ghost stories…grab a flashlight!

39 CommentsTuesday • October 30, 2007 • by michelle

As I’ve told you, my friend Tui of Mental Mosaic is organizing a Halloween-themed blog carnival:

True Spooks…Share Your Ghost Story

I’m now late submitting this (sorry Tui!) but I’ve been trying to post this for three days–Internet problems AGAIN. I hope she’ll still let me in!

I don’t know how long this connection will last, but at this point, I have such low hopes for being able to get through NaBloPoMo. Keep your fingers crossed for good Telecom Italia vibes please!

Anyway, keeping with the Halloween theme, I also received word from somepinkflowers that there’s a Halloween party going on over at Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun, and I thought telling some ghost stories would be a fun way to particpate.

So here is my contribution to the Halloween festivities–three, three, three true creepy stories for the price of one!

I.

When I was a teenager, I used to joke with my family that there was a man living in my closet, which was really a cubby hole that ran the length of the top floor of the house on either side of the upstairs bedrooms. I used to hear strange noises, things shuffling, falling, just weird stuff that I was always a bit too afraid to investigate in the moment.

I really did think it was possible that someone could live in there, especially if he smuggled up food from the kitchen every now and again. Did I mention my grandmother was no longer so sensitive to small noises around the house after having as many as eight people living there at a time? Hell she might’ve even just thought it was the friend of a grandchild or something grabbing food if she saw him….

I didn’t go exploring in the cubby all that often anyway, and like any good storage space, blankets and pillows were part of the mess. The Man in the Closet would even have his choice of stuffed animals, so you know, it *was* possible that there was someone in there.

Well it was all a funny joke until one day my goddaughter, who was about two years old at the time, and I were up in my bedroom. She walked over to the cubby hole door and pulled it open, probably to get my old Barbies out or something.

With a loud bang, the door pulled back and slammed shut immediately (virtually impossible to occur on its own because of a really sticky door handle) and she was left standing there, staring at the closed door with an open mouth and wide eyes.

I grabbed her and ran downstairs (greeted by laughing family members, of course). She was too young to explain what happened, but I never did hear strange noises come out of there again.

II.

Switching locations to southern Italy, I had been in my house for a few months, just about that time when you’re used to all the natural noises a five-hundred-year-old house makes.

Well one November night, I heard footsteps on my wooden stairs, slow and steady, and heading toward my bedroom which is on the bottom floor of the three-story house. The stairs are connected by iron rails, so someone walking on them creates a very peculiar noise–the stomp against the wood, but also a ting because of the iron. I turned on the light but didn’t see anything, and eventually (eventually!) went back to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I was greeted by the top of a coffin propped against the house in front of me. My elderly neighbor had passed away during the night, and he was already set up in his house for a couple days of viewing before he would be buried.

I heard the footsteps for two more nights and haven’t since.

III.

This one is from a very good friend of mine here in the village who, trust me, isn’t one to normally believe in this kind of stuff, so I sure believe him.

When he was a teenager, he was hurrying to get home after a summer night out, and so was speeding up the winding road into the village on his motorino (like a Vespa). He saw a light flash before him on the otherwise pitch black night, and realized as he got closer that it was an old man holding an old-fashioned lantern standing right in his path.

He swerved at the last minute, but hit him anyway; his bike went one way and he went the other.

As he made his way back to the bike, he looked around for the man or the light or anything, but saw nothing. He thought that maybe the man had tumbled over the side of the road, panicked, and went home.

When he got up the next morning, he asked his grandmother about the news in the village, if anything had happened the night before, but there was nothing of interest.

Later, when he told others of his story, it turns out that plenty of people around here have seen that man with the lantern, lighting up the pitch black road for late travelers home–but no one knows who he is or why he hangs around.

Have any ghost stories you’d like to share?

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