Favorite Ghost Stories-Mr. Macabre of Mr. Macabre’s Cerebrations

Mr. Macabre runs a delightfully southern gothic blog (Mr. Macabre's Cerebrations) that balances a dollop of twisted humor with a healthy serving of down home Hallowe'en goodness. I'm so pleased to share his ghostly experiences with you today!

I'm not psychic, let me put that to rest right now--although I wish that I was-- but for some reason, I have had many encounters from what I can only attest to as being supernatural. I don't ask that you believe in ghosts, spirits or what have you. I'm just reporting this sampling of true incidents that have happened to me in my life. You can make your own decisions about ghosts yourself.

Starting from childhood (we are talking 4 or 5 years old) I remember lying in bed watching "the changing face", for lack of a better descriptive word for it. It was a semi-transparent head that floated in my bedroom and morphed from male to female to different people. Sometimes it would be at the foot of my bed, around 6 feet from the ground, sometimes to the side. I would watch it night after night; it always stared straight ahead, never looking at me, changing faces constantly (about one every 4 or 5 seconds). For some reason, I wasn't afraid, or maybe I should have been, I don't know. I thought this was just something that I experienced, but by happenstance I was talking to a friend that told me of a little gold dancing man on his bedposts. He said he would watch him night after night and although it wasn't the changing face, it was something that he wasn't scared of, but maybe should have been. 

Fast forward to my early 20's (and no, this isn't the 1950's era as some of my friends like to tell me, I'm not that old, yet). All h-e-double hockey sticks breaks out in the paranormal. I would sit in the front yard in the swing at night and just swing by myself; it was just something that I liked to do. I would see fleeting black figures in the yard at times. More than once I observed a swirling black 'void' above our front lawn, silently turning. I would watch it for many minutes before it melted away. 

What the weirdest thing was that I was just swinging one night and I look over to my car, an 83 gold Honda station wagon. It was a figure; it looked like a corpse. Its skin was decayed and it was grinning at me, the eyes a dull glowing yellow. He had a shirt on. It looked like a gray work shirt, tattered but it buttoned up the front. He grinned as he rested his chin on the top of my car, looking right at me before disappearing. During that time I heard whispers, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes in chorus but definitely 'human' voices. The voices could be easily located; I could pinpoint the location from where they originated, beside the stairs, by the bush beside the carport door, any number of places. I saw streaks of light at night, in different colors, but mostly white. I could watch them through windows. I don't think that they were an illusion of any sort because I could pinpoint their proximity. I would go outside and reflex dodge when one zipped too close. Sometimes there were many, sometimes few, sometimes none. Sometimes they arced, sometimes they went straight, sometimes they were bright, sometimes they were dim. Yes, I went to the optometrist, my eyes were fine. Were they orbs that I was observing? Who knows? 

And then there were the footsteps…I could deal with apparitions but footsteps were another matter.
My brother and I were alone in the basement and we heard them the first time coming from the kitchen, through the dining room and into the den. They were heavy footsteps, like men's boots. We ran out the back door and scampered up to the next door neighbor's house and called the police, all the while keeping a close eye on the house. 7 patrol cars were in our yard in minutes and the house was thoroughly searched, from attic to under beds to closets to basement. 

Nothing. 

We had a vantage point to see every door in the house, to see if anyone came out. No one did, no one that could be seen, at least. That was NOT the last time that footsteps were heard. My mother heard them repeatedly, as did my brother and I. Sure it could have been a pipe banging…until I came home for lunch one day… 

I worked as a cashier at Piggly Wiggly one summer and my folks had taken my brother (unwillingly of course) on vacation with them to Williamsburg. I was a typical teen, 'family fun' was an oxymoron to me. I said I couldn't get off of work (lied) and got the house to myself. I came home one day for lunch and was sitting in the kitchen…alone, or so I thought. I heard the steps coming down the carpeted hall, hitting the hardwood floor and then the area rug in the foyer, muffling that one step before stepping onto the hardwood floor again, getting louder, coming to the kitchen. It was EVERYTHING I could do to stand up and look around the doorway (like a dummy, I should have gotten the #$%^ out of there) to see…nothing. Silence. No one was there. That was terrifying. But the pièce de résistance was yet to come… 

look at the lower right corner of the window by the
front door,a bright orb is there.  No flash is used.
Orb is outside the window, more on the frame of
the window. 

Orb is passing through the glass/window
frame, going inside the house.
Window pane frame can be seen around orb.

I joke about being old at times (and sometimes I feel that way) because I like to go to bed at oh, 8:30 or 9:00 and get up at 5:00 (you know the old saying, early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and an obnoxious morning person that you want to kill). Alright, I know, I'm old. But it wasn't always this way, I used to go to bed at 2 in the morning and get up at 6 or 7 and able to go all day. Those days are LONG gone. 

I remember coming home one night late and my folks were home in bed asleep. It was late, maybe 1:30 or 2 in the morning. I didn't party, never have really and I'm not able to drink alcohol (I'm allergic to sulfites, a component to a lot of alcoholic beverages, it makes my guts cramp but that's TMI, isn't it?) so I wasn't drunk and I never have done drugs (ok, smoked weed 5 times in the early 80's…had a deep philosophical conversation about Dr. Seuss and decided it wasn't for me). I had been having a strange repeating occurrence near that time…my house key was bending in my pocket. It would bend just enough to make it hard to get it into the lock and I would have to take a pair of pliers and bend it back. It was a brass Kwikset key, I couldn't bend it with my own hands, much less accidentally in my front pocket. My folks had forgotten to turn on the carport light and I was fumbling for the house key to let myself in when I heard it: Demonic tongues. The sound was by the mailbox at the end of the driveway, it was a loud, rough, old and raspy male voice speaking in an unknown language that sounded somewhat like people that speak in tongues in church, except it was guttural, snarling, and definitely evil and loud. Nothing was there to see, no one could be hiding nearby, no one could have made that sound or that language. 

Bent key or no bent key, that *$&^% key got into that lock in record time. I was shaken; I looked outward from the supposed safety of the kitchen door window.Nothing. 

For years, things quieted down, except for a couple of incidents here or there. After my grandfather died, my grandmother was scared to stay by herself so I would spend the night with her every now and then. My grandmother (and grandfather) viewed ghosts as a 'normal' part of life. My grandfather was a hellfire and damnation Independent Baptist preacher who worked for the railroad (who at about 6'4" was a VERY imposing figure) and had ghost stories that he would tell as someone would explain the weather, very matter-of-fact. "Ghost lights" that would hover above a house that foretold an imminent death was a favorite of mine. 

My grandmother was the same, she called the house one morning asking about me if I was ok; she had seen a young man dressed in "old fashioned" clothing walk down the hall, sit in a chair and disappear. I think that she said he looked at her. Ghosts were a part of my grandparents' lives. She asked me if I minded sleeping in my grandfather's room, some people minded sleeping in a 'dead man's bed' as she referred to it. I didn't care; I loved my grandmother like life itself and understood her terminology. HOWEVER…apparently my grandfather had issues with me in his bed. I had just laid down and closed my eyes (I had a light on, whaaat? I didn't want to stump my toe if I had to get up) and I heard my grandfather clear his voice plain as day in the room with me. The sound came from the left front of the bed, about 6 feet up…about as high as my grandfather was and there was no mistaking it. 

I moved to the next room. 

I casually mentioned it to my grandmother the next day. She told me that he still came by to check on her (she had what is now diagnosed as apnea which is stopping breathing in one's sleep, just like her grandson), waking her up sometimes at night by saying "Mae, you alright?".

Fast forward to 2004 and the birth of Mr. Macabre. After a fierce battle with our own unscrupulous realtor, Mrs. Macabre and I get our dream house. Big front yard, great neighborhood, good neighbors, grand back yard, perfect for us! 

Comes complete with 2 ghosts, no extra charge. 

This is when we first stepped foot in
the house with the Realtor.  Snapped this picture in the kitchen.

Glowing balls of light showed up on photographs both indoors and out, from different cameras. We would catch the scent of a woman's perfume in the house and in the yard occasionally, just a whiff but strong. I asked my next door neighbor what kind of perfume that the lady that lived here wore and it was the exact perfume we smelled: White Shoulders. Keep in mind the house had been vacant for over eighteen months and the lady had died in a nursing home years before. We would smell pipe tobacco in the living room. It would be strong but no smoke, just the scent. I asked my next door neighbor did the man of the house smoke a pipe…the answer was yes, but was only allowed to smoke on the back porch. I guess he sneaked in and could now smoke in the living room. 

We had been moved in a bit and were still
being checked out to make sure we were
going to take good care of the house.

Oh, and did I mention that he died in the late 1960's?We heard noises on the roof at night, like walking, sometimes; sometimes it was like people gathered around up there. We dismissed it as the house settling. Strange though, it doesn't happen anymore in spite of the fact the house is older. 

Mrs. Macabre didn't believe in ghosts. There was always an explanation, even though one might not be readily available. Until one night… 

I had gone to bed early (yeah, big surprise), and it's an ordeal for me to go to bed with a CPAP machine. Once I'm down, I'm out for the count. 

About 45 minutes go by and Mrs. Macabre bursts into the bedroom,"Have you been up?!"

Groggily (and ticked off, I just had started dozing off),"No, I haven't." 

"Someone just walked down the hall! I heard heavy footsteps down the hall!" 

I smiled to myself, "It's probably just Mrs. Murtz taking a look around to make sure everything's fine." Did I mention that Mrs. Murtz was a portly woman?I went back to sleep and Mrs. Macabre went to bed a believer. 

Halloween party. Apparently, we had an
invisible party crasher.

The paranormal incidents have slowed. I didn't say stopped, I said slowed. Mrs. Macabre one day told Mrs. Murtz that everything was fine in the house and to not worry about it, we were taking good care of it. Events started to wane and I can't say I wasn't disappointed somewhat. I enjoyed the fact of living in a 'haunted' house. 

But things still happen occasionally. About a month ago we were coming in from shopping and we stepped into the door. Mrs. Macabre abruptly stopped, "Someone's' here! I heard them say 'they're back!'" I asked if it was male or female, she said it was a male voice. No radios, no television, no telephones were on. I didn't hear it but we searched the house over including the attic. And yes, you guessed it. 

Nothing.  

Our cats sometimes chase and watch unseen objects. By itself, it's not that unusual, but there's a difference between one psycho crazy cat playing by himself when he gets good and wound up and a cat playing with something. Maybe one cat, but multiple ones doing the same thing?I can sit in the den sometimes and hear faint music and voices over the air cleaner machines. I can sometimes sit quietly, close my eyes and start to hear something like broadcasts. It hit me one day about the air cleaner, it's making a white noise. Sometimes I hear music from the 20's, sometimes western, sometimes an old radio show with people talking cheerfully but all of it old. No radios are on or televisions or any other musical device.And this is not all, just what I can remember. Then there's the Samara story (http://mistermacabre.blogspot.com/2009/03/samara.html) in which a waving young woman in a black dress appears to Sausage Von Trapp and I one morning and disappears. Someone I believed tried to communicate with me at one time through an app on my iPhone (http://mistermacabre.blogspot.com/2010/04/haunted-iphone-app-review.html). I still have occasional visits from phantom cats gently walking on my bed (http://mistermacabre.blogspot.com/2009/07/invisible-visitor.html) as well as glimpses of figures in and out of doors.

As I said, I'm not clairvoyant. I'm not on a crusade to make the world believe in ghosts, this is just things that I have experienced in my life. It's probably just air currents, happenstance, coincidence, banging water pipes, overactive imaginings, or some other rational, logical explanation. After all, we are living in the 21^st century, with our superior level of civilization, it would be utter nonsense of us to lower ourselves to the level of superstitious tomfoolery to believe in such poppycock as ghosts, spirits or the boogy man…Or maybe not…