Reply #149: I don't know - but I've had two very weird experiences. [View All]

I've only had two ghostlike experiences that I can recall. Here's the first, and if there's another of these threads some day I'll post the second, which is much more recent and rather different.

The first, very vivid ghostlike experience I had was when I was 8-10 years old and spending the summer in southern Illinois with my grandparents in their old house. I slept in a room between the kitchen and the living room, and there were very old family portraits of people who had died before I was born all around the room.

One night something - I don't know what - woke me in the middle of the night and I decided to go into the kitchen for a glass of water. The night was moonless and the room was pitch black, but I knew the short distance I had to go and wasn't worried about bumping into anything. ( I still remember the layout, after all these years.) I got out of bed and walked to the middle of the room, my hand out ahead of me to be sure I didn't bump into anything. But I know I only went a few steps, not far enough to reach any of the furniture or walls. My hand touched what felt exactly like the wool fabric of a man's suit jacket, and it was vertical and had exactly the degree of resiliency and overall feel that would have. I was terrified because THERE WAS NOTHING LIKE THAT IN MY ROOM OR THE TWO ADJACENT ROOMS. I was in the empty middle of the room, but I was touching something just like a man's suit jacket. I still remember the adrenaline rush and the way my stomach felt like it was falling to my feet. There was absolute silence, no sound at all. No footsteps or breathing except mine.

The next day, I looked all around my sleeping room and the two adjacent rooms, but there was NOTHING that would have felt like that. Nor did anyone get up during the night - there was only the immediate family and all of them said they had stayed in their rooms.

To this day I don't know what I touched, but those old pictures of greats and great-greats took on an eerie context for me. Right over the bed where I slept was an old photo showing a man I had never met, my great-great grandfather holding my grandfather as a baby. He was wearing a wool-looking suit.

I've never stopped wondering what happened that night.