• If I Only Knew Then… by Hope Thorpe – First Place Winner
• An Unearthly Voice by Melissa Mezzo – Second Place Winner
• Ouija Board Incident by Cliff  Zier – Third Place Winner

The Entries

• Pipa at the Door
• Ouija Board Incident
• The Pumpkin and the Chapstick
• Wake Up!

• An Unearthly Voice
• Something That Did More Than Go Bump in the Night
• The Ghost of Mooney House
• Kennedy Assassination Ghost Story
• If Only I Knew Then…
• The Lee Avenue Haunting

The Prizes!

First prize, Four tickets to Lyndhurst Castle and a Haunted Hudson Valley t-shirt (design in progress)

Second prize, Haunted Stories DVD Collection Vol. 1 and 2 from The History Channel

Third prize, $25.00 gift card to Amazon.com

FIRST PLACE WINNER!

My family and I moved from Florida back to New York when I was 15 years old.  We rented a home in the Town of Montgomery.  It was a beautiful country home with a large back yard.  The home was a Colonial style, with original hardwood floors and a fire place.  My favorite room in the house was the bathroom.  There was on old fashion tub with claw feet. Perfect for long baths to ease away stress!    A separate shower stall was located behind the door.    Off of the living room was a cozy sun room.  The previous tenants had left some of their belongings in the sunroom, but once it was gone, we had big plans for that area.  The house was situated on a lot on the edge of the woods, and there were pathways leading down to the Wallkill River.  A very comfortable house that offered enough room for the whole family and we were truly happy there.

It did not take me long to make an assessment of this place.  Within the first day of being there I could feel right away that

there was something different about this home.  My mother and I were unpacking one night, and we decided to take a break.  We were laying on a bed together, talking and I said to her I felt that this place was “haunted”.  She said I was just uneasy about being in a new place and that those feelings would go away within a short amount of time.  Mom could not have any been more wrong.  We were in the house few days when the previous tenants came to pick up their belongings in the sun room.  They were a young professional couple.  I said to them, “Hey, lemme ask you a question, is this house haunted?”.   In which their reply was a very nervous laugh and a “nooooo”.  My parents just looked at me and laughed off the question as if to say … Silly teenager, what do you know…

At first we were having small paranormal experiences.  Enough to make us realize something wasn’t quite right, but small enough to make us think that it was our own lack of memory or disorganization.  We would go into the pantry for a can of soup and put the soup on the counter.  Then turn around for the can opener.  After that we would go back to the soup and it would be totally gone.  It would be back in the pantry or, oddly, in the refrigerator.   Occasionally we would see dark shadows move from one side of the room to the other, again being pushed aside by the thought process that this is “just my imagination”.  My nephew who was just 2 years old was living in the house too.  He use to spend his time in his room playing and talking with “the little boy”, when there were no other little kids in the house.  One night, after a few months of these minor experiences, I was laying in my bed trying to sleep.  I heard my bedroom door open up.  I thought it was one of my sisters coming to borrow something or ask me a question, so I turned around to look towards the door, and standing there, in the door frame, was a woman who I had never seen before in my life!  I could see she was short, with long hair. She seemed sort of frail.  As she stood there, looking at me, looking at her, swear I felt my heart stop!  I couldn’t breath, and I didn’t want to move.  I thought the best thing to do was to turn my back to the door way, and stare at the wall!  I thought if I didn’t acknowledge her, maybe she would leave me alone!  As I turned my back in total disbelief in what I saw, she too turned and walked down the hallway.  My mother who was in another room down the hall, heard someone walk past her room, and my brother who was laying on the couch down stairs in the living room, heard someone walk down the stairs.  When my brother and mother looked to see who was up, no one was found.

After this event everyone that stayed in this house with us had some sort of experience.  One day, my mother, best friend and I decided to try and contact the spirits that were trapped in this house.  As we prepared for our séance, I lit a large glass encased candle.  It was one of those spiritual candles in glass tempered to withstand the heat of the fire.  Within moments of the flame being lit, the glass exploded!  This should have been our sign not to proceed with what we were about to do.  I was at the head of the table trying to initiate contact.  We were seated in the dining room which was adjacent to the living room.  We sat with our hands joined to one another with our arms resting on the table in the form of a triangle.  In the middle of the triangle, we placed a lit white candle.  As we were calling forth the spirit of who we thought was a woman, a ball of white light formed in the living room.  The ball began to float and move towards us.  As it traveled into the dining room the ball of light grew in size.  As the ball of light passed over the table and closer to me, the flame flickered with the movement of the ball of light, and then the light passed right through me!  I remember shaking and crying, and becoming overwhelmed with sadness.

After that night we never tried to contact the spirits again, but we continued to have experiences here, in the form of shadows, doors opening and closing on their own, items coming up missing.  The biggest skeptic became a believer in this house! Now, I would love to investigate this place further.

It was over twenty years ago now. My husband and I lived in a tiny house in Beacon, NY. It was a converted summer cabin in an area of the city known as Groveville Park. When we first moved into the house it had a feel to it, sort of like someone was standing next to you, staring intently at you all the time.  As time went on things began to change and the house began to grow very creepy.

Over the years, all sorts of things happened.  It was little things at first, like objects disappearing. There were so many hours spent searching to no avail, only to find an item weeks or months later right where you had already looked to many times to count.

However, the most frightening experience happened one summer night in August of 1989. It was a hot and humid night. All the windows were wide open, with the shades up. I remember lying there in bed watching the streetlight shining through the open windows.  Unable to sleep, I gave up and started to read. Finally, it got so late, I decided I would just wait for daylight and get up. I remember I turned and looked at the alarm clock, it was 5 AM. My book was finally (two hundred pages later) starting to get really interesting.

I remember thinking how grateful I was to have had an uneventful night. The house could be so creepy and had a tendency to do things such as, the sound of foot steps on the floor, doors we didn’t even have opening and closing, the sound of someone exiting and entering through one of the bedroom closets, strange balls of light, the feeling of dread in the bathroom. Let’s just say I preferred to be sleeping at night in that house.

Then I heard it. This sound coming from the living room, this scratching sound, like animal claws on the hardwood floors. I stopped reading, I was thinking, “That dog is being really loud. What’s he up to?” (We had a dog for so many years it was an automatic thought.) I was reading again and there was more scratching. “That dog really needed to be quiet, so distracting.” There it was again, that scratching noise. It sounded like it was coming closer. I thought, “Oh wait a minute, the dog died last winter.”  I stopped for a moment, I thought about it for a minute, “It must be the cat.”  I went back to reading.

Now there was a lot more scratching and again it sounded even closer. It sounded like it was almost in the hallway, “Wait a minute.” I thought, “I know I locked the cat in the mudroom last night.”  I suddenly felt this intense dread come over me. I yelled out, “Who’s there?” No answer returned. I continued to hear movement. Concerned, I started to get out of bed, but just as my feet were hitting the floor, that’s when I saw it.

I had this large basket of laundry in the hall that was in need of folding. I saw this small human figure. It was inky black and stooped over, creeping behind the laundry basket. I can’t explain why, but without thinking I began to yell at it to get out of my house. Suddenly it stood up. (I just have no words that can impart to you the intense shock and fear that came over me at that instant.) It’s in my house! Right there in front of me this thing in my house. It did not come through a door or a window!  It came from the living room. A space that has no doors or windows that opened to the outside, but it’s in my house! At that point it stepped out from behind the laundry basket. Then turned towards me. It stood there for a moment. It was as if this faceless thing were looking at me. Then it folded up on itself, there was this flash of light and it was gone and so too was any sense of comfort or security in that house ever again.

“What are you so happy about?” snapped Nancy as I met her and the other neighborhood girls on the sidewalk. Nancy, Vicki, Denise and I were on our twice-weekly walk to spend the afternoon at the “Y”. “What are you so happy about? Don’t you know the President is dead?”

What? The President is dead? President Kennedy? No, I didn’t know. That afternoon? No, no one had told me. Class was interrupted by the announcement? No, I was at religion class in the “Y” Building, not in the school building. Discussion followed about the events of that afternoon for the course of maybe two blocks. Then silence descended upon the group for the rest of the five-block trek to the “Y” for swim team.

Routine in the locker room was normal. So was swim team practice itself. It was normal on the surface anyway; no one really spoke to anyone else that afternoon, about anything. No mention was made of the assassination of the President, Boston’s own. Mrs. Sullivan, the coach, was red-eyed, but she said nothing beyond her usual drill instruction, but it seemed like she blew her whistle harder on that historic, gloomy day.

At home that evening, my mother and my grandparents were wailing. I couldn’t understand the depth of their emotions. My 12-year-old mind couldn’t see why the death of someone so far removed from any of us – the President of the United States – should affect the adults so deeply. Grandma came upstairs the next morning from her first-floor apartment in our two-family home, and spent the day with my mother. My 10-year-old brother, Johnny, and I really didn’t pay much attention to the events of that day and agitated to watch cartoons instead of the non-stop news coverage. We didn’t get our childish wish. Mom and Grandma stayed glued to the television set for updates on the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, and were most curious as to who this Oswald was. Later, the two of them sat horrified as Jack Ruby shot Oswald on live television, and the question of who Oswald was would likely never be fully explained. This Oswald, forever to be mysterious, killed their President, Boston’s President, the compelling interest of every Bostonian, Catholic or otherwise, who was NOT of the Brahmin class. Yes, the Kennedys had money and power, but they were never Brahmins. They were not of Boston’s ruling class of patricians with Puritan ancestors, and they always stood outside the sphere of true respectability. The Kennedys were always outsiders, and in the sorrow all around me I understood that they were our kith and kin, that the Kennedys’ ascent to national legitimacy was indeed our own, and now Jack Kennedy was dead.

I was always edgy going up to my room at night on the third-floor of that ancient house, because that floor was haunted by who-knows-what sad spirits of those who had lived there before. The house was alive and it knew me, and I didn’t like that feeling. I never was able to relax in my bedroom. I never saw anything physically appear, but so many strange things happened up there. As I lay in bed at night, I often heard the noise of objects moving or of footsteps of people who were not there. I would return to my room to find belongings moved inexplicably. Whatever or whomever occupied these attic rooms at night was not at peace, and I didn’t like being up there with it. I never spoke to my mother or my grandparents about these things, because they would not believe me, I was certain.

That night, November 23, 1963, I ascended those creaky stairs to my room. I lay there going over in my mind the events of the previous two days and thinking about the reactions of all the grown-ups in my house and in my neighborhood. Suddenly, I began crying, sobbing, contorting in sorrow under the blankets of my bed. The significance of the President’s assassination finally came to me in that moonlight-filled room. I wept, because Kennedy wasn’t just a national figure to me, to my family, or any of my neighbors. He was uncle, cousin, nephew; he was one of us. And I cried with the emotion of one who has lost a close relative.

Suddenly, I felt a weight at the foot of my bed. It was a weight as though a human being was seated there. There was no footboard at the bottom of this bed; so the shifting of its lower end was obvious. My heart raced; I was afraid. I put my head under the covers, frightened to look down and terrified of what might be there. I tried to explain the weight on the bed to myself – maybe it was my grandmother’s cat! But this cat would have had to walk up two flights of squeaking stairs, and I would have heard its approach. Whatever was at the foot of the bed, it was not my grandmother’s cat.

Slowly, with great trepidation, I peaked over my covers. In the light of the strong moon, I saw the clear indentation on my bed, the distinct impact of a body on that space. But, there was no one there. Slowly, my fear gave way to a feeling of ease. My racing heart slowed and peace came over me. Whatever sat on my bed was there to comfort me. Whatever its usual state of agitation might have been, it put it aside for that night to show the bit of humanity it still possessed. It ceased to be the haunter of these premises, the disturbed spiritual remnant of a past occupant, and became, for that instant, a sympathetic soul still capable of empathy and the consoler of a weeping child.

Calm came over me and fear fell away, and eventually I fell asleep. In the following days, my household, my neighborhood, and my small world continued as before, but forever altered. Thanksgiving came and went a few days later, with the whole table in a depression.

John-John saluted his father goodbye. Jack Kennedy was dead. Camelot was gone.

It was in November of last year (2009), My husband and I went to Ireland for our honeymoon. When we arrived we drove to our first hotel, which was the Clontarf Castle Hotel in Ireland, which is 2 miles from Dublin City Center. The Clontarf Castle was built in 1172, and in 1997 it was open to the public as a 4 star hotel.

There is remnants of the old castle inside the Hotel itself in the main lobby area. Well, on our last stay at the Castle (which we stayed there already 3 nights with nothing happening). We both went to bed a little early due to having to get up in the morning to drive to our next destination. My husband experienced something that he couldn’t explain. He told me that during the night around 3:00am he woke with the feeling of someone tapping his shoulder. As he woke right next to him there was this little girl dress in period clothing (he said like a peasant girl and she was around 9 or 10 yrs old) and she was tapping him telling him to “Wake Up”. The way our bed was there was no way someone could squeeze between the bed and the nightstand, plus he said he could see right through her. As he tried to focus on what he saw, he was eager to wake me up. As he tried too wake me up, he was unable to sit up, speak, or do anything. He felt as if someone or something was sitting on his chest. Then as he came too and was able to move, he looked over to me and there he saw a black shadow figure on my side of the bed. He thinks the shadow figure was either sitting on the bed next to me or leaning over me, he isn’t sure but he saw a shadow figure (it was blacker than black). He also thinks that the little girl was trying to wake him up cause of the shadow figure.

I’m glad he was able to move cause we didn’t know what that shadow had in mind. It was really freaky!!! . That night I turned on all the lights in the room before I finally fell asleep. And as we were leaving we told the front desk of our experience and they told us that this was the first time someone actually said anything about a ghost at the hotel.

For nearly 20 years, my in-laws ran a bed-and breakfast in Upper Red Hook, NY. The house was a 1752 Dutch colonial built up high on a hill. The ground floor housed a half-basement, and the original kitchen; a massive stone fireplace for cooking worthy of a Hollywood movie. The first floor housed two large living rooms and the added-on kitchen. The second floor featured two large bedrooms, which were the guest rooms. The top floor housed the family living area, a series of small dormer rooms and one medium-size bedroom.

Upon taking ownership, my father-in-law did some research into previous owners. He discovered that around the turn of the century, the house had been used as a residence for Catholic nuns. The previous long-term owner, Hudson Valley portrait artist Edward L. Mooney, had bequeathed the house to the church. Mooney is best remembered today for a striking portrait he executed of Hudson Valley School landscape painter Jasper Francis Copsey (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jasper_Francis_Copsey,_by_Edward_L._Mooney.jpg). Tracing the lineage even farther, my father-in-law found that the house had originally been built for a Captain in the Dutch colonial forces.

Since my in-laws purchased the house as a functioning business, a clientele base came with the property, and they were immediately booked with guests throughout their first warm-weather season. My in-laws would occasionally find objects missing from where they laid them down only to discover the objects in question weeks later in a completely different place. But since they were simultaneously grappling with running a B&B business, as well as acclimating themselves to the huge old house and all the maintenance that that entailed, they didn’t think anything of it, until one weekend when an unaccompanied older woman came to stay.

The woman had booked a room for a long weekend. All went well the first evening and everyone went to bed with no trouble. But the next morning, the woman came down to breakfast looking harried and disheveled. She first asked my in-laws if they knew if there were ghosts in the house. Being not particularly attuned to such phenomena they said no, they didn’t believe so. Then the woman told them, “Well, I happen to be a psychic. And last night a hostile ghost calling himself Edward appeared at the foot of my bed. He was very angry and told me that he didn’t like me and that if I didn’t leave immediately he would break something in the house for which I would be blamed. As a result, I’m afraid I must cancel my reservation and leave as quickly as possible.” With that, she skipped breakfast and beat a hasty retreat.

For many years after, my wife’s family just accepted the fact that for some reason the ghost of Edward Mooney remained within the confines of the old house. Everyone in the family would occasionally hear heavy breathing in upstairs rooms when no one else would be present, objects continued to disappear and re-appear in unusual places, and once my brother-in-law looked up from where he was sitting to catch a glimpse of an elderly gentleman in Victorian-period attire walking past the doorway. One small room on the top floor in particular seemed to hold a special kind of inhabited energy, and an old friend of my wife refused to ever attempt sleep in that room after being tormented all night by the sound of heavy breathing and cold draughts of air passing through. When my wife and I would occasionally sleep over in one of the guest rooms on the middle floor, I, too, would always be bothered by poor sleep and troubling dreams, though this may merely be the power of suggestion as I already knew this story in detail. My one ghostly experience there came when I accidentally dropped a silver ring I had been wearing on the floor. I watched it roll under a piece of furniture, only to get down on my hands and knees and discover that it had completely disappeared, though there was absolutely nowhere else it could’ve rolled to. I never did see that ring again.

And lest anyone think that that house contained only the spirit of Edward L. Mooney, one night years after the psychic’s experience, my father-in-law woke up to use the bathroom and was walking the few steps to the small upstairs bathroom only to be jolted wide awake by the sound of a woman’s voice coming from right behind him calling his name loud and clear, though the only other living resident in the house at the time, my mother-in-law, had fallen asleep two floors downstairs on the sofa. I guess even nuns are not guaranteed a peaceful eternal rest!

A few years ago, my in-laws tired of the constant upkeep of a 250-year-old house, and sold it at a respectable profit, though I’ve always wondered since if the new owners, a large family that were not interested in running it as a B&B business, ever experienced the ghost of Edward L. Mooney and his friends.

My ghost story begins in my childhood home in Yonkers, NY.  The paranormal occurrences began before I was born in the form of voices and shadows, but picked up once I was born, and manifested a lot stronger than it had in previous years.  I have always had an interest in the paranormal, which is why I believe the entity usually took on my voice and did things when I was in the house to get my attention. My mom has also always been interested in the paranormal and was the first to experience things before I was born.

The house I lived in as a child was a two family house, my grandfather living downstairs and my parents and siblings living upstairs.  My mom and my grandfather would often see a little girl on rainy days in the downstairs apartment and hear her calling out for her mother, but sometimes she would just hear a voice calling out “Mom”, but what is most disturbing is that the voice was either me, or one of my siblings.  My mom would answer, only to realize that no one was in the house besides her, leaving her with an uneasy feeling that this “entity” could take on our voice whenever it wanted.

The basement of our house had a very uneasy feeling to it; it was a normal unfinished basement, except the extreme feeling of fear that overcame you when you entered it.  Whenever I would leave the basement I would feel a strong presence walking directly behind me up the stairs to the point where I had to run up the stairs, feeling like I had to “escape” danger.  I used the basement as a hang out when I was in my teenage years because it had some couches, a pool table and a stereo.  Many times when I was down in the basement hanging out with friends the radio would change stations (the dial would turn and the station would change from what we were listening to, to classical music).  When it happened the first time we were scared and left the basement, but it became a normal occurrence after a while and we would just change it back to what we were listening to, hoping it wouldn’t happen again. There were also times when all of the lights would go out, leaving the basement dark enough to only see shadows, and we would see a tall figure of a man walking around us for a minute or two, then the lights would go back on by themselves.  I later learned that the man who used to live in the basement apartment next door hung himself and was best friends with my grandfather, so maybe he was just coming over to check things out?

Another experience that stands out above all of the others is when I was with a friend in Tarrytown and I got a call on my cell from my mom and step-father telling me to stop messing around with them because they were trying to sleep.  When I told them that I was not in the house and that I was in Tarrytown they panicked and told me they would call me back, so I naturally got nervous and drove home to find out what was going on. When I arrived I  was told a very disturbing thing from my Mom and step-dad.  They said they were sleeping when someone started knocking on the bedroom door and when they said “what”, the person(using MY voice) said “Mom, Mom, MOM!” and started shaking the door violently and banging on the door like there was some sort of emergency.  My step-dad jumped out of bed and opened the door, only to find I was not there, in fact no one was there, or in the house.  My mom thought I was playing a joke on her, and that’s when she called me.  I was NOT in the house, the only ones in the house were my mom and step-dad (my siblings all lived on their own and were not there either).  That was extremely disturbing to me, as this was MY voice it took on, and the fact that it could violently shake a door and bang on a door like that was even worse.

I have had a number of experiences in the house that have left their mark on me, making me a believer and an avid ghost hunter, but I have never experienced anything like that since, and when I go back to the house I hear new stories from my nephew who now lives in the house (who is a big skeptic), but when he tells me stories that have happened to him, I get the feeling of déjà vu.  He has heard voices and footsteps, he has seen shadows and he has had all of the burners on the stove turn on a lot higher than is even possible, as I had happen to me (he had it checked and found no answer for why it happened).  I think that the ghost is still there and feeds off the energy of the younger people in the house, because as I have grown my experiences have lessened, even when I go looking for them.  I am definitely a believer because of my experiences in my childhood home and whenever I go back to visit my nephew, I still feel the presence and I think it probably remembers me as well.

SECOND PLACE WINNER!

It was 1973 , I was six years old when my family moved into an apartment in a two-family home on Lee Avenue in Yonkers, NY. My mom decided she wanted to clean and paint the apartment before we moved in so it would ready for us . That very first night as she began painting the dining room the door that lead to the kitchen started opening and closing all by it’s self . She shrugged it off as a draft even though no window’s were open.

A few days later our family moved in and there were boxes’ everywhere and chaos as in any big family settling in their new place. There was a walk in pantry in the kitchen with many shelves . My mom was putting away the canned good’s and dishes when she yelled out my name loudly “DONNA! “ I came running into the kitchen and said yes mommy? She was angry and confused why would I do this ? I said what mommy? What did I do ? She showed me that my name was written all over the inside of the pantry walls was my name in blue cake writing icing… It was a few days until she really believed me that this was not my doing.

My brother , Larry was resting with a migraine in his bedroom that was directly off the dining room . My sister , Doreen and I were in the kitchen as she was baby sitting me while my mom went food shopping. Doreen was making me some lunch when my brother came running into the kitchen as pale as a sheet shaking. He said , Okay girl’s very funny why did we do that to him? My sister and I looked at each other bewildered and asked him do what ? He said the dining room chairs were lined up outside his bedroom door. We finally convinced him it was not us . But now the three of us knew something was not right . We waited until our mom got home to tell her.

My mom was a devout catholic and insisted a house blessing would take care of the negative vibration in our new apartment. She went through the apartment sprinkling Holy Water and reading prayers from the Bible. We thought that should taken care of it wasn’t until the days to follow , it became apparent that it made it much worse.

This “being” , spirit, demon whatever it was … became physically abusive and manifested itself into look like anyone in the family . I would be in the bedroom watching our 13” black and white TV and what I thought was my sister walking into the bedroom with her bathrobe on and looked at me and smile then walking out. A moment later my sister would come into the room and I asked why was she wearing her robe ? She looked at me and said I wasn’t , going over to the closet and showing me her robe still hung in the closet. I told her what happened a moment before and we realized it was not really her.

One day I stayed home from school sick and my mom was cleaning the apartment as I was sitting on the couch talking to her. The TV was not on and no one else was home with us. We had a small long haired Chihuahua named Sammy and he was lying in the middle of the living room rug resting. His head popped up , his ears went back and out of no where all three of us heard a man speaking backwards in the center of the room .

Obviously shaken we ran out of the living room . My mom grabbed her Rosaries and started to pray in everyone .Sadly thing’s only became intensified with the prayers. Blinds would pop off the window’s , odd smells that resembled a goat farm , evil faced cartoon sketched onto the furniture , children’s nursery rhymes were heard faintly from the closet my sister and I shared . We never found peace until our family moved out of there.

My question is to anyone who moved in after we moved out. What did they experience?

This is my true ghost story, it’s not really that scary but it is true and it happened to me and some of my family.

My father Eugene died of cancer on October 20, three days before his birthday. The night that he died my cousin Audrey was at my brother’s house in Blooming Grove, New York. She was helping my sister-in-law with the kids.  While she was cleaning, she heard my nephew Timothy say, “Pipa door.” She asked him what he had said and he says the same thing, “Pipa door.” She still didn’t understand what he had said.  Well, my other nephew Daniel speaks up to my cousin Audrey saying, “He is saying that Pipa is at the. door.” that was around 10 pm at night. My father passed away at around 8 p.m. that night and the funeral parlor came to pick him up at 10 pm. My cousin Audrey was very scared.

On my father’s birthday on October 23, the first day of his wake, I had a strange thing happen.  After the first session of the wake, I was home on my computer, well on my Dad’s computer in the back room; I had the curio cabinet light on which I never use.

I was emailing one of my friends to thank her for coming to my fathers wake. While typing this light in the curio cabinet started to flicker like crazy, this kind of scared me. I will admit, I started to type a little quicker at that time and the light just kept flickering.  Now mind you that light is never on or used and it should have not done that because the light bulb was fine.  It never did it before this and it never happened again afterward.  I know this because I turned it on many times after this incident to see if it would and it didn’t.

After that occurrence, I went out into the front living room in the front of the house by the front door, all of a sudden my dog Ohana, she is a Shih Tzu, started to bark and growl and looking in the kitchen from where I had just walked from. I was watching her and she was acting scared and her body goes up like she is about to attack or run, it’s like what a cat does when they are scared they lift their bodies or their backs up, well let me tell you, that scared me to death! All I could think of was that my father was here with me in the house and the only one that could see him was my dog Ohana, well after that, I took her and left the house.  We went out for a little bit until it was time for everyone to come home.

When I think about it now, I wish I wasn’t scared and I wasn’t scared, or that I was and had the ability to see him with my own eyes, because I would have loved to see him one last time.  Before my father had passed away, my mom asked my dad that when he got to heaven if he could flicker the lights for her so she know he was ok. On that Thanksgiving, we were at my sister’s house in West Haverstraw. We were sitting and eating dinner, or about to, when all of a sudden all of the lights started going nuts and I am not kidding. They were flickering like crazy I was like holy crap I thought a breaker went out so I went to check, and it was fine nothing went off. My sister and a friend came running in and was like, “Oh my God did you see that!”  I asked if they made something go off and they said no.  I checked everything and the breakers were fine. I look at my mom and said, “Well, there you go. You got your wish. Dad flickered the lights for you.”

Since Dad was an electrician he really gave a good show.

THIRD PLACE WINNER!

OSWEGO COLLEGE, Lake Ontario, 1985

I was in the TV lounge on our dorm floor when somebody came in yelling, “Guys, you gotta see this!” I ignored him. He came back again yelling, “This is amazing! They’re using a Ouija board and contacting a spirit!” I chuckled and thought ‘yea right’. He came in 2 more times and on the 5th I got annoyed and went with him just to shut him up. Several people were in a girls room circled around the board. We came in quietly and shut the door. Two of the girls were pushing around the ’slider’ and screaming. They told me that they had contacted the spirit of a little girl who kept asking, “Why daddy, why did you do it?” They asked her what was wrong and she answered that her daddy pushed her into the water.

Then the door opened slightly and then slammed shut! Whoa. The opened it and looked around but nobody was there. They then asked the girl how old she was and when was her birthday. As it turns out the date was the same one that the girl in the dorm room had. She freaked out. They asked the little girl other questions that only the dorm girl would know.

She got them all correct! They screamed again. This brought the attention of the other people on the floor and eventually the Resident Assistant came in angrily and told them to put the board away and go to bed.

The next day they started doing research in the college library looking for any reports on missing children or even deaths. They found nothing. However, they did discover that the college was built over an old indian burial ground. Uh oh, I thought, this isn’t good! The girl from the dorm room phoned an aunt she knew that was into this kind of stuff. She told her to THROW away the Ouija board and never use one again. It was very dangerous to use. She said it probably wasn’t a little girl but a spirit trying to trick us. So, they did what she asked.

However, ever since I got involved that night I had a spooky feeling like I was being watched, it wasn’t a good feeling. The next night I was trying to sleep but couldn’t because of how I felt. I got up and looked out the window to the lake and got this feeling like I should go down there. There were no voices in my head or anything like that, just a feeling. I kind of brushed it off and went to the lounge to watch TV. When I got to the double swinging doors I felt a slight breeze coming from the middle gap of the doors. I looked in and saw that all the windows were closed! Huh. I pushed on the one door and as it opened I began to feel a stronger breeze. As I went in it became more of a wind where my hair was starting to blow a little. The closer I got to the CLOSED windows the harder this wind became. It was now more like being in a wind tunnel! I was freaking out. Then something happened that I will never forget. I felt something in front of me and it pushed my arms up in the air, I couldn’t put them down. It then seemed to go THROUGH me! I could feel it. Then it was behind me and I heard the double doors swing open and closed. Then my arms dropped to my sides, the wind stopped and I just stood there not moving for a good 5 minutes! I was scared. I eventually turned my head around but saw nothing. It reminded me of that movie Poltergeist when the spirit of the daughter went down the stairs and the mother could feel her passing through her!

After that experience, now I HAD to go down to the lake. The feeling was strong. I headed down the elevator and out the front of the dorm, across the campus. There is a little road that circles the campus and goes along the water. When I got there I felt something pushing on my knees. As I crossed it pushed harder, so hard that I had to go down on my knees and crawl to the other side. I was able to make it to the lake and when I got there the pushing stopped. I stood up and waited for something to happen. Nothing. I did something I never thought I  would do because of horror movies I’d seen. What is the worst thing somebody could do in this situation. Yea, go down to the edge of the water! I was terrified. Waiting for something to  come out of the water and grab me. Nothing. I became frustrated and yelled out, “What do you want!!!???” Still nothing. I then told ‘it’ to leave me alone. The next day I told everybody about my experience and they were upset that I went alone. However, after that nothing else happened to me or anybody else. Then the winter break came and we all went home for the holidays. When we came back the girl in the dorm room told us that every night she would put her purse down somewhere at night. Every time she would wake up in the morning it would  be soaking wet! Not like something had just dripped or leaked onto it but drenched like it had been under water! We couldn’t believe it. Nothing happened to her after that.