compressed) I had a meeting the next morning and she was slamming doors turning my light off and on so I sat up and begged her to stop and poof,
she did!
I would have thought I’d be scared of a ghost but I absolutly wasn’t. She would get really ragey though if i left for an extended period of time. Once before a vacation I closed all interior doors and closed all the shades and left 2 lights on b4 leaving, upon my return
( this is long after having no roomies) I came home and ALL the shades were open ( even one that was at the top of a staircase that NOONE could reach ) and the whole house was a blaze with every light on!!
I could tell a million more stories but I’ll leave it at , since moving I miss her occasionally…
Wow.
Damn if that ghost was gonna do the most you should have asked her to clean your house for you. 🙂
Great post. My younger son has has talked about wanting to go to Vegas — we have family who just bought a place there — so I’m going to suggest we wait until Sting’s residency to plan the trip. As a musician, he’s a real fan of the Police and Sting. I saw the Police at a festival in Chicago in the 80s so it would be nice to hear this evolution of Sting.
I want to know more about Hecate’s possessed doll!
I love reading all of these stories! I pick up energies, and when we were house hunting 8 years ago, there were places I ruled out immediately because the energy was bad.
I’m really sensitive to house energy too.
My husband still likes to tease me about it, but I tell him I saved us from bad things. Lol
I once worked as a scare actor at a “Haunted House” which was staged on a decommissioned US Navy battleship. The ship was legit haunted (of course… heh.)
Some of the spooks were into it and thought we were hilarious, and/or enjoyed helping us freak people out. They played along!
A few of them didn’t want us there. You could tell. They did shit like trip people (including the scarers).
The friendly ghosts were really friendly, and the grouchy ghosts would FFF you up.
It was one of the weirdest experiences of my life.
In any case, you could definitely tell the place was haunted. Then again… pretty much everywhere is, at this point!
Love this story! Hecate- please do tell us more about your possessed doll and the little girl spectre!
I have to add one more…
Once I had 2 guy friends over and I off hand mentioned I had a ghost in the house. They proceeded to mock me and make jokes about how I’d been living alone too long and had conjured her. Subsequently we’re standing in the entryway as they’re leaving and all of the lights and TV are turning off/on and a door loudly slams upstairs,, I turn and they’re both in a dead run too their cars. I stood on the porch shrieking in laughter
Haha-i love that!
Hell to the no about the possessed doll. No, no, no. That would freak me out terribly!
My house is an old Victorian that everyone asks if it’s haunted, but it’s not, luckily nothing has happened there. But I have had weird stuff happen elsewhere.
For those who like ghost stories, I’ve been listening to A Funny Feeling podcast, they usually talk about a known ghost story, have a guest on to share their experiences, and get listener stories too.
Thanks, I’ll check that out!
I live in an old Victorian and have a ghost, I once woke up to her gazing at me w curiosity and kindness, a bit Mom-like, and when she realized I could see her, her eyes widened and she disappeared, and I haven’t seen her again, but sometimes I feel her presence. She had dark hair parted in the middle and tied back, like maybe from the mid-1800s. Sometimes I also feel my childhood dog jump on the bed to be w me. I also used to live in Asia, and in our community, there had been a lot of wars, I never saw ghosts but many others did, they were just part of the community, v magical realism…
I’m so glad someone said something about a deceased pet. I feel my long gone cat jump on the bed in the middle of the night a couple times a week. It doesn’t scare me- it’s actually a big comfort.
I’m more scared of the living than I am of the dead.
I used to see my childhood cat out of the corner of my eye for a long time, before we adopted another.
I absolutely have had past cats visit me! You feel them jump on the bed or hear their particular purr. Or even rest around my shoulders and purr -what a nice feeling! I also used to just know that my Dad would ride in my car. Not just the feeling that he was there but also a scent, a kind of curry and wool combo.
My mom would have some chatty times in the days before she passed and she would talk about who else was in the room with us. Once her eyes snapped open she looked around and said “Where’s your father? He was just here with Rocky!” Rocky was my pet raccoon. It is a nice thought to think that Rocky is hanging out with my family!
I have creepier stories from when I was a child, but nothing like that in years. Thank goodness.
I’m so glad to hear these stories, thanks for sharing…my dog hasn’t visited in ages but I think of her all the time. She was a feisty little Westie who always had to get the last word, so funny spunky and fearless, my role model and a great love in my life, they do live on in our hearts…
I lived with a little girl ghost one summer. I was working at an opera company in a tiny town and “company housing” was in a bunch of ancient decrepit houses. Ours was riddled with every insect imaginable, chipmunks living in the floor boards of one girl’s room, etc. Apparently my room had been the room of the young daughter of the town sheriff. She died of small pox in the room. She kept my room completely free of bugs and wildlife. I could leave my window open (which didn’t have a screen) and no bugs or birds would fly in. My room was always the perfect temperature even when the rest of the house had wild temperature fluctuations. She was cool.
A cool, kind ghost. 🙂
When my grandma was sick in the hospital my sister woke up in the middle of the night and heard a bunch of people in her living room. It sounded like a reunion. They sounded happy. She was still sleepy but she knew it couldn’t be actual people in her living room. She got up to check and in the dark she saw the silhouettes of people sitting in her living room, whispering. She ran back into her bedroom and she cuddled with her husband. Then she dreamed with those people. She could see their faces and genders. Two men, three women. Old timey clothes.
The next day grandma died. Someone mentioned she was the youngest sibling and the last in her family to die. My sister asked more about her siblings and it turns out, those people who came to visit my sister very well could have been her siblings. Two men, three women. My aunt asked my sister to describe each person and my aunt recognized each of them. “Yes, that’s my auntie! That’s my uncle!” So my sister believes her siblings came to take grandma and they couldn’t wait to see her again.
It happened again when my aunt died unexpectedly. A few months later grief took our other grandma, but before it happened my sister had dreams with that auntie warning us. My sister would feel her presence and the ghost would make noises and knock things over. It got too scary and one night my sister asked my aunt to please not come back anymore because she was scaring her and there’s nothing we could do. Grandma was already too sick. My aunt never haunted her again. Her daughter would also hear her voice sometimes but it didn’t scare her. It gave her peace. My dad also heard her voice a few times and it scared the crap out of him (he’s the type to not believe that stuff until it happened to him). I only felt my aunt’s presence very strongly one time. And like, her scent was in my room. I know she was there.
This is was a very strong spirit who visited many of us for months because she died too young and too suddenly. It wasn’t supposed to happen. I guess she wasn’t ready to cross over because she couldn’t accept her death.
When my childhood cat died, he haunted my room for a couple weeks. Cat sized indentations on the bed where he used to sleep, the sound of him sharpening his claws on the laundry basket, I even saw the short ladder to the attic spring back like it did when he jumped off of it. It wasn’t scary at all.
When I was just out of college I started seeing shadow people at night, it was just the figure, but it was distinctly human in shape. I saw the distinct outline of what looked like a military figure in dress uniform with that distinctive cap shape (US Marine if curious) and once it was a small child-sized figure next to my bed reaching for my face. Terrifying. I moved all the time during that stage of my life and it took a few months after every move, but they’d eventually re-appear. I kind of just accepted it and then I learned that it’s a sleep disorder/phenomenon known as Hypnagogic Hallucinations and that I slept with my eyes partially open. Knowing that took the terror of the dreams away and life/sleeping has been so much more pleasant and explained why I always had to sleep in a pitch black room. So if you see the shadow people at night, look into this phenomenon, it’s fascinating!
Now, in my 1938 house I joke that our house ghost is named Penny because we find random pennies where there were none previously. Mostly on the bedside tables or really, just in random places throughout the house. I once found a gray baby sock in the middle of the room and yelled at the ghost that they better give up that dream because there’ll be no babies happening with me. In my two year ownership of the house there had never even been a baby as a guest so it was extremely out of place. It seems a friendly specter and I think it knows we’re trying to save this little neglected house so it’s giving good wishes to us.
I don’t remember this but when I was very little we lived in an old Victorian and my mom said I used to talk about “the other family” all the time. I would say things like, “The other mom doesn’t like this room anymore,” after my mom wall-papered a room, or “the other girl wants to go outside.” It really freaked me parents out, they thought I had problems(tm). They said they took me to various doctors who said there was nothing wrong with me. One doctor told them I was very creative and they should just let me enact my fantasies and I would outgrow it. The only part of this I remember is a nightmare I had right before we moved out when I was about four. I remember the other mother was going to take me away. I screamed the house down and my parents found me wedged between the sofa and the wall in my playroom. We were in the process of moving out, and we left that house just a couple days after my dream.
After I was grown my mom and I got to talking and she asked if I remembered the “yellow house.” I did, and I said my clearest memories were of running my fingers across the beadboard in the kitchen, and the nightmare I had. That’s when she told me about the other family I talked about. I googled property records for that house and found a newspaper scan from the turn of the century. A family, including a young girl, died in a fire. I don’t remember the other family, except for my dream, but my mom said I talked about them as if they were right in the room with us.
Spooky stories post l! YES! I love spooky stories but I’m not really receptive for these kind of things so besides a funny episode that happened to my mother and myself I have never witnessed anything but I am a believer.
My mother is more sensitive and have experienced more things. Just last week she was not able to sleep and at 2 am she was listening some classical music in Spotify with her headphones on and the eyes closed.
Her cat was sleeping on her belly and suddenly she heard a clear woman’s voice telling her pacefully: “Go to sleep”. She opened the eyes expecting to see somebody but her sister who was the only person in the house was deeply slept in her own room with the door closed.
Later we talk about it and concluded it could had been an elderly lady who was her friend and sadly passed away the week before who was coming to say goodnight and goodbye.
As per the religious spirit, I think I would be upset about the music. When it’s summer I only play my happy summer Playlist at home so I think I would should at her: Hey let me listen to my reggaeton in peace!
I’ve never had any kind of encounter, unfortunately, but a couple years ago my parents told me about their stay at the Drake Hotel in Chicago in the mid-90s. First off, they are the most skeptical type people who would never believe in this type of stuff.. but anyway, they said at one point in the middle of the night, the door to the small closet in the room creaked open. My dad woke up and shut it and went back to sleep. A little while later, it opened again and he heard some ruffling around. He went over there again to check it out but this time didn’t close the door. Went back to sleep and that was basically it. But still, something was in that closet and they did not want the door shut! Lol.. I’ve since looked up the Drake online and there are lots of haunted stories about that hotel. Crazy!
I always lived in homes where I saw, felt or heard ghosts. In our childhood home I woke up at 4 am and one was sitting at the side of my bed a few days before my great aunt died. A friend/ neighbor saw one go up the stairs. My aunt came down the stairs and he asked her who had gone up, she said there was no one on the stairs other than her. He was rigid with shock, because from where he was he had seen the legs go up the stairs. When I was just barely pregnant, living in a rental, my husband saw one, a very old man who put his hand to his lips in a shhh gesture. My heart shaped candlesticks broke that night. At our current house we were all in the living room and heard footsteps walk across the unfinished attic floor above our heads. Heavy footsteps, and the kids and I thought it was my husband. Moments later my son went to the bottom of the stairs to call him to come downstairs to eat. No answer. My husband drove up into the driveway and came in a few minutes later. We were afraid and he went to check, no one was up there. The ghost in our house is a tall gangly figure, a young man we assume. Sometimes he looks like he’s in a bomber jacket. Our house was built in 1912. I just saw home a few days ago as I glanced up from the dining room into the kitchen. I told my youngest who asked “how are you not afraid”? A day later my youngest saw him and freaked out.
Okay, now y’all are going to be sure I’m trippin’ but I’m actually not a druggie and I’m fairly well educated. 🙂
We were able to buy this lovely house when the market was down.
It’s a larger house and my entire town used to be a very large ranch and before then, Native American land.
After a couple of years, my older daughter told me the house was haunted.
I told her it’s just a large house with a lot of mechanical stuff through-out and it creaks and the wind can be strong but she said she was seeing shadow people.
I’m a registered Cherokee; not by a lot but still and I asked her if she wanted me to smudge the house.
She said she would do it and I said, “You be you.”, (She’s kind of a holistic, witchy woman) and she did and that did it.
They were gone.
Forward a couple of years.
I never told anyone this but I started seeing shadow people.
It’s hard to explain.
Soon after, my younger girl came to me and out of the blue said she thought the house was haunted and told me some things.
Nothing threatening but still and her sister came and smudged the house again.
No more shadows.
You know, anyone can smudge a house.
A friend of mine said you should tell the good spirits they can stay but the others have to get out.
F**k that. They all need to get out.
“F**k that. They all need to get out.”
lol 🙂
But, actually, I’ve heard it’s best not to talk to them. Good or bad, the interaction can open a channel into another “world” or “realm”.
Don’t know if it’s true because my granddad told his sister to go away after the whole family was stressed over her appearances. She never returned.
Good to know. 🙂
Thank you.
I felt badly that I was startled with the child and didn’t try to tell him/her to go to the light where Mama was but dang! 5:00 alone in a basement…it was a little unnerving.
I had a ghost in my apartment in Boston. I called her “apartment ghost” — super original, lol. I heard her walking in the living room when I was on the other side of the apartment. She was fine, she just liked to pace.
My new house is a massive old Victorian split into condos. It used to be a funeral home, among other things, and the guy who owned two of the units has been in jail for 7 years for running a Ponzi scheme. It’s got great history, I love it. Anyway, I don’t have any people ghosts there so far, but there is a ghost cat. I see it out of the corner of my eye, when my cat is confirmed to be somewhere else (like, I can hear her clawing the couch and I’m in the kitchen). My dryer turns on by pushing a button that beeps — it beeps A LOT when I’m not in that room (and neither is my cat). And my cat talks to the ghost cat. It’s cool, as long as Ghost Cat doesn’t both Actual Cat, we’re all good.
My more recent one was a few years ago in my old flat which in an old victorian house conversion. I was awaken one night with the presence of a dark shadow standing over me and a distinctly female voice in my head telling me that I need to ‘wake up, there is someone in the garden’. I got up put on the lights and checked no one was there – maybe I scared them off when i put the light on but it didn’t scare me or anything. I saw glimpses of her a few times over the 4 years I lived there but I never once felt uncomfortable.
I love these stories so much! I think I’d have a heart attack in Sting’s situation, though — someone in the corner of my bedroom staring at me? Yikes!
OK last one….as I mentioned up thread my ghost would get really active if I left the house for long periods of time. I had basically been living at my to be husbands house so I was rarely home. I rushed home 1 night after work to shower and change for a baseball game ( go royals) I had laid my clothes on the bed and when I jumped out of the shower I’m standing in my room and a heavy, cotton shirt levitates off my bed and flips over. As I said I was rushing around but this stopped me in my tracks and said aloud “ that’s freaky!” but because as mentioned I was somewhat used to her shenanigans I quickly moved on…
I ran down stairs and grabbed water bottle to bring w/me and the cap of the bottle ricoshayed of one wall, on to the opposite and back, it had such velocity it shocked me!
I was telling my bro on the way back from the baseball game about it and my little nephew piped up from the back as he was dropping me “ Dad we are NOT going in!” 😂
My house is haunted. We see a lot of orbs and twinkling lights. My cats see them too and will sit and watch them.
A few years ago I kept waking up and seeing a dark figure standing in the corner. It was darker than usual in the room and I wasn’t sure of what I saw. I didn’t feel threatened and went back to sleep. The next night same thing, only it was closer. Still didn’t feel threatened and went back to sleep. Same thing the next night only it was directly to the side of me looking down on me. Still didn’t feel threatened, went back to sleep. That morning my husband said “did you know there’s a dark shadow watching you sleep?” I told him I wasn’t sure but since he saw it also I guess it was true. That night I woke up and there were dancing lights above me. I remember thinking “oh, cool!” LOL I never saw the dark figure again.
This one is more recent. We re-did the master bathroom and at one point there was a huge hole in the floor, one of the heating ducts goes under the floor there and there was a problem with it so they were going to fix it while they had the floor open, so the heat was turned off. Did I mention this was in the middle of winter? My husband stayed elsewhere with the cats so I was there alone. I woke up in the middle of the night with someone spooning me and rocking me. It seemed as they realized I was awake they slowly stopped and disappeared. I was little freaked, but not badly. I felt like it was an old lady. I always hear sturdy footsteps coming up the sidewalk to my front door but there’s no one there. It sounds like someone in sturdy healed shoes, like Ferragamo-type heals. So I’m wondering if that’s who was spooning me.
Ghost activity always seems to ramp up when we do any house renovations.
The other night my husband swears he saw a ghost cat. He saw the tail of a cat run by the bed but both of our cats were already on the bed. I hear things hitting the floor like they’re being knocked off a shelf, but there’s nothing on the floor. The cats will get up to check it out, also. They never seemed scared or freaked.
That is so freaky! I would be terrified but it’s cool that you can be so chill about it 😉 .
I absolutely LOVE all these stories, thanks to everyone for sharing!!!
None of you are being serious right ? lol
bima,
Are you my Irish Catholic husband who does NOT believe in spirits/ghosts but believes in other things like Mary was a virgin, just go to confession and you are forgiven, the Pope actually talks to God, demons and exorcism?
Just because you haven’t experienced it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and stop stalking my celebrity gossip! You love Sting!
There a part of the brain you can stimulate that makes a person feel a “presence” in the room with them. It’s not a big mystery. It’s why some people think God talks to them too.
Ah ghost stories! I have a love/hate relationship with them! As far as I know I’ve never lived in a haunted dwelling. But two things happened in two of the houses I grew up in that were strange but since they were one time occurrences it’s hard to know.
The first was when I was under the age of 10 I think and I used to share a room with my sister. I woke up out of a dead sleep while it was still dark out and saw a face of a disembodied man floating above me. I can’t remember what the face looked like too much, just that it was a man and it had a beard and vaguely looked like my dad. My instinctual response to this weird image was to raise one of my arms towards it because I was confused I guess. As soon as I raised my arm, the face dissolved and vanished. That’s when I freaked out and hid under the covers. I can’t remember if I ever told my parents about it at the time but years later I asked my dad (who is still alive today) if he looked like anyone in his family. I’ve come to suspect it was the spirit of my great-grandfather visiting his great-granddaughters. He died before I was born so I never met him. I have no proof of course and to this day I’m not sure if it was a dream. But it felt very real when it happened. There was no repeat incident and I have not ever woken to a face floating above me since (thank God because it freaked me out enough the first time).
The second incident happened in the second house I grew up in and the whole family experienced this one. We were all woken up by the TV downstairs that had turned on by itself and was on FULL VOLUME. It was so loud which is why we all woke up. I usually watched TV later than my family and went to bed after them but I never typically watched it in that room and I always remembered to turn the TV off. It freaked the entire family out because we thought maybe someone had broken into the house or something (that room was in the basement level and had a door that led to our backyard and was also right next to the garage). My father went out with our dog to do a full round of the house but there was no one there. It only happened once so it could have been some power surge/electrical thing in the area. But it weirded all of out. I never got any weird feelings in that house apart from my own bedroom but I chalked it up to the fact my bedroom was over the garage which had a lot wires and stuff. Apparently being near lots of wire/electricity can induce feelings of unease and paranoia or something. Because I never experienced anything strange in that room, just my own paranoia lol.
My parents just moved into a new house and I keep joking they have a ghost only because one of the dimmers in their rooms on the first floor doesn’t seem to work properly. We figured out it seems to be linked to the microwave which messes with the dimmer’s settings. So no stories at that house yet but they’ve only been there a few months and are doing a lot of renovations which I am told can “awaken” spirits. So we’ll see!
I do not believe in ghosts! I swear. I’m such a sceptic. HOWEVER, I did live in a possibly haunted house once. It was over 100 years old. We locked ourselves out and broke a small pane of glass to get in. Why we didn’t call a locksmith??? Young and stupid. Maybe? Anyway. The house got mad at us. Our super happy house started feeling weird. When sleeping upstairs, I would wake up feeling like I was being smothered. Eventually, I quit even going upstairs and slept on the couch. And then, a friend tripped and fell into the glass coffee table breaking the glass. Glass for glass! The house chilled after that but we moved anyway.
Soon after my grandfather died, the light in our guest room wouldn’t turn off – and then my ex husband slept in the room, had a vision of my grandfather on the edge of the bed and the light was fine. In our last house together, he and I both saw a little dark haired, dark skinned girl wearing a white dress run though our living room. We both saw her and went to look for who was there and no one was. It was odd because we described her the exact same way.
My now husband’s ex wife killed herself in a terrible way, after a terrible mental breakdown. I was scared that she would come back and haunt us because her soul might be unsettled. I bought a HUGE thing of sage and burned it throughout the house….so far, no issues (thankfully).
I live in a building with no pets allowed, but I want one. I should look into getting a ghost cat LOL.
And you don’t have to deal with a litter box. They’re perfect pets.
We have a ghost in our kitchen. It knocks things off the windowsill(my poor plants) and opens one cupboard door every night. We don’t bother it and it doesn’t bother us. We found out recently that a lady died in our house but I don’t think it’s her because all this didn’t start until the guy next door passed away. I’m not worried about it. But my sister does have a ghost in her house and I haven’t been back because it doesn’t have good vibes and gives a cold feeling.
I’ve never had a ghostly encounter myself but I believe you all, Sting, Hecate, and others, and I thank you for sharing. The UK seems to have a lot of ghosts and haunted for some reason. I remember a bunch of cricketers talking about their experience. And the Hampton Court ghost pic/story is one of the best ones I’ve come across.
We live in a world where we can perceive only a tiny, tiny part (less than 0.01% or something) of visible light. Our sciences haven’t caught up to reality yet.
My greatest fear IS encountering a ghost — because of all the questions it would raise, I guess!
I always claim to have never had a supernatural experience of my own, but then I’ll think of 100 different terrifying things I’ve witnessed. I guess I don’t THINK of them as supernatural experiences because of what that would mean! I am in Ghost Denial.
Oh! I love all of this! I currently live in a haunted house, and it doesn’t bother me, but my friends sometimes get upset when they visit.
I lived in a house built in the 1920s. When I was watching tv in the living room I heard something moving around in the attic and then distinct footsteps. I freaked (because humans are scarier than ghosts) and my boyfriend checked upstairs when he got home…nothing. I kept hearing the same noises and footsteps and we would check the attic to find nothing. No scat, no sign of anything. Finally one night, alone again, the footsteps were so loud I couldn’t hear the tv. I looked at the ceiling and yelled, “I hear you and acknowledge you and need you to be quiet so I can watch my show!” Not a sound after that, at least that I heard. My now husband is a super skeptic and finally admitted to me the house freaked him out. I took sleeping pills, so I never heard anything at night. He told me he would often wake up to noises in the attic that sounded like a baby keening, except inhuman. He grew up on a farm and never heard any sound like it that would explain the noises from the attic.
A friend of my mom’s bought a house on property that was once part of Fort Monmouth, NJ—the site of several Revolutionary War battles. At 6 am every morning, she kept hearing a sound like someone was marching up and down her sidewalk. After some research, she found a guard standing sentry was shot dead on that spot in the early morning. She found it rather comforting, for she felt he was still on duty. Plus the fact, no burglar would drop in because the house’s reputation was well-known in the neighborhood. 🙂
This is my favorite celebitchy post and list of comments EVER!
The last house I lived in was haunted. Every morning at 8 a.m. it would come up the basement stairs and open the door. Then it would walk around in the kitchen and living room. It got to the point where I would set an alarm on my phone for 7:30 so I wouldn’t be in the kitchen or living room when it came.
There were times when I would hear people talking in the basement through the furnace vents. When I was brave enough I would tip toe to the door between the kitchen and the basement stairs. I could hear them, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. When I opened the door, they would immediately stop talking.
The washing machine and dryer were in the basement. I never did laundry when my husband wasn’t home and when he was, I made him go with me to the basement.
OK, so my turn! 10 years ago I lived in a haunted studio with my boyfriend (I’m from Bucharest, Romania). We knew from the beginning that the last two owners had died there, but we were both in college and the place was really nice and cheap. It was haunted by, what I believe, an old lady, who the previous owner.
Whenever I was in the shower, I felt this immense fear and urgency to leave the bathroom right then! I started showering with the door open and always when my boyfriend was at home, but the fear was still was there. It was as if there was someone there watching me shower and telling me to hurry up, faster, faster, for no reason.
Towards the end of our stay there, it got worse. One evening, it was clear weather, no wind, and the window to our balcony started shaking and slamming. We just looked at each other and couldn’t believe it.
A bowl moved on the table, left from right and I got that on tape. No inclination, no wind, no nothing.
Things falling off shelves and tables, lights flickering, the whole shebang.
The freakiest and most intense thing that happened to me while I was living there, and I swear this is true, was when I started getting shaken. I would stay on the couch, in the bathroom, kitchen and feel as if someone grabbed me by my shoulders and just shake me for a couple of seconds. This went on for two weeks. I asked myself what the hell it meant and it just came to me that it was the old lady trying to warn me about an earthquake, because that’s what it felt like. So, I started obsessing about the earthquake. I told every single one of my friends, and my parents, that there was going to be an earthquake, that my ghost warned me about it. On a Friday evening, I was simply petrified with fear that it was going to happen that night. I convinced my boyfriend to leave the house for a couple of hours. There was no earthquake… that evening. It was the next day, Saturday, while my boyfriend was at work. We were living on the eighth floor and the whole place moved so much. After it happened the calls started to come in. I felt so much satisfaction!
My boyfriend didn’t believe in ghosts until the studio. We had even talked about getting a priest there, but eventually, we just moved shortly after the earthquake.
London is full of ghosts. We had two in the house I lived in in Maida Vale, one we called ‘the pipe smoker’ he would turn up two or three times a year for a few hours with a strong smell of pipe smoke just in one tiny two foot circle in the hall way. No one in the three apartments in the old house smoked and we could all smell it in exactly the same spot on each floor. Not only the smoke but the area in that two foot circle was icy cold when the pipe smoker was there, walking through it was like walking in and out of a refrigerator. Never saw or heard him just the smoke smell (no actual smoke) and the cold spot.
The second one turned up in the basement flat sometimes for a day or two at a stretch, and just hummed to himself, no moving of the furniture or visuals other than a slight feeling that your vision wasn’t quite as sharp when he was there, like there was an invisible mist in the air.
One of the next door neighbours saw a lady in a long white coat walking up the stairs and vanish through the landing wall on a couple of occasions
One of my work colleagues had the closest encounter; she was going to see a lawyer in one of those old buildings that still had cage lifts. She was in the lift making her way up to the lawyer’s floor, when the lift stopped and in got a Bishop in full regalia, mitre, cope and crook. She was surprised to say the least, being London she just thought it was some someone in fancy dress and got off at her floor, when she mentioned it to the lawyer and he said , without batting an eye lid oh that’s just the ghost, odd duck.
The creepiest ghost story came from a friend who managed the Revillon fashion house in London, they had just relocated from Harvey Nichols to a new shop in Bond street which used to be a bank. One night the night watchman saw goop (ectoplasm) seeping out from around the bank vault and dripping down the walls, he quit the next day saying he had seen dead people walking about the building , he was a tough ex-military Yorkshireman but he was utterly shell shocked. It took about two months to finally clear out the walking dead with various psychics and exorcists. It was put down to the fact that there was an electrical substation on the other side of the vault wall which may have been attracting spirit entities.
On a side note ghosts are legally recognised in the UK, if your house is haunted then you have to declare it when selling the property. If you fail to disclose it you can be made to refund the new owners. I wonder if the law was in place when Sting sold his house?
this thread is THE BEST
I need more stories
let’s go
+1
I’ve seen ghosts and had ghost experiences since I was ten, when there used to be this column of light that would mess with me in my room every night. I’d wake up and it would be right by my face, then it would float back to the middle of the room and just stay there. Any time I hid under the covers or closed my eyes, it would come back to the side of my bed until I looked at it again. Sometimes if I couldn’t sleep, I would see it start at my doorway, but usually it woke me up by the side of my bed. There was also a column of dark shadow that would lurk in the doorway of my sisters’ bedroom. I don’t know if they were the same ghost, but I was terrified of our hallway and sleeping every night. My mom told me I was imagining things, but she admitted after I was grown that she saw it too.
We moved to a REALLY haunted house, and I started seeing people in mirrors. You’d see shadows of someone running through the house sometimes. I had this amazingly cool attic bedroom that any teen would love. It was huge and had a passageway with a little hidden nook. But my mirror kept fogging over and other people’s faces would show up, and then it started in my window, and then the mice started acting weird. I had one that would come and sit on the floor a couple feet from the end of my bed (which was just a boxspring and mattress on the floor). It would sit up on its hind legs and watch me do homework or read. At first it would run back a few feet when I threw magazines or shoes at it, but then after a couple days it got reinforcements and three of them sat on their hind legs in a line watching me and refused to flinch when I threw things. Then they started moving closer. I ran and moved to a tiny closet bedroom off the living room that night and have been afraid of mice ever since.