That needs a like button.

These stories aren't bad, exceot the steps in the hall - how did you ever sleep?!- but this is why I don't watch scary movies. I saw one at a drive in in high school that was set in a woodsy area where something bad would happen right after the wind blew and a bunch of leaves clattered in the wind. I am too outdoorsy a person to have that kind of thing in my head! It took decades, like, into my 30s, possibly in my 40s, before I stopped being creeped out and scared by that same sound.

Callaluna, your kitty Isabella is still going after 5 years of subq?! Did you do anything else, or, was she young to start with? Java will turn 18 this year. If he was a human, he'd be heading to college!

Andi, I love that! A ghost who cares about proper nutrition.

Java, I don't know, maybe it started when I was young enough to just accept it as just another part of the house. I was only 4 when mom and I moved in.

The best part of all the ghost stories, IMHO, was Zenkitty's friend pouring the ghost a cup of coffee and then returning to her book.

Callaluna, your kitty Isabella is still going after 5 years of subq?! Did you do anything else, or, was she young to start with?

She was about 3 years old when this happened. She got sick, they could not figure out why. We had hundreds of dollars worth of tests done, and they ruled out a lot of things. In the end, they told us they believed she had intestinal cancer, but the only way to confirm was a test that would cost hundreds. I asked what the treatment would be if we decided not to have the test: special food and SubQ fluids and a pill every day (I think it was steroids, but it was a long time ago now). I asked what the treatment for intestinal cancer was. Same. So we skipped the test and went straight to the treatments. I gave her the pills every day and the subQ fluids every other day for a year. And then she got better. We don't know why. I have no contact with my ex-husband, but I am in touch with his mom and get Isabella updates. She is getting kind of old now, but is still relatively healthy. She has had a few recurrences of poor health, but has always pulled through. As far as I know, he doesn't give her subQ fluids anymore. He was always totally freaked out by it, so I hope for her sake she didn't need it!

G., being the person she is, said Good morning and got up, poured a cup of coffee and set it down for the ghost, and went back to reading.

This is my new favorite ghost story.

I don't have much in the way of ghost stories, but there's a place on the New Forest moors (in Darkest Hampshire, where my parents live) that I'm certain is haunted. My mother and I have both had weird 'this place is not right' feelings while crossing that moor, especially when dusk is falling. A long time after I started thinking that it was haunted, I came across an old pub on the edge of the moor where they have lots of old memorabilia and pictures etc to do with the history of the area. That part of the moor turned out to be a place where they hanged highwaymen off a specific tree. Fun times.

George reminds me a little of Phantom Dennis.

I have no ghost stories to tell, but it's fun listening to others'.

Me, neither, Bev. And that despite living in what my grandfather referred to as "the ghost house." My folks had a big old Victorian built in 1894 and you would have thought it had at least one ghost! Not so lucky. Unless there was one up on the third floor. My brother had the servant's quarters for his living space and it was always cold because even the central heating had a hard time keeping it to temperature. Mike was the type who probably would have made friends with it and then made mischief.

I couldn't deal with it if one of the people in the room was all clinging to some dumb theory and I couldn't just burst out with "Why so stupid?"

I was on a jury where the prosecution's evidence didn't come close to convicting the defendant. But two jurors said, "She just looks guilty." For what it's worth, they were white and the defendant was black. However, the rest of us were willing to come in the next day to hash things out and the two dissenting jurors said they couldn't afford to miss the work and gave in. In that particular case, fiscal privilege trumped racial issues. Not exactly "yay," but I'm glad an innocent woman didn't go to prison.

Re: ghosts. My senior year in college I was in a dorm where we believed a ghost haunted the elevators. We could call out to her from the lobby and the elevator would be available right away. If you didn't involk her name the elevator could take 5-10 minutes.

After college I spent a couple of years traveling. At one point I was hiking across the Dartmoor in southern England. I camped in a picturesque little glen, and at midnight I awoke to fluttering sounds all around, and a light brushing against the tent, like tiny birds throwing themselves against it. Eventually the fluttering stopped and I heard what sounded like a chorus of sorrowful moaning, but surely was just a group of animals I wasn't familiar with. I looked outside several times, but never saw anything. Even though I had been hitchhiking and camping for most of a year, I felt unaccountably frightened that night and slept little.

The next morning, feeling a need for human contact, I hiked into the nearest village, and struck up a conversation with a somewhat elderly local woman and her very elderly mother. When I told them where I was camping, the younger woman expressed mock horror and said "Don't ever venture there at night, there has been a coven of witches there for centuries and if they find a young man like you they will steal him away!" The mother, who seemed to have taken her daughter seriously, said derisively "For God's say Della, he's not a virgin, they have no use for him! They will investigate him, and they will be upset when they find that he just won't do, but they aren't going to bother him. People these days know nothing about witches!"

Reassuring, I guess, but it was still the last night I spent on the moor.