It's October. Halloween is coming.

[Kanalah]

http://cheezburger.com/6639271680

I always get winners like this at Really Big Craft Show too.

[bhskittykatt]

There's an old mansion here named "Wardner's Castle". It was built by James Wardner in 1892, a local historical figure. He only lived in it for one year, but it is said that he haunts the castle.

More interesting is the legend of Laurie Gospodinovich, the artist who painted a mural on the third floor of the house (at the time, a museum) in the 1980's entitled "Spirits of Wardner Castle", a rather creepy mural depicting James Wardner and his family as ghosts haunting the castle. She also painted herself into the portrait. Laura's works seemed to be fraught with tragedy; a mural she painted at a local restaurant was destroyed by arson, and according to legend, the day after she finished the mural in this house she died in a car accident.

Afterwards, the house changed hands and was converted into a bed and breakfast. The new owner didn't like the mural, so he covered it with drywall. According to legend, at that point, weird shit began to happen. Dishes would fly out of cupboards and shatter. Ethereal voices would be heard on the third floor where the mural was covered. B&B guests would see apparitions wandering the halls.

The supposed solution to this was to cut out the drywall and uncover the portion of the mural that showed Laura's face. Revealing her face in the mural caused the paranormal happenings to cease, but left a rather creepy face peering out of the wall. A picture was used to cover it up.

[Eddie The 'Ead]

Back in 2003 my father died of a heart attack. Not long after, this balloon we had that was delating would float around the house. One night, the balloon floated over to the bed where my dad would sleep, and stayed there all night.

Also, some time not long after he died, we had an infestation of house flies on day in the dining room. The ceiling was practically covered with them. I've heard flies are a symbol of death, so I always though this was significant.

[Rodimal]

I remember laying in bed one night during one of the worst storms of the winter when I felt someone sit down on the bed beside me, but when I looked no one was there. Now to say I was scared shitless is an understatement, but moments later that kinda went away and while I did hid under the covers a bit, I didn't feel afraid of the storm anymore, just the after effects of the adreneline rush of being startled . All I felt was soothing comfort coming from the presence. Soon the worst of the storm passed and it left.

A year or so later I was home after leaving college and was going from the bathroom to my room (different one now, my mom gave my room to my sister my second year of college, and moved my stuff into her old room) and the door to my old room was open. Standing in the doorway was a vaguely human shaped form filled with stars. The was another bad storm going on at the time.


The last one involved my sister. She was killed in a car wreck in 95. In 96 I tried going back to college, but was having a hard time. I was sitting in an empty computer room talking to my online friends (old telnet) about things and I felt a presence behind me and touching my shoulder. I turned and there was no one there, its then I knew who it was.


out

[Andara Bledin]

When I was a wee lass, and my brother even wee-er, we used to play a game in the room we shared. We would sit on our beds, which were against opposite walls of the room we shared, and toss a bit of wadded up paper into a small trash bin the other would be holding.

This one night, we chose to add to the difficulty of our little game by turning out the light. This lasted for several tosses, until, during the middle of one, this glowing orb thing just sort of drifted from one doorway to the other, across the middle of the room, passing directly between us at about three feet off the ground.

Needless to say, our wee little selves freaked out, and I was across the room with the light on in under a second. I then spent the next hour or so doing my best to re-create what had happened in an attempt to prove it was just some trick of the light. As can be imagined, I had no way to make a light of any sort creep across even the carpet or ceiling, much less float in the air.

Thinking back, I don't know that I ever told our parents about it. I'll have to ask around about that.

^-.-^

[Lace Neil Singer]

Ghost stories, scary stories, whatever. Come on, people!

Ask and ye shall receive.

The Chase Vault (AKA The Moving coffins of Barbados).

In Christ Church cemetery on the island of Barbados there is a burial vault of unknown origin. The earliest records call it the "Chase vault". It was first used for the burial of a Mrs. Goddard in1807, followed by two-year-old Mary Ann Chase in 1808 and her sister Dorcas in 1812, a probable suicide. A few weeks later, Dorcas' father Thomas Chase died. When the vault was opened, all the coffins had been moved from their original places. It was thought that thieves had been in the vault, but the concrete seal of the tomb was still in place.

Two more burials were made in 1816. In both cases, when the vault was opened, the coffins already present had been moved about. The casket of Thomas Chase was of lead, weighing 240 pounds, far too large to be moved by a single vandal. In each of these burials, the workers returned the coffins to their proper places and sealed the mausoleum with cement. It happened again in 1819. This time, the Governor sprinkled sand on the floor (to sho footprints), and pressed his personal seal into the fresh cement. In 1820 the tomb was opened again, and the coffins were again out of place, even though no footprints showed and the concrete seal was undisturbed. The governor ordered the coffins removed and the vault left open; the mystery has never been solved.


Glamis Castle.

The family chapel is haunted by a Grey Lady, who is said to be the spirit of Lady Janet Douglas, burned at the stake as a witch on Castle Hill, Edinburgh in 1537, on charges of plotting to poison the King. It is likely that the charges were fabricated for political motives. The apparition has been seen relatively recently in the chapel by a number of witnesses. She is also said to appear above the Clock Tower.

The ghost of a woman with no tongue is said to haunt the grounds, and to look out from a barred window somewhere within the castle. She runs about the park pointing at her mutilated face. There is no suggestion as to who she might be.

A young black boy, the ghost of a Negro servant who was badly treated around 200 years ago, haunts a stone seat by the door of the Queen's bedroom.

One of the more infamous ghosts is known as Earl Beardie, who is otherwise known as Alexander, Earl Crawford. Allegedly he was a cruel and wicked man, probably stemming from his rebellion against James II. His spirit is said to wander the castle, and there have been reports of children waking to find the figure leaning over their beds. He is also said to be gambling for all eternity in a secret room with the Devil, people have reported loud swearing and the rattling of dice. He is often mixed up in literature with the second Earl of Glamis.

Revenge From an Unquiet Grave.

Late one night in 1681 a miller, James Graeme, of Country Durham, England, was accosted by the hideous ghost of a young woman. She was drenched with blood and had five open wounds on her head. She told Graeme that her name was Anne Walker and that she had been murdered, with a pick'axe, by one Mark Sharp acting on instruction from a relative of hers, also named Walker, by whom she was pregnant. She made clear to Graeme that unless he gave this information to the local magistrate she would continue to haunt him.

Refusing to believe what he had experienced, Graeme did nothing. But after the apparition appeared, Pleaded, and threatened twice more, he went to the authorities with the grisly story. A pit identified by the ghost was searched, and Anne Walker's body was found. Sharp and Walker were arrested. During the trial, a hideous shadow hung over Walker; the ghost of the murdered baby. Both men were found guilty and hanged.

Anne Walker's ghost was unable to find peace until the two men who murdered her were arrested and hanged.


Colonel Buck's Tombstone.

In a cemetery on Bucksport's main thoroughfare, clearly visible just inside a wrought-iron fence, is the gray tombstone of Col. Jonathan Buck. Appearing on one side of the tomb is the dark image of a woman's stocking foot, a reminder of an 18th-century curse. During the Salem witch trials, all New England was caught up in the fever to exterminate witches. Colonel Buck, an influential resident and a member of the family from which the town took its name, decided that Bucksport should purge itself of witches also.

He found a perfect candidate in an old, feeble woman, whom he had tried, convicted, and executed. With her last breath, she cursed the colonel and declared that when he died his tomb would bear the print of her foot as evidence that he had murdered an innocent woman.

Colonel Buck, not one to tempt fate, cautioned his heirs to choose a tombstone unblemished in any way. Soon after his death, however, the shape of a woman's foot gradually began to appear on the marker. Dutiful heirs made many efforts to have it removed, but to no avail. Finally they replaced the stone with a new one. Within a few months, another footlike shape appeared. Like the first footprint, it could not be removed. When a third stone was put in place and yet another footprint appeared, the heirs gave up. Today the third stone and footprint remain for all the world to see.


The Phantom Hitchhiker Of South Africa.

South African Army Corporal Dawie Van Jaarsveld was motor-biking to Louterwater to see his girlfriend. It was the early months of 1978, and the early part of the evening on the Barrandas-Willowmore road near Uniondale. The hitchhiker in this case was an attractive brunette in dark trousers and a blue top. Van Jaarsveld stopped to give her a lift, keeping one eye on the road around to ensure that she was not a decoy for a mugging. The girl indicated she wanted a lift and the corporal gave her a spare crash helmet and an earplug so that she could listen to the radio, as he was doing, which would keep her awake during the drive.

After a few miles the corporal was alerted by a bumping sensation and looked back to find his passenger gone. There was no trace of the girl and the spare helmet was strapped to the bike. The investigator, Cynthia Hind, verified directly with the corporal that he had gone to a cafe in Uniondale and the proprietress there confirmed his distracted state of mind. Cynthia Hind then went to Louterwater Farm where one of the people on the farm also testified to the corporal's state of mind. According to another investigator, David Barritt, the witness identified the phantom hitchhiker from a photograph shown to him as Maria Charlotte Roux.

She was a 22-year-old who had been killed in the early hours of the morning of 12 April 1968, ten years previously, in a car crash near Uniondale when a car driven by her fiance veered off the road. This 'hitchhiker' is a much reported phenomenon of this area. In May 1976 another witness, Anton Le Grange, had encountered what would appear to be the same hitchhiker, who had asked to be taken to an address that could not later be verified and who disappeared from the car during the drive. This disappearance seems to be unique amongst hitchhiker stories for Mr Le Grange heard a hideous scream from inside the car and saw the right rear door swing open as though somebody was opening it, although no one was visible.

The car was travelling at speed at the time. Even more extraordinarily, the car was being followed by a Police Constable Potgieter and apparently he, too, saw the door opening.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Last year the online comic rhymes with witch started a rather macabre series named The Last Trick-Or-Treaters. You can read episodes 1-13 starting here and episodes 14-17 continuing here.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Room For One More.

A young woman on her way to town broke her journey by staying with friends at an old manor house. Her bedroom looked out to the carriage sweep at the front door. It was a moonlit night, and she found it difficult to sleep. As the clock outside her bedroom door struck 12, she heard the noise of horses' hooves on the gravel outside, and the sound of wheels.

She got up and went over to the window to see who could be arriving at that time of night. The moonlight was very bright, and she saw a hearse drive up to the door. It hadn't a coffin in it; instead it was crowded with people. The coachman sat high up on the box: as he came opposite the window he drew up and turned his head. His face terrified her, and he said in a distinct voice, "There's room for one more."

She drew the curtain, ran back to bed, and covered her head with the bedclothes. In the morning she was not quite sure whether it had been a dream, or whether she had really got out of bed and seen the hearse, but she was glad to go up to town and leave the old house behind her.

She was shopping in a big store which had an elevator in it (an up-to-date thing at that time). She was on the top floor, and went to the elevator to go down. It was rather crowded, but as she came up to it, the elevator operator turned his head and said, "There's room for one more."

It was the face of the coachman of the hearse. "No, thank you," said the woman. "I'll walk down." She turned away a little bit disturbed, and then the elevator doors clanged, there was a terrible rush and screaming and shouting, and then a great clatter and thud. The elevator had fallen and everybody in it was killed.


Berry Pomeroy Castle.

The castle has been the scene of numerous ghostly sightings and strange phenomena. The most enduring ghosts seem to be the terrifying apparitions of a White Lady and a Blue Lady. The White Lady haunts the dark dungeons, and rises from St Margaret's Tower to the castle ramparts, where she has been seen beckoning to witnesses (as recently as 1987). According to the legend she is the spirit of Margaret Pomeroy, who was imprisoned in the dungeons by her sister Eleanor. Eleanor was jealous of both her beauty and her affections for the man she had designs upon. Margaret slowly starved in the dungeons, a long drawn out and painful death. Whether she is the source of the feeling of unease and horror some people experience at the castle is unknown.

The Blue Lady is not confined to specific areas of the castle and is supposed to lure people into parts of the ruin. Traditionally she is seen as the ghost of the daughter of one of the Norman Lords of the castle. She was raped by her father, who then strangled the resulting child in one of the upper rooms.

In other tales it is she who strangles the child, haunting the castle in anguish. When seen, her face is said to portray this suffering. She is regarded as a death portent to members of the Seymour family.

The castle has been the scene of many other ghostly sightings and phenomena. Strange lights have been witnessed, voices have been heard, and there have been reported cold spots and freak winds, although the latter is always possible in an open ruin. Other apparitions reported include a lady in a grey dress, the ubiquitous Cavalier, and strange shadows with no earthly presence to cast them.


Renishaw Hall.

This seventeenth century mansion has been occupied by the Sitwell family for the past 400 years. Reports of a haunting there go back at least 100 years. The current owner's grandfather made many of the improvements to the estate that are visisble today, such as the garden, park, and lake, as well as cosmetic changes to the interior. During some of these renovations involving the enlargement of the central staircase, a secret was revealed that may be the cause of the hauntings.

Back to 1885. Miss Tait, daughter of Archibald Campbell Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury had been invited to Sir George's (the renovator) coming of age party. She was given a first floor bedroom to stay in. In the middle of the night she woke up because someone was kissing her. She ran to the room where Sir George's sister was sleeping and told her. Miss Sitwell then made up a bed for Miss Tait on the sofa, explaining that she would never sleep in that room because she had had the same experience there.

After the party, Sir George's agent, a Mr. Turnbull, came to see him about some business. During the conversation, Sir George laughingly told him the story of Miss Tait's phantom kisser. The agent didn't laugh. He looked shocked and then related a story of his own.

When Sir George had lent him the use pf Renishaw Hall for his honeymoon, a friend of the bride had come to stay. She slept in that same bedroom and had reported the same experience. She was so shaken up that she left earlt the next morning. Mr. Turnbull had put it down to an over-active imagination.

A few years after Miss Tait's vsisit, Miss Sitwell was entertaining guests in an upstairs drawing room after dinner. The room was brightly lit and the door to the hallway was open. She was chatting away when she realized there was a figure in the hallway outside. Her friends claimed to have seen nothing but Miss Sitwell's eyes obviously following something. She later wrote of her experience, "I saw the figure with such distinctness that I had no doubt at all that I was looking at a real person."

The figure was of a woman, seemingly a servant, with gray hair in a bun under a cap. Her dress was blue and had a full dark skirt. She moved as if trying to avoid detection or notice, but her arms were stretched out in front of her with hands clasped. She moved towards the top of the staircase and disappeared. Lady Sitwell called out, "Who's that?" and urged her firends to acompany her on the chase. They were jsut about to give up when one young woman, looking into the hall below cried out,"I believe that's the ghost!"

Where her old room used to be, she saw a woman with dark hair and dress, obviously distressed and deep in thought. Her figure cast no shadow. She slowly glided around and then melted away.

Back to the secret...

During the enlargement of the staircase, the first floor room where the women had had their harrowing experience, as well as Miss Sitwell's old room, had to be demolished. Sir George asked the clerk to take note of anything interesting that was found. Maybe Sir George was psychic, because when the floor was taken up, a coffin was discovered between the joists of the bedroom floor. From its constrcution, and the fact that it had nails rather than screws, it was dated from the 17th century. It had been attached to the joists with iron clamps. It had no lid, since the floor had served as a lid.

The coffin did not contain a skeleton or bones, but there were marks in the coffin that indicated that a body had been in it. The coffin has kept its secret. What happened there and the origin of the coffin has never been discovered.


The Vampire Of Croglin Hall.

The vampire story dates from just after the English Civil War. The owners of Croglin Low Hall were a family called Fisher and the story was told to one Augustus Hare by a descendent of the family in 1896. For some reason of their own, the Fishers decided to go and live in the south of England and rent out the farm. The tenants they found were two brothers and a sister called Cranswell. The new family stayed in their remote farmhouse through the first winter without event. The summer came and, that year, it was stiflingly hot so they slept with the windows open. At that time the Hall was only one storey high - the upstairs has been built subsequently. Near the Hall was a chapel and a small graveyard which once belonged to the Howard family - great landowners in these parts.

One particular airless summer night the men sat with their sister watching the moon rise. After a time they decided to go to bed. The sister lay in her bed, the bedclothes cast off because of the heat. She had closed her window, but not fastened the shutters. She gazed out of her window, propped up on her pillows as the long summer day faded out and night took its place. In Cumbria at midsummer, because it is quite far north, it does not get very dark at all between sunset and sunrise.

Miss Cranswell soon became aware of two lights in the belt of trees some distance from the house which separated the lawn from the graveyard. She watched and, after a while, she made out a dark shape moving towards the house - towards her window. A terrible horror seized her. She wanted to get up and leave the room, but to go to the door would have meant she had to go closer to the window. Besides she had locked the door from the inside and so would have to stand there and unlock it - all the while clearly visible to whatever was out there.

Frozen to the spot, she stared at the shape but then it turned and instead of moving closer to her window, it started to move around the house. She jumped up and ran towards the door. Her hands were shaking so much that she found it hard to turn the key. And then her heart nearly stopped. Behind her - close to her though she didn?t dare look - she heard a scratching at the window. It was outside. Just feet away. She stood there petrified with fear still not turning her head. Then she heard the sound of it unpicking the lead which held the glass in place.

She forced herself to look and saw that one pane of the mullioned glass had come away and a long bony hand stretched in and turned the window catch. Whatever it was, it came in through the window with a rush and grabbed her - its fingers in her hair, its mouth at her throat. It bit her neck and forced her onto the ground. As it bit her she screamed.

Her brothers heard the noise and came and battered at the locked door. The creature looked up and as the door was broken open, then it turned and fled out of the window, leaving her lying on the floor, bleeding profusely from a wound at her neck. One brother clambered out of the window and went after it. But it was fast and before he could catch it - perhaps it was lucky for him that he didn't - it disappeared into the inky blackness around the graveyard.

Trying to explain it afterwards, the girl rationalised that the creature must have been a dangerous lunatic. But she was still horribly shocked and her brothers took her away from Croglin to recover - over to the Continent. They stayed away for a while, but then, as autumn came, it was she who urged them to return to Croglin. They had paid for the tenancy, and besides, she joked, it would be very bad luck to come across two escaped lunatics.

They returned to Croglin and spent the winter there. She had the same room, but always closed the wooden shutters. The brothers took to carrying loaded pistols with them around the house. But nothing happened until one night in March.

The sister was lying in bed when she heard a terribly familiar scratching at the window. She struggled to get fully awake and scrabbled for a candle and something to light it with. When she got a flame she saw that the shutters were opened. Staring in at her was a brown shrivelled face and she saw its long bony hands picking at the lead of the windows.

This time she screamed immediately. Her brothers rushed in with their pistols. She pointed to the window, but the creature had gone. The brothers ran out of the front door and saw it moving across the lawn towards the graveyard. They fired and one of them hit it in the leg. It scrambled away into the darkness and they lost it.

The next day the brothers summoned their neighbours, and with their help they went into the graveyard. The tenants of nearby Croglin High Hall had also been suffering visits from it and their young daughter had bite wounds at the throat. The father had thought that she had been bitten by a rat, but when the Cranswells said what had happened to their sister, they feared the worst and the father joined the party as it made its way to the graveyard.

One of the locals had heard rumours of a particular vault being home to some monster so they opened it up. They stood around, pistols and other weapons at the ready. The vault was full of coffins but most were smashed and the remains mangled and strewn across the floor. Only one coffin was undisturbed. They lifted the lid and there they saw the mummified and shrivelled figure that had moved as if alive the night before. To confirm what they feared they looked at the leg and found a recent wound from a pistol ball. There and then they set fire to the dry coffin and burnt the vampire in it.

In his book Legends of the Lake District J. A. Brooks tells that in the early years of this century the tenants of Croglin Low Hall had to deal with a fire in the dining room chimney. When the fire died down and they were rebuilding the chimney, they found an ancient burnt corpse in there. Though the tenant wanted to rebury the corpse in a churchyard with proper Christian rites, he died before he was able to do this. It is possible that the corpse is still there in the chimney....

[Eireann]

When I was in high school, I babysat in a haunted house. God, that place was scary. At night, the atmosphere became - I'm not sure how to describe it - somehow denser, as if the darkness had gained mass. It had been a farmhouse, but the land around it had long since been used for building other houses, rather than for farming. I hated to go in the attic, and avoided it whenever I could. Of course, the kids' bedroom was right across the hall from that attic, so putting them to bed was frightening. I'd shut their bedroom door, shut the door at the top of the stairs, and then, as I descended the stairs, I would hear heavy footsteps descending right behind me.

Each time, I made it halfway down the stairs before breaking into a run. The stairs faced a window next to the front door, and I did NOT want to see what might be reflected in that window, coming downstairs behind me.

Once, when my sister was in high school (she's older than I am), she came home from a night out with some friends white and shaking. When she calmed down, she explained that they had stopped at a stoplight, and someone walked in front of the car; everyone in the car could see that odd shadow effect you get when a person walks in front of one headlight, then the other, at night.

Except nobody was there. They didn't see a person; they just saw the shadows of a pair of legs.

One of the high schools in my hometown is haunted by the ghost of a student who fell from a catwalk in the auditorium, landing on the seats below. People who sit in these seats often feel an angry presence. He has also been seen in the catwalk area - but only from the waist up.

[AccountingDrone]

I like Creepypasta, this one is fun but full of language [and more than a few mistakes that the military of the time would *never* have allowed.] With a little tweaking it would make a decent made for Syfy movie.

[MoonCat]

In one of our first-ring suburbs, there is a street called Sugar Road which runs between two cemeteries. There's an old story that sometimes a driver will pick up a hitchhiker on this road, a young woman, who asks for a lift to one of the cemetery office buildings. When the car gets to the building, the driver turns around and the young woman is gone, although the car doors are never opened.

There is also the beautifully-restored Shea's Theater, whose original director, Michael Shea, has been seen (and heard) more than once inside the theater. Last November, I was looking at the theater website and clicked on their calendar. It opened up to the year 1899, which I initially thought was hilarious, partly because the theater wasn't even built yet in 1899. Then I got curious and looked up Michael Shea, and found that he was married in November of 1899.

There are actually lots of haunted sites and ghost stores in WNY. Last night we went on a ghost walk. Fun, and you can learn lots of interesting facts about the city.

[Jester]

It's October. Fantasy Fest is coming.

What? Yes, Fantasy Fest is a Mardi Gras-esque celebration of Dionysus and hedonism. However, it is also a time when you are guaranteed to see lots of out of shape elderly people in various states of drunken nakedness. And I'm sorry, but that IS SCARY!

It's getting warm-er up here. I think today was around 28C.

Which means that I can join Jester in drinking my slushies while you guys are bundled up.

Yes and no. While I do gloat about the wonderful weather on my tropical island home while everyone up north is freezing, I am not really a fan of slushy frozen drinks. So you'll actually be drinking them without me.

However, we can gloat together, if you want.

(Seriously, I will actually contribute some more relevant stories at some point later this week....Key West is considered the second-most haunted city in the U.S., after only New Orleans, and I happen to be friends with several people who conduct ghost tours down here, so I shall gather some stories and share them here.)

[AccountingDrone]

(Seriously, I will actually contribute some more relevant stories at some point later this week....Key West is considered the second-most haunted city in the U.S., after only New Orleans, and I happen to be friends with several people who conduct ghost tours down here, so I shall gather some stories and share them here.)

Like that funky looking doll? The one that the guy treated like a real kid?

[fireheart]

However, we can gloat together, if you want.

Hmmm....let's see what I've got in the esky then. *digs around* I have several bottles of my dad's homebrew in different "flavours" (up until recently my dad was a big stout fan, now he drinks mostly lager and ale), some Coronas, some Sol, Strongbow, Rekorderlig, Koppaberg, Skyy Blue....take your pick.

[Jester]

Like that funky looking doll? The one that the guy treated like a real kid?

Robert the Doll is merely one of many funky Key West stories. Amusingly, my friend CJ works with Robert the Doll. Well, in the same museum as him, but it's fun to say she works "with" him.

Hmmm....let's see what I've got in the esky then. *digs around* I have several bottles of my dad's homebrew in different "flavours" (up until recently my dad was a big stout fan, now he drinks mostly lager and ale), some Coronas, some Sol, Strongbow, Rekorderlig, Koppaberg, Skyy Blue....take your pick.

Other than the vodka, everything sounds good....though I have to admit, I have never heard of Rekorderlig or Koppaberg. Are they any good?