The Requested Ghost Tales

Many people had asked about past experiences with ghosts in times when we lived in a "troubled" house back when I was young, as well as slightly more recent encounters. Here is a summary.

We moved to a house in Edgebrook (a swanky, suburbanesque cove of Chicago with big houses) in 1977, back when I was 6.
Shortly thereafter, many strange occurrences plagued my impressionable self. To preface things, my mother was very psychically "connected" and receptive to seeing strange things, my brother slightly less, and myself about the same. To wit:

Around 1980, things started getting weird. My mother was seeing strange things, such as shadows and flashes of light. My brother started coming home and seeing the lights in his own room turning on and off. We all went on a ghost tour and the group was encouraged to take a clump of dirt from this girl's grave, as good luck. I refused, felt bad vibes, but my mother and brother took some dirt for themselves. Within a week, my mother's car was crushed between two large trucks, and my brother was in a bad accident. They disposed of their "lucky" grave dirt immediately.

In 1981 we were poised to move out west to start a new business that my dad sought out. My mother swore that her mother was visiting her as dreams, advising against it. Ultimately, it turned out to be a bad business venture.

While sitting alone in that Edgebrook house, in my room, I started seeing curtains move, shadows zip by, etc. Once, while reading a book at 11:00pm during the summer of 1981, I saw (and heard) a white figure run by my doorway, in the dark hallway. As I ran out to see, I smelled ozone (that lightning, post thunderstorm smell). The next day there was a permanent "burn" on the carpet that was in the same area.

Shortly therafter, all the buttons on my mother's blouse were found to be now sewn to the opposite side.

During these encounters of 1981, I eventually heard more stories from my brother and somehow stopped being scared of things. As I tried brushing my teeth, like a good boy, the water from the faucet suddenly tapered off to nothing, like the faucet was being shut off on me. I got mad and smelled ozone and knew something was up, so I said out loud "Leave me alone you moron, I'm too tired." and the water pressure was restored. I never saw anything again.

The night before the discovery of the reversed buttons, my window shade rolled up and my radio turned on and off repeatedly. I unplugged the radio and it still turned on about 3 hours later.

Shortly after all these episodes, my parents independently found home made pornographic material that had been hidden by the previous owners of the house. Upon its disposal, nothing further occurred.

Subsequently, when I was 15, we ended up in a house in Skokie, and my mother and I smelled perfume at the time of year when the previous owner would have died. We set up a camera with a motion-activated shutter, loaded with infrared film, and left it for the 3 days we all were out of town. With all external light blocked off, the whole roll was subsequently, automatically exposed. We've yet to develop that infrared film.

Recently I wrote an article about why Ouija boards weren't that big a deal, and immediately became plagued by shadows and strange episodes. No further updates. Some shadows floating around were dark (which supposedly are bad) and some were gray (which supposedly are lost). One thing that helped me, for all you poltergeist infested folks - our energy can beat up others fairly easily. If you have odd dark shadows around, putting a cross in the room may not do it. Might have to get "spiritual" (not to sound weird) to knock out the bad spirits.