I went to the West Virginia Penitentiary it was very scary.

I went to the jail for just a normal tour. I went on a Sunday with my dad and my mom. We just thought that it was going to be a normal tour but it was not. It was at night, so that really did not help the situation. First, when we went in, there was a horrible smell.

Then we heard voices that we thought were saying “help I am trapped”. At first, I thought I was crazy then my mom and dad started hearing them too. I asked the tour guide if he heard anything and he said “no”, he was use to the sounds that could not be explained.

The tour guide took us in this wheel type of a thing; he said it was used so the prisoners could not run to the exit. We then went to look at the cells. However, as we were doing that, we heard a sound like something was rotating around and looked back to see the wheel moving a little bit. My mom said she did not see it but we knew she could. The tour guide said, “There you see”. I believed it was a ghost.

Therefore, we made our way to the hole. I felt a very cold feeling, as we got closer. I cannot describe the hole, but when we were in it, I was terrified. I felt a person touch my back I looked around and no one was there. The tour guide said that he felt it also. My mom started to feel a little scared and we decided to leave and not take the rest of the tour. Once again, we went to the wheel going through the opposite way, the guide escorted us out to our car. Once inside the car we could hear voices saying “come back, I am trapped”. I will never go back to that place ever again.

I am pagan and I have read a lot about seances. A group of friends pressured me into conducting one, even though I had never held one before. We went to a cemetery in Twin Falls; it was an older cemetery and there is a play area within the same area that it is located. My friends and I went to the play area and waited for dusk and for the families to leave.

After we had the area to ourselves, we went into the graveyard and chose the middle of the graveyard to do our seance. We lit candles and I cast a circle of protection around our group because I didn’t know what would happen. There was four people – me, my boyfriend Mike, and our friends Steve and Chuck.

We set in a circle around a candle and concentrated on the area around us. We meditated and focused on finding an entity around us. I was deeply into meditation and unaware of what was happening around me. I had a weird feeling and I looked up to find everyone in our group looking at me and they said that I had jumped and when I had jumped all the crickets had stopped.

We were in a park and no crickets could be heard… when a few minutes before they could be. It was a creepy feeling. Mike and Chuck decided they didn’t want to do this any more so they left the cemetery and sat at the swings. Me and Steve were intrigued and decided to continue on. We meditated some more and at the same time, both of us looked up and started talking about the creepy feeling we had.

We looked back at Mike and Chuck to see them staring at us. Mike and Chuck started waving for us to come over to them. Steve and I decided we had had enough and joined our friends at the swings. Mike and Chuck began telling us that a shadow had blocked us completely from their view for a few seconds, but that this shadow had been moving.

They said it was this dark thing that kept walking past me and Steve and when it would walk in Mike and Chucks view of us, Steve and I couldn’t be seen through it. We left immediately after hearing this… there was nothing in between us that could have blocked their view from us. I haven’t been back to the cemetery because I remember the creepy feeling that Steve and I had and it makes me shudder just thinking about it.

I have very much enjoyed visiting your web page. The stories related are well written and, for the most part, I think, true. I would like to contribute my family’s and my own personal experience of a real life haunting. I swear before God to its truthfulness.

Ben Creek, Mingo County, West Virginia lies only a few short miles from the southwestern panhandle of the state of Virginia. The area is mountainous and rugged and not a far distance from the Hatfield and McCoy “stomping ground.” Further, this part of Mingo County is relatively isolated and one’s closest neighbors can be several miles “down the creek” or “up the mountain.”

The year was 1971 that my family and I (myself being the youngest of six siblings) moved to Mingo County, West Virginia from the Cleveland, Ohio area. Believe me, to describe this change as a culture shock is minimizing the experience. The geography was different, as well as the people, and the lifestyle generally. The poverty was incomprehensible to my eight year old eyes. My parents, being from the Mingo county area as children themselves, desired moving back to the place of their roots and to be geographically closer to their own families.

We moved into a modest and dilapidated two-story house (the second story was actually a full, unfinished attic) on Ben Creek, about 1/2 mile up the creek from our nearest neighbor, my Uncle Walker. Being short on money, my father searched for the most economical house in the area. In no time we found our house. The grass and weeds had grown up high, and with boards over the windows, the house looked ramshackled and abandoned. We had to “make do”, though.

After we moved in, we began to make the best out of our “new” home. Being only eight years old and in the third grade, classmates began commenting to me if we had seen any “ghosts” in our house. My brother (ten at the time) and I responded no we had not and we usually left it off at that. I am ashamed to admit it but, in all honesty, we thought these people were backwoods morons.

At the same time, my three sisters in junior and senior high were also beginning to get quizzed by their classmates along a similar line of questioning. It seemed everyone “on the creek” knew something about our house except us–the unsuspecting “city slickers.”

Shortly thereafter, everything changed.

It was on a warm, late-spring Sunday evening, shortly before dusk just as the sunlight was just beginning to slip behind one of the mountains. It was still light outside, only slowly growing dimmer. My father and mother and one of my sisters had gone into Matewan (about twenty miles away) to grocery shop and to stop to visit relatives in that area of the county. I, along with my brother Tim (10), sister Donna (14), and sister Debbie (16) were lounging around the living room and doing what kids do. Tim and I were playing some sort of board game on the floor, while my sisters watched television and talked. Our dog, Mitten, was chained up to the front porch. Suddenly, Mitten began barking and growling absolutely hysterically! I had rarely heard Mitten sound so, at the same time, distressed and threatened.

Initially, my brother Tim and I (being our family’s “little men”) jumped up and ran toward the opened front door thinking that either a bear or a human was going to come into the house! Just then, Tim and I leaned out of the front door with our sister Debbie right behind. Stretching our necks out the door to see what Mitten was barking at, stood a human figure standing at the corner of the house! (The way he was standing, we could only see his front half. The backside was behind the corner of the house.)

We thought at first that it was a man trying to break in on us kids knowing my father was not home. But, this was like no man we had ever seen! Still thinking it was a human man trying to get in, we yelled at him (it?) to not come in because we had a gun and would use it. (We really did have one and Debbie went to get it.) Just as Debbie got back to the door, and within full sight of Tim, Debbie, Mitten, and myself this thing moved. As it moved, we knew immediately this thing certainly was not human. It was a solid black figure, with no light reflection whatsoever reflecting off of it. It was like looking into a black hole.

The shape was reminiscent of an old style fisherman hat with full-body slicker. I will never forget how it looked. As it moved away slowly from the house it moved as one unit (that is to say, with no body motion at all) and was actually floating above the ground about one foot and had no feet. It did not make any sound as it floated down our gravel driveway and turned right as it reached the roadway. We were in shock and could not believe what we had witnessed.

My father did not believe us at all, and thought we were just making this up until my mother witnessed the very same figure coming up the driveway about one week later! As she sat in the front door one morning after a cooling rain, she said it looked like it had come up out of the ground and proceeded toward the house. She thought that it was going to come on up the stairs and onto the porch, but it proceeded up past the corner of the house instead.

And, lastly, if my mother and we children did not make a believer out of my dad, he converted to one shortly thereafter. One night as we slept, we all awoke to all hell breaking loose in the attic. It sounded like somebody had broken in through a window and was smashing furniture (we had none up there), smashing mirrors (none), and was stomping through glass for what seemed like hours.

This activity woke us all and it sounded as though whoever was up there was about to come down the stairs! That’s when my dad and eldest brother Terry (18), thinking somebody had broken in and was vandalizing the attic, armed themselves and went up the stairs. The noises stopped just as my dad was opening the attic door. Nothing had been touched. Even the cobwebs were still in the windowsills!

We still had to live in that hell house for the remaining part of the summer, though nothing quite so extraordinary occurred.

That’s my story and I swear to its authenticity. I am now a 34 year old man, occasionally fear the dark, and noises in the night make me break out in cold sweat. I used to be angry that how could anything (even a ghost) psychologically scar such a young, innocent child. I am no longer angry, but I admit that I am still traumatized by the experience (what do I do, go to a psychiatrist and tell him I saw a ghost?).

After reading an article in the sightings section of this website, I was amazed at the story of the ghosts in Shepherd College. The one that intrigued me the most was the one concerning the Gardiner Hall ghost. Although a ghost does exist in that building, it is not that of former college professor, Mabel Gardiner.

As a resident of the building in the spring of 2003, I resided on the second floor in a room with its number displayed upside down. For a few months, I asked intently why my number had to be upside down at all times, and received the same concerned response of, “Oh, don’t worry about it, but ask a friend why it has to,” Then one night, on a weekend when my roommate and his girlfriend went away, I was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of footsteps in my room. The sound moved from my door to my roommate’s side of the room, where I could hear the abrupt shuffling of papers. Eventually, the footsteps approached the edge of my bed, where a cold sensation erupted.

The next day I confronted several of my friends, asking whether or not a ghost really existed in Gardiner. Their immediate response was, “Yes, her name is Patty and she roams the hall’s at night and rests in the day in your room, #211.” Well, after discovering this, I noticed a plaque of memory in our lounge for a girl with the first name Patricia. As the story goes, she died in the shower after hitting her head. This incident occurred in either 1988 or 1989. The picture of Mabel Gardiner must remain upside down because Patricia blames the Gardiner family, for some reason, for disclosing the accident, which could have possibly been avoided.

About two weeks before I left for summer break, I woke up in the middle of the night in what looked like a blinking flash of light that surrounded the mirror in my room. After looking up, a young woman appeared with dark brown hair and in a white outfit. My guess is that Patty wanted to appear to me before I left. But just to keep the record straight, although she did win the homecoming queen crown, she does not walk the field. She is not Mabel Gardiner, but Patricia Loy who tragically died in the building in either 1988 or 1989. If you have anymore questions please write me and I will fill you in on some more information regarding the hauntings in Gardiner Hall.

We had moved in to our rather expensive townhouse, and two days later, my mother suddenly became sickly ill. One night around 11:00, I had went in to her room to tell her goodnight, and she told me to get another blanket to put on my baby sister. I went up to the third floor where her bedroom was, and the room suddenly became quite chilly.

I went to the closet on the wall further from the street, and opened the white bi-fold doors. I pulled a blanket from the top shelf and then I had a feeling like some one was right over me, hovering over my shoulder. I turned around and saw a small girl that looked about 5 or 6 years old, and she was dressed in an older style night robe that was white.

She appeared to be hovering about three inches above the floor. The spirit was a tint of extremely soft blue, but appeared as a person which you see in a negative of film, and you hold it up to the light – the edges are bright fluorescent blue-green. She then disappeared as quickly as she had come.

Strange encounters have happened at our home, but nothing as major as that. A couple of times, a glass would topple over onto the table, or a CD might fly across the room. I hate having a “poltergeist”, because my friends are terrified of it, but it seems like it only comes around when I’m very angry, like one time when I was mad at my friend, the door slammed shut.

I will never forget my experience with the paranormal. We have moved since, and now live in a new house. The only weird thing here is the 1st day we moved in, a picture frame toppled of the nightstand on the living room table…

My family and I moved to Morgantown, West Virginia when my son was around 9 months old. We lived in an apartment on the second floor of a house directly across from a very old, very large cemetery. It is a well maintained cemetery and has many walkways. We loved to walk around in it, and look at the dates on the grave stones. Some of the gravestones date back to the 1700’s, but most of them are from 1900 on. Anyway, my son learned to walk at around 13 months, and I loved to take him for a walk in the cemetery because the roads were level and it was safe. He used to stop to rest, sitting on gravestones. After a while, I began to notice a pattern to his “rest stops”. They were always Ladies who died in their 70’s or 80’s. We jokingly referred to them as his grandma’s, and chalked it up to coincidence.

One day, I was walking with him as usual and he wandered into the center of a cluster of stones. He began to pat one of the stones. The name on the stone was “Goodhill”. The other stones around it were also from the “Goodhill” family. (By the way, I changed the name because I don’t know if members of this family are still around–lets just say it was a VERY distinctive name.) After patting on one of the stones, my son took off across the grass. He was very intent and walking faster than normal, so I let him go. On the other side of the cemetery, under a tree, he stopped by another gravestone. It was by itself, under the tree. The name on the stone was “Goodhill”—the same name from the cluster of stones he stopped at earlier. I looked at every marker surrounding the stone, there were no others by the same name. It seems that someone was trying to let my son know they were all alone.

In the same cemetery, weeks later, we were walking again and my son led me to another grave stone. I stood there laughing hysterically, and my husband asked me what was wrong. I pointed, and he too began to laugh. You see, my family and I love the poem, by Dylan Thomas, called “A Child’s Christmas in Whales”. We even have the movie. My son was not yet old enough, at 14 months, to know the movie well, but he led us to a stone marked “PROTHEROW”. Mrs. Protherow is a very colorful character from the story. Incidentally, there are no other stones anywhere in the cemetery with that name. It seems, that yet again, my son has connections.

One last story to creep you out. We moved away from the cemetery, so alas, this is the last one. My husband and I, our two children, and one of my husband’s disabled clients were walking through the cemetery, looking at the older graves and commenting on the vandalism toward the back. There are two “above ground” crypts – coffin sized, in stone. One has a hole in the end. My husband jokingly knocked on one of the stones and said, “hello in there.” We all ran, yelling at him. I have no Idea why we all ran either. I picked up my son and took off, leaving him laughing behind us. When I got to the top of the hill, I stopped, feeling better. My husband was walking rapidly toward us with a strange, but amused look on his face. On his left hand, the one he used to knock on the grave, were three long scratches. He said that they didn’t hurt, and that he didn’t scrape his hand on anything. My hubby loves to joke, so I drilled him for the rest of the afternoon. He insisted that he wasn’t lying. The next morning, the scratches were GONE. A warning not to mess with their grave?

Well I was born in Marietta Ohio in 1984 and two years later my family decided to move to my father’s home town of Parkersburg West Virginia. So we got a nice house in Parkersburg. Our address was 520 5th street in the business part of Parkersburg…You know… down near The Blennerhassett Hotel.

Well anyway…The first day we moved in we noticed some weird things. The home was said to have been the original location of Kimes Funeral Home which is now across the street from where that home used to be. Plus all of the bedrooms had numbers on them…as if it were a motel of some sort. There were fireplaces in every room. Just a beautiful home to grow up in. The first day we came there…my mother put her two priced life-like dolls in an old rocking chair in the back bedroom that faced the backyard. That room was to be used as storage. The next day when she came back the dolls were still in their place…but there were foot prints on the marble in front of the fireplace. My mother was stunned so she picked up one of the dolls and put its foot in the print to see if it matched and to her surprise…it matched perfectly.

That was just the beginning of the weird things to come. The owner of the home told us to never unlock the attic door. We were to never enter that room. Storage was running short, my mother decided to have my father break the lock off so we could use the attic. We thought it would be no big deal. You could see from the outside of the home that the attic window was broken so my mother decided to replace the glass. She replaced it and the next morning I woke up screaming.

My mother asked me what was wrong and I told her that Tinda was dead and that her mother was a witch and her father only had one leg and they killed her. I was only 2 years old so you can imagine how shocked my mother was to hear this. I told her to take me to the attic and I would show her. So she carried me to the attic and I went over to the window that we had replaced and she was shocked because it had been broken out. But I told her that Tinda was a little girl whose mother was a witch and her father was a bitter man with only one leg. They used to lock her in the attic and punish her and one day they pushed her out the window. My mother was terrified but brushed it off to be my wild growing imagination.

As the days went by things began to happen even more frequently. My mother had 7 children, 5 girls…and 2 boys. I was the youngest girl but I had a little brother. Well my older brother, Chad, kept seeing her. As did my sister Misty and my sister Lora. But everyone kept mistaking her for me. Everyone said she looked just like me.

Well the years went on and soon I turned 4. We kept seeing sighting of Tinda and I often played with her. The funny thing is…I can never remember seeing her. I always prayed to God “Don’t let me see her…don’t let me see her” And I remember her telling me that she didn’t want to scare me…so she always kept herself hid. As long as I couldn’t see her…I was happy!

Some time passed and Easter was right around the corner. My mother and I had gone to “The Salvation Army” located right near our house and still stands there today. We were poor then so it was a treat to get to go to that thrift store. We went in the store and found this beautiful dress and matching hat for me to wear on Easter Sunday. I was so proud of it that when I got home I went straight to my room to hang it up above my bed. That night when I went to sleep I dreamed of how much fun I would have wearing the dress in the week to come when Easter would get here. Easter was my favorite holiday and I loved dressing up for it.

The next morning when I woke up I looked up at the dress and screamed. It was covered in blood. I ran down stairs and told my mom and she thought I had done it but I swore to her that I didn’t. She tried washing it and washing it but it wouldn’t come out.

And one night my brother Chad was cleaning his room while I was downstairs helping mom bake a cake like I usually did. According to Chad, who he thought was me came to his room stood in his doorway and just stood there he said “April, you want to help me clean my room?” He turned his head and then looked back and “I” wasn’t there. He thought to himself, “If you didn’t want to help me all you have to do is say no”!

He couldn’t find me in my bedroom so he went downstairs to find me in the kitchen with mom. He looked at me and said “April how did you change your clothes so quickly?” And mom said “Chad she’s been here all night. She hasn’t changed her clothes”. See the “April” that he thought he had seen had a long white dress on. While I had my pink nightgown on, he then realized it was Tinda.

Tinda continued to play tricks like this on everyone in my family, even my own mother. My mom was washing dishes late one night and she heard me crying in the hall she walked out there to give me a hug and she walked right through “me”. Yet again it was Tinda.

Every night as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep I could hear basketballs bouncing in the attic, or the toilet flush. This would go on all night long, which made me an insomniac at a very young age. Still to this day I have trouble sleeping.

My father was a terrible man who thought teaching a good lesson was beating or scaring his children. He once locked me in the attic. For some reason I was terrified. Terrified of the thought of Tinda’s mom and dad being up there with me.

Only a few occasions did I see figures of Tinda’s mother and father. Once when I was just a baby…when we first moved into the house, my sister Bobbie was babysitting me. And I remember this like it was yesterday. I was in my crib in my mom’s room which was downstairs while she was watching TV in the living room which was obviously the place where funerals were held when it was Kimes funeral home because of the lavish glass doors that slid closed. All the sudden I remember hearing a cackle Yes a cackle. Like you would imagine a witch would do. My sister Bobbie heard it too and ran in there as I had started screaming.

The home was a beautiful place to grow up, but also a very scary place. After 8 years living in that house we moved to Reedy West Virginia. A small town with a population of 140. It was a big change but a big relief. From time to time my mother would make trips back to Parkersburg to see who lived in the home. Once there was a family with children and all my mom asked if they had seen or heard anything and they said “It’s funny you ask that My son was just telling me today about the basketballs bouncing in the attic while he was trying to go to sleep”. My mom smiled because she knew Tinda hadn’t left!

More years passed and people stopped moving into the house. It had become very old. It became outdated and too small for a family who wanted fireplaces in every room. Without us knowing it, they started to tear down the house. One night my mother had a dream that Tinda came to her crying and said “I have nowhere to live I have nowhere to go”. Mom asked her why and she just kept repeating “I have nowhere to live I have nowhere to go”. We were in the works of moving so mom said “You can live with us we’re moving to Ripley”. She woke up sad and in tears. She decided to go to Parkersburg because she knew something was wrong. As she drove past our old house on 520 5th Street in Parkersburg, West Virginia she saw that they were tearing it down to build a shelter for homeless or abuse children.

Fast forward to today February 12, 2003 and the shelter still stands. Our home is gone. I believe Tinda lives with us now in Ripley West Virginia. But every night as I go to sleep I pray “Please God don’t let me see any ghosts.” And she grants my wish and hides her identity.

One Friday night, my little sister was spending the night with my grandma and my other sister was spending the night at my other grandma’s house. I was on my computer until after midnight, it was between 2:30 or 3:00 when I got off.

That night I was sleeping on the couch in the living room. I was watching television, and I heard something. I thought it was my imagination or one of my dogs. Well, it couldn’t have been one of my dogs, because they were both laying on the couch with me. Then I heard it again. It sounded like it came from right over top of me. It sounded like someone was walking very fast and pushing boxes out of their way in the attic. I knew it wasn’t my imagination.

After about 3 minutes the noises stopped. About 15 minutes after I heard the noise, I turned the light off to go to sleep. Then I heard a noise from the other room. Like someone was typing on the keyboard for my computer, but I looked back to the room and no one was in there. I finally went to sleep.

The next day, I told my sister about it. I didn’t tell my little sister about it, because she would have been scared. She didn’t believe me until about a week later on another Friday night, when she heard it, and so did I. She heard noises like someone was typing on the keyboard, as before.

We went into our attic Saturday night with one of our friends. We took flashlights with us. We looked towards the side of the attic that the noise had came from, but we didn’t see anything. Then we heard a really loud noise. We turned around and on the other side of the attic we saw something that was NOT there before. It was a chair that we have never seen before. Then a ghost appeared in it. We screamed. We were so scared we couldn’t move.

The ghost said something. It was hard to understand what it was saying. It was like mumbling. This is what we think it said:

“So, you are the ones I have been scaring. I love typing on your keyboard. Why did you move into this house? I was alone until you moved in. I have been trying to scare you off for 11 years. Nothing works. Now leave! If you don’t, you will be sorry!”

We ran out of the attic. We told my mom and dad, but they said we have been watching to many ghost shows. They still don’t think it’s true. Ever since that night, I won’t stay up late on the computer, well, I don’t get on the computer that much anymore, and I sleep with the lights on.

I am not sure what it is that I have following me, but I think it maybe a ghost of some sort.

When I was 13, my mother and I moved into a house in Harpers Ferry, WV, with my aunt, uncle, and younger cousin. I have always heard the ghost stories about Harpers Ferry, but since the house was not in the actual town, I did not think I had anything to worry about. Apparently, I was wrong!

We moved in, thinking that it would be a pleasant place, because it was quite big, and was in a quiet neighborhood. Nothing really happened for a few months. However, when things did start happening, they did not go unnoticed. At first, they were just like what you hear in everyone else’s stories. We would hear moaning, and people talking. Nevertheless, as time went on, it got worse.

My mom and my uncle were at home, alone one night. They were sitting in the upstairs living room. They heard something big, fall and make a huge bang. My uncle (Jay) went through the upstairs rooms, while my mom went downstairs to see what had fallen. They both came back empty handed. Another night, all of us were sitting in the same room, talking. When everything got quiet, it sounded like someone was walking up the steps. (The house was a split-level, and the stairs creaked when someone was walking on them.) The footsteps, along with the creaking noise, seemed to stop at the front door, then continue up the steps. It seemed like it lasted for hours. Everyone was really freaked. That is not the worst part, my younger cousin (Jess), was about 8 or 9 years old. She had never really been the scared type, not afraid of the dark or anything. However, she would never want to be in her room alone for some reason. My aunt (Tammy) always blew it off as Jess being scared, but one night, after Jess had gone to bed, Tammy and Jay were watching TV in their bedroom, across the hall.

Jay heard what he said sounded like someone scratching at the door. He got up to check it out, but there was no one there. He went into Jess’s room to see if she had waked up. She was still sleeping in her bed, but her bedroom light was on, with the switch on the “off” position, and her closet door was open. Jay said he did not know what to think, so he turned the light off (to the “on” position) and just went back into his room. The next morning, he went to wake Jess up for school. The light was still off, but this time it was on the “off” position. Weird? Jess started getting ready for school, and got some clothes out of her closet. She called Jay in the room, because she said her closet door would not close. Jay tried to close it, but it would not budge. He started looking to see what was wrong, and he saw a huge hole in the ceiling of the closet. Well, he went to the attic to see if it was possibly a rat or something. Nothing! There was absolutely no possible way an animal could have gotten in there.

My aunt and uncle had two dogs at the time, and one of them had killed a kitten that my mom had gotten me. I buried her in the back yard, by the tree line. One day, I was out visiting her grave, I looked up in front of me, and there stood this white shadow looking thing. It was not like a human form, nor was it animal. It had a head, but the body was rounded, and no feet appeared. Of course, it scared me, so I turned, and ran towards the house. As I was running, I looked back to see if it was chasing me. Sure enough, it was. However, this time, it looked like a white dog or some kind of four legged animal. I reached the house, and slammed the back door behind me. I looked out the door, but there was nothing there. I told my mom about it, but of course she thought I was nuts!

I do not think there was anything that happened to my mom or my aunt, but we did not live there long.

After leaving there, everything seemed to be normal. A little while later, when I was 15, my mom, step-dad, and I moved into Avon Bend (a little community, a few miles from Harpers Ferry). At first, everything WAS normal. We lived with another family for about a year, before they moved out. Right before they moved, I was sleeping in my roommate’s bedroom, which was the finished attic. She and I were very close friends. We stayed up half the night, talking and making plans for the weekend. She had fallen asleep, and I was just about there, myself. I suddenly heard someone scooting their feet across the carpet. Half asleep, I looked up and saw this person standing at the top of the steps, staring at me. I was not scared, but startled. I sat up in bed, and stared back, until this person faded away. The next morning, I told my friend about it, telling her, what the figure looked like and how it made me feel. I was in church at the time, so I thought it might have been an angel, or something to that affect. She told me that she thought it was her grandmother, because she comes to “visit” occasionally. Why would she come to see me? Even though I was a churchgoer, I still felt an evil presence in the house.

My grandfather, who is a preacher, came over one day to pray and bless the house. I kept hearing people talk, and move through the house. There was even an instance that drove me to leave for a while. I was on the bottom floor of the house (in the living), and started to walk up the stairs to my bedroom. There was no one else there, so I had my music up loud. As I turned the corner to the steps, I heard fast footsteps behind me; they kept getting closer and closer. It scared me, so I ran up the step, but could still hear them to be what sounded like right behind me. They were so loud; I could hear them over my music. When I got to the top, I did not stop until I got to my room. I shut and locked the door behind me. I turned the music off, and started calling out to see if it was my mom or someone I knew. No one answered me everything was silent. I was TERRIFIED, but I eventually got enough courage to open the door, bat in hand. I did that little creeping search of the house. You know, the one you do, late at night when you hear a strange noise. Peeking around every corner, I did not find anything. I did notice, however that there were muddy footprints on the stairs, but nowhere else in the house. They were not there earlier. I left shortly after that. I did not come home for 2 weeks.

I live in Charles Town, still. I do not live in an old house, but still get visited by something. When I was pregnant with my son, I use to stay up at night, while my boyfriend slept. I was sitting on the couch one night, watching TV. My boyfriend was snoring in the bedroom. I swear, someone said my name in a whisper! It came from what is now, my son’s bedroom. Now my son is 6 months old. When I hold him, he looks over my shoulder and laughs. I look behind me, and of course, there is nothing there. He does not do it to anyone else, just me. Sometimes I am afraid to go into his bedroom. I feel like someone is watching me, or looking over my shoulder. I was lying in bed one night, and woke up to see a man standing at the foot of the bed. I woke up boyfriend up, but he faded away, making me out to be a liar.

My boyfriend thinks that all these things are just in my head. He does not believe in ghosts. I KNOW they are real! Nevertheless, I do not understand why I keep feeling and seeing them. Is there one that is with me all the time, or that follows me? It seems like no matter where I go, or live, there is always something strange about it. Whoever, or whatever it is, I wish it would go away so I can have a normal life!

When I was 9 years old (March 21, 1999), my grandpa, whom I was very close to, was murdered. The woman he lived with murdered him for insurance money. A while after she killed him I had these strange feelings like my pa paw was watching over me.

Supposedly my grandpa’s spirit dwelt in my aunts house. My aunt believed grandpa’s spirit dwelt there because a light in the kitchen on the same circuit as another would go off at the identical time everyday. I felt truly weird in my aunt’s home. My mom and I were at her abode one time when the light went off. My aunt told mom her theory she had for the light episode. My mom just thought my aunt was crazy. “Dad, if that is you, turn the light back on,” said my mom. As soon as my mom said that, the light came back on. A cheerless and fearsome feeling came over me and as a result I jumped up screaming and began to cry like any 10-year-old would do. A family friend was also in the house when this happened. He was a grown man and was almost in tears after briefly talking about the event. Within ten minutes all my aunts’ visitors had left.

I believe my grandpa was just telling us he was fine and not to worry so much about justice because God is giving him justice. I think he was also saying we needed to all get alone. Right before that, my mom and I were screaming at each other. He simply wanted peace. He must of thought he scared everyone because after that, the light incident rarely happened again. This took place in Wyoming, WV, in the city of Ravencliff.

When my Grandma Belle was a very young girl, her father Leander was a deeply-religious-man, many in the town of Ripley, West Virginia looked to him for spiritual leadership.

An example of such is the nature of this story. A local family was experiencing “visits” from a spiritual entity that came in the form of a rolling blue flame that would suddenly appear in their living room and move from room to room often omitting strange whining sounds like that of a cornered cat about to strike.

Although the entity had not hurt anyone in their family to this point, they were none the less terrified by what they were seeing. As the days went by the visits became more frequent to the point that the troubled family could no longer deal with it and asked our great grandfather for his help.

That night when Leander arrived at their home the entity was in full force, roaming about the house as the terrified family looked on. Leander knew from experience the only thing to do was to confront the spirit, so he slowly approached the flame but when he got within a couple of feet, the flame flared up followed by a loud screech.

As the flame moved away Leander again followed it to the next room and again approached the entity and once again the flame flared up and the noise got louder. Leander again remained still until the flame began to move toward the rear of the house. At this point Leander cornered the entity and stated “In the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, what do you want”.

The flame flared up engulfing the entire room for and instant and the screech reached a deafening pitch, and just as suddenly it was gone… never to be seen again.

To that local family it was a demon driven from their home, but to great grandpa Leander it was just another wayward spirit finally at rest.

First of all I have two ghosts in my house, a good one and a bad one.

One night when I was going to bed I saw something through my mirror standing in the hallway, at first I thought it was my dad because he was tall, had black hair, and was wearing a white t-shirt and jeans with a white towel over his shoulder. As I sat there and watched him, he watched me, so I turned around to get in bed and he went away. Then my dad came into my room and he said I didn’t know you was in bed, and I told him, yes you did you was right there in the hallway, I seen you through the mirror. He said no, I fell asleep on the couch 15 minutes ago.