Have you ever seen something that defies "rational" explanation?
I have.
Back in the early 90's I shared a house with a co-worker and her two little boys. The house was a nice, normal little 3 bedroom, 2 bath home on a quiet street in a decent neighborhood. It didn't happen too often that I was home alone, but one Saturday afternoon I was delighted to find that I had the house all to myself. Roommate and kids were out of town for the night. I was expecting company but they hadn't arrived yet. Ahhh, blissful quiet.
It was late, late in the afternoon and the remnants of the sun's rays were coming through the windows at the back of the house casting long shadows and tinting everything a dark golden orange hue. I had been watching something on TV and hadn't gotten up to turn on a light yet, even though it seemed to be getting darker by the minute. I was curled up on the sofa, completely relaxed and comfortable, with a blanket on my lap.
As evening crept in, the colors in the room gradually shifted from the warm golden glow of the sun to the cooler grays and purples of the nighttime spectrum and these tones were further enhanced by the blue glow from the television.
After a while I was startled to notice a whirling shadow, which I immediately identified as the ceiling fan over the dining room table. It took me only a moment to realize that it shouldn't be on. It hadn't been on. I know this because even without the circulating air from the fan I was snuggled up on the sofa with a blanket. I got up and went over to the switch on the wall and saw that it was in the "off" position. Curious, I flicked the switch "on" and then "off" again and saw the spinning blades begin to slow down. I remember thinking that was odd but really, we hadn't lived in the house very long and who knew what odd quirks there might be. I waited for the fan blades to come to a complete standstill and then I turned on the light, went back to the sofa and sat down again.
About 20 minutes after I reclaimed my position on the couch those same swirling shadows caught my eye again and this time I was alarmed by the thought that we must have some faulty wiring in the house. I remember getting up, flicking lights on and off and plugging things into random outlets all over the house. Everything appeared to be working correctly with the exception of the ceiling fan, so this time I made sure that the pull chain on the fan was also in the "off" position. I couldn't imagine how that could make a difference, since I had clearly seen it stop and then begin again, but I figured it couldn't hurt.
This time it stayed off and I made a mental note to mention it to my roommate. We would need to speak to our landlord about it and have him take a look.
Not long after, I heard water running in the master bath. Believing it to be just an air bubble in the pipes, I expected it to gush for a second and then stop. But it didn't stop. Now, I'm not talking about a trickle or even a slow steady stream. This was a sustained sound, in the tub, just as if someone had turned on the tap to get the temp just right in preparation for a shower.
I got up and hesitantly went into my room (the master bedroom was mine). By now I was halfway convinced there was someone in the house who was messing with me and I'll admit I was scared. I crept through the bedroom, checked behind the door and quietly looked into the closet. Nothing. Meanwhile, the water was still running. I knew I had to go look.
I took a deep breath and peeked around the door frame. There was no one there. By now I was quite unnerved and before doing anything else, I ran through the house, checking under every bed, in every closet, the laundry room - everywhere! I checked all the doors and windows. The house was locked up tight and I wasn't any happier to discover that.
Quickly, I went back into the bathroom before I lost my nerve. I stood looking at the tub for a moment, searching for an answer. I'm a very logical thinker and so after a moment I convinced myself I was just being silly. Surely, the washer on the faucet was going bad and some extra pressure in the line could have caused the water to turn on. I clearly remember thinking that we really needed to talk to the landlord first thing in the morning.
I reached for the handle and before I could touch it, I watched it turn. Off. By itself. The flow of water simply and completely stopped. I stood there, blinking stupidly, not comprehending what I had just seen. I couldn't think of a single explanation. I couldn't rationalize it away.
Stunned, very excited, and a little bit nervous (I'll admit it) I went back out into the living room. I slowly turned in circles a couple of times and then, me being me, I took the direct approach and spoke to the house.
I said something along the lines of "Ok, so now I know you're here and clearly you know that I'm here. I have no problem sharing this space with you, and as long as you leave me and the others who live here alone we'll leave you alone. Deal?"
We lived in that house for a total of 6 months and not one additional weird thing happened there. Make of that what you will.
Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Sloss Furnace
This weekend, I had the opportunity to visit the Sloss Furnace in Birmingham. Back in it's heyday, Sloss was responsible for producing iron, which was used all over the country to build buildings, cars, you name it. I won't delve deeply into the history of the place here in this blog - you can google it if you wish to read more about it, but the very nature of the place made working conditions nearly unbearable. Temperatures reaching upwards of 120 degrees, vats of molten metals, and an evil, wicked foreman named "Slag" all co-existed to make this an incredibly dangerous place to work. There were lost limbs, explosions that seared the flesh of some workers and blinded others, and at least 100 men are reported to have lost their lives there.
Most people who believe in ghosts believe these sorts of conditions can make an area ripe for a haunting (Update: moving orb?)
and indeed, there have been many reports of strange and frightening encounters and a number of investigative teams have gone in with numerous pieces of high-tech equipment. Again, you can google and find their accounts.
This, however, is my account.
Most people who believe in ghosts believe these sorts of conditions can make an area ripe for a haunting (Update: moving orb?)
and indeed, there have been many reports of strange and frightening encounters and a number of investigative teams have gone in with numerous pieces of high-tech equipment. Again, you can google and find their accounts.
This, however, is my account.
Let me just start by saying Sloss definitely deserves a high creepiness score. Everywhere you turn there's another staircase leading down into pitch dark basement nooks and crannies. There are towers, bridges and narrow walkways that lead between and around giant, unnameable pieces of unknown equipment. There's even a tunnel. (Update: Can you see the bright beautiful orb in front of Mikki's face?)
It had been raining heavily for several days in Birmingham and the pumps weren't on. There was standing water everywhere in the lower levels. It's so dark that I took nearly 200 photos just so that I could see the path ahead in the momentary brightness of the flash.
When we first arrived I saw that the land the factory sits on is bordered on one side by the interstate. In fact, it's so close that the parking area for the furnace is directly beneath the highway with the parking spots falling between the giant support pillars. On the other side of the property is a set of train tracks that is still in use and a long train did go by, whistle blaring, while we were there. My thought was that we would have to discount anything we heard - if we heard anything at all. But that didn't stop us from hearing something completely unexpected and unexplained down in the bowels of the largest building. I'm baffled by it.
Let's take this in order though. I saw something. Up on a high, square tower in the bright afternoon sun, I saw a shadow man. He was leaning with his elbows on the top railing and one foot proped up on the lower railing. I saw him. He appeared to be a man dressed all in jet black close-fitting clothes, or perhaps it wasn't clothes at all. Perhaps he was simply comprised of shadow - I don't know. I only saw him for a moment. But the black outline of his "clothing" was crisply defined against the cloudy blue of the sky. I saw him in profile but even so I couldn't make out the shape of his face. It was just more darkness where a face should be. I had walked around the side of an enormous piece of equipment and was suddenly looking straight at him. I blinked and before I could say a word he was gone. I stood there in amazement. Not just that I'd seen something so clearly, but that I'd seen it outside, at noon, on a sunny day.
We had all split up and sort of gone out in little groups. My friend, who is in my opinion, a sensitive, came and found me. He told me he'd been exploring and had come across an area that had stopped him dead in his tracks, but he wouldn't tell me anything else. He just said, "Come with me." and so I did.
He took me into the largest building, into a room and down the stairs into a stygian darkness where I had to stand still for a few moments while my eyes adjusted to the faintest flicker of indirect lighting that was being reflected off of some of the equipment and into a pool of standing water. I had no idea how deep that pool was. It might have only been there because of all the recent rain but it was an enormous pool to be inside a building - probably 6 or 8 feet wide by about 8 or 10 feet long. Because of the size, I got the impression that it was deep and that it was a normal feature in this particular area. That impression was reinforced by the fact that there was a 3-foot-wide, mesh-grating type of bridge running across the pool. There were no handrails, and a rather large pipe jutted out over the bridge at chest-height which meant you had to duck and turn to manouever around the pipe, all while not falling off into that water containing who knows what.
My friend wouldn't tell me what he had experienced or even exactly where in the room he'd experienced it because he wanted to hear what I had to say. The moment I got both feet on that bridge I felt an overwhelmingly strong sense of vertigo. It looked as if the pipes around me were moving, and it felt like the bridge was swaying ever so slightly. There was nothing to hold on to and even though I was so close to the firm ground where I'd started (and where I'd felt perfectly fine) I was afraid to move. I had to stand perfectly still for about 20 or 30 seconds while I got used to the sensation of movement. My friend watched me standing there and finally asked what I was doing. When I explained, he kind of chuckled and said, "Yeah. Weird, isn't it."
We both finally made it across the bridge near the wall on the other side and were talking quietly about what could cause that particular sensation, when suddenly we both stopped and at the same time each of us said something like, "What the hell? A horse?" At the same moment, we had both clearly heard the sound of a horse whinnying. There were no horses on the property, and when we later checked with our friends, some of whom had been in a different part of the same building and some of whom had been outside on the grounds, not one of them had heard the horse. (Update: After further historical research we found that horses were common on the grounds during Sloss's heydey.)
There's another down-in-the-basement area that has been much-discussed in some of the televised investigations of the Sloss. The same friend and I wandered in there. This area has a giant pipe running through the room and out through a hole in the wall, on into some other part of the building. This pipe is blocking the path from one area to another so a four or five-step staircase with a concrete slab on top has been built for easier access between the two rooms. I climbed up on top of that slab and stood there. Have you ever felt the sensation of low blood sugar? You get sort of weak and your muscles get all jittery. Well, I'd had a late breakfast just about 2 hours earlier so that should in no way have been a problem, but that jittery low-blood sugar feeling came over me within a matter of seconds after climbing up onto that slab. I stood there for several minutes hoping the feeling would pass but it didn't. Finally I told my friend I had to sit down. I was about to step down to that first step when my knee on the supporting leg suddenly buckled. Thankfully my friend was right behind me and he has quick reflexes. I don't know what caused that leg to buckle any more than I know what caused the overall weak feeling. I sat down right there near the steps and my friend sat on the slab I'd just nearly fallen off of. We sat there for a long time not talking, just looking and listening. All of a sudden he snapped a couple of pictures. He said he'd seen someone standing in front of me, just about a foot and a half from me. I didn't see anything. I hope he caught it in those pictures.
After that I wandered into another room in the same area. It was really dark in there. I snapped a lot of pictures in there because I couldn't see anything. All I know is that as I sat there in the dark, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I actually felt frightened. During the time we'd bee at Sloss I'd been startled, amazed, excited...but this was the only room that scared me. I was in there by myself for 10 or 15 minutes when my friend walked in. Immediately, he said, "Don't move!" and he snapped 5 or 6 shots of me from different angles. He still hasn't told me why but I can't wait to see the rest of those pictures.
When we first arrived I saw that the land the factory sits on is bordered on one side by the interstate. In fact, it's so close that the parking area for the furnace is directly beneath the highway with the parking spots falling between the giant support pillars. On the other side of the property is a set of train tracks that is still in use and a long train did go by, whistle blaring, while we were there. My thought was that we would have to discount anything we heard - if we heard anything at all. But that didn't stop us from hearing something completely unexpected and unexplained down in the bowels of the largest building. I'm baffled by it.
Let's take this in order though. I saw something. Up on a high, square tower in the bright afternoon sun, I saw a shadow man. He was leaning with his elbows on the top railing and one foot proped up on the lower railing. I saw him. He appeared to be a man dressed all in jet black close-fitting clothes, or perhaps it wasn't clothes at all. Perhaps he was simply comprised of shadow - I don't know. I only saw him for a moment. But the black outline of his "clothing" was crisply defined against the cloudy blue of the sky. I saw him in profile but even so I couldn't make out the shape of his face. It was just more darkness where a face should be. I had walked around the side of an enormous piece of equipment and was suddenly looking straight at him. I blinked and before I could say a word he was gone. I stood there in amazement. Not just that I'd seen something so clearly, but that I'd seen it outside, at noon, on a sunny day.
We had all split up and sort of gone out in little groups. My friend, who is in my opinion, a sensitive, came and found me. He told me he'd been exploring and had come across an area that had stopped him dead in his tracks, but he wouldn't tell me anything else. He just said, "Come with me." and so I did.
He took me into the largest building, into a room and down the stairs into a stygian darkness where I had to stand still for a few moments while my eyes adjusted to the faintest flicker of indirect lighting that was being reflected off of some of the equipment and into a pool of standing water. I had no idea how deep that pool was. It might have only been there because of all the recent rain but it was an enormous pool to be inside a building - probably 6 or 8 feet wide by about 8 or 10 feet long. Because of the size, I got the impression that it was deep and that it was a normal feature in this particular area. That impression was reinforced by the fact that there was a 3-foot-wide, mesh-grating type of bridge running across the pool. There were no handrails, and a rather large pipe jutted out over the bridge at chest-height which meant you had to duck and turn to manouever around the pipe, all while not falling off into that water containing who knows what.
My friend wouldn't tell me what he had experienced or even exactly where in the room he'd experienced it because he wanted to hear what I had to say. The moment I got both feet on that bridge I felt an overwhelmingly strong sense of vertigo. It looked as if the pipes around me were moving, and it felt like the bridge was swaying ever so slightly. There was nothing to hold on to and even though I was so close to the firm ground where I'd started (and where I'd felt perfectly fine) I was afraid to move. I had to stand perfectly still for about 20 or 30 seconds while I got used to the sensation of movement. My friend watched me standing there and finally asked what I was doing. When I explained, he kind of chuckled and said, "Yeah. Weird, isn't it."
We both finally made it across the bridge near the wall on the other side and were talking quietly about what could cause that particular sensation, when suddenly we both stopped and at the same time each of us said something like, "What the hell? A horse?" At the same moment, we had both clearly heard the sound of a horse whinnying. There were no horses on the property, and when we later checked with our friends, some of whom had been in a different part of the same building and some of whom had been outside on the grounds, not one of them had heard the horse. (Update: After further historical research we found that horses were common on the grounds during Sloss's heydey.)
There's another down-in-the-basement area that has been much-discussed in some of the televised investigations of the Sloss. The same friend and I wandered in there. This area has a giant pipe running through the room and out through a hole in the wall, on into some other part of the building. This pipe is blocking the path from one area to another so a four or five-step staircase with a concrete slab on top has been built for easier access between the two rooms. I climbed up on top of that slab and stood there. Have you ever felt the sensation of low blood sugar? You get sort of weak and your muscles get all jittery. Well, I'd had a late breakfast just about 2 hours earlier so that should in no way have been a problem, but that jittery low-blood sugar feeling came over me within a matter of seconds after climbing up onto that slab. I stood there for several minutes hoping the feeling would pass but it didn't. Finally I told my friend I had to sit down. I was about to step down to that first step when my knee on the supporting leg suddenly buckled. Thankfully my friend was right behind me and he has quick reflexes. I don't know what caused that leg to buckle any more than I know what caused the overall weak feeling. I sat down right there near the steps and my friend sat on the slab I'd just nearly fallen off of. We sat there for a long time not talking, just looking and listening. All of a sudden he snapped a couple of pictures. He said he'd seen someone standing in front of me, just about a foot and a half from me. I didn't see anything. I hope he caught it in those pictures.
After that I wandered into another room in the same area. It was really dark in there. I snapped a lot of pictures in there because I couldn't see anything. All I know is that as I sat there in the dark, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I actually felt frightened. During the time we'd bee at Sloss I'd been startled, amazed, excited...but this was the only room that scared me. I was in there by myself for 10 or 15 minutes when my friend walked in. Immediately, he said, "Don't move!" and he snapped 5 or 6 shots of me from different angles. He still hasn't told me why but I can't wait to see the rest of those pictures.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
It's all about atmosphere
Old-fashioned Gothic horror is a passion. So much of what passes for horror these days is simply gore and splatter but I much prefer the old, blood-frozen-in-my-veins feeling I got as a child when I first read Poe's The Raven and The Tell Tale Heart.
There's nothing in the world like a good ghost story. Shadows and atmosphere, gargoyles, candles, billowing fog, an avenue of huge old trees leading up to a slightly past-its-prime old manor house, perhaps a swampy marsh or dense forest - these are images that are sure to make my pulse pound and my breath quicken. And if, by chance, there is a family cemetary plot or mausoleum on the premises (and, dare I hope? a Vampire?) I experience a paroxysm of ecstasy!
There's nothing in the world like a good ghost story. Shadows and atmosphere, gargoyles, candles, billowing fog, an avenue of huge old trees leading up to a slightly past-its-prime old manor house, perhaps a swampy marsh or dense forest - these are images that are sure to make my pulse pound and my breath quicken. And if, by chance, there is a family cemetary plot or mausoleum on the premises (and, dare I hope? a Vampire?) I experience a paroxysm of ecstasy!
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