random ghost stories

I am bored of politics again. So instead I am going to write about the few 'strange encounters' I have had over the years. I'm sure there are explanations for them all but as each happened, I tried very hard to figure it all out and not jump to the conclusion of the paranormal immediately, and came up with zilch. I have always been interested in the paranormal, but really just 'in passing' like movies and such. The odd weirdo seance as a teen, etc. Lots of stuff happened back then that I can't explain, but there were also too many variables with other teens around so I put those at the bottom of my list of odd events.

The others have happened as I got older. The time when you should be less inclined to jump at bumps in the night.

A few years ago, my ex boyfriend and I were sitting on the couch at my old place. It was a duplex but the other side was unoccupied at that time. I can't remember the exact time, but it was evening. My duplex was owned by the Community Housing Agency and workers didn't do work there at night so that was the first thing I crossed off my list when 'the event' happened - that and the fact the worker van was not parked outside at the time anyway. So anyway we were sitting there talking, cuddling, watching tv when a door SLAMMED so loud in the basement, we both jumped. It was very loud and clear, and kind of like when you slam a car door while sitting inside, I felt the air pressure change in my ears. We both turned and leaned to look down the stairs behind us because it was a half-wall. We then looked at each other like 'what the hell was that?' and got up to check. My heart was thudding a mile a minute. The bang was SO loud. I figured I must have left a window open down there, though I was pretty sure I didn't.

We walked down the stairs and then just sort of stood there bewildered. None of the 4 basement doors were closed. They were all open. We looked around, like checking to see if maybe something had fallen against the furnace (no), or perhaps a window was open and the door banged in a cross-breeze and bounced back open (no, all windows were closed tightly), or something else had maybe fallen. No no and no. I didn't really have much in my basement, and nothing was out of place. All I really had down there was cardboard boxes and a toy room. Everything was fine. We had no idea what happened and we never figured it out. It bothered me, but what can ya do?
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 Later that same year, a week or so after me and that same boyfriend split up, I was on the computer talking to my friend about ghost stories. It was almost halloween, afterall. I well and truly freaked myself out so I slept upstairs on my couch to be near the kids' rooms rather than sleep in the basement alone. Earlier in the evening, I had put a load of clothes in the dryer to be ready for work the next day. I didn't go downstairs again. In the morning, around 6am, I woke up on the couch and headed down to grab my clean clothes for work. I stopped dead in my tracks at the bottom of the stairs because the door to the laundry room was closed. I almost never shut that door because I just don't. I don't like closed doors in a basement (see also above story - where I had all 4 doors open lol). I was a single mom and gone from the house all day and leave all doors open wide. I just do. Always have, always will. So anyway that was my first curious surprise - why was the laundry room door shut? But then my eyes wandered to my left and my bedroom door was shut as well!

That really freaked me out. I do not shut that door even when I am in there sleeping because I want to be able to hear my young kiddos upstairs during the night in case they have a problem. And I don't shut the door when I am not in the room - so what the heck? But my biggest shock came when I looked up and noticed that a latch was also closed over the door.

To explain, when I moved in, I noticed that someone had installed a latch/hook lock at the very top of the door and frame - the kind you would need to hang a lock through in order to actually lock it. I don't have a lock, and why would I do that anyway? My kids are good and don't go sneaking in my room but there is nothing fun to find in there regardless lol. But here the latch part attached to the frame was closed tightly over the hook part attached to the door. My kids were about 9 and 4 at the time - both too short to reach that latch, and no chair or box to stand on either. I was completely bewildered and could barely breathe. What was going on? Two doors shut, and a latch connected as well. I opened the doors after having a mild panic attack (okay - it was close to major lol) and then I realized another problem...

The latch on my door was really tight. I had to lift the door by the knob to get the latch to come off smoothly. That's when I ran some little experiments like slamming the door to see if the latch would jiggle enough to swing over on it's own (not even close, no jiggling at all), pushing the latch so it was almost shut and then closing my door to see if it would engage with the hook, (no, because again, I would have to lift the door by the knob to get them to line up correctly), etc. Nothing worked. I even took a video showing how hard it was to close the latch securely, as it was when I found it, so I could show my friends I was not crazy. About the only explanation anyone could come up with was that I was sleep walking after my ghostie chat with my friend, and went downstairs and closed the doors myself and engaged the latch. That is as impossible to prove as it is to disprove, so I had to just leave it at that. Two events with the basement doors within a few months of each other.
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One other event happened at that house. When my daughter was almost 3, she and I were leaving the house to go for a walk. I was locking my front door when she suddenly blurted out 'Your dad says Hi'. My dad died in 1996 and this was 2004. I did not talk about my dad much because I didnt want to explain death to a young child. She had no real concept that I even had a dad - just my mom/her grammie. So I said 'ummm what?' and she repeated it, all nonchalantly "Your dad says Hi". I was stunned. I glanced at her and she was just boppin around on the sidewalk waiting for me. I said something like 'where is my dad?' and she looked all exasperated with me and pointed away from the house, like towards the road or across the road, and said 'he is right over there'. I was stunned back into silence for a few moments. I felt cold all over, all shaky and weird. I finally said 'WHERE is my dad?' and she got totally frustrated with me, like a 3 yr old bossy diva would, and pointed again towards the road and said in an exasperated diva tone "He is right over THERE, with your grandma!!!!". I nearly fainted right there on the spot. My dad's mother had passed away 4 years earlier and lived on the other side of Canada so my daughter had never met her. My other grandma lived on the other side of Canada too and again, had never met my daughter. As far as I will ever know, she had no concept that I had a grandmother at all. It was just too flippin weird. Then my daughter started jabbering other things like 'your dad says he likes you. he doesnt love you, but he likes you'. She sounded a bit more confused about that statement when compared to the sureness of her other statements, so I have no idea if she 'heard' something and didnt know how to express it to me or what. But I was completely freaked out at that point and just started on the walk with her. I dont know why, but I had the impression that my dad and grandma were standing on the other side of the road near some trees so as we passed that point I whispered 'Hey dad. Please don't do that to me again!'.

In hindsight, I wish I had never said that. The whole thing caught me SO off-guard, I didnt know how to react so I just blurted that out. I meant dont freak me out like that again lol, but it came out almost like 'dont come around me like that again'. That's not how I meant it, but what's done is done. I will never know what really happened that day but she never spoke of my dad again until she was older and asked me why I didnt have a dad. She apparently has no memory of that incident. One day when she is much older, I will tell her about it. It would be cool if she retained some sort of memory of it, but she was so young, I doubt it.
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In my new house, only a couple things have happened. One also involved my daughter. She was sitting at one end of the couch reading to me one night. The hall light was on behind her and we were just relaxing. But I noticed several times while she was reading, she was acting weird. I think she was about 7 years old at the time. She would slow her reading and glance slowly to her left, looking slowly over her shoulder. I didn't think much of it, I thought perhaps a hair on her head was sticking out and catching the light and she could see it out of the corner of her eye. But as she was reading more, she got more irritated and would turn her head very fast and suddenly to the right and look just slightly behind her shoulder toward the front door. It was starting to freak me out so I finally asked what the heck she was doing. She said 'that bright white light is ANNOYING me'.  I looked around and said 'what light??' and she said 'the one I keep seeing beside me. it's really annoying me so I'm trying to catch it' (as in, catch full sight of it). I was stunned. There was nothing there. Just a dark blue couch with nothing reflective on it like papers etc, nothing behind the couch except the bare wall and floor, etc.... I watched her reading and she peeked furtively to the right again and I had the sudden impression for a split second that someone was standing there watching her read. My impression was of my grandma, white hair so that would probably be dad's mom, and all I said in my mind was 'If you are going to watch her read, maybe you could stand back a bit because she can see you'. After I had that loud thought in my mind, she never looked over her shoulder like that again. She kind of shrugged and wiggled a bit, and turned her head a couple times, but she was not focused on anything directly anymore. It was truly an odd moment. It was nice if my impression was correct, but it was also weird lol.
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The other thing that happened was when I was in my basement. I was doing laundry and everyone else was upstairs. You have to picture my basement  - it's just an open unfinished space with 4 cement walls, a water tank and furnace sticking out toward the middle, and then my washer/dryer along the side. The rest is just boxes and such randomly placed around. Also, the stairs are open, meaning there is just a railing down the side not an enclosed wall, and you can see between every step from anywhere in the basement. My laundry stuff is only a few feet away. So anyway I'm standing there doing laundry and the water tank/furnace is behind me. I saw movement to my right so I turned just in time to see what I thought was my oldest son dashing behind the water tank. I had a clear impression of his upper arm, elbow, and part of his lower arm - bent like this < as he hid behind the tank. We all like to pop out and scare the crap out of each other so I decided to let him play his little prank and scare me. I waited and then wondered why I had not seen or heard him come down the creaky old steps right beside me. But whatever, I kept loading the washer and waited... and waited... and nothing happened.

I could not hear anything and got fed up. I hate being scared even when I know someone is going to jump out. I always scream lol. So I decided to sneak around the other side of the furnace and scare the daylights out of him instead lol. I was still totally convinced my son would be on the other side... So I crept around the furnace and saw nothing but the empty basement. I quickly dashed around the other direction thinking I would catch my son there but no one was there. Nothing. My blood ran cold, I threw the last of my clothes in the wash and slammed the lid, and dashed upstairs as fast as I could lol. I told my boyfriend that someone was trying to play hide and seek with me in the basement but it wasnt any of them - still sitting in front of the tv where I left them - and I didn't want to play anymore lol. He thinks I am crazy and that the house is not old enough to have any activity - but I cannot explain what happened that night. There is no way at all for car headlights to shine in the windows, there is no tv down there, nothing but the bare ceiling bulbs to give off light - so I don't know what I could have seen. Blah!
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My boyfriend doesnt know what to think about the paranormal. He goes back and forth between logical explanations and otherwordly explanations. He had one strange experience before we met and that's his only real tie to the paranormal - He was living with his ex gf and they were sleeping in bed one night. He woke up hearing voices like women talking. It was muffled enough that he could not hear exact words, but loud enough that it sounded like it was coming from his house. It was a bitter cold night so no windows were open. He laid there listening to the talking and thought 'holy sh*t, someone is in my house!'. He got out of bed thinking someone was in the basement because the slight muffling made him think that must be the place. As he moved away from the bed and toward the sound, he glanced at his gf and realized she was awake. Her eyes were as big as plates and she was frozen in the bed. She managed to mutter 'Do you hear that???' and sounded terrified. He whispered yes, or nodded, and then went to walk out of his room. But as he passed the closet, he realized the voices totally sounded like they were coming from inside. The other side of his closet wall is the kitchen so he was bewildered. He opened the closet door and the voices ceased immediately. Just stopped dead. He continued to check out the rest of the house though and nothing was there. He looked outside and no one was on the street, the neighbour's house was dark, and he could not see any footprints in the snow between the homes either. Sometimes he says that it must have been voices outside, carried strangely by the cold night air, but most of the time he admits that something funky was going on. He said it sounded like several women, like you would expect to hear them chattering at a party or little get together or something. Talking, laughing, chatting - then poof gone as suddenly as it started. His gf was completely freaked out but he also knows from that that he was not the only one hearing it, it was not a dream, and she did not hear it coming from any window area either.