Ghost Stories!

On Halloween, I posted my Grandmother's two known brushes with ghosts on Fark. Today, I got an email from a website asking if they could re-post my story. That website? http://www.yourghoststories.com/. I'm very excited for two reasons: A) someone actually read my post, and B) I have a fun new website on my radar. Who doesn't love a good ghost story?

Not only that, but I discovered the show "Ghost Hunters" this week. I watched two episodes, and out of the four stories profiled, only one was really freaky...but that one? Wow. Terrifying. Now I'm hooked. Anyway, feel free to post your own ghost stories in the comments section (and on the Ghost Stories website too).

Here is mine:

My Grandmother and Great-Aunt rented a house during WWII that they swore was haunted. My Great Uncle was a spy/interpreter so he had access to some things it was harder for the average GI to get...like silk stockings. Anyway, Alice & Grandma Helen noticed that things were missing (like the stockings and their grocery money) pretty often, so they locked them up..in a box only the two of them had keys to. No dice...they'd open the box and it would have been cleaned out. Then they started hearing heavy footsteps in the night going up and down the stairs and through the hallway, cold breezes where there was no explanation for them, etc. They did a bit of research and learned that there had been a murder/suicide in the house and promptly moved out. Suddenly they realized why the house had been such a good deal and why no one stayed there very long.

Grandma Helen passed away in January of this year at 101 yrs. old. My Mom went to visit her in the hospital when she was in her final days and happened to hit a time when she was very lucid (she lived by herself until 3 months before she died and she was never senile or otherwise batty except for the last week or so before she passed away in which she was in-and-out of it). Anyway, in a very lucid moment she told my Mom how the father of my cousin-by-marriage whom she'd only met once or twice had come to visit her and told her that it was ok to move on to the "other side." In Grandma Helen's trademark logical way she went on to say to my Mom, "Well, at first I couldn't figure out why the "Other Side" didn't send your father or even Bob (my Dad), but then I realized that I probably would have thought I hallucinated that. Uncle Jack though? I barely knew him. Random." It seemed to ease her mind though, which was nice.

I kinda like the idea of an emissary being sent to usher you off to your next plane of existence. I think Grandma Helen did too. She was pretty psyched to get the fark outta here by the end and see what was next anyhow.