Paranormal Factor

I once worked with adults who were mentally and physically disabled. Many of my shifts were at Garrett Home (name changed for confidentiality). Garrett home had once been the home of the Garrett family, and had been built in 1866. It was a large white victorian, it had a quaint cottage in the back, a barn and a screened in porch.

The house was right on the highway, not very isolated; but Garrett Home had a life all of it’s own seperate from the busy road it resided on. Many of the residents of Garrett Home were prone to fits of rages, which they did not display much of once they left Garrett Home to move into their own respective apartments or duplexes.

Garrett Home had an attic upstairs, one of those old fashioned ones with the tiny door. Often the attic light would come on for no reason. Sometimes when I left at 12:45 in the morning, I would look up to see the attic light on. I would let the other staff know, and they claimed they did not leave it on either.

The home had a wide spiral staircase. I can’t tell you how many times I dreaded walking down those stairs, it was as if someone were about to push me down the stairs. Sometimes I felt a touch on the small of my back, or felt and heard breathing on the back of my neck. This was quite upsetting.

Sometimes during the day, if I worked alone, I would turn the seventies style stereo on to listen to music as I worked. One morning I was in the office working on my documenting when I heard the tuner on the stereo. I went into the “ball room” and watched as the button on the tuner moved as if an unseen hand was trying to change the station. I quickly shut the stereo off.

It came on again, and with it the changing of the station. I unplugged it, and thankfully, that was that; although it was clear that there was an electrical charge a few seconds after I unplugged it.

Mornings after that, the stereo was often on because staff had turned it on. When staff left, the stereo antics began again; that is unless I remembered to leave it unplugged.

Garrett Home was closed a few years ago. The residents that had once raised hell within it’s wall now living in their own apartments or deceased. I still wonder how much Gorman Home had effected their lives. It was a spooky old house, but like many other houses of its ilk, attracted a new family. They refurbished the grand old home to its former glory. Hopefully it isn’t playing games with them like it did with me.

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.

When I was about ten, I lived in an apartment in Michigan. My grandmother Wanda had just died, and I was pretty upset about it. My mother was devestated, we had already lost another family member (an aunt) just prior to that. She was actually on the phone with my great grandmother, her grandmother before I went to sleep. I went to bed and began to dream.

In my dream, there was a large white room and many carnations. There was a white casket, and it was slowly going into a furnace. I watched as the casket went into the furnace and began to burn.

There were so many flowers in the room in funeral arrangements. I woke up crying and was startled by the smell of carnations. There were no flowers in the house at that time. The next day, we got the news that my great grandmother had died and she was to be cremated in California. Her ashes reside with my uncle at this time.

My great grandmother was quite a character. She was Polish, and she had a large flowery sort of handwriting. I know this because she wrote me often. I met her only once, and found her to be somewhat of a firey sort of person.

My mother had told me that at times she terrorized her when she was a child. I know a bit more about her now, I have found some interesting things about her on the Internet. I knew that she lived in Palm Springs, but what I did not know was that she was actually the assistant to Fay Bainter.

Fay Bainter was an Academy Award-winning American actress. She is the aunt of actress Dorothy Burgess and sister-in-law to actress Grace Burgess. She quickly achieved success, and in 1938 she became the very first performer nominated for both the Oscar for Best Actress, for White Banners, and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, for Jezebel, winning for the latter. Since then, only nine other actors have won dual nominations in a single year. She was again nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Children’s Hour. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Blvd. Fay Bainter died from pneumonia at the age of 75. You can find out more about Fay Bainter here.

I find my Grandmother Carol to be fascinating in that many of the pictures she sent to me of herself had her posing in some glamorous way. It comes as no surprise she had Hollywood connections. I am sure that when she left this world, she wanted me to know it.

Whenever I hear about instances of pets haunting people, I am always reminded of the mysterious black cat that haunted my bedroom window. I only began talking about it recently when my family, friends and the world in general became more open about such things. It seems unlikely that such a thing can happen.

Late at night I was woken up my a constant meowing. We didn’t have a cat at the time, so I figured, it was just a neighborhood stray that I would send off. It was summer, so the screen was in place and the window was open. I saw a cat sitting on the lower roof near my window sill. I figured I would scare it away with my hand. It had bright green eyes and was completely black. I punched at it only to find air, my hand went right through it.

My wife also woke up and said, “shut that cat up!” she heard it too. I told her there was no cat. She didn’t believe me. Years later, I told my sister about the cat. It turned out that she had seen it too, and even described the eyes to me and the color before I told her any of the description.

When she used to have my room she seen the cat a couple times on the window sill. She did know that she did not like the looks of the cat and found it threatening. She had also heard it running down the stairs.

Was it the spirit of a cat or something else? It is hard to say. One thing is for certain, it was not a very happy sort of animal. We have long since moved away and have heard nothing further about this mysterious cat thus far from the new owners. My aunt did have a series of mishaps with the place, which makes sense to me since nothing really good every occurred there. If you fixed something one day, guarenteed it was falling apart the next.

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!

I used to be the sort of person that didn’t believe in the demonic. I figured, man could be so mean that why did we need demons or the devil for that matter? Something happened that really changed my mind. I was in a dark frame of mind. I had been listening to a lot of death metal, (not really by choice, by occupation — I was working on a website for a death metal band — they were not demonic, but definitely dark) and one of the band members alledgedly may have been a satanist (No, I do not capatalize satan’s name, it is like giving him credit that only God deserves; and I won’t do that for him).

At any rate, one night I woke up unexpectedly. It was dark in my room but just light enough to make out shapes. I looked down at my daughter sleeping beside me who was a toddler. Perching on top of her was this horrid little creature. My eyes got wide and my heart about stopped.

Then, it snarled at me. It had a wizened, ancient little face and hair like a crone. It had sharp teeth and it had the form of a gargoyle such as those at Notre Damn. It wore white rags. Suddenly I had a burst of anger and fear. I wanted this awful thing off my daughter. I smacked at it; perhaps trying to see if it was real. There was a popping noise and it simply disappeared. After that, I slept with the television on.

This happened in the old house I used to live. I still doubt to myself that this ever happen. Part of me really hopes it was a waking nightmare. But I wasn’t tired at all when it happened!

There is a small, forgotten cemetary outside of town towards Oakley. If you follow Juddville Road until you reach M-52, you will see it there on the left; on the side of a hill. If you go past it at night it is very eerie as many cemeteries are.

One night, my brother drove by it and seen a white, whispy figure leaning over a gravestone. It was a tall, slender man, slightly stooped. He had a hat (possibly civil war hat and uniform?) on as he looked solemnly at the grave. His cheeks and eyes were sunken in and he was bearded. He had an emanciated appearance, almost starved.
He was a solitary figure holding a lantern and looking straight down. The ghostly lantern gave him a ghastly green light. He did not acknowledge my brother. He also reminded my brother of the man on the mountain in a Led Zeppelin album.

We tried driving past at night again, but witnessed nothing. The cemetary is actually closed, and there haven’t been any recent new burials there that we are aware of.

9-6-08

I am going to add a little to this story as it has brought back a memory of something that occurred to myself, my husband, my daughter, her cousin, and her friend at the abandoned golf course that butts up against the cemetary you mentioned on M52.

It was winter and we had just moved back to Michigan from Arkansas. The country club had always been the place to go sleding in the winter so we packed up and took a trip out there. Usually we weren’t the only ones enjoying the hilly landscape, but this time it was just us and the blowing wind. I remember we were having a lot of fun, the kids had went exploring while my husband and I made snow angels and a snowman to pass the time. My husband had commented on the fact that if you looked over the gorge that divides the country club from the cemetary you could see where the ground had begun to errode and some of the caskets were becoming visible somewhat, we talked about how creepy the place was and that if one of my loved ones were buried there I would surely want the place fixed.

After a little while the kids returned, my daughter and her cousin carrying a bunch of rags on the end of sticks. I am somewhat of a germ freak and I hollered at them to get rid of the stuff as it was just garbage. My husband wanted to know where they had gotten the torn up and very dirty fabric from so they led us to the other side of the grounds and showed us the place under some very tall pine trees. The ground here was not covered in snow, just a thick bed of pine needles and huge cones scattered around. They showed us where they got the rags and low and behold there were also a pile of bones close by the same area and a strange piece of plastic that may have been part of a hat.

I am niave, I will admit it, and my first thought was a deer or dog (the bones were larger than belonging to a small animal) which had died here or been dragged here by another predator or hunter. I dismissed the rags at once, not associating them to the bones, I saw no skull to discern what animal the bones belonged to so we each voiced our opinion as to what we believed they were. Not once did any of us think that the bones were human, although the cemetery was just a few yards away. Why would bones be here and not there? It just didn’t make sense to even think it.

Anyway, we packed up some time later and returned home. A few months went by and then Spring was upon us and all of the snow had melted. It was late March and my husband and I were watching the eleven o’clock news and suddenly a report began about the bones of a transient man who had been missing since 1972, they had been found on the very same country club grounds, in the very same spot as we found the mysterious bones. The reporter was standing in the copse of trees and I recognized them instantly as the same ones we stood under in January. My husband and I exchanged glances. It was just too weird; to have uncovered the half-hazard deathbed of a man who no one had been able to find so many years ago.

Of course, we kept the ordeal to ourselves and didn’t mention it to anyone. Who would have believed us anyway? I had forgotten about it until I read the above mentioned story. Wonder if the ghost that was seen could maybe be the same man whose bones my daughter, her cousin, and friend found? Maybe he haunts that area not knowing he is dead. I don’t know really, but my imagination says I just might not be far off from the truth.

This past February I had a strange and somewhat terrifying experience in room 202 at the Little River Casino in Manistee, Michigan. In the suite was my brother and his wife, me and my children ages 8 and 9. I awoke around 3:30 in the morning to the sensation of a pressure on my side, kind of pushing me down. I thought it might be one of my daughters pushing me down. I raised my arm out to try to push off whatever was on top of me. I felt something substantial, but definitely not either one of my kids. It was at that time I began to get frightened. I was laying on my side so I turned my head to my right shoulder to get a glimpse of what was on top of me. It was at that time that I saw a large dark funnel of no substantial shape. I heard a mocking laugh. I struggled, to no avail. I decided to let the entity know that they should get off of me in the name of Jesus Christ. The funnel suddenly hit the ceiling and disappeared.

There I was; very frightened, hoping it was a dream. I decided to switch sides on the bed. I woke nobody up, as I felt like my sister-in-law would think I was nuts and I didn’t want to scare my kids. So I tried going back to sleep. This is when I felt hands all over the front of me, pushing and pulling. I knew I was sleeping when the second attack began as the sensations began to wake me up. I began to cry out, and this woke my sister-in-law. She said she looked over at me in bed and saw that I had a dark figure over me with it’s “arms” wrapped around me. My brother then heard my cry, turned on the light and asked me if I was okay. I told him that I was definitely not okay. My sister-in-law told my brother what I saw, and I told him what I experienced. Unfortunately, we were looking at another night in the same room already paid for. Thus, I didn’t sleep and basically played “night watchmen”. I was ready with my camera should the entity return. The only thing that happened was my daughter was crying in her sleep and I could see nothing bothering her from my viewpoint.

I would like to clarify I was on no medications, had not drunk any alcohol during this trip. This was the scariest thing to ever happen to me, and because of what my sister-in-law witnessed as I cried out leads me to believe it may be paranormal. My concern is, will other people suffer this same malady in that room? I definitely believe it was malevolent. Another question I am left with is, is this the attack from a “shadow person”? My best friend told me I should have asked for a different room. I was too worried the staff would think I was crazy! The Little River Casino is a somewhat new casino, and I am not aware of any history with the place.

My childhood home belonged to my family for generations. Built in 1886 by my great-great granfather it had withstood many a depressive moment, and stands tall within its nestle even today, unchanged and seemingly ominous. Although it no longer is inhabited by family the great old Victorian always reminds me of a time in the early nineteen eighties when I began to believe in ghosts.

The memory of an eight year old is always spoken of as imaginative or full of fantasy and unsubstantiated fears, but I don’t totally agree with that theory. Sure, children love to dream of many things, like, being a ninja or a princess, having a real unicorn or a dragon, of being able to fly, and surely it was easier to believe in the monster that lived in the closet.

This is my story of the proverbial monster in the closet which visited me often over a span of five years. The house I grew up in was a veritable grab bag of spooky occurrences and phantom spectres. Many born within my family tree and some others found their demise within its walls; I believe each moment of despair and a part of each hapless soul who died within the house had been recorded and possess the place to this day. Most died of natural causes; still born babies, sickly children who died in early stages of life, old age as well as the many now curable illnesses and diseases.

It was a sweltering August night as I slept in my room at the top of the stairs. My younger brother slept in the room next to mine farthest from the stairway, and our parents shared the room downstairs below my brother’s room. My paternal great-great grandmother had just passed away a mere month before this night, within her room across from my parents. She found solace within death after spending her last few years locked in a time long ago.

I recall her before and after her dementia, she was stern but loving; an old woman who had weathered things that could break even the strongest reserve. The mother of fifteen children, two of which survived to have children of their own. She had outlived three husbands and both of her surviving children who both died horrible deaths, herself dying at the age of eighty-eight in mid-nineteen eighty.

I cannot be sure that I was visited by phantom ghosts of my family, I can be sure of the fact that what ever it was it was not friendly nor did it make me feel welcome in my own house. I never had problems sleeping in my own room before this night. I often coddled my younger brother during the darkest nights when he was afraid of sleeping alone. This one night though, he did not visit me with tears on his cheeks asking to sleep with me for the remainder of the night. I slept alone and unfettered for most of the night. That is until something brought me out of what I recall as a deep slumber. I remember that because when I woke it was like I had been shaken. I thought I would see my brother’s face before mine as he always did on previous nights, but where he should have been there was nothing, just me and the darkness. I called out to him thinking he had given up trying to wake me and had returned to his own room, but he didn’t reply. To this I was grateful since it really was uncomfortable sharing my twin bed, let alone with my squirming brother. I remember that at the time I was not afraid, for the mind rationalizes the unexplained and finds meaning for everything, even in an eight year old mind.

I tried to fall back to sleep, and had almost reached that point when I felt a light breath upon my face. My eyes snapped open instantly, ready to scold my brother for waking me once again. I opened my mouth to tell him to just get in bed with me and stop breathing in my face (I hated it when he breathed on me). But he wasn’t there. I got up to check on him and found him fast asleep, his mouth open and his face cherubic in the moonlight. I debated going downstairs and climbing in bed with my parents, something I hadn’t done since the last time I was really sick. I decided against it and returned to my own room, dispelling the breath on my face with that rational thinking I spoke of earlier. My bedroom window was open and the curtains fluttered in the light breeze; of course it was just the wind, it was the only plausable thing. So, I returned to my bed and snuggled against the wall as far as I could in case my brother came to me for real in the night.

I found that no matter how hard I tried I was not going to fall back to sleep any time soon. So, I lay there staring at the ceiling, my eyes already adjusted to the dark as I counted the flaws in the plaster and pictured cartoon characters in the lines and cracks. This was a little game I played to help me fall asleep. It began to work its magic and I felt my eyelids become heavy. Once more I was asleep, for how long I do not know. I recall a dream I was having, of being in the park with my dog playing fetch with a stick. Then as clear as day I heard a woman’s voice speak my name within my room. It was spoken as whisper in my ear and again I felt the puff of breath against my skin.

This time I was afraid. I did not recognize the voice, it was not my mother, nor was it any of my older sisters for they had homes and families of their own and wouldn’t be in my room in the middle of the night playing tricks on me. I feared to open my eyes, feared for what would be looking me in the face. I pretended to still be asleep. Ghosts must know faking because I heard the voice once again, this time louder and not quite so close as before. With courage I didn’t know I had I allowed my eyelids to open a crack. My heart hammered in my chest and my ears rang with my fear. Yet, my room was empty once again. By now my mind had forgotten to rationalize and every deep seated fear I had was made real as I lay there. Eyes open wide now, I stared out my bedroom door into the hall. I wanted to get up and flee to the safety of my parents room but found that I could not move. Lifting my head and limbs was our of my control, not one part of my body responded to the need to get up and out of bed. It was like I was being held down, restrained in my own bed. I could not cry out either, my voice had been silenced no matter how I tried to scream.

The next moment I found myself looking at a dark mass as it floated outside of my room in front of my door. The smoke-like thing was so dark it blocked out the railing and stairwell behind it. What strikes me as the most scary point of the moment was the fact that I could see above and below the dark cloud. I could see the top of the window that shone down upon the stairwell and I could see the light teal carpet in the hallway at the top of the stairs. The dark thing seemed to billow and churn fading around the edges as it hovered in my doorway for what seemed like an eternity.

Still, I could not move. My terror was so intense I felt my heart would burst from fear. Soon, it began to move away from my doorway toward my brother’s room. This frightened me even more and I fought with all my might to move, to call out to my parents for help. As soon as it passed out of sight of my doorway I found I could move and almost threw myself out of bed in the instantaneous return of my motor skills. I waited, listening for any sound, for the phantom voice again. I found my courage and leapt from bed and ran down the stairs to my parents room. I was hysterical and blubbering and it took a few minutes to be able to speak coherently and explain what had happened. I begged them to check on my brother, for surely it was still in his room. The did and found nothing. This reinforced the notion that I had just had a bad dream. Both my parents tried to convince me it was nothing more than my over active imagination. They wouldn’t listen no matter how I pleaded with them about what I saw.

My mother patted me on the head, led me back to my room with kisses, tucked me back into the one place I dreaded to be, my bed. This happened to me frequently, the same way, with the voice and the dark shadow outside my room. From the first night though, I never allowed my brother to sleep alone in his own room. I was just as afraid for myself as I was for him and we spent many nights huddled together in my small bed.

I learned not to dread the occurrances, but found ways to convince myself it was nothing. But that nothing ended up morphing into more and more occurrances as time went by. I will leave this story off here, for the other happenings are for another day. I just wonder, since I haven’t lived in that house since I was seventeen, almost twenty years ago, if the new tennants witness those same hauntings? Is there another child that sleeps in my old room who is awakened by that voice and immobilization and phantom cloud? Does that child’s parents disbelieve and dispel the fear with false reassurances? I surely hope not, I hope whatever inhabits that house has found the path to heaven or hell, whichever realm it belongs in.