I wish I could have found this thread a while ago. I hope its not too late. Sorry if it is long.
Since I was a child, I have had several experiences that border on the paranormal. Okay they are paranormal. I will list a few.
But first, I would like to say that this is the first time I have discussed this with someone other than my family. Please do not ridicule me for the stories, they are as true as my memory can recall them. I wish that they were not real, but they are. And I know saying that may make some question the validity even more. I have no way of proving to you that the stories are true. Its important to me that you at least contemplate these stories being true.
Trains
My brother and I were trying to waste a good summer afternoon by playing in the back yard. We were playing frisbee with each other and the dog. We heard a train in the distance, and it sounded like it got closer. It eventually got loud enough that it was quite noticeable. But there was no train. We were not scared, just confused. Later we would learn that one house behind ours, there used to be a train trackin the 1930'a! Kind of cool.
Shadow people
Again, my brother and I were wasting time together. We happened to be in the garage with nothing to do. We picked up a basket ball and bounced it to each other off the concrete floor. Made a racket! But we were having fun. The garage door was an older wooden door with windows on top, my brother was facing the windows, my back was to the door. Suddenly my brother was frozen stiff in the middle of him getting ready to receive the basket ball from me. the ball bounced and missed him. I asked him what was wrong. and he didn't answer, he then started screaming, and i looked to where he was looking, and saw something I can't forget. A "shadow person" as we both came to call them. It was something we called a "void face". There was a human-like thing outside the window, and it was bright daylight out, but the face was pure dark pitch black. The face had no features, just a silhouette, in bright daylight! It was "looking" at us, or rather into us. It caused us both strong emotions of fear and terror. It slowly turned and you could see its face in profile, but still only a silhouette. It walked off and we never saw it go anywhere. It scared us seriously bad.
But that shadow person would come to see ME again, unfortunately. I was asleep, in my bed, my brother was fast asleep in his beside me. The head of the beds were situated below a large window in our bedroom. The curtain never really closed around the window, which annoyed me as it let in light. I awoke kind of irritable, and started to get the sensation that I was being watched. I became frozen like my brother had been. I was only able to force my eyes to move, and I strained to see it. I looked over my head out the window through the seam in the curtain, and there was the same shadow person watching me, looking into me. We did tell our parents about this, but they dismissed it rather fast. But I have come to learn I am NOT the only one this has happened to other people through out time have had this happen too. This happened to me when I was young and before I had learned of shadow people. So I was not influenced by media.
Old house
I moved out of my parents place, and had just secured my first real job. I lived in an old rental house from about the 1900's with the dog I still have. I was watching TV, and she got off the couch and cautiously walked down the long living room, and peered around the corner into the kitchen area. She immediately started growling, showing teeth, snapping at something and her ears were back, tail tucked in. I lived in a bad neighborhood, and figured we were getting robbed. I pulled the large knife out of the couch cushions, and slowly approached the area where the dog was. I too looked around the corner and saw a faint diffuse blackening of the room in an upright oriented oblong oval, human sized. It vanished and the dog stopped being aggressive.
Later I had a similar experience where I was trying to find my dog, and figured she was outside. I wanted to get her inside so that we could get ready for a walk. I went to the back yard door, and stood in the door way calling her name. I saw a diffuse light black misty oval flash from the right near the old rose bushes into the garage door. The garage was detached from the house and the personnel door was open to the yard. I figured it was my dog and an optical illusion, so i begged her to come out of the garage. Between my legs I felt a set of furry ears, she was in the house the whole time and had come to see what I was doing!
The last episode of strangeness at the old house was revealing. I had come to feel that the house had been owned by an older lady. I had also come to suspect that if the things I saw were real, then perhaps they were her ghost? So I pretended to talk to the ghost, although it was not there, and told her i was taking care of the place, and thank you for letting me live there. I started to take care of the roses, the yard, the tree, the sprinkler system, repair the stairs, and more. The ghost encounters slowed and stopped. One day I came home from work and noticed something had been moved in the garage, and couldn't figure out what. I then forgot about it. But this happened again the next day, and I found a metal medallion with a rose on it, and it had some words on the back, it was some sort of prize for growing roses! It HAD been hanging on a nail in the wall. I never noticed it before, but you could see the shadow of dust and time where it had been. I placed it back on the nail and it was a perfect fit. I knew it had moved on its own. It would be perhaps 3 months later that I had to move from that place, due to losing a job. I was cleaning up and had all moved out. I was standing in the kitchen talking with my sister who had come to help. I turned my back to walk out for the last time, and the little bell on the old stove timer started ringing. That thing never worked since I had moved in 2.5 years before. Without a pause, my sister said "Well, I guess its Time you leave, you're done here!" I think she was right. I was never afraid of the ghost there, i had come to realize it was just watching me and wanted to be noticed. in the end it was sort of a protector. When I turned in the key and paid the last month rent to my land lord who had come to inspect, he slowly asked me a question. How was it living here? Hey, did you experience anything strange? I was sort of angry, he had known the whole time! I told him what had happened, and he was floored!
