First off, I need to give credit where it's due. This hub is inspired by MissJamieD's chilling hub, entitled, "Fun and True Ghost Stories."

I think that many of us have had some kind of paranormal experience in our lives. I know that I sure have. It's not something I share with many people, though, as I'd sometimes rather prevent people from thinking that I'm either delusional or full of it.

After reading MissJamieD's writing, I have gained the courage to share a couple of my own slightly terrible and marginally chilling tales of ghostly encounters!

I was fifteen and I was sneaking back in to the house in the middle of the night. Again. My friend Jimi was with me, snickering quietly as I used more muscles than were necessary in my attempt to keep the old door from scraping the sagging frame as we crept into the front entry.

My mom's room sat immediately to the right of this little mudroom/foyer and there was no door going in to it - just an arched opening through which we could see right in to my mother's bed. I turned around to Jimi, giving her the one-finger "shush" signal. I pointed to the figure lying sideways on top of the covers. She was facing away from us and was curled up and breathing slowly so we were pretty certain she was still asleep. She wore a really conservative long, white nightgown, which didn't strike me as strange until I thought about it later (my mom is not a conservative dresser by any stretch).

We crept onward past the bedroom, through the living room, and in to the kitchen where we hoped to procure a few snacks before stealing up to my room to gab about the night's escapades. It was at that moment that the bathroom door (adjacent to the kitchen) swung open, bathing us in its bright, invasive light. There stood my mom, in short shorts and a spaghetti strap tank squinting at us and asking if we had just gotten in.

Jimi and I looked at eachother with equivalent looks of puzzlement on each of our faces. A strange mix of terror, curiosity, and disbelief welled up in me until it finally settled in my throat where it sat like a lump of unswallowed food.

We scurried back to peer into mom's room, seeing her empty bed and nothing else of note. Neither of us could get over what we saw and we scoured the house looking for the mystery woman. We even went through the yard and walked around the block searching for this nightgowned spectre.

We never found her but have since become more enlightened about the house and why some of its previous occupants have never moved out.

Probably two years after the above event occurred, my mom had moved out and my dad (they are not a couple) moved in. One day, shortly after this changeover, our neighbor stopped by and asked sheepishly if we had ever had any strange experiences in the house.

My dad told her that we had not and she left, probably feeling pretty dumb.

Well, later I found her in the back yard and decided to see if she'd clue me in as to why she would ask such a thing. I didn't feel like telling her about my experience yet - I kind of wanted to test the waters first.

Some light conversation primed us each to open up a little more to eachother and she began to tell me of the terrifying events that happened to her in MY house during her childhood.

(A teeny bit of backstory is needed at this point. The house was converted into a duplex many years ago. This neighbor was living in the other side of the duplex at the time of this story but lived in my side for much of her childhood.)

She proceeded to tell me about one recurring event which I found (and still find) particularly frightening. As a girl, she slept in the northernmost upstairs room - MY ROOM! - and would wake in the night, screaming for her parents. Her parents would come, she would tell them what she had just seen and they would stroke her hair and tell her to go back to sleep and that it was just a bad dream.

But she knew better. More often than not, after my neighbor had settled into her child's bed in her cozy little room, she would look up toward the ceiling to see the sickeningly familiar image of a mans face and shoulders hanging upside down from the attic entry and looking directly at her. The man never varied from this routine. He never came any closer to her and he often smiled at her. Still, as you can imagine, she was horrified.

As I listened to her story, I had to hold back the feeling of fright that began to perceptibly widen my eyes and dry out my mouth. There was, in fact, a strange square opening in the ceiling of my bedroom upstairs. I guessed it went into the attic, but didn't care to look since it kind of gave me the creeps. The opening, since I had moved in, had always been covered with a piece of sheet metal that was screwed down about every inch along the entire perimeter of the opening. Oh goody, couldn't wait to nestle into bed that night I tell ya!

Shortly after this, I moved out on my own and pushed these (and the many other experiences I had at this house) to the back of my mind and went out and lived my life. Now, though, my dad has purchased the house and in the process of procuring a loan has learned a lot of very interesting things about the house which is now a part of our family.