My Only Ghost Story
Friday, October 31st, 2014 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoHappy Halloween, to all those who celebrate it!
I've been reading some AWESOME scary stories lately (one over at Jezebel bothers me very, very deeply, and I'm really, really glad I didn't read it alone at night!) and in the interests of adding to the general level of scare, I thought I'd share my only experience with a ghost. It's not particularly scary, but it was a pretty unnerving experience in both halves.
When we lived in Vancouver, we rented a basement apartment. I was initially against this, since I thought it would be dark and dreary. Instead, it turned out to be a wonderful space, painted white, with gorgeous hard wood floors. Yebisu and I loved it, and it was relatively close to UBC on the bus line. All of the public transport options were easily accessible from our apartment, including the trolley that ran on old-fashioned train tracks a few blocks over. Our neighborhood was laid out in a fairly straight grid pattern, so I never had a problem getting lost as I got to know it, and to top it off, it was a pretty quiet location (except for Chinese New Year and Halloween, when all of neighbors would set noisy fireworks off.)
One night in late September, I awoke around 2:00 AM to see a man standing at the foot of our bed. He was tall and pale and wore lumberjack style overalls and a plaid shirt. He was staring down at his hands. Fear gripped me and I started to shake Y. awake. For those who don't know, Y. is a terribly hard sleeper (years of being in the army reserves have given him the ability to fall deeply asleep almost instantaneously, no matter where he's sleeping) and he was slow to wake. As I shook him, I looked to the foot of the bed again. The man was starting to move, but incredibly slowly, like a slow-motion movie that was one frame too short. He was beginning to look up. I shook Y. harder, and eventually, he woke up as I turned on the light. The man was gone. Y. searched the entire apartment and found no one--the window next to us was locked tight, our doors, too. Y. assumed I'd had a bad dream, but I've never had the sleep paralysis that leads some people to ghost-story-like waking nightmares. As I thought over what had happened, I realized that I didn't feel that scared. It was out of the ordinary, of course, and it surprised me, but there was no lingering terror, no sense of malevolence from the thing at the foot of our bed.
I held onto the story for a few months, until our friend M. came to visit. M. had some amateur ghost-hunting experience and listened to my story. Then she asked if she could use some equipment to look at our room. Under a UV light, she found a long scratch on our bedroom wall that didn't appear when the regular lights were on. It was about the height the ghost-man's hands had been as he stood at the foot of our bed. M. walked around the neighborhood with me, and when we came to the train tracks, she speculated that the spirit/ghost had been looking for them. After much consideration, I came to the same conclusion, and I think now that the thing at the foot of the bed was lost and the scratch on the wall was a marker that he'd been there, a breadcrumb on the forest path. We never saw him or anything else again, and whatever he was, I hope he able to find where he was going.
I've been reading some AWESOME scary stories lately (one over at Jezebel bothers me very, very deeply, and I'm really, really glad I didn't read it alone at night!) and in the interests of adding to the general level of scare, I thought I'd share my only experience with a ghost. It's not particularly scary, but it was a pretty unnerving experience in both halves.
When we lived in Vancouver, we rented a basement apartment. I was initially against this, since I thought it would be dark and dreary. Instead, it turned out to be a wonderful space, painted white, with gorgeous hard wood floors. Yebisu and I loved it, and it was relatively close to UBC on the bus line. All of the public transport options were easily accessible from our apartment, including the trolley that ran on old-fashioned train tracks a few blocks over. Our neighborhood was laid out in a fairly straight grid pattern, so I never had a problem getting lost as I got to know it, and to top it off, it was a pretty quiet location (except for Chinese New Year and Halloween, when all of neighbors would set noisy fireworks off.)
One night in late September, I awoke around 2:00 AM to see a man standing at the foot of our bed. He was tall and pale and wore lumberjack style overalls and a plaid shirt. He was staring down at his hands. Fear gripped me and I started to shake Y. awake. For those who don't know, Y. is a terribly hard sleeper (years of being in the army reserves have given him the ability to fall deeply asleep almost instantaneously, no matter where he's sleeping) and he was slow to wake. As I shook him, I looked to the foot of the bed again. The man was starting to move, but incredibly slowly, like a slow-motion movie that was one frame too short. He was beginning to look up. I shook Y. harder, and eventually, he woke up as I turned on the light. The man was gone. Y. searched the entire apartment and found no one--the window next to us was locked tight, our doors, too. Y. assumed I'd had a bad dream, but I've never had the sleep paralysis that leads some people to ghost-story-like waking nightmares. As I thought over what had happened, I realized that I didn't feel that scared. It was out of the ordinary, of course, and it surprised me, but there was no lingering terror, no sense of malevolence from the thing at the foot of our bed.
I held onto the story for a few months, until our friend M. came to visit. M. had some amateur ghost-hunting experience and listened to my story. Then she asked if she could use some equipment to look at our room. Under a UV light, she found a long scratch on our bedroom wall that didn't appear when the regular lights were on. It was about the height the ghost-man's hands had been as he stood at the foot of our bed. M. walked around the neighborhood with me, and when we came to the train tracks, she speculated that the spirit/ghost had been looking for them. After much consideration, I came to the same conclusion, and I think now that the thing at the foot of the bed was lost and the scratch on the wall was a marker that he'd been there, a breadcrumb on the forest path. We never saw him or anything else again, and whatever he was, I hope he able to find where he was going.
