a new ghost/supernatural thread for a new year

[Winston Smith]

That was an awesome thread. So. Let's start er up again.

Warning: cusswords; used appropriately and non-gratuitiously. You don't like it, cut and paste into word, and do find/replace.


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When I was slightly younger and stupider, or more stupid, or whatever, I was seeing this girl. No, that didn't make me stupid--well yeah it did with this girl in particular--but that's not the point. Hah, 18 and already bitter off women.

One summer night, she and I needed to find a place where we could be alone for a little while, maybe kiss a bit, talk, etcetera etcetera. We were nearby the Strybing Arboretum, in my hometown of San Francisco, located in Golden Gate Park off of 9th Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard. I used to work at said Botanical Gardens, so even in the dark I could find my way around. We had reached an unspoken understanding as to needing some place to be alone for a little bit and so I parked the car a block away, outside of the park. I had learned my lesson about parking in Golden Gate Park after returning to my mom's car and finding the front passenger window crackling in place, completely ruined but still in place, taunting me. Come to mention it, I was with this selfsame girl. The point is: generally in Golden Gate Park at night anything takes a back seat to malevolent people.

Not being able to carry a gun (for my own good, I was legally a child and it's for the children) I had a CRKT m16-13z and my wits and my fists. And I trust those things. Yeah, young and stupid. Well. I bet I could trust the CRKT, if I hadn't lost it, a fault of the wits.

So I park the car, and she rouses herself from the comfortable silence we had lapsed into. "Here?" she says, looking around incredulously. We're parked in a well travelled area, a scant block away from the area of culture that serves the whole Sunset District, which is to say, the southwest corner of San Francisco, a grid of Dolger houses that all looked the same fifty years ago. That's where I resided, yessir. "No, not here, stupid." The stupid was in my mind. But I think she hears it, because she draws away from me, almost as cold as the summer night. It's San Francisco. But, she's still walking with me, so it's a very low level Mood Emergency. We wait for an absence of cars (Lincoln Boulevard is a pretty major thoroughfare) and squeeze through the locked gates, and don't expect to encounter anyone because it's been five hours since the Arboretum (henceforth known as the Arb) closed.

Let me tell you a little bit about the Arb. It's fifty plus acres of preserved plants, plopped down in the middle of the less-cared-for Golden Gate Park. It's shaped like a baseball cap, has two entrances/exits, and is ten blocks long. It's got hills and dips, and copses of trees. It's got ponds and bridges and ducks and a LOT of squirrels. Impetuous little buggers will sally right up next to you and wait for you to give them food. It also has foxes and hawks and lots of other things, included squirrels. And squirrels.

Seriously, I haven't stressed the squirrelality enough.

So as you can see, except under rare and extraordinary I'm generally a jocular person. And this night in general, I have a reason to be in a good mood. I have a fearlessness that's half arrogance, half stupidity, and half sixteen year old amorousness. No, I got that right, I was at 1.5 on the fearless scale.

We enter into the Arb, and cross the sprawling green that's front and center, tending hard toward the south, along the edge. We pass right by a small (meaning a few thousand feet square) garden which obscures a large gazebo. We listen for voices, not out of fear, but because if we hear them, we might know them. See, this is a known spot for young parambulators on their way to trysts, drug use, talking, etcetera. Or just young folks out for a beer al fresco. But there are no voices tonight. It's not eerily silent, though. Not yet. I can hear cars, and wind, and birds.

She's still cold, and mad, and put off. Maybe I said something earlier. Who can remember? Maybe she checked her little book named Slights on Ramona and there was some accounting for previous debts that needed to be done. I'm ruminating on this, while playfully reaching out and smacking her on the buttocks every so often, just enough to stop being funny and become predictable and annoying.

We're across the green, coming down a hill, and she's telling me in quiet tones for the third or so time about how she found a gentleman who apparently could find no better place to masturbate than just through yonder dark, impenetrable to the eye, tall, dense, trees. For once, this gets me to shut up and think about how there are a lot of sickos, junkies, etcetera who prey on young, stupid, fearless kids like me. Stupid doesn't make you tough, necessarily.

Ruminating on this, we're coming up to a bridge over a pond that looks disgusting in the day time. Now it just looks sad, and manmade. The trees are on our left, and our right. Directly ahead a few hundred feet distant is a gate, but it's locked, and not of the type we can fit through.

And it happens like this.

The first thing that happens is that I get deadly serious. I have this streak of iron in me that comes out when I need it. My friend Forest calls it the dragon, see, because it has unintended consequences and it's hard to reign in. But it's always justified, in the beginning. He says that all men have it. I think that's another story.

But yeah. I get completely, one hundred percent, deadly-*expletive deleted*ing-serious. My hand magnetically goes to my right front pocket and my other arm is reaching, groping blindly for Ramona, blindly because I'm looking around. She, in typical Ramona fashion, is looking at her feet, and doesn't come. Yet.

The second thing that happens is that *expletive deleted*it gets quiet. The humming and throbbing of the teeming (for a city) amounds of biomass around us goes completely away. I don't hear any cars, or sirens. It could be blood rushing to my ears. Or it could be... whatever's making me feel like something's going to die, or something real awful and wierd and life-ruining is going to happen before I get out of the Arb. I'm thinking nocturnal predators of the bipedal variety. So I start thinking of escape routes, places to hide, how to ambush, what to say to Ramona. My mind can work real fast, when it has to. But these weren't casual thoughts.

Ramona's starting to get an idea of the sensations and thoughts that have been coursing my neurons for the past two seconds, so she looks up, thank god, and comes to me, putting her shoulders under my outstretched arm. She starts to say something about how she doesn't like it here, or, it's always been creepy to her after Mr. Tossing-his-own-Junk, or any of the things she said to me a few times as we were walking in; that up to this point that I didn't listen to, but now I hear them EVEN THOUGH SHE DOESN'T SAY THEM. That should give you a picture of the sensory acuteness that this massive adrenal dump gave me.

Then we hear it. It wasn't a blood curdling roar, or a scream or any of that *expletive deleted*it. I can explain it to you perfectly. Stop reading this for a second and hum. Not a tune, but a single note. Now close and unclose your throat, sloooowly. That's what it sounded like. Except smaller, like a smaller throat, and pretty goddamn closeby. And directed toward us. As if something were facing us.

So. We stop dead in our tracks. I look around, can't spot it, look at Ramona. I say "Let's" and she says "Get the *expletive deleted*ck out of here" and I say "Okay."

So it's another five minute walk getting out of there. We go up the hill, past the fountain, down the center of the green, not the south side. I've got about three hundred feet of visual clearance on all sides, except it's dark, really dark, with that tiny little god's thumbnail of a moon, and so I really got about twenty five. And it sounds again.

"Hrmrrrrrrrrrrr"

And well, that's not a cat. I've heard cats. I've heard cats having sex in my backyard, and a while later, giving birth in my backyard. I know the yowls of cats in and out. It sounded more... avian, if that makes sense.

It's further away, but definitely not where it was the first time. And this time it doesn't sound like it's facing toward us, it sounds like it's moving parallel.

We're not running quite yet, but we're moving as fast as you could linked at the arm with anyone else without breaking into a run. The exit is in sight. We're pretty much clenching each other close, and really thinking about our lives. I'm more scared then I've been in a while.

The front gate is through a smaller coridor of flowerbeds and small outbuildings, so basically we're hemmed in for forty feet. I think the thing is following us, not in front of us, but who knows. It moves pretty silently. It could also move very quickly.

We walk quickly. I'm still looking around. Got my knife out. As if three and a quarter inches of steel is going to do anything against anybody, much less... whatever the *expletive deleted*ck this is.

I'm scared, but I learn the meaning of the term nervous in those forty feet. One agonizingly slow step at a time we creep out of there, pretty much running at this point, me gawking my head left and right, front and back, and Ramona near tears. Or maybe it was the other way around, I'm not sure. Don't remember.

Nervous: I could feel every hair, especially the ones one the back of my neck standing straight out. I could feel the blood rushing, readying for some fits of cardiorespiratory exertion. I could feel Ramona's elbow, tensed up. Every little detail too. Every flower and brick and cobblestone. I could smell the rust of the iron as we squeeze back out through the gates. And I could hear every little vibration in that sound:

"Hrmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

It's lonely. And sad... now that it's behind us. I get the feeling that it doesn't want to leave the Arboretum. Or can't. Or at least I feel safe now. But I pray that I never hear that sound again for the rest of my life. And so we... we "book," in the parlance of my youth.

And none too soon too, we reach the roads. Get back to the car. We get over it, or fake getting over it, real quick with smirks and "that was weird"s. We try to formulate what we're going to do next. I think about other places I know, for young people like us, but I realize very quickly that I've never been less aroused.

I turn the key. Drive her home. Go home. Try to sleep.

Even talking about it gives me the creeps.

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Well. I hope you enjoy that. That actually happened, although I've filled in some of the details I've forgotten.

I am very much looking forward to this thread.

[Strings]

And have you gone back and done any research into what it may have been? Any rumors about the Arb? You shouldn't just stop things there...

[grislyatoms]

I'm going to keep this kinda short, almost time to go home.

Seashore State Park, Virginia Beach Virginia, about 1982-1983.

Had two friends over on my birthday for a sleepover.

I have been in almost every nook and cranny of that park, swamp and all.

So we were following a very small, disused trail well away from the managed portions of the park. Almost exactly like Winston Smith posted, all the sudden there were no animal sounds at all.

We heard a low frequency rumble. rrrUmblllle. rrrUmmble. You could feel the vibration in the ground.

I know my hair stood on end, and from the looks on my friend's faces, their's probably was too.

We RAN out of there.


Still don't know for sure what it was, but I have a theory.

My Grandad mentioned a couple weeks or so later that he had seen heavy equipment being hauled into the park. Maybe that's what it was.

[BrokenPaw]

A couple of years ago, on a summer evening, BrokenMa and I were sitting on our couch talking, when from outside we heard a really strange sound.  We stepped out onto our deck (a balcony that is attached to the second floor of our house), and tried to get a better feel for what was going on. 

The sound was a...gabbling (that's really the only way to describe it).  It sounded as if there were words in it, not like it was an animal screech or anything.  It was just like a language we couldn't understand, being spoken by someone very upset and in a terrible hurry.  It was coming from about our head-level, about 50 feet away to the north in the woods.  (It's worth noting at this point that the land falls away from my house pretty steeply in that direction, so the point where the sound was coming from was easily 40 if not 50 feet off the ground).  It was completely dark out, so we couldn't see anything, but we listened to it for a good 30 seconds, and it never moved.  There's a large Beech tree in between our deck and where the sound was coming from, but I grabbed my 6D Mag-light and pointed it out toward the sound to see if the light would let us see past the tree.  The instant I did that, the gabbling stopped.  There were no other sounds at all.  No sound of wings, or scrabbling of claws on tree bark, or anything.  But after about two seconds of the silence, both BrokenMa and I suddenly and simultaneously began retreating toward the door.  We got inside and shut it, and had the creeps for the rest of the night.

The next day, I went out into the woods in that area, to see if there was a tree that something could have been up in.  BrokenMa confirmed the direction we'd heard the sound from, and I did a quick survey.  There are no trees there.  The Beech that's next to the deck is only about 12 feet away, and the sound was coming from well past its farthest-reaching branches.  Other than the beech, there are no trees even close to that line-of-bearing, other than wee scrub, for probably 150 feet.  There was nothing else there at all.

The following summer, while walking through the woods, I found a dead deer lying on the ground directly beneath where the sound had been coming from.  A few months later, I found a dead raccoon in the same spot.

Some months after that, a friend of ours was camping in the woods after a late-running party.  She was a very avid camper, and wanted to stay in the woods instead of crashing in our house.  The spot she picked was a level spot about 10 yards from where I'd found the deer and the raccoon.  The next morning, she said she hadn't gotten a wink of sleep because there had been something walking around her tent all night long, and it sounded like it was on two legs.  She refuses to camp in my woods any more.

I've had several people react with fear or aversion to that particular spot in the woods, all of them unconnected to one another.  One guy, the very first time he was ever at my house, got out of his car, and walked over to the woods' edge, pointed toward that same spot, and said, "What's over there?"  I asked him why, and he said, "It just feels...wrong."

Another friend of mine was getting something from her car while it was parked in my driveway one night, and she had her back turned to the woods, and she heard a voice coming from the woods near that spot, calling her by name, but when she turned to look, no one was there.

A neighbor of mine was walking down my (200-foot-long) driveway after dark one evening, and when he got to the house, he said that he could have sworn that something was following him, just out of site, in the woods next to the driveway.

I don't know what it all is.  I have speculations, but nothing I'm going to get into here.  I've lived in this house for seven years, and strange stuff has been happing in and around that particular part of the woods the whole time.

-BP

[gunsmith]

Hey winston, I think what you heard was the mating call of the African Clawed Frog.
They are a serious threat.....to other frogs and small animals!
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/july7/med-frog-77.html

[crashresidue]

Cheers all,
    I was flying for an east coast helicopter company.  On July 4th, 1976, I ended up doing tours about Philly and surrounding areas.
    In the late afternoon, I had a "tour" scheduled around Gettysburg Battle field.  I launched with enough fuel to "go and return" and plenty of daylight - no matter what the client wanted.
    Tour went well, and after dropping off the "tour" people, I had a bunch of time on my hands - so I sat in the parking lot next to the memorial waiting to see of others would like to see it from the air.  No takers.
    Time to leave, so I did the start and proceeded to do the "pre-take-off" checks.  Went well until I did the "mag" check - right mag's DEAD.  A/C gounded until it can be replaced.  Call the Co. and inform them - they aren't happy.  Now they've got to send a mechanic by vehicle to do the repairs and provide me with transport to and from the motel I've reserved.
    While I'm waiting, I begin to wander around the Memorial.  It's an AWSOME place - in the daylight!
    Do not EVER walk a battle field after dark!!!  I didn't know that then.
    The mechanic is caught in traffic and therefore delayed - so I'm wandering around this battlefield in the dark.  By 2100, the batlefield is totally silent - no animal sounds, no wind noise, no insects - nothing.  AND then, the "vapor lights" started showing up and coming toward me.
    I freeze and hope it's "swamp gas" - but "swamp gas" doen't moan, doesn't wave it's arms at you, doesn't whisper "words" you can hear and understand - as in asking "why", I said "you're dead" - "but I DIDN'T die here - I died a-way's over there".
    I un-@ssed that place as fast as I could run!  I'll never walk a grave-yard in the dark EVER again!
    If you believe in reincarnation - I'll tell the story of how I found where I died last time.

Gentle winds,
cr

[Strings]

Crash: if you're not willing to share the second story in open forum, PM me... I'd love to hear it!

[crashresidue]

Cheers Hunter Rose,
   It's not embaressed - I just didn't know if anyone would like to hear it.

   In summer of '81, I was flying for on operator in western Coloraado.
   My summer contract was supporting a core-drill out of Stanley, Idaho.  We were looking for "iums" - radio-active materials in the raw.  We didn't find any.  So we moved our base of ops to Burns OR.
   One day, late in the season, I'm ferrying from where the I'd dropped off the geologist  back to my fuel truck.  En-route, I see "sparkles" in the sage brush.  LOT'S of sparkles!!!  I make a turn around the area, dropping altitude, and hover over the main concentration.  Looks interesting!  Aircraft wreckage.
    Re-fuel and return to the geo.  I tell him about the "sparkles".  He's a "scrounge" - so he's very interested and we depart his A/O for the valley.  I find a clearing off to the side, let him out, and return to the fuel-truck to get my mechanic and his tools. I come back with both, do the "cool down" for this aircraft and shut her down.  Nothing out of the ordinary - YET!
    The other guys are wandering around, doing nothing much, so I stay with the a/c and smoke.  They get bored after awhile and we call it a day and return to the motel - back then you could land at the motel if you had owners permission and we did.  I call the FAA about the wreck - it's an old bomber from WW!!, no sweat.
   Next day, I get a call back from the feds - it's been reported and recovered - case closed.  Yea, RIGHT!
   That afternoon - the "scrounge" got the better of my geo, so we fly back out there.  Land, and this time I get out to wander around with them.  The "big parts" are missing, but most of the debris is still there.  One engine, two of the landing gear, parts of two turrets, a couple of practice bombs - you get the idea.
   Well, I'm bored and lazy - so I decide to sit on one of the landing gear.  My butt hit the gear and my knees buckled!!!  I could "smell the fire and feel the smoke"!  That's the best I can describe it.  I drag my @ss off the ground about the time the geo wonders out loud - "if any body parts are still here".  I stood up, shakely, and said yea, they're just past the engine on the left side.
He looks at me like I've just sprouted wings and walks to the motor.  10 seconds later I hear "no SH*T" and he's waving me over to it.
   My mechanic is looking at me like I've got horns and the geo has eyes as big a saucers as I stagger over.  Teeth and part of a jaw.   After some more looking, them - NOT me, they find a leg bone and a zipper.  I'm at the point that I ain't touching NOTHIN'!
   Four smokes later, I'm calm enought to fly back.  I'm not talking and they're looking at me REALLY strange - and all I can feel is the fire!  Point of interest - a MAJOR drunk-front went through my motel room that night!!!
   Call the feds back - "Case closed" is all I can get from them.
   Fast forward to 1996.  I'm flying fire conrtact out of Bridgeport CA and one morning, for no reason at all, I buy a newspaper in-route to the heli-base.  Front page article is all about a wreck that had been found in Big Springs OR.  Seems two hunters had found a bomber wreck, with human remains and THIS time the feds were interested enough to go out and look.
  The bomber, a B-24, died on March 2, 1945, on a night training mission - I was born on March 2, 1948.
  Whether you believe in reincarnation or not - I DIED in that crash - I have no doubt.
   My wife of 25 years just read this before I post - her only response is "It doesn't tell the whole story" - well, that's the best I can do.

Gentle winds,
cr

[stevelyn]

Back in the mid-80s I was an MP stationed at Ft. Monroe, VA. The location where Ft. Monroe sits (Old Point Comfort) has been home to military activity starting with a log palisades since the 1600s. It provided defense to the entry of Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads, and was witness to the Battle of Hampton Roads and the Peninsula Campaign during the War Between the States. It was the only U.S. Army fort in Confederate territory that didn't fall to the Confederacy. Due to U.S Naval support, a 6000 man garrison was able to be maintained and supplied. After Lincln's assasination, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was held prisoner there for two years without charges before being released. Initially he was held in a building no longer there and then later moved into the walls (Casemate) of the old fort in a cell set up for him. The Jefferson Davis cell is now part of the museum and is set up the same as it was when he was held there with the original furnishings. They also have some of his personal effects on display next to the cell.

In later years the Coast Artillery had several batteries that defended Norfolk Harbor up and just past WW II.
The present fort was designed and built by none other than Robert E. Lee when he was a LT in the Army Engineers. His old quarters were still in use at the time I was there. They are located across the street from the museum.


As soon as I started working after being assigned to Ft. Monroe, other people in my unit started telling me stories of unexplainable events that happened at a couple of sites inside the old fort. One of them is the present Casemate Museum and the other Quarters 14 now known as the Casemate Library. Quarters 14 sit across the street adjacent to the old original parade ground and the area is lit well enough at night. Quarters 14 was where most of the stories and later my own experiences occurred.

At the time all essential buildings had intrusion alarms that guarded the perimeter (doors and window) and also a sound activated (sonic) alarm that would trip and allow audio monitoring of activity inside. There were several occassions that the sonic alarm tripped on Quarters 14 and we could hear noises of what sounded like a party of some sort going on. Voices at a low roar, not clear enough to decern words, and classical music that would have been played at the time. You could distinctly hear what I think was a harpsichord (sp?) and violins.

Everytime the alarm would go off someone was dispatched to check on the place. The old timers attributted it to the "ghosts" and never placed much priority on it. Me being too curious and stupid to be scared always volunteered to roll on a Qtrs. 14 alarm. Of course nothing was found to be amiss.................usually.

There were a couple of occassions all the lights inside the house (Qtrs 14 is a three story house) were turning on and off by themselves. There there was the time the porch light was swingning wildly back and forth on a windless night. Most of the time it was just voices and music.

I can only recall hearing anything in the museum itself once or twice. We hardly ever got an alarm on the museum.

The story on Qtrs 14 was that it was assigned as officers quarters, but no one could live in it any longer than a couple of weeks. Occupant would find furniture rearranged. Hear strange sounds during the night. Closed draperies would be opened, opened draperies would be closed, doors and windows would open and close. After a while Housing started offering it to senior NCOs, then jr NCOs, lower enlisted and finally anyone who could live there more than a couple of weeks without getting spooked. Finally they withdrew it as personnel quarters and turned it into a historical research library.

I've been in it several times. At no time did I ever feel spooked by being in the place and I have yet to come up with an explaination of what I heard and saw. My only theory is what we heard is what is now known as Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP). Radios and other possibilities have been ruled out as a cause. Are they voices of folks in the past making their presence known? Who knows?

Electrical problems for the lights being turned off and on have been ruled out as they actually reacted to our presence there. And a physical force of some sort unseen by persons and myself was exerted on the light fixtures.

Anyways, if you ever get the chance, go and visit.