“She heard guitar music coming from the basement downstairs”

I’ve received your emails for a couple of years now, and I never would have believed I’d be writing to you with my own “out-of-the-ordinary” experience.

It happened a couple of weeks ago when I arrived home from a business trip back east.  The first thing that seemed to be “different” was my dog, Henry, who just sat there instead of jumping up and down and doing his best to bowl me over.

I usually leave him with Jane who stays in my house when I’m away.  It costs about the same as boarding, and this way Henry is not cooped up.  I also feel confident that my house isn’t sitting in the dark each night, making an inviting target for some thief.

For some reason, when Henry first spotted me, he didn’t even bother to get up.  He merely raised his head while remaining lying on his side.  I thought perhaps he was sick but Jane assured me he was fine but a bit scared.

“Scared,” I asked?  “What does he have to be scared about?”  It was such a strange comment.  But not at all strange when Jane told me what had transpired a few days after I had left.

She said that in the middle of the night she had heard guitar music coming from the basement downstairs.  She said she was scared out of her mind, started to call the police, but thought better of it and went downstairs to check it out.

“I took Henry with me for protection,” she said, although she and I both know that Henry runs for cover at the first sign of trouble.

Jane went on to tell me what she saw.  “As I was walking down the stairs leading to the basement, I saw the figure of a young man out of the corner of my eye.  Normally, I would have run back upstairs and out the house, but I didn’t feel the least bit threatened.  It was as if he wanted to say something to me.

“Then when I walked down the final step, I saw that he was holding a guitar, and although he was moving his hand up and down as if he were playing it, I heard no sound.

“And then he vanished right in front of my eyes.  I glanced down at Henry whose tail was between his legs.  He was slowly creeping behind my legs, the brave protector dog that he is.”

When I asked Jane what the young man looked like, I knew at once he was the son of the people who rent out the house to me.  I met him once, just weeks before he passed away from a long-term illness a year ago on Christmas day.

Georgina Lassiter
Montreal, Canada

“I had a strange feeling that someone or something was watching.”

I have always believed that sometimes spirits of the dead kind of “hang around” until they finish some sort of unfinished business.  And I always hoped that I would experience it for myself because it seemed so exciting.

But my experience in a cabin my folks rented on a northern Wisconsin lake last summer exceeded my wildest expectations.

I had just graduated high school and was getting ready to go off to Boston College, so the trip was kind of a graduation present.  Nothing was unusual when we brought our bags in from the car, and my sister and I playfully fought for who got the cushier bed.

We rented a small motorboat in the afternoon and found the lake to be reasonably quiet and quite beautiful.  After a very nice dinner at a local restaurant, my sister and I climbed into our separate beds in the same room.  Our folks were in the second bedroom, and we were all tired from our first day’s adventures.

When I turned off the lights, I had a strange feeling that someone or something was watching.  I mentioned this to my sister who immediately freaked out and started peeking out the window to see if someone was there.

I explained that I wasn’t afraid of someone stalking us from the outside, but rather from the very room we were in.  My sister, Marlene, just looked at me, turned over and said something derogatory about my intelligence and wondered why a fine school like Boston College would admit me.

Then the “fun” started.

I awoke when I felt a tug on my blanket.  I was half asleep and mumbled to my sister that she should stop messing around.  When Marlene didn’t answer, I realized she was asleep and I let out a small scream.

Marlene sat up and asked what was wrong.  When I told her, she said that she also had felt something tug on her nightgown  but thought it had merely been part of a dream.

Well, we didn’t get much sleep the rest of the night.  In the morning, when we told our folks what happened, my mother turned white.  She said she had experienced the same thing but was too embarrassed to tell our father.

We mentioned this to the manager of the cabin, and he said it had happened to him numerous times ever since he bought the cabin.  He referred to the intruder as “The Playful Ghost.”

Christi Mikan
Milwaukee, WI

Can you guess who it is?

This man was born Ehrich Weiss March 24, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary. Ashamed of his birthplace, he later claimed to have been born in Appleton, Wisconsin.

His family was poor and at the age of eight, he went to work to help pay the bills. He sold newspapers and shined shoes until age12, when he left home and began performing magic, calling himself “Eric, the Great.”

He was a mere 5′5″ with a high-pitched voice, but was extremely athletic and charismatic

Soon he became famous worldwide when he astonished audiences with his incredible feats.

In 1926, a member of the audience asked if he could punch the magician in the stomach to test his tolerance for pain. A few single blows caused his appendix to rupture.  Despite the pain, he continued to perform several shows but after one final performance in Michigan, he collapsed and was rushed to a local hospital.

Both of his homes, in New York and Los Angeles are currently said to be haunted by his ghostly spirit, even though one of them burned down after his death.

Harry Houdini died October 31, 1926 of peritonitis.

“He’s standing there at the end of my bed, but he isn’t saying anything.”

When our beloved neighbor, Henry, and his son, Allen, were in a tragic automobile accident our entire neighborhood was devastated.

We are a close-knit community, have street fairs, barbecues, etc. and have made numerous friends over the years.  Henry died that day and his son was left in a coma for two weeks.  The doctors feared Allen would never wake up.

My husband and I would visit him just about every day, and while we were taking a break in the lounge, one of the nurses came rushing in and said come with me.  She led us into Allen’s room and we were astonished to see him awake.  His eyes were open and he was trying to speak but nothing was coming out.

The nurse gave him a sip of water, and he started to make audible sounds.  Then he looked at my husband and said, “Is my father OK?”

We didn’t know what to say.  Again he said, “Is my father OK?”

My husband looked at me and said, “Yes, he’s OK.”  Then Allen looked a bit puzzled and said, “Why isn’t he answering me?”  I asked what do you mean.  And he said, “He’s standing there at the end of my bed, but he isn’t saying anything.”

We looked but couldn’t see anything.  My husband sighed and took Allen’s hand.  “Allen,” he said, “I’m afraid your dad didn’t make it.”  Allen nodded but said nothing.

Well, Allen recovered.  It took a long time, but he made it.  His mother said he never mentioned it again that he saw his dead father at his bedside.

J. Cantor
Minneapolis, MN

“Her predictions were right on the nose.”

Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) was born in Atlanta, Georgia which is the setting for her bestseller Gone With the Wind, a story of the Civil War.  The film starred Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in 1939.

When Mitchell was writing the saga, she said the story was revealed to her in bits and pieces, often as if it were an out-of-body experience.  “Things would pop into mind that I had never considered, and it was as if I had a professional writer at my beck and call inside my head.”

Mitchell also recalled an incident in which an acquaintance who was known for her insight and intuition had foretold of the book’s success years before it was written.  According to Mitchell, this woman could pick your brain and tell you things you didn’t want to know about yourself.”

Mitchell described the woman as extremely bright and someone who could talk to the spirits.  “She told me things about myself I had told no one.  And I had never met anyone like her before or since.”

When the book became an instant success, Mitchell recounted that by this time her friend has passed away.  “But I’ll never forget her words of encouragement during the long, long months it took me to write it.  She would tell me things that would transpire once I achieved fame and glory, and her predictions were inevitably right on the nose.

“It was the most surreal, exciting, and scary thing he had ever witnessed.”

I ran into the house trying to get out of the torrential rain that was about to destroy my umbrella.  It was one of those nasty storms we get here in the Northwest.

After checking my voice mail, I turned on the computer and was taken aback by an email address I hadn’t seen in years.  It was from Susan, an old, old girlfriend of mine from back in my University of Washington days.

Susan was one of those people whom you never really knew how she ticked, and I’m not so sure she ever knew herself.

We had dated for a little over two years, and although she was a joy to be around – and I don’t want to tell you about some of the crazy things we did together – she could be quite trying at times because she would vacillate from happy to sad to happy again, in a wink.

Anyway, Susan said she was going to be in Seattle in a couple of weeks and wanted to get together.  Funny thing is she didn’t bother to ask if I were married; frankly, I don’t think she cared.  She was a free spirit, and that was always part of her appeal.

As it was, I am married, but my wife, Edie, is not the jealous type and she didn’t hesitate to give her blessings.

The evening Susan and I had our mini-reunion, I had to admit it was wonderful seeing her again.  After twenty-two years, she hadn’t really changed much.  She was still trim and energetic, and I thought she was sparkling.

Now I remembered why I had put up with so much of her flakiness for so long in college.

The surprising thing, however, was a story she related to me.  She had come to Seattle to interview a doctor for a book she is writing.

The man is a well-known name in the medical industry and had just returned from a safari in Africa in which he saw a dead man come to life.  And he swears it’s true.  After checking out his sources, Susan believed him.

A local fisherman had been accidentally knocked unconscious and had fallen out of his small boat and drowned.  When his body was recovered a full three hours later, the doctor’s party happened to be there and he confirmed there were absolutely no signs of life in the man.

In fact, he said the man had been dead for quite a while.

However, a witch doctor put the dead man on a slab, began chanting, and dancing.  To the doctor’s amazement, the dead man started to regain color and started breathing.  He said it was the most surreal, exciting, and scary thing he had ever witnessed.

I had heard stories about these things because my hobby is paranormal activities, but I was always skeptical.  Not any more.

As for Susan, we renewed our friendship and the next time she’s in town, we’ll have her over for dinner.

B. Towne
Seattle, WA