From: karens@hrm-gate.uchicago.edu (Karen Spragle)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: haunted house
Date: 2 Oct 92 18:03:38 GMT
Organization: University of Chicago

A close friend of mine (who would not lie) told me this story:
(she heard the separate stories from the individual people, not all from JAY)

Her boyfriend, Jay,  moved into the house of an elderly woman a couple of
 years ago.  It's a two bedroom ranch style. I think he bought it, but the
woman, who had lived there with her late husband,  had no place to go.  He 
let her stay there.
	   Any way, one day, Jay came home from work and there was an old man 
sitting on the couch, staring into space. He was wearing a blue suit.
He approached the man and asked him who he was, the man said nothing.
He went in to the woman's bedroom and asked her who he was, and the 
woman said "Oh, that's Bill, my late husband.  He visits me all the time."
	   Jay was confused.  The woman was not known to suffer from dilusions,
but he couldn't believe her.  He went back out to question the man,
an he was gone.  There was an indent on the sofa where he was sitting.
Jay felt this, and it was cold.  The woman died a few months later.
    A few months after that, Jay's friend Mark came over to the house
to look for him. Mark is a contractor, and was going to do some work
on the house.  Jay was out, but the door was open, so he entered.
On his way to the kitchen, he bumped in to an old man wearing a blue
suit.  He asked the man who he was, and what he was doing there, but
got no reply.  He walked past the man to the kitchen to continue to
look for Jay, whom he did not find.  When he went back through the hall,
the man was gone.  When he looked out the front door (the only exit)
he was no where in sight.  When Jay came home, Mark told him the story,
described the guy, and it was identical to Bill.
	    Mark's girlfriend, Pam, also had a story, but she said she didn't
want to tell it because it spooked her too much.  Jay said that his
ex-girlfriend (a very cranky self-centered woman)
had been in the living room without him one evening,
and all of a sudden, the kitchen light turned on.  She went in, turned
it off, and went back to the living room.  Sure enough, it went back
on again, but she did not see Bill.
	    The last, most bizzare incident happened a couple of months ago. 
 Julie (my friend)
and Jay had a minor fight in the kitchen, and she left his house upset.  By
the time she got home, he had left a message on her machine saying he
was sorry, she called him and all was fine and dandy again.  At about
12:30AM, she was woken up by the phone.  She answered it and it was Jay.
He was visibly shaken, and took a minute to calm down.  When he did,
he said that he was woken up by a large banging noise coming from the
kitchen.  He got up and went to investigate.  He walked in the kitchen,
and there was Bill sitting at the table staring at the place my
friend Julie had been standing when they were fighting.  Jay approached,
and he just vanished.  Jay opened the refridgerator and to his shock,
all the condiments that were in the shelves in the door were found at
the back of the refrigerator.  "Bill" had banged the door with such
force, that the items were dislodged.  I can understand why Jay was
shaken.
	  
Jay, Julie, Mark, and Pam were all together when they told Julie the
story.  None of them are big jokers, and she can't see them trying
to contrive this story to scare her.  She has been alone in Jay's 
house with no odd expieriences.  
Bill seems to come out only around people he doesn't like, or is
threatened by.  Jay senses that Bill wants to protect him.  Bill's
wife has never been seen.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories