What do you say to a ghostly apparition upon meeting?

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Last December, I was in bed at night when I heard my doorknob start to turn and when I sat up and opened my eyes, my bedroom door opened all the way to my wall, stayed there for about ten seconds (with no one in the doorway), then shut completely – with the audible clicking that you hear when you pull it shut all the way, and the sound of my doorknob again. And before anyone even suggests it: no, I absolutely was not dreaming, or anywhere close to being asleep.

What makes it even more noteworthy is that it was the anniversary of my best friend’s suicide.

* shrug *

Welcome dear friend. Take a seat and tell me about your plane of existence. Oh, and if things are clearer there, why not take me along?

“Ha, you’re not real, I can see right through you”

We thought we had a ghost on our VA hospice unit. He was never seen by staff but only by different bedbound patients who had no contact with each other. They independently described him as about 19–20 years old, thin, about 5’10’ still had freckles, blue eyes and soft spoken. They said he was dressed in a faded, army-green smock and walked around the units in the early hours telling the patients everything would be OK. This went on for the 2 years I worked there. The other nurses, who had been there a lot longer, just took it in stride.

Our wing had been a psych unit for years dating back to WWII. The nurses had gone through the records to see if there were any patients matching the description, but after awhile that proved fruitless with such little data. But they did discover that the last time patients in that hospital were given green smocks was during the Korean War when the unit was used for the care of shell-shock (PTSD) victims.

There are two acquaintances who claim to have experienced run-ins with a spirit or spirits. One is the mother of a high school friend. The other is the husband of a friend that I’ve known since the age of two.

The mother claims that she has been followed for most of her life by “The Man in Black”. He doesn’t speak. She no longer fears him, but is still unsettled by his appearance. The rest of the family and at least one outside member have claimed to see him as well. The other friend’s husband claims to be able to see/hear spirits upon entering some buildings. Both are well educated and just sort of seem to accept this “gift” as do their family members.

As someone who has never experienced it, I find it hard to believe that there is any type of life after dying. Are these people pulling our leg or crazy? Who knows?

I used to call the source of the creaking in the walls and the dripping faucet “Dennis”.

Spoiler alert: it was the wind and old plumbing.

My husband believes in ghosts, though his beliefs are undefined. He’s currently battling his own loss of faith, so his views on the human soul and afterlife and such are in flux.

If I saw a ghost, my first question would be “who the fuck drugged me”? Spirits and ghosts are hallucinations, nothing more.

Beetlejuice, beetlejuice, beetlejuice?

I love that movie!

Being the skeptic that I am, I would ask to be told something that I don’t know but which could be verified. If the spirit could do that then I would consider the possibility that I was not hallucinating.

“What’s up?”

Many many times from friends that have passed, grandma’s and most recently my dad. I believe the energy we possess while we are alive can remain as an entity that can and does interact with the living….if we are open to these “signs” they send our way.

I believe what @Cruiser said.

@Seek: Hilarious! “Wind and old plumbing!”

I was advised via a medium that I had an entity that was feeding off my despair. One night I felt that energy leave my gut (I wrote about it here once) and another night I was visited by a friendly presence that started physically manipulating me through a series of yoga-like movements that kept repeating (I had smoked a little weed that night, but this was well beyond just my inebriation.) I was going along with it although in the back of my mind I was wondering if they/the presence was good or bad, so I asked. The reply was it was good. I asked its name, which in a way is a silly question, because what did it matter, but the response I got was “Lana,” which seemed like a weird response, but later I looked it up, and it means “light.” So I got the understanding that I was being loosened up with these yoga poses, which included a pretty significant backwards bending while standing and then after a while this dark energy was extracted from my gut and out through my mouth.

So there was that. I know a married couple and the husband is a tortured artist and they bicker constantly for sport and they have a ghost or something that has followed them from NYC to New Mexico. They have stuff misplaced and rearranged all the time, and once he posted a photo of two of his dining room chairs impossibly balanced against each other on the dining room table.

Back to my situation, the medium advised calling out the spirit that was feeding off me—basically to make the distinction that they weren’t my despairing thoughts, but that they were being fed to me.

I don’t have trouble now, but I had a little stretch recently where I felt that dark energy trying to return. It was palpable and “physically” uncomfortable, like a physical pressure, but the good news about that was that I saw it as distinct from me. Back in the day, I would have mistaken it for my own energy.

I’m glad to see this question here. Thank you.

Meeting Spirit happens to me often. I thank it for showing itself to me, and that’s usually the end of the interaction.

Long ago. I describe the whole thing on another link. I would say nothing the first few times but eventually I told it, it wasn’t welcomed. And if it was going to stay it had to either be quiet or pay rent. It stopped making noise. I like reasonable ghost. LOL

Ehhh, what’s up doc?

I believe I’d be still and wait for it to address me. If it didn’t want anything with me, then I would probably leave it alone.

My attention would be better directed toward trying to find out what made me think I saw it than toward trying to converse with a hallucination.

If I were lying in bed, though, I would regard it as a hypnagogic hallucination (very tricky, those—they seem so genuine, but they’re not) and dismiss it—after my pulse returned to normal.

BOO ya!

Wuddup foo.

I have only seen one ghost and it was a dog and I was going rather fast. I think what I said was “shit!” or words to that effect.

Pretty sure that is what I would say (and perhaps do) if confronted face to face with one.