Share your paranormal encounters no matter how silly

In 2000 we had just moved into our house in Maplewood. My wife and I were exhausted and in bed. She was sound asleep, I was starting to drift off when all of a sudden I heard someone banging on one of the windows in a different bedroom. It was a fairly small house, both bedroom doors were open and the window in question was about 12-15 feet from where my tired head lay on the pillow.  

This was on the second floor. Five very clear raps in quick succession. I jumped out of bed and ran down and looked out the front door. Nothing to be seen or heard. 

I never told my wife the story until we moved. Never heard the sound again. And I never figured out what caused it. 

When I was a child of about 10, living on Long Island, I had an early morning dream about a neighbor's dog getting hit by a car. I woke up and went to the bathroom, where I looked out the window and saw the dog in my dream get hit by a car. It freaked me out and I've never forgotten it. 

The_Soulful_Mr_T said:

When I was a child of about 10, living on Long Island, I had an early morning dream about a neighbor's dog getting hit by a car. I woke up and went to the bathroom, where I looked out the window and saw the dog in my dream get hit by a car. It freaked me out and I've never forgotten it. 

whoa. Yeah that would stick with me too. 

As my house is inhabited by cats, they frequently try to psych me into believing there are ghosts by merely staring at something behind me. As the house is 100 years old, they are either very sensitive to the other worldly or they enjoy seeing which one of them can get me to turn around. 

About 30 years ago I lived on a farm in West Virginia with a very old farmhouse. One day I was on the tractor up the hill mowing the horse pasture, and as I turned to start the next pass I saw someone standing in front of the hay barn: a man with brown hair, wearing a blue/white/black plaid flannel shirt and brown corduroy pants. We sold  tack and feed out of the barn so I thought he was a customer. I looked down to shut off the brush hog and change gears; when I looked up again he was gone. Then when I got to the pasture gate, it occurred to me I hadn't seen a vehicle at all, nor had the dogs barked as they always did when anyone came into the driveway.

When I told this story to the lady who owned the farm, she instantly said "oh, that was Richard Vitalis Eppinger" and went on to say he was one of the sons of the family who homesteaded that farm and died in the early 1900s, around 20 years old, of tuberculosis.

mulemom said:

About 30 years ago I lived on a farm in West Virginia with a very old farmhouse. One day I was on the tractor up the hill mowing the horse pasture, and as I turned to start the next pass I saw someone standing in front of the hay barn: a man with brown hair, wearing a blue/white/black plaid flannel shirt and brown corduroy pants. We sold  tack and feed out of the barn so I thought he was a customer. I looked down to shut off the brush hog and change gears; when I looked up again he was gone. Then when I got to the pasture gate, it occurred to me I hadn't seen a vehicle at all, nor had the dogs barked as they always did when anyone came into the driveway.

When I told this story to the lady who owned the farm, she instantly said "oh, that was Richard Vitalis Eppinger" and went on to say he was one of the sons of the family who homesteaded that farm and died in the early 1900s, around 20 years old, of tuberculosis.

I was just thinking maybe you had a bout of hay fever. 
My house is haunted by the previous owner’s wife. My kids, when they were little all saw her, she hasn’t been around lately since my last one moved to Brooklyn a few years ago. She had passed away in her sleep in one of the kids room. I think the fact that there were things left in the basement that belonged to her, is what kept her spirit around. She had one child and they left her sewing machines in the basement where she sewed. I never threw them out because they were very good singer machines that were very expensive. But I finally gave them away to an old lady who lost hers in the flood during hurricane Ida. She’s Italian also, and I figured it would be better if Francesca followed her machines to the new home, they would get along just fine. 
Yes, spirits don’t always fly away….

One time in college I was driving late at night, when I saw Death (from a Bergman movie, the Seventh Seal) sitting in the back seat of the car, and beginning to put his hands around my neck.  Shortly after that I heard a quiet but strange sound around the rear wheels, pulled to the shoulder of the road, and discovered that I had a flat tire.  I felt fortunate as though the Death vision was a warning to help me be extra vigilant to become aware of the tire problem.

We moved to Maplewood in 2012 and took the kitchen down to the studs.  After the reno, we smelled puffs of cigarette smoke in the kitchen with some frequency. Perplexing, because we didn't smoke, and we'd redone all the drywall. 

Previous owners had a big family, 7 kids.  The patriarch was a smoker and, I believe, passed in the house. One of the kids hadn't been to the house since their father passed.  That kid called after we'd been in the house maybe a year and asked to come to say goodbye.  We happily obliged. Haven't smelled smoke since.

More than 11 years ago I went to a house sale that a very invested MOL'er was running on Elmwood Ave.  Really good stuff - I went there and picked out some items... and as I was going thru the home it felt 'off'  - One of the last items I purchased was a 'cat themed curtain' ... and I mentioned my odd feelings and yes... The lady running the sale confirmed that the house was indeed... haunted. The dealer is on facebook currently....

Right after my father died, we were sitting Shiva at my parent's apartment.  When he was alive, my father would spend most of his time at home sitting at his desk in the foyer.  From where I was sitting in the living room, I had a clear view of that desk and i saw my recently deceased father sitting there as he always did.  

We were on a ghost tour of Boston one autumn night a few years back. One of the stops was the Central Burying Ground in  Boston Common. We were asked to form the usual semicircle around the tour guide so I walked a little past him and then turned around to face him, so I was forming the far end of the semicircle. At that moment I distinctly felt a tap on my right shoulder - the shoulder that was oriented toward the graves. 

I turned around. Nobody was there.  My daughter was a couple of feet to my left and was too short at that time to have reached the shoulder on the other side. I told the guide and he said yeah that sometimes happens. 

We also heard a story that night of some unmarked graves of British soldiers from the Revolutionary War era that were unearthed when they were digging the tunnels for the T. Apparently if you’re in the front car of the train, some nights you’ll see the ghost of a redcoat ahead of you in the tunnel. We tried that night but to no avail … my daughter was pretty disappointed.