1999 Encounters

Witnessed By James Gebhardt, New Hope, Pennsylvania jdgebha@ibm.net

When I worked at an Inn in New Hope, PA as a live-inn housekeeper, I always knew exactly how many guests we had at the house. I always took time out to talk to each guest, trying to remember who they were and their names for the next morning when I served breakfast, That night I knew we only had one room left unoccupied and I always felt relieved to have even one less room to clean in the 8 room Inn. I knew that all of the guests were in their rooms one night, and I looked down the hall, to see a man in coat-tails look up the long stairway to the upstairs of the old house. I thought that he looked upset, because he bolted upstairs, two steps at a time. I remember thinking at the time, that the manager, or the Inn Keeper may have checked this last guest in, and he was possibly part of a wedding. I told the manager the next day that I wasn't looking forward to cleaning all the rooms. He said "What are you talking about? You don't have to clean all the rooms, only seven were rented," he said in a voice that I could only describe as annoyed.

Confused, I asked him who the man in the gray coat was, that bolted upstairs last night, was he one of their friends? He wasn't any of the guests that I had checked in... I knew that for sure. When I told the manager about the gray-coated man he looked at me, like well... like he had seen a ghost. The manager said, "Don't tell me that, I don't wanna hear anymore about this..." Still confused I said, "What do you mean?  He wasn't a guest?"  He said "Oh, No! Its Ann Miller (the movie star) all over again! She stayed here and started talking like this." Apparently others had seen this ghost before, and there was an old newspaper story on the wall about a ghostly soldier staying at the Inn, or something like that.

I'm just really, really glad that I didn't realize that the ghost was a ghost, or I wouldn't have been able to sleep that night in my room on the top floor. I also had nights in the Inn where I was sure somebody was watching me, standing right over me.  I used to hear very loud, almost insanely loud ringing sounds in my ears at the time. I  remember thinking how cruel that was, that loud ringing sound, and I wondered if I was going to die, the energy was very, very strong.  I was always uncomfortable after that and couldn't stand to have the vacuum cleaner on, because I felt cut-off from the real world when I was in the Inn by myself.  Evening Magazine did a story when I was still working there too, about the best Inn in New Hope and they put a bit in the story about the ghost too.

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Witnessed By Elio, January, 2000, El Salvador ferrufino@sprint.ca

I'm 28 and from El Salvador. My house in my town is haunted. For years, since a family member that built it died, people (myself included) have heard footsteps in the upstairs room. What is common now is the pulling of covers from sleeping people and the sound of a tired, panting dog walking around one's bed in the pitch dark. Of course the doors are locked and when we turn the lights on there is nothing to see. I cannot fathom what a tired dog has to do with my dead relative, but believe me, it has frightened me a lot.  The haunting seems to be directed at me. These are the things that I encounter at night:

• Pulling of covers off me by invisible hands.
• Spraying of "fake" water droplets on my face.
• The sound of a tired dog breathing heavily inches from my face (I never actually feel its breath).
• Cold drafts and the feeling of hands caressing my legs and ribs.
• Something scares the hens off  trees at night, it is not predators. The same thing also scares our cattle. People tell me animals sense the presence of the spirit.
• The feeling of strange presences in front of my bed and my cowardice in not opening my eyes to look at them.

Lots of other people have experienced these things in my house but it seems to happen to me more often. For sure I will experience more phenomena and I will write to you again, bye.

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Witnessed By Amanda, January, 1992, Palm Desert, California MandaSugar@aol.com

This is something I will always remember.  I have always believed in ghosts and their existence, my experience only furthered my belief.  My encounter took place when I was ten years old. It was late and I was just getting back from my neighbor's house.  I got in my room and peered out my window for reasons I don't know.  In-between my neighbors house and mine was an empty lot, so they was only darkness.  Walking towards the light of my neighbors house (which was up the street) was a figure of a woman walking.  My first instinct was that it was my friend's mother.  So, I opened my window and called out her name.  The woman was still walking and I was still yelling.  I was wondering why she didn't say anything or turn around.  So I just watched and as the figure reached the light it disappeared.  Even though the neighborhood was fairly new and never experienced a haunting at that house again, I still believe that was ghost.

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Witnessed By Jackie Schmidt jackie@ammultimedia.com

When I was six, my sister Teri was five, and a visiting friend named Stephanie was five, we lived in a haunted house and saw the most unusual ghost I have ever heard of.

Teri, Stephanie and I were waiting outside for Stephanie's parents. They were visiting from England and had said they were ready to go and it would only be a "minute". Adult to child translation--two hours.

We were standing between our car and their car discussing how annoying parents are when we noticed a plane flying extremely close. It was an old, unpainted, gray cargo looking plane. It was more boxy and round than streamlined, at least that's how I remember it.

We be children were excited about a plane being so close and watched with fascination as the plan landed ON THE ROOF OF OUR HOUSE! Of course, we being children had no idea that planes don't land on houses. We were just feeling pretty special and jumping up and down waving at the pilot. The pilot looked at us and laughed and waved back. It seems to me that he was wearing Red Baron like accessories. After a few moments, he took off again. He had come from the left side of the house and gone on to the right.

By this time we were sick and tired of waiting on parents and so we went in to see what the holdup was. We found them sitting around the kitchen table chatting. Well I was just unbearably annoyed at my parents and hers and decided that I might as well be a part of the conversation since that was the only attention I was going to get.

"Did you hear the plane on the roof?" I said. My dad said, "Oh, Jaclyn, you're imagining things." I knew I wasn't, but after I thought about it, I couldn't remember the plane making any noise.

The whole subject was abandoned (not forgotten) until I was about 13 years old.  The family was taking a car trip when I suddenly mentioned the ghost plane event out loud. My sister, Teri, said, "Oh my God!  I remember that too, I thought it must have been a dream!" The correlation proved that it was real and I knew it was anyway because I have an unusually good memory. In fact, I can remember some things from before I could walk.

The really strange part of this is, how could an entire plane have been in the form of a ghost? An inanimate object?

That was not an isolated incident. That house was haunted. The very first night we stayed in our new house, Dad gave Teri and I flashlights in case we needed to find that bathroom in the dark.  Well I needed to find the bathroom. So I sat up, found my flashlight, turned it on and shined it in front of me to find a black male figure at the end of my bed.  He didn't speak, only turned his head to look at me.

I was so scared that I just turned off the flashlight, put it back under my pillow, laid back down and shut my eyes. I thought that he would go away if he thought that I was asleep. All night long I stayed awake with my eyes shut listening for the man.  I never heard him leave and so it was light before I could muster the courage to open my eyes. The first thing I did was go to the bathroom because after holding it all night, I was really uncomfortable.  After that I went to my parents room and told them about it.  They said, "Oh, Jackie, you're imagining things." 

When I moved to my own room in the same house, there were new events. Every night as long as I was in that room, a woman would come out of the wall. She was an older woman, kind of scrawny and scraggly. She would come and stand over my bed a moment and then leave the room. I was pretty sure that she was checking on everyone. She would always come back and go into the same spot of the wall that she came out of.

She would lean almost right on top of me so I thought that her eyesight probably wasn't very good.  She must have really wanted to see me. I wasn't scared of her after the first couple of nights.

Anyway, those are the three major things that happened in our haunted house. By the way, my parents never noticed anything.

The funny part of this story is that this was a relatively new house, the next one we lived in was over 100 years old and still had the woman's belongings in the second story. On top of that, she died in her bed in the kitchen.  However, nothing peculiar never happened in that house.