From: smith_wa@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (William A Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Re: Ghosts in my life
Date: 2 Sep 92 05:34:10 GMT
Organization: HAC - Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

In article <15052@umd5.umd.edu> walrus@bessel.umd.edu (Grig Larson) writes:
>One local ghost story is kinda weird, since it happened to me and I have
>no idea if anyone else knew this. If you are bitterly skeptical, I suggest
>you stuff it, since this story is very personal to me.
> 
>I became engaged to my wife in 1988. We went looking for Apartments that
>we thought would suit our income and location. The ones we settled on
>were Rose Hill Apartments in Rose Hill, Alexandria, VA. It was perfect; It
>was right next to a library and a shopping center.
> 
>After we moved in, things in our marriage settled down. There was this nice
>patch of woods with a path out back. On certain days, I would enter the woods
>and look about. Now, I am a skeptic psychic. I have to see proof and stuff
>before I can fully believe anything weird. But I got this feeling in the woods
>that was unlike any other. It was as if the woods were magical or something.
>I figured it was just the fresh air.
> 
>At the end of the woods was a huge clearing. It was supposed to be another
>suburban community, but something stopped it in mid-project. I suspect it
>was money, but it is odd to walk through woods and then suddenly come
>across a fire hydrant and a street, driveways and sewers, but no houses. The
>street wasn't even connected to any road. It began and stopped in the woods.
>
>I took friends of mine on these walks, many of them with the same interests
>I have in studying psychic phenomena. One of them said that was "glowing"
>and looked odd in a bath of light. I thought he was full of it, but he said
>it was true. I found some hair that had been "clipped" as if by scissors,
>and a friend of mine said it was wolf hair (he is really in the know about
>wolves). So he wanted to come see the forest at night and bring some friends.
>After we did, I never wanted to back there again.
> 
>This is when things got real weird. I had a son (this is about 1990 now)
>and he slept in our room, with a huge window that faced a playground. That
>window had this feeling that something very large was floating there and
>watching my son (we were on the 3rd floor). It got sao bad, we had to shut 
>the blinds. Also, my son began to "talk" to something in the room. Our
>cats got kinda freaked if we locked them in there as well. As my son
>grew older, he would point and look like he could see something in the air
>we could not. Then things began to disappear, like watches, pens, glasses
>and perscription bottles, and a lot of other stuff that we don't know if
>we became forgetful or really just vanished. The cats stopped sleeping by
>the windows, and began to watch them nervously. They started to sleep in
>closets instead.
> 
>Then I heard from a local that our nice community used to be a drug haven \
>in the late 70's. The forest our back was called "The hasty graveyard", 
>since many people killed in the drug mafia were laid there to rot. If the
>police were missing somebody, that was the first place they would look.
>Often they didn't have to look long. Then a huge anti-crime faction cleaned
>up the area to what it is today, but now I had a different respect for the
>woods.
>
>Then I found out that the playground that was below our window hosted the
>murder of a 4- year old a few years ago. It seems that a disgruntled father
>decided to get back at his ex-wife by murdering his son in cold blood.
>
>Christmas of 1991 started out to be the beginning of the end. My wife
>set up the articial x-mas tree in early December. She half-finished it
>and then went to bed. When we woke up, some one had finished it. She
>thanked me, and I never touched it. I had come home from work, and went
>straight to bed. I saw the tree as finished then. Then the tree would
>turn. Not spin, but slowly turn all month until we took it down. It seemed
>to turn about 20 deg a night, and we would just re set it. We thought the
>tree was unbalanced, and that was the reason, but when we took it apart,
>the pieces would move on their own. You would look away for a second, turn
>around, and the fake branches would be stacked, ala "Polterghiest." We
>would not even hear a sound. We stuffed the branches in a box, marked them
>with protective signs, and hid them in the closet. Now we were thuroughly
>spooked. 
>
>We had a friend "exorcise" the place, and things became remarkably better,
>but then it got bad again until we moved. 
>
>Its last effort was to get us to stay. When we moved, dark patches would
>fill corners of the room. It haunted a chair that we just left there for
>the landlords to toss. My friends were so spooked by this, that I had
>everyone on my side. Our new place almost didn't accept us, and when we
>said we'd sue for breach of contract, they said, "Ok. Um, we have no idea
>why we said this. We apologize."
> 
>Now I live in Reston, and things are ok. We have a ghost here, but she's
>a friendly one, and once we made a "contract" that she could go as she
>pleased as long as she didn't interfere with anything, and she stopped
>tossing cups at us (another story, but this file has gone on way too long).
> 
>I have net.friends who helped me move and can back me up on most of this.
>I left out a lot of stuff for sake of brevity, so if you have an questions,
>feel free to e-mail me.
> 
>
>__Punk "Punkie" Walrus______________________________________________________
>___                  ___ # "Personifiers unite! We have nothing to lose 
>|__) |  | |\ | | / | |_  #  but Mr. Dignity!"  -- Anonymous --
>|    \__/ | \| | \ | |__ #==================================================
>                         # "My uranium Pu-38 space modulator! It's GONE!..."
>-+ walrus@bessel.umd.edu +--------------------------------------------------
>