If you ever get a chance, man, go to Savannah. You can walk around the city with an a drink and it’s perfectly legal, full of haunted places, beach, and oddly enough, at least 30 magic/oddity shops. It’s a creepy place but so cool.

When I was 12, I made the mistake of watching The Exorcist at my cousin’s house, which absolutely ruined me for the following two or three months.  One night shortly thereafter, back at my house, I was lying in bed, trying desparately to go to sleep (glancing at the clock every few seconds, calculating how little sleep I was going to get if I wanted to get up and get ready in time for the bus), when I heard a small pop in the ceiling in the corner opposite of my bed.  My house was always settling somehow, especially during windy fall nights, but I was still on high-alert mode.  You know the feeling, your eyes are as wide as they possibly can be, you can feel the blood rushing to your head, you can even hear your own pulse wooshing through your ears.  That was young Armathrillo, rationalizing away a small creak while simultaneously preparing for an untimely death couresy of Lucifer and Linda Blair.  As the wave of “don’t be ridiculous, it’s just wood” was preparing to wash over me, I heard another pop, then a scratch, then an absolutely maddening scurry, something was dragging itself accross my ceiling directly towards me!  I pictured some gravity-defying baby with no legs and claw-like hands making its way towards me (think Trainspotting mixed with something from Silent Hill, though I hadn’t experienced either of those yet).  I jumped straight the hell up and tried to make my way out of the room, and instantly went from out-of-breath to tunnel-vision to blind and stumbling.  I stubbed every toe I had, and somehow between my room and my parents’ room, managed to calm down enough to explain that there was a fucking demon spawn in my room.
Mom and Dad came back with me, and I thought, “great, now it’s not going to do it again.” But it did!  Clear as anything!  It was the real deal!  Though, we couldn’t see what was making the noise.  Mom was almost as freaked out as I was.  Dad, as always, was cool as a cucumber.  “We’ll take care of it in the morning.”  “Take care of what in the morning?”  “The squirrel.”  And, yeah, he was right.  Though, who knows, it might’ve been possessed.  Right?  Right.
Cheetara:  This was my favorite/most hated picture from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I hate spiders.

Some things that have scared, (and scarred) me:

Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind – especially the scene where the UFO ship comes down & abducts the kid.  It’s clever that you never actually see the aliens, yet get scared shitless, (especially when they start unscrewing the screws on the floor, or their POV as they’re coming down the chimney).

Poltergeist – that fucking clown doll.  I HATE HATE HATE clowns even to this day!  Then when that big head popped up as Craig T. Nelson is pulling on the rope?  Who would’ve expected THAT?  Now the movie’s getting lampooned by him in commercials.  Still scary as hell.

Tales From the Darkside TV show -Episode: Inside the Closet.  Those red eyes.  Oh God those red glowing eyes!  Then when that little hand/claw just missed grabbing the girl’s foot?  And then the payoff when we finally see the monster.  Too bad the corny ending takes some of the edge off of the episode.  As soon as I saw it was that episode, I couldn’t watch it.

Scream – (The original).  Really tense & scary scenes all throughout.  You never knew when someone was gonna get killed or who was doing the killing.  Too bad they had to do Scream 2, Scream 3, Scary Movie & all the other knockoffs that have since marginalized the film.

Alf. I must have been about 5 when it was on. That weird brown dude scared the shit outta me.

Great stories everyone!  I only wish I wasn’t reading these at work under fluorescent lights so that I could creep myself out a little more. Here’s mine.  So I was around 7 or 8 at the time.  One night, I wake up with a sore throat and a cough.  I feel horrible, so I get out of bed and go into my parents’ room and wake up my mom.  She and I walk down the long hallway from our bedrooms, then through the living room.  She goes into the kitchen to get some medicine, turning on the lights and rummaging through the cabinets.  You know how when your eyes are adjusted to the dark, turning on a light is really harsh, so I just stand in the dark in the living room, resting against a chair, waiting on her.  When she’s done, she walks past me and I follow her back to our bedrooms.  She used to always wear these long, flowing silky night gowns, so I grab onto a handful of nightgown and let her lead the way.  Only, for some reason, she turns and goes into the spare bedroom instead.  I walk just into the room and think “this is weird” and let go of her nightgown.  Suddenly, she’s gone.  I get panicky and run back into the kitchen where I find my mom, still rummaging through the cabinets.  So, yeah.  True story.  Granted, it’s a true story from a possibly feverish kid, and aside from a few bumps in the night, nothing like that ever happened again at our house, but who knows?   It’s still the scariest thing that ever happened to me.

Hm… I remember one time when I was four I saw Jay Jay the Jet Plane and had a dream that there scary happy faces were trying to kill me. My mom took away the tape… mine is patetic.

Oh my God, how could I forget the nightmare episode of Facts of Life?!?!?  I don’t know if it was a halloween episode or not, but it scared the life out of me!  All I remember now is Natalie being choked to death with fuzzy dice – which really upset me because she was my fave – and someone wearing a pig mask wielding a chainsaw. 

The worst experiences for me are late at night when my brain dredges up music and defunct closing logo jingles from television shows I watched early on in my childhood.
The worst was when I was going through summer session studying for my American Government final. Three days were spent almost sleepless with the second variation of the Muppet Babies end music (The Muppet Babies/Little Muppet Monsters suite) playing endlessly in my head on a loop. By the third night, after my test, I was on the verge of freaking out.

I’ve always seen ghosts, and usually they simply stare at me a bit, and we each move on, but since I moved to Japan, only the less benevolent kind have been around. Despite noticing things like ghosts, I’m fairly oblivious to the real world. It wasn’t until my girlfriend pointed it out that the architecture of this apartment is really…odd. Nothing that would jump out at you, just random slants in the ceilings, and the fact that all the walls seem like they’ve just been put up recently. At one point this obviously wasn’t an apartment, but there’s nothing inherently scary about that. What was scary was waking up unable to move, with someone sitting on my chest stealing my breath. That was when I bought a cat. Cats keep ghosts at bay, which may sound ridiculous, but I’ve never seen the two together, and that works for me. I always thought my cat was cute because she would stare right through the crack in the doorway into my bedroom all night long, just watching me, but the the other day I noticed her doing the exact same thing whether I was in there or not. I would say it was just a cat being a weird cat if I didn’t know there was an old man with a grudge who spends his time pacing my room, waiting for my cat to go away. So what I really want to know is, what was this place before it was an apartment?

Carpeteria!! I was just about to comment on that! I watched that episode recently as a grown up and it still freaks me out. The Allen head was the worst part for me too.

PS, I love this thread.

I meant to mention this before, but I’ve never heard of sleep paralysis before, but I’ve experienced it!  I went somewhere with my dad once and stayed in the truck while he went in the store.  Well, I dozed off, but when I woke up, I couldn’t move!  My eyes were open, I could see, but I couldn’t move a muscle!  Freaked me out, but I never told anyone, and it never happened again.  Thanks for reminding me, anniemagus!

Rhino, I think you are talking about the Recognizers. They tried to stomp Tron when he made his escape. I was in a cemetary in
Mexico when some joker blew a truck horn. I did this to a
cousin of mine. When we were watching Arachnophobia, we were
watching the scene where the British dude was in the barn. When
the spider lander on him and bit him, I put my hand down on
her shoulder. She screamed. I was lucky she didn’t chase me
down the street for it. And for the guy who mentioned Large
Marge, I still won’t watch that scene willingly. And I’m an adult
now.

Hm, things that truly scared me as a kid:

- The upstairs of tther peoples houses. I lived in a bungalow, dark areas upstairs used to scare me so much – though when I was up them, it was the dark areas downstairs. A friend of mine had a huge basement, we used to go down there and then one time he ran back upstairs and shut the door. I was too scared to run up the stairs and too scared to even move.

- Being sat down by my brothers to watch Nightmare on Elm Street 3 when I was 7/8. Seriously, it was only a few months ago – some twenty years later – that I actually started to be able to look at pictures of Freddy. Even things like bobbleheads freaked me, I had to scroll past a lot of X-E plenty of times. I used to think I would be in bed awake and Freddy would come for me, so I stretched my arms and legs out like a star shape thinking it would lift the sheets and look like the bed was empty – yes, I was a dumb kid.

- BBC’s Ghostwatch “live broadcast”. Nothing like seeing trusted tv presenters in scary situations.

- Being followed by an old guy through a local park in the middle of the day, later finding out he was ‘known to police’. One of the things I remember most of that day was I had walked through the park after putting stickers in my Oliver and Company album.

- Having to stay alone in an eye hospital with bandages over eyes and being taken on a trolley through wards. It was to fix a squint that I still get sometimes. I remember several days where no-one visited cos I was out of town, a kid I played with during the days bandages were off who I never saw leave because bandages went back on.

- Having to spend time in a part of a hospital that was also the ‘mental health’ wing. I now work within line of sight of that place, walking back still gives me bad memories.

- The seeing ’sick, dying and passed on relatives’ part.

- Tremors and the fear of the graboid monsters coming up through the damn toilet.

- Scarecrows. Living in a rural village with farm fields behind the house and Wurzel bloody Gummidge on tv. Scarecrows blowing in the wind do look like they are coming to get you.

- Spiders. Slowly getting over that. Heights too. Seagulls and pigeons will make me hurry my step and duck.

- Clowns. Still make me uneasy, the whole two faces thing.

Guise: I saw Ghostwatch! I can see where it would scare people since they passed it off as real. I still remember the scene where the camera passes the curtains and you can see the figure of ‘pipes’ behind it. Even though I knew it was fake that scene still scared me!

Hey, apologies for the long paragraph above — I did a preview and all the line breaks showed up, but they disappeared when I hit “post”

Damn post ghosts stole my line breaks!

Wow, such great stories! I’ve got a few stories, although not anything as freaky as some of those. Now when I was younger I HATED Halloween night, everything about it; except for the dressing up and trick or treating.  Even to this day I feel a bit uneasy as the sun goes down outside on Halloween.

When I was young, probably 5 or 6 I was got sick in the middle of the night. I woke up because I was feeling pretty crummy and was about to get up to go get my mom. Before I got up though I happened to glance up toward the shelves on the wall and because they were directly across from my bed. I had a porcelain doll on the shelve and all of a sudden it’s eyes started to glow red and it started to sway back and forth. I was so freaked out I screamed for my mom and wouldn’t move from under the covers. I had a really high fever, so of course I was hallucinating, but the next day I made my mom take the doll of the shelf . I found that doll in a box last year and it still makes me shudder a little.

Another thing that even to this day makes me shiver is a dream I had every night from about the ages of 4 to probably 10. I wish I was exaggerating about that. I’ll try to make this as short as possible too. It was night outside, but I was in a city so it was not pitch black dark. I was an adult in the dream and wearing some sort of dress suit or an actual dress (at 4 I was a tomboy, so why I was wearing “girls” clothes is odd) and I would be walking in a dark alley that has slightly wet pavement. It was always quite except for the sound of the the heel of my pumps on the pavement and the drip of water off of something onto the ground. Then I would hear the footsteps behind me and they would get closer, so I would walk faster, they would walk faster, so I started to run and then they would run. Then I would be pinned with my face against a brick wall by this man in black clothing with a black cape and an old style green witch mask (sometimes a werewolf mask) breathing into my ear and on my neck. I could see his one hand from my peripheral vision and he had these long finger nails (claws for werewolf) and he’d brink them up to my back and cut me from the top of my neck to lower back. I could feel the nails in my flesh and feel the blood come out of my back he would let me fall to the ground and I would lay there for a moment knowing I was left to die. That’s when I would wake up. I have never ever had any other dream that real and that scary.

While I have a few more, I’ll only post this last one. I don’t remember much about how I ended up seeing the clip on tv because I was pretty young, but it was an episode (I think) of Tales From the Crypt. I saw the last probably minute where this woman is lying in her bed with her hand over the side of it and this creepy hand; which might have been the crypt keepers, reaches up grabs it and pulls her under the bed. To this day I have to sleep with my hands and feet in the bed and under the covers, even if it is the middle of summer!

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark!!! I want to get WHOLE collection now! Thanks for the reminder guys =)
also, Unsolved Mysteries has the scariest theme song ever!!! This is coming from a guy who has tubular bells on vinyl. hahahahaha

Alfred HItchcock’s  The Birds….that totally terrified me as a kid.  And still does.  All those dead birds!!! Like when they flew into stuff and crashed, and the one part where this guy moves a painting and a couple dead crows fall out.  I had this Michael Jackson poster behind the head of my bed, and I was always afraid that dead crows would fall out behind it!…  TO THIS DAY I still have fear of birds falling on me or in front of me…….

A couple other items have sprung to mind:

1.) The boogeyman episodes of real ghostbusters.  I can’t believe no one has mentioned that yet – those prompted me to sleep with my closet doors closed until I went to college!
2.) One night I had a dream that I was walking along the side of the road that was at the edge of a canyon.  Down the road there was a boat, just sitting beside the road looking out over this canyon.  I went in the boat, and it was a restaurant.  After I woke up, I just sort of shrugged it off as being an unusual, if innocuous dream.  I didn’t give it much thought at all to tell the truth.  However, a couple of weeks later I was at the library with a friend, just killing time while he was getting help with his taxes.  I was flipping through this book of pictures of roadside americana like 1940-1980.  I turn the page, and I see the exact boat from my dream, and it was sitting at the edge of the exact canyon I had seen!  It gets weirder – I read the caption, and it was a restaurant – and it had burnt to the ground in the early 70s, years before I was born!  I don’t know what, if anything, it means, but all I know is it sent a shiver down my spine.

Okay, sorry about being a tease in my previous post, but I wasn’t sure if my post would go through, and I really didn’t want to type that story up only to have it eaten by the internet. I’m going to warn you though, this is a LONG story. This happened several years ago now, to myself and three other friends. Let me preface this by explaining that this is in Washington state, where I still reside. My friends and I joke that we export apples, timber, and serial killers. We’re only half kidding on the last point; for some reason Washington has churned out some scary, scary people. It was just before my 18th birthday, and I had just gotten back from a two week mission trip to Honduras. I had also graduated from high school, along with two of the three friends involved in this escapade. To celebrate my return, me, my friends Kari, Jessika, and Bevin, decided it would be great fun to go to the local watering hole and skinny dip. There was pretty minimal risk, or so we thought, since the gates to the lake are locked at sun down. We were going to park by the river and hike into the lake through the forest. The lake is several miles out of town, so there were NO lights out there. It was PITCH. Thankfully Kari, who I swear should have been a boy scout, had a couple of flashlights, otherwise I’m sure one of us (probably me) would have broken an ankle. As we’re hiking in we’re having a grand ol’ time, giggling, teasing, trying to scare each other. It was even funnier because Bevin had just finished a Twin Peaks marathon, so I kept telling her Bob was gonna get her. We were teenagers; being dicks to one another is just what you do at that age. We make it in, strip down, hit the water, blah blah. I was all ready for a nice gossipfest, but one of our group is very earth mother/ granola, and she kept ruining it for the rest of us. I didn’t care WHY people had done what we were gossiping about; I just wanted to giggle over it! So far the experience has been pretty lackluster; the water was warm, but that was about it. We kept hurting our feet and falling over b/c the ground was so rocky where we had waded out. I think we had different reasons for doing what we were doing, as well; my granola-inclined friend I think expected this to be very “womyn bonding, one with nature”, I just wanted to make mischief. One friend was only along for the ride, and the llast was following my line of thought. After only about 20 minutes we decided we’d had enough, and climbed out to dry off and head back into town. This is when it gets weird and scary. The lake is man-made, and cut out of the surrounding forest. There’s only one access road in, which as I mentioned before is locked at night. But the lake its self is sort of like a meadow with a lake on one side. So once you’re in, the area opens up quite a lot. We were at one end of the open area, across the open expanse from the forest where we hiked in. We were about half dressed when we saw it. A flashlight. Heading our way from the same direction we had come from. Oh. Shit. Our first concern is that we are busted SO hard. We’re trespassing on county property, there are signs clearly posted all over the place, someone must have called the cops on us, a local farmer or something. I’m certain my older sister, who I lived with, is going to tear me a new one if the cops drop me off at home. Jessika’s dad is a cop, so she’ll be doubly busted. We struggle to get into our clothes, which was a chore because we had all worn jeans to protect our legs. I was onlyhalf dried; I’m sure you can imagine the thrill of trying to yank dry jeans up wet legs, thinking a cop’s flashlight is shining off your white ass. Probably going to get indecent exposure charges slapped on top of  tresspassing. This is what I’m worrying about as Jess slowly says “I.. don’t think that’s a cop..” We all freeze, and suddenly we’re whispering. She explains that had it been a cop, he would have identified himself by now, and there probably would hve been two of them. (I’m sure they also had access to the key that locks the gate, so I doubt now, years later, that a solitary cop would have come, all alone, through the forest to get some trouble making teens.) As soon as Jess makes this point, we notice the flashlight is jiggling weirdly. I blurt out “Holy shit! He’s running!” And we did the same thing, still trying to hop into our clothes at the same time. The problem is in two stages: first, who ever this person is, he’s between us and our car. Second: he clearly is looking for us, because we ran , and he followed us. I don’t know where the hell we thought we were going to run to; the direction we bolted in just led to more lake, and maybe pasture land, provided we got through the river and over who knows how many barbed wire fences. After a split second of whispered panic, we decide to hide, in the hopes that he’ll keep heading into the lake, past us, and we can run back to the car. So by now we’re in the pet are of the lake, and here to trees are back, at the edge of the water. There’s no beach here, and no one wants to swim here because there are a ton of decaying leaves in the water, slimy roots, etc. As a result of the trees, there are these little hollows where the grass drops down to the water’s edge. The four of us hid in one of these hollows, me and Bevin on one side, and Kari and Jess on the other. We ducked under our towels, hoping he would miss us. I was sure that at this point I was SO screwed, as my beach towel was a faded baby blue that looked white in the dark. But what else could we do? At this point in time, I’d never had a self defense class; none of us had. We were terrified, and didn’t know what we would do if whomever this freak was caught up with us. By the time you hit the pet area, the pavement from the parking lot is gone, and there’s gravel instead. We all froze; we could hear him panting, and hear his footsteps on the gravel. He had heard our retreat; he knew we were here somewhere. I have never delt well with suspense. I love scary movies, but I am a squirmer of the highest degree. It’s so, so much worse when you’re the one in the movie instead of the observer. I finally couldn’t stand it, and peeked out from under my towel. I was facing the water, so I wasn’t in the right position to see our pursuer. But I did see his flashlight slide along Kari’s towel. I covered my head up again as fast as I could. Kari’s towel was actually a small blanket that she kept in her car. It was purple, with a plaid pattern worked over it in pinks and greens. I figured that we were busted; the pattern was plainly visible in the flashlight beam. I could still hear his breathing. I held my own breath and listened to my heart gallop, wondering if maybe I was going to have a heart attack before this stranger could find us. Here’s where it gets really, really weird. I didn’t hear his breathing anymore. I didn’t hear his feet on the gravel, and I was listening as hard as I could. I was certain that he was right on top of us, trying to wait us out. I heard Kari say “Okay, let’s go.” I about screamed, I was sure this was what he wanted. I froze, trying to whisper to Kari and Jess both to freeze, that I was sure he was still there. But after a few (endless) seconds, I peeked up over the edge of the ground, and saw Kari and Jess clearly reflected in their flashlights. The chaser was no where that I could see. To this day I have no idea where he went, or why I didn’t hear him leave. One minute he was there, breathing and fidgeting on the gravel, then he was simply gone. We decided we were going to run back out to the car along the road, and simply hop the locked gate when we reached it. As quietly as we could, we hoofed it back, down the gravel road, through the paved parking lot, and then on the narrow road that let vehicular traffic into the park when it was open. We all four bolted, afraid our pursuer was going to attack from the forest that the little road ran through. We had to stay on the road; it was on an embankment, and on one side was a stream that fed the lake, and on the other was barbed wire. I’m not sure how long the road is, but it felt like forever. We all four took off running, but I was soon too winded. I have activity induceed asthma, so while I can walk forever, I’m simply cannot run for very long. I was all alone, trying not to cry, I was so scared. Thank God Bevin came back and walked with me, not leaving me all alone. Finally we make it to the gate. Thank God. The car is just a few hundred yards away, and we can get the hell out of here. Kari and Jess were waiting for us, still on our side of the gate. They look scared again. There are now two cars parked next to ours. When we had arrived there had been none. And someone was still in one of them. I could feel them looking at us. Abruptly, I was pissed off. I had been terrorized to the point of numbness, and I just wanted to go home. That’s all, I just wanted to see my sister, and kiss my nieces and nephew, and pet the new puppy. There was no way some dick in a car was going to stop me. I threw myself over the gate, and stomped towards the car. The other three seemed to feel the same way, and quickly followed me. Now that we could see the lights on the highway, we were braver. We carefully kept the wood pilons used to mark off a grassy center in the middle of the parking lot between ourselves and this car, which suddenly and loudly roared to life. Whomever was in this car started honking. Rhythmically. He sounded like a car alarm as he crept towards the exit to the park. We all ran for Kari’s car, and piled inside. Jess wanted to get this guy’s liscense plate number, to give it to her dad. Kari floored it after him, and we were almost close enough to read it when he suddenly sped up, and was gone. It looked weird, like a vhs tape in fast forward. We went back to town after that. Weirdly, none of us could agree on what the car looked like. This is in part because human minds are fallable, I know. But I am still certain now, more than ten years later, that I saw a maroon, four door sedan. Bevin was certain it was a yellow two door, Jessika thought it was a little truck, and Kari though it was a town car of some kind. All of us agreed that we had never seen a car speed up and take off like that before. It was a terrifying night. I have no idea what these people wanted with us, but I am still certain to this day that it was nothing good. My personal opinion is that they were working in tandem, and the honking was the guy leaving telling the guy who disappeared in the park that we were out there now. That was the last time I went skinny dipping, and I stay the hell away from the park at night.

yikes. Lemonwitch, you win.
long, but definitely worth reading, people.

bill, i’m a winner. i’ve been a winner since the 3rd. it’s friday today, you say?

OH MY FUCKING GOD
LemonWitch that story scared the shit out of me!!

Lemonwitch- GREAT STORY, and very well told.

When I was about 5 I was laying in bed trying really hard not to go to sleep. I was just laying there and all of a sudden my mattress jumped! I was so scared! I laid there for what seemed like and eternity with my eyes all huge. i finally gathered the courage to get out of bed to tell my mom what happened. She just passed it off as a bed spring that popped up suddenly. I was WAY freaked out about it though.

Kujo scared the piss out of me when I watched it for the first time.
Sleepaway Camp also scared me half to death. Especially at the end where the he/she is standing in the lake with the head in its hand and screaming (or laughing, i can’t remember). MAN that was bazaar-o!

I”ve always wanted people to understand: I’m not saying ghosts or hauntings are REAL, but whatever makes people think that they may be, was going on in my mothers house my entire life.

I personally belive that any “Ghost” story could be any number of a bunch of different things.  Spirits of dead people are actually on the bottom of my list.  Call it what you will, but “things that have never been or been alive in the way we understand it” is what I think of as the most common.  Call ‘em demons, or fairies, or boggles, or whatever.  Just call em ghosts but realize there’s different versions, right?

So…my childhood was completely ghostridden.  I should say that it wasnt just childhood of course.  Whatever they were, they are still there.  I just dont live there anymore.  But I dont think they were all from the same source, but there were a hella lot of them.

When I was a little baby tword almost old enough to walk alittle (oh, story related to me by my parents, I dont exactally remember this at all)  they would for some reson find me in the furthest room of the basement from the stairs down.  It was a 2 story house, Midwest style, you know?  Indiana.  Normal neighborhood.  So that’s basically 3 stories, 2 sets of stairs, in the dark, in the middle of the night, a baby in a crib what couldnt really walk yet.  Scared the crap outta them all the time, till they started locking me in the room to keep me in their, otherwise, I’d end up in the basement.

Cut to childhood.  I remember things just ACHING to get me.  I always felt a pressure at night, that something wanted me.  To “Get me” I guess.  Never really knew what they were, but I always felt there were alot of them, and that they all had their own area of the house.

Now I know many were figments of my imagination.  Had to be, just by ratio you know?  And some of what I saw, maybe almost all of it, was Matrixing, like in ghost hunters.  Your mind is programed to see faces, so they are there…though mine were not always so much as THERE exactally as …percieved.  I could feel them just at the edge of places.

Plus, it was a very very old house, and the wireing was pitiful.  Many plugs would burst into sparks and be very dangerous throughout childhood, needing to be replaced.  So maybe there was/is a very strong fear cage effect.  That makes sense.

But that cant explain everything.  It got to the point that I catagorized them in their own little characters: they were very regular and easy to recognize.

My room, in the closet, had the only “door” to the attic in the house.  A dark creepy, unfinished place, what with joints joists, insulation and dust.  And by “door” I mean flat ceiling tile that lifted up that you could kinda climb in.

Later: nearing and in teen years, one night, I heard it fall into place, or lift up quickly.  I knew that sound, it had happened when I was a child and to scared to move in the dead of night, and nothing quite ever happened other than  me being rediculously scared.  But this was teenage, and only about 8 at night, mom was up and downstairs ect.

So I stopped painting my little minerature for this game, and listened.  Sounded like nothing, and I was trying to best them.  I talked to them sometimes, like “oh ok, you win, very scary, now go away” you know.  I was older, felt like It was time to ignore them as punishment for scaring the bejeesus outta me when I was a kid.

But I heard it again, and a shuffling sound.  I was out and downstairs in like a few seconds flat.

“what was that?” mom said.  “oh the ghosts you dont belive in, no big deal” said me.  She never felt anything at all, though myself, my sister and my brother certainly did.  Eventually went back up.  Checked.  Nothing, door in place, ect.

Late teen years, told all these stories to my friends when they spent the night, and more often than not they would see or feel something atleast.  Sure, maybe we were worked up and wanted to see it.  But then we didnt want to be “lame” and liked to be all teen smarter than the world, and didnt really want to admit how scared we were unless it was something real.  And we prided ourselves with being in a real ghost house, so normal scary shouldnt  cut it: the ghost better damn well preform to get us this old.

One friend decided to sleep on my couch in my room to see the “armour Thrull” which I called it cause it reminded me of a picture I had seen in the black deck of Magic: the gathering.  Sorta dark humanoid figure, but stopping at the waist, with just maybe a bit of thick body behind, crawling tword my room from the bend of the stairs leading up to the second floor.

So this friend, knowing I had seen this thing, and me having explained to him many of my ghosts seem to be “repeaters” like you see them doing something, look away, look back, and they’ve started their actions over again, from where they started.  This friend wanted to see it and push it’s limits, since I always got to scared to let it get any closer to my room door than about 3 feet away before I had to look away and let it repeat.

This friend and I talked, about whatever till he finally started.  Friend shhhs me.  “it’s there, it’s really there.”  “yep,” says I, “Scary looking huh?”  Shhhhs me again.  he’s going to see how close he can let it get.  Time passes.  He watches.  Looks away.  I laugh.  Goes back to watching it.   Time passes.  Then he jumps into my bed and we both go under covers.  Trust me, this is prime scared folks.  I’m mostly curious but scared sure.

“what” I asks.  he cant talk, is shakeing very badly, and quite frightend.  I keep asking what.  Finally he reveals that he did get to scared when it got about 3 feet away, like with me but the last time, he didnt  jump into my bed scared as hell till IT”S HAND CAME INSIDE THE DOOR FRAME! 

You should understand that the couch in my bedroom was such that laying on it, as he was, your feet would be dangling just about a foot from the doorframe.

This is very long, but there are so many things, I’m trying to do the variety and flavour some justice.  THis has been a lifelong thing.

Last thing.  When I was little, my brother told my sister and me a story about a ghost in this house.  He is six years older then either of us, and her and I are only a year apart.  He’s maybe 12, probably 10.  This story I later tell everyone to start off the ghost stories about my house, specially cause this one always seemed very different then any of the others.

It concerns a little “black” boy, though he is called such because he seems about the size of a 3 year old, and sure, male.  But the black isnt cause he’s that, but because his “skin” is kinda bumpy weird looking, and very very jet black.  But the eyes were normal.  Story goes (and this is probably made up to scare us, but one way or another this being was there, even if this isnt his real origin.  Maybe we belived him into exisitance, or maybe it was my brother trying to make sense of somthing he had seen.)  that a small child back in the day in our old old neighborhood (it was a historic district) would creep down into the basement because of the hot tar that would bubble there, for use in paving the roads when they were building the houses, which is what this boy’s father did.  One night, somehow, this boy fell in, and father /mother pulled him out screaming, tried to help but he died.  And thus this little black boy was haunting our house.

So this boy was seen in one room only.  Living room.  Moving from the upstairs stairwell to the diningroom.  Which lead to kitchen, then downstairs basement stairs.  But he was only SEEN in the living room.

What would happen is you’d be asleep (when people spent the night, we’d sleep downtheir, in the living room)  you’d awake and this face black with white eyes would be staring at you like from 1 inch away.  Then it’d run tword the dining room and be gone.  ONly happen once a night if at all.  No repeats.

Yes I did see him a couple of times.  SO did my friends, here and there.  So did everyone, cept our mom of course .

One of the more striking things about his pathway through the room was that he walked through some furnature, but avoided some empty places as well.  Later in high school it occured to me that he was walking the path that existed through furnature when HE was alive, but he didnt see our furnature so much.  Thus the od pathway.  Plus I decided long ago that he was merely curious who “these people” were sleeping in his living room while he walked to his path to the basement, and our waking up scared him away.

The final thing I realized because of a friend Senior year.  After telling him some stories, and telling him of the “little black boy” he, being a friend for some time, but the ghost stories were usually saved till someone was going to spend the night, had hung out with my mom before while I was doing something or other upstairs before we went to do something, had heard about how they had to lock me in at night when I was very young.  It was a funny sorta story, and they both laughed and joked about it later when I came down.

But after hearing about the little black boy story, he put this to me.  Didn’t I realize that I had been doing LONG before I heard any stories, or evene remember anything, hadnt I been doing exactally what that little black boy had always been doing?

I never had thought about that befoer, never made the connection.  But I was chilled to the bone, and still am, because it occured to me he was right.  Whatever the origin of that story, I realized it all made sense.  It’s possible whatever led me down there at night, all those “THings” wanting to “get me” all through my childhood, could be what happend to the only benign spirit in the house, and I had known that story all along.  Something in that house wanted to get me, and the little black boy was a strange show of what could happen if they had succedded.

My mom lost that house recentally.  I dont know what’s going to happen to it.  It’s empty now, and has been for a couple of weeks, and I’m a little scared that those  “things” may get lonely, and for the first time in more than 30 years, have no one to …get.  ANd maybe, just maybe, they will follow their little victem, hehe, to his apartment with his fiance’.

I Know this whole thing is very very weird sounding, but to the furthest extent of mine, and EVERYONE who ever got a chance to see or feel that place, including my fiance, who is scared to even go there after dark before my mom moved out, knows that explain it any way you want, but there is something their.

And I must admit, come Halloween, I think I”m going in their, down to that basement, and seeing if I cant learn anything about why my childhood was the way it was.  Dont get me wrong, I was happy and loved having ghosts, specially when I got older.  But I dont know what’s going to happen with it, or if I’ll get to go back ever after it’s sold.  And it’s been to large a part of my life not to finally try to “push the buttons” and give them every opportunity to prove themselves one way or another one last time.

better that then they decided to follow me.  THough I admit I extended an open invation to the “little black boy”

Unsolved mysteries,there is one episode that sticks in my head to this day of that show. well, actually it might be two. The episode has a girl that’s been kidnapped because she went to the door at night to open it up for someone who she thought was her “uncle” (her siblings where there but were not kidnapped.) they never found her, or who did it, but later in my life I swear I not only got to watch this episode again but it had a freaking update, Apparently Some teenagers where eating at a diner and when they left the waitress found a help me message under the cup. for some reason they thought it was the same girl. (I was young I don’t know why this one particular one sticks)
Screamers…I read the comments under them first, but even if I know they are coming I can’t stand it, if I even think that what someone is watching is going to be a screamer I get out of the room. Did not help though, there was a stupid commercial around Halloween last year for a Haunted plantation house (south Carolina, full of them.) where they show you the picture of the house and music and then a screamer…not once,,,but twice. beginning and ending of that commercial.

as for scary incidence…the only thing I have is one night I was on the verge of sleep and I swear I heard a strained female voice say “Please, help me.” not yelling, but she sounded as if she really needed help. Of course this was my room, my bed and a “manufactured home” so there was no reason to hear such things.