I want to say that "ghosts aren't real" like all smart educated non-supersititious western people. I wouldn't want to get into some kind of scientific argument about it, especially on the "ghosts are real" side, but I would want to explore the idea of myth and dream and the psychological need to believe and what the ghosts "mean" to the people who see them. Stories like yours give me a delicious tingle.
Also, I lived in a very old house in DC for a while. It was supposed to be haunted, and I laughed it off until I was home alone one night and heard knocking on the walls - as if someone was trying to locate a stud or a hollow place, continuing down each wall in the living room in a methodical fashion. We had no upstairs neighbors, there were two closed businesses on either side, and the knocking was definitely coming from right in the room with me. I got a little bit freaked out listening to the knocking, so I left the room and went into mine. You had to cut through my room to get to the 2 rooms in the basement, and we had a bead curtain at the bottom of the stairs. On my way into my room, I heard the distinctive sound of someone running through the bead curtain, and when I got to the top of the stairs it was swinging back and forth. I turned my back and the sound happened again, and the curtain was swinging violently. It for sure was not a breeze or a wind (communicating between a closed basement and a closed room) - it was something denser and more directed than that passing through the curtain in a certain way much faster than any breeze.
I wish I'd had the presence of mind to try some sort of "knock once for yes, twice for no" thing, but I think I just sat on my bed and said "I hope you're a friendly ghost" and went back to my book. It happened a few times later that summer, always when I was alone. I never saw anything. My roommates who had lived there longer than me confirmed that they heard the knocking sometimes too, and it became sort of a thing to say "Hey ghost, I'm home" when coming through the door.
Like me, my roommates always heard it when alone in the house.
Were we having a collective hallucination? Was the house just settling in some way? I have no idea, but it's sure kinda creepy, isn't it?
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Also, I lived in a very old house in DC for a while. It was supposed to be haunted, and I laughed it off until I was home alone one night and heard knocking on the walls - as if someone was trying to locate a stud or a hollow place, continuing down each wall in the living room in a methodical fashion. We had no upstairs neighbors, there were two closed businesses on either side, and the knocking was definitely coming from right in the room with me. I got a little bit freaked out listening to the knocking, so I left the room and went into mine. You had to cut through my room to get to the 2 rooms in the basement, and we had a bead curtain at the bottom of the stairs. On my way into my room, I heard the distinctive sound of someone running through the bead curtain, and when I got to the top of the stairs it was swinging back and forth. I turned my back and the sound happened again, and the curtain was swinging violently. It for sure was not a breeze or a wind (communicating between a closed basement and a closed room) - it was something denser and more directed than that passing through the curtain in a certain way much faster than any breeze.
I wish I'd had the presence of mind to try some sort of "knock once for yes, twice for no" thing, but I think I just sat on my bed and said "I hope you're a friendly ghost" and went back to my book. It happened a few times later that summer, always when I was alone. I never saw anything. My roommates who had lived there longer than me confirmed that they heard the knocking sometimes too, and it became sort of a thing to say "Hey ghost, I'm home" when coming through the door.
Like me, my roommates always heard it when alone in the house.
Were we having a collective hallucination? Was the house just settling in some way? I have no idea, but it's sure kinda creepy, isn't it?