Paranormal Factor

When I moved into my new home, I felt secure and got absolutely no bad vibes. I still don’t. I had merely experienced the usual things that people do when they can’t find something. Many times in my life, my family would joke that, “The ghost must have moved it” we would all laugh when we found the object in some place that we had forgotten laying it down at.

So many times strange moving objects result from people moving them and not remembering or not telling the other person where they moved it to. This happens all the time. It is not mysterious, it is not unusual, it is just stuff getting misplaced.

One day, I was looking into the kitchen from my office desk and talking to my daughter and sister-in-law. I happened to notice that my keys were dangerously close to the edge of the counter. No big deal, keys aren’t breakable. I decided to monitor them so that at the right moment I could pick them off the floor.

As fate would have it, my daughter and sister-in-law turned their backs from the counter and looked out the window. That is when I saw the keys move back onto the counter. Nobody witnessed it but me, so of course, it becomes a story (I take this from Grant and Jason’s perspective on Ghost Hunters. If nobody witnessed it but you, or you do not have it on film it becomes just a story — but this is a forum for stories). It seems trifling really. It wasn’t a human that moved the keys back. I do agree, it was rather thoughtful of the unseen entity or entities, at least I didn’t have to get up from my desk and pick them up!

Our house is surrounded by woods. At night it is very quiet, a slightly creepy. During the fall, the moon is so bright in the sky on most nights that you barely need the outdoor light. The air is fresh and clean. We live on top of hill by a large lake. Since the summer months have ended, things are very quiet.

My sister-in-law was outside walking the dog at about 2:00 a.m. All of the sudden I heard a frantic barking from our larger dog. She came back into the house looking upset. She said that she seen a large dark shape that hissed at her in the woods. It sounded like a cat, but it was too large for that.

The dark shape ran from a neighbor’s lawn into the woods. She said she could tell it was relatively large from the sound that it made in the woods, much too large for a cat. I pretty well figured that maybe she had seen another type of animal, but I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why it would make a hissing noise.

So, I decided to investigate. I went outside by my bedroom window. All was dark and silent on that side of the house. Suddenly, our large dog began to fuss. He looked scared. It didn’t take me long to get back into the house and lock the doors. We have had trouble in the past with a young man that lives on the corner. He would harrass our windows late at night, and committ other acts of mischief. Fortunately, we caught him red handed so I know it wasn’t him.

When I moved into my new home, I felt secure and got absolutely no bad vibes. I still don’t. I had merely experienced the usual things that people do when they can’t find something. Many times in my life, my family would joke that, “The ghost must have moved it” we would all laugh when we found the object in some place that we had forgotten laying it down at.

So many times strange moving objects result from people moving them and not remembering or not telling the other person where they moved it to. This happens all the time. It is not mysterious, it is not unusual, it is just stuff getting misplaced.

One day, I was looking into the kitchen from my office desk and talking to my daughter and sister-in-law. I happened to notice that my keys were dangerously close to the edge of the counter. No big deal, keys aren’t breakable. I decided to monitor them so that at the right moment I could pick them off the floor.

As fate would have it, my daughter and sister-in-law turned their backs from the counter and looked out the window. That is when I saw the keys move back onto the counter. Nobody witnessed it but me, so of course, it becomes a story (I take this from Grant and Jason’s perspective on Ghost Hunters. If nobody witnessed it but you, or you do not have it on film it becomes just a story — but this is a forum for stories). It seems trifling really. It wasn’t a human that moved the keys back. I do agree, it was rather thoughtful of the unseen entity or entities, at least I didn’t have to get up from my desk and pick them up!

Most everyone recieves items passed down through family members, tokens or trinkets with no monetary value except sentimental ones.  My mother inherited items from her grandmother, many of them had been lost or damaged through natural disasters and moving.  One item I recall was a paticularly ugly glass butter dish.  It was cream colored with pea green vines up the sides and along the base; comprised of a flat base and rectangular lid.  It had withstood many years and had always stood upon the kitchen counter used often for exactly the purpose it was intended.

I was in charge of dishes after every meal.  And one particular evening I accidentally dropped and broke the lid in several pieces.  My father tried to glue it back together but it just wouldn’t take the gluing and eventually it had been thrown away to the dismay of my mother who valued every piece she received from her grandmother.  I felt horrible about breaking it, it wasn’t on purpose, just one of those accidents that make you feel utterly worthless to do anything about except apologize for.

Weeks went by and my duties had not changed after every meal.  I stood at the sink with my hands in the hot, soapy water and emptied the sink and refilled it several times clearing the dirty dishes from the counter putting them now clean into the drainer.  I finally got through the heap and had only a few pans left to wash when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of sunlight on glass.  I turned my head toward the twinkling and found the butter dish that I had broken, which had been thrown out several weeks before, standing in its regular spot on the counter.  I frantically called for my mother, who was not one to see things as anything but coincidental.

She examined it finding no cracks or broken spots on it at all, and dismissed it at once with a look at me, almost as if I had been playing tricks on her, which I most assuredly had not.  I was frightened and had quite a hard time after that doing my kitchen duties.  Every time I entered the kitchen my eyes would automatically return to the butter dish, almost wishing it to be gone.

My little brother said something strange to me that next day during dinner.  It was out of the blue and so innocent that I didn’t know whether I should have been afraid or intrigued.  We were always the last at the table, our parents always left after eating to sit in the living room and watch television.  I recall him turning to me and saying with a look on his face as if he was hearing and repeating something said to him that only he could hear.  He said, “Grandma is glad we are using the butter dish.”  And that was it.  I waited for him to say more before I spoke but he just went back to eating.

He offered to help me with dishes afterward because he wanted badly to play Monopoly before our bedtime.  I asked him how he knew that grandma was glad about the butter dish and he shrugged and pointed toward the basement doorway.  The basement was one place I feared more than any other in the house, it was dark and wet and smelled like rotted earth.  I looked toward where he pointed and saw nothing, and when I looked again at his face he had a smile and was looking toward the basement dooway.  He wasn’t a vindictive child or prone to stories, again it was an innocent gesture and glance, but it frightened me immensely.

I still cannot explain how the dish had gotten back into the house after being discarded and then taken to the dump, which I am sure it had since the garbage was collected once a week and this had been several weeks since the accidental breaking of the butter dish.  Nor do I have any reasoning for the things my brother said to me or the way he looked toward the basement doorway.

No one ever spoke of the butter dish turning back up fixed as if I hadn’t broken it after all.  As with many other occurrences that happened over the years it seemed to all be in my imagination when I absolutely knew that it was not.

I remember, back when I was a teenager, how difficult it was to get most of my school friends to come to my house for any longer than just in and out.  Their trepidation stemmed from weird occurrences that were common to me but intently frightening to them.

This is one experience I recall when a friend I will call “C” had decided to forgo the strange within my house and actually spend the night.  My parents had gone out for the night leaving her and I in charge of my younger brother and several foster and adopted kids who lived with us at the time.  It was 11 pm and everyone but her and I were in bed fast asleep.  I remember we were sitting at the dining room table playing a game of Rummy, all of the lights were blazing; as I always insisted on them being, and the room was quiet except for our occasional banter about the game. 

Midnight chimed on the grandfather clock in the livingroom and just as the twelfth chime rang a picture of my older brother, who lived elsewhere, flew off the top shelf behind us and landed hard against the old phonograph/eight track cabinet across the room.  The picture had soared over our heads and we both were instantly startled as the radio in the cabinet began to play, switching stations with an eerie static. It was one of the kind that had to be switched from radio to eight track to phonograph with a toggle-like switch inside a heavy lid that concealed the players and radio within.  This was the first time something like this had happened, mostly it was just things disappearing or phantom shadows that only I laid witness to.

Both of us were severely frightened by this. Although I had encountered other strange happenings, my friend ‘C’ had no idea about the things that just seemed to go on in my house.  (And shame on me if I had purposefully withheld that information in the hopes that nothing would happen while she was there, I was only 13 at the time.) Of course, I had told the stories but she had dismissed them as my imagination.
I begged her not to call her dad to go home, and it took much finesse to calm her down.  Finally, she consented to stay the rest of the night and nothing else happened, thankfully.

The following morning my mother called us to breakfast and we overheard her talking to my father about the midnight arrest of my brother; the one whose picture sailed across the room and caused the radio to eerily play on its own.  My friend and I exchanged glances.  I decided to divulge the previous night’s happenings to my parents and I don’t really think they believed me.

I haven’t talked to ‘C’ in many, many years, and I wonder if she remembers this occurrence?  From that day on not one of my friends from school would come to my house except one, my friend Patti who lived across the alley. Patti was the only fearless friend I had, and still have today.  Seems like we have had more than enough of our share of hauntings over the span of our lives.  Maybe that is why our friendship has lasted all these years; because we share a link with some otherworldly realm that has reached out to us over and over as we grew up. 
              

Around the time I was still in high school, we used to love to get in the car and drive to King Road at night. Lots of strange things happened, there was even a sighting of a black, cougar-like creature in the area. Perhaps we were just teenagers scaring each other while under the influence, but I can tell you it was very strange. A friend of mine had a nickname for the beast, he called it the “Bleen”. He even claimed to have seen it’s read eyes staring out from the darkness. Once I seen it too, and I demanded everyone in the car to leave immediately.

We did see many dark shapes out of King Road, along with ghostly lights. You could often see them from a distance as you approached King Road, but once you got there, they disappeared. The area was very spooky at night. To the right of King Road was a vast ditch. If you were to get your car into that ditch there was no way of getting it out. Many times we almost ended up in peril during the winter months.

Why did we even want to go there at night? The place was eerie, even during the daytime. There was only one house on that road, and it was at the end of it. As I got older, I avoided King Road at night. Really, there was no reason to be down there, it was just a narrow dirt road that connected Juddville and Chipman. Several teenagers and people in their early twenties partied on that road, but by the late nineties all parties had ended. I still wonder if we just loved to scare each other. One thing for certain, whatever walks on King Road most likely walks alone now.

There seems to be a trend with my sensory perception of ghosts. Family members have also noticed the same thing I have. If I am sleeping and I am bothered by a ghost, I notice a few things. I feel cold, I begin to shake and cry in my sleep. It is usually enough to wake me up. I don’t notice that I am having any dreams whatsoever, just that I am being bothered. This was the case at a hotel I visited, the cabin in Idlewild and here in my own home.

Two nights ago, I shut all the lights off at night; something I don’t normally do — because I actually have problems with the supernatural and more recently with a neighborhood kid who was bothering our house at night. That is when I had trouble. I woke myself up sobbing and afraid, I was certain someone had been bothering me again.

There are moments when I really want to forget that I am different, so I go ahead and just try to be like everyone else at night. Sometimes I wake up and see apparitions, or a black shape. My father says I am having waking dreams and I like to agree; but there is an uncertainty that says, maybe it is the “others”.

This is something I don’t normally discuss with everyone. I have no serious history of mental illness, just this thing I have been dealing with for awhile. Thankfully, I have been encouraged by shows like Paranormal State and Ghost Hunters to accept, that perhaps beeing cursed or blessed with being able to sense spirits is just something that naturally occurs.

I realize there are plenty of people that deal with this including the part where people judge
you as being a quack. That’s okay with me, I accept that people have different views. However, as long as there are people that feel the way I do, I can discuss it. I welcome anyone who is also experiencing paranormal activity to feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.

We really have a great deal of tales to tell! We have collected these tales mostly due to not being really able to talk about our experiences for a long time. There are so many haunted places in Michigan! In the case of myself (the Administrator) ghosts seem to flock to me. My stories will be published here for the first time ever. I really never wanted to be haunted, but I seek to learn more; to know if I am the only one ( I doubt this) etc.

I have found that I am actually not the only one, my friends and family also suffer from prophetic dreams, ghost sightings and more. My cousins sense the past, see orbs or ghosts and take ghostly photos.

As for myself, my psychic abilities range from remote viewing, intuition and prophetic dreams, problems with shadow people, attacks from ghosts (I leave the light or tv on when I sleep or do I have trouble!), once I even saw a demon in my room, but more on that later…

I also find that if I focus, I can predict symbols. I will describe more of my abilities later on.

For now, I hope you find peace or fascination in the stories here from a family of people who are as my father says, “Finely Tuned” and from my dearest friends who have shocking paranormal experiences and abilities. Please share your feedback, we all wish to learn from you too!