A selection of stories submitted to the Ghost Story Project.
“She was holding something sharp…”
Location: Los Angeles, CA
To give you a short summary, I met a girl from the Dominican Republic, she told me she was haunted. I believed her only half-heartedly until I actually visited her and realized it was true. This was going on for three years now, she came to visit me in 2019.
- The cabinets in my restroom were all opened, they were the heavy snapping kind. I have two cats but they don’t have the strength and they never opened them before, I was the last person in the restroom.
- My girlfriend claims that she saw a dark figure in the hallway and she was terrified.
- I heard.. something whisper in my left ear, clear as day that said “Heeeyyyy…” it was 1 AM and the girlfriend was asleep. It was dead silent in my room and I was just about to go to bed.
- The cabinets in my kitchen area were opened.
- Random sounds in the house were happening in the night (Couldn’t figure out what it was, sounds like a lot of moving of items.)
Lastly, when she left and returned home, I thought it would be over. I was wrong. I woke up one night and saw this black shadow in front of my bed. I know I was awake, I pinched myself. But you know how people describe it as a shadow? Well to me.. it kind of looked like a void, similar to how someone were to crop out a picture. It was just, gone. It was still night so I assumed I was half-asleep. I figured if it was going to harm me, I’d be dead. So I just stared at it, didn’t say anything. I rubbed my eyes, and it was still there. My cats were looking at it, but not moving. I just.. stared at it, I can see everything else in the room fine. My eyes were adjusted to the night. BUT I CAN’T SEE THROUGH THIS THING.
It was a 6 foot woman, with long hair, but she had a hunchback and she was holding something sharp, that looks like a knife? The knife was also black. After about half a minute, it wasn’t moving. So I just recalled that I had Alexa bound to my lights. I told her to turn them on and.. poof. It was gone like that. I immediately turned off my lights using the voice sensor again and this time, it was gone. I can see my computer desk at night and whatever it was. It was gone now.
The next morning, I told my girlfriend of the weird thing I saw and she was silent and told me, “That’s the same woman that follows me around.” She never described her to me.
That was just the experiences in California. The times I went back and visited her were bountiful, plentiful even. If you’re interested, I can tell you more. Though if you’re using this for research, I hope this helps.
“…what do you mean you heard me?”
Location: Van Nuys, CA
I’m one of those kids that grew up in a haunted house (lived here for 21 yrs, from age 2 to present day, it was built in 1953 and renovated in 1960) but my mom refuses to believe it and I’m a scientist and also super scared of ghosts so I try to find rational explanations for everything (with some success). I’ll start with the odd occurrences that I’ve never found an explanation for:
– Consistent footstep noises in the hallway (they always seem to be at night, but I’m not sure if that’s cause I’m not always home during the day) and footsteps from the attic (the attic has one staircase entrance from the hallway and a small sliding panel into my closet too small for a person, both remain closed) the attic one is especially odd since it isn’t complete. The only person who goes up there is our AC guy and even then, you can’t fully stand up in the attic, you sort of squat walk or crawl so I’m not sure how I hear footsteps from above. Both of these are when everyone is asleep and no one is moving (I’ll ask my mom and sister the day after to be sure, but I stay up later than anyone and also my mom only gets up to go to the en suite bathroom where the loud fan turns on and I can hear that, or she lets the dog out late at night when I can hear him walking too) the footsteps are so normal at this point I don’t even really note them because they happen so often, just about nightly.
– Doors moving on their own. (Something to note, this only seems to effect doors off of the hallway now that I’m writing this all down) it started with my sister’s, when we were infants her door would always swing wide open unless it was fully clicked shut. I wrote this off as a draft of course except one day it just stopped doing that. There were no renovations done and nothing changed to the ac, but for some reason that door just never swung open again (it would open for about 9 straight years from my first memory though I can’t remember exactly when it stopped). Some years later, about 2011, the door to the hallway began acting odd. It would open and shut, open and shut, over and over again. My sister and I could hear it when we were in adjacent rooms, it would click fully shut and open again multiple times. It didn’t correlate with a time of day either. My mom brushed us off (especially since my sis and I always told her about the footsteps and noises so we had little credibility to her) but one day we were all sitting watching TV in the den next to the hallway door (you can’t see it from where we were sitting, and it’s only us in the house, even the dogs were with us) the door began it’s ritual.
My sis and I ignored it from fear, but (it was loud but not slamming) my mom heard it and just asked ‘Is that the hall door?’ my sis and I were so glad she finally noticed and admitted something weird was happening! We told her it was what we were talking about, but despite sitting there with this happening she just said ‘Odd’ and never mentioned it again! This would be another thing I’d write off as a draft, except for no pattern with timing, it clicked fully closed each time, and once again it just stopped doing that one day out of nowhere despite no renovations or changes to the house (it did this for about two years). Next was my room door. At this point, we had had renovations but only the bathrooms had been redone, not the ac and the bathroom is not connected to my room. This has been happening just this past year, I always leave my door open during the day and thought nothing of it but this past year my door has been swinging shut on it’s own. Not clicking, but against the doorjamb. I would open it multiple times a day, and it’d just close again. Again, it has never done this before and we haven’t made and changes to the doors or house so I have no rational idea why it started now.
– This may mean more to me than to you, but this was the last straw that I couldn’t write off. My sister has moved out so it’s just me, my mom, and our one elderly dog (who is deaf and has separation anxiety so he sleeps in my mom’s room). I was with my boyfriend late, and came home around 1am. The next morning my mom and I have this conversation:
Mom: “What time did you come home last night?
Me:”Around 1, why?” (To be clear, my mom never asks and doesn’t mind if I get home super late, she doesn’t even wake up when I come home lol so this was a weird question for her to ask)
Mom: “Oh, I heard you around 11 though”
Me: ? “I wasn’t home then, what do you mean you heard me?”
Mom: “I was in bed and I heard someone, I thought it was you.” (Keep in mind, my mom is a single mother and an associate defense attorney, so she’s a bad ass, and isn’t even looking up from her work while having this convo with me. She’s so nonchalant I had to poke her with qs)
Me: “what do you mean you heard me? What did you hear?”
Mom: “Just like someone moving around the house a bunch. It didn’t really sound like you but I figured it was.”
Me: “You didn’t go see who it was? What if it was a burglar??”
Mom: “I thought about that, but then I thought ‘If I die, I die.'”
Cue my shock as my mom finally admitted to hearing the noises I’ve always been hearing! Upon further grilling, my mom has chalked it up to “weird” but isn’t recanting what she heard because it was so clear (also, there wasn’t anyone home and it was a burglar) yet she isn’t admitting it’s a ghost either.
Most everything else are things I can convince myself are normal, like the lights being weird (one incident when I was younger where the lights in the hallway kept dimming and getting bright, over and over with no reaction from us messing with the switch) in order to sleep alright, I say it was a malfunction (despite it only doing that once ever) or short wire or something, same with the lights flickering in the hallway no matter the new ness of the bulb or how tight we screw it in.
This is general feeling but sometimes I’ll just feel watched. Not always, I do some pretty embarrassing stuff and feel fine, but sometimes it’s like someone’s there. Nothing ever mean though, just creepy cause of the feeling, but it never feels bad necessarily.
To add, it’s not me since I’ve lived in multiple places but this house is the only place I’ve experienced this is.
“It came from that hole in the wall.”
Location: Port Reading, NJ
When I was 5 on a Halloween night I was sitting in the living room. My brother and sisters were already in bed. Mom and Dad were in the kitchen. I could hear them. I had a pack of three hard candies I was trying to open. I felt like I was being watched from a little hole in the wall where a door stop had been missing. I called out for my mother. She said she would be there in a minute.
I struggled with the wrapper keeping an eye on the wall. All at once a two dimensional black mass with yellow eyes and yellow jagged teeth with its mouth open stretched across the room! It came from that hole in the wall. It never fully came out of the hole. It stretched up toward the ceiling then bent down to me! I screamed a blood curdling scream. The thing took one hand and grabbed my hand with the candy in it. It took its other hand and grabbed the cellophane wrapped candy! Then it was gone.
Mom and dad came into the room and I told them what happened. They did not believe me. I shouted at them if I am making it up where is the wrapper? They searched the room and could just [not] find it. Still reluctant to admit it happened, they put me in bed. Laying there I heard my father ask my mother if she thought I was telling the truth. They looked for the wrapper and did not find it.
Daniel S. Wise 